The MERS Virus Thread

LazyLion

LazyLion

King of de Jungle
Joined
Mar 17, 2005
Messages
106,893
Reaction score
9,102
Location
District 9
The global death toll from a SARS-like virus has risen to 27, the World Health Organization said Wednesday after three patients died in hard-hit Saudi Arabia and another in France.

The new virus was last week renamed the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS, reflecting the fact that the bulk of cases are in that region.

There have been 38 confirmed infections in Saudi Arabia, with 22 fatalities, according to WHO figures.

The UN health agency logs cases and deaths according to the country where the individual is thought to have caught the disease, with its Saudi toll including one individual who subsequently died in Britain.

Previously known as nCoV-EMC novel coronavirus, the disease is a cousin of, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which sparked a world health scare in 2003 when it lept from animals to humans in Asia and went on to kill some 800 people.

Like SARS, the new virus appears to cause an infection deep in the lungs, with patients suffering from a temperature, cough and breathing difficulty. But it differs from SARS in that it also causes rapid kidney failure.

Health officials have expressed concern about the high rate of fatalities compared to the number of cases, warning that the disease could spark a new global crisis if it acquires an ability to spread more easily.


Source : Sapa-AFP /sdv
Date : 29 May 2013 16:35
 
Last edited:
Newly discovered virus takes more lives, spreads

(CNN) -- A new SARS-like virus recently found in humans continues to spread -- with the worldwide total now at 49, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

Of the 49 known infections with the MERS-CoV virus, 27 have resulted in death, the organization said.

The latest deaths were reported in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi health ministry said Wednesday that three people died from their infections in the country's eastern region.
WHO tracks new coronavirus to Middle East

The virus is "a threat to the entire world," the WHO's general director said Monday.

It "is not a problem that any single affected country can keep to itself or manage all by itself," Margaret Chan said Monday in her closing remarks at the 66th World Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.

Although many of the cases have occurred on the Arabian Peninsula, people have died of the infection elsewhere.

However, "all of the European cases have had a direct or indirect connection to the Middle East," the WHO said earlier this month. But "in France and the United Kingdom, there has been limited local transmission among close contacts who had not been to the Middle East but had been in contact with a traveler recently returned from the Middle East."

On Tuesday, a patient died in France after having contracted the virus during a trip to the Middle East, the WHO reported.

Coronaviruses cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, as well as a variety of animal diseases.

However, the new virus is not SARS.

The WHO recently gave it a more specific name: Middle East respiratory symptom coronavirus, or MERS-CoV.

It acts like a cold virus and attacks the respiratory system, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said. But symptoms, which include fever and a cough, are severe and can lead to pneumonia and kidney failure.

Health officials do not yet know much about how the virus spreads, which makes it hard for scientists to prevent infections, Chan said.

The WHO is calling for the world to pull together its resources to study and tackle the virus.

Source: CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/29/health/world-coronavirus/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
 
49? Jeez when i read about this story 4 weeks there was about 20 or 30 dead. This is hardly scary, more people die from aids every day yet we don't seem overly concerned about aids spreading across the globe.

How many people have died from seasonal flu today i wonder?
Influenza spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, resulting in about three to five million yearly cases of severe illness and about 250,000 to 500,000 yearly deaths
Click to expand...
wiki

Let's use half a million a year as our marker, that means 1300 people are dying from seasonal flu each day across the globe. 49 people have died from this virus in last 10 weeks. Now let's take 10 weeks and see how many have died from seasonal flu. So roughly 70-90000 people have died globally in the same period. Come to us with those numbers and perhaps it will seem more scary.

They have been predicting something that will wipe us out by the millions though so maybe this time we will see more than 1000 dead within the first year but at this rate if we make 500 i would be amazed.
 
Last edited:
An incurable disease that is contagious - how could that not be scary?

The only treatment is containment and letting it die out. Lose control of that and you'll be looking at millions dead. There is plenty to be scared of, but not so to paralyse you. Yet.
 
killadoob said:
49? Jeez when i read about this story 4 weeks there was about 20 or 30 dead. This is hardly scary, more people die from aids every day yet we don't seem overly concerned about aids spreading across the globe.

How many people have died from seasonal flu today i wonder?
wiki

Let's use half a million a year as our marker, that means 1300 people are dying from seasonal flu each day across the globe. 49 people have died from this virus in last 10 weeks. Now let's take 10 weeks and see how many have died from seasonal flu. So roughly 70-90000 people have died globally in the same period. Come to us with those numbers and perhaps it will seem more scary.

They have been predicting something that will wipe us out by the millions though so maybe this time we will see more than 1000 dead within the first year but at this rate if we make 500 i would be amazed.
Click to expand...

Haha! :D Ok, let's not even be concerned. After all, research has shown that some people, are just naturally immune to some diseases like HIV etc., simply because their ancestors were exposed to it. So, yes, not everyone will die from epidemics.

But you be the one to handle the press. :p
 
Influenza spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, resulting in about three to five million yearly cases of severe illness and about 250,000 to 500,000 yearly deaths
Click to expand...

So say there 5 million severe yearly cases, and 500 000 yearly deaths. That is 1 in 10. Take into account you looking at a lot of people who have AIDS, or the elderly etc who are really at risk to anything. This virus has 27 out of 49 that 55% compared to 10% and these are mostly healthy individuals who shouldn't be dying.
 
I understand killa's train of thought.
But what would happen if this strikes a country like SA? With the high number of HIV and tb cases?
 
Mila said:
I understand killa's train of thought.
But what would happen if this strikes a country like SA? With the high number of HIV and tb cases?
Click to expand...

People with compromised immune systems will sick earlier and die. The sheer number will overwhelm the resources necessary to dispose of bodies. People will stay away from work to nurse sick family or out of fear. Economic activity will cease. Estimate 17-20M dead.
 
sand_man said:
And therein lies the rub. A 55% fatality rate is extreme...
Click to expand...

Well, not compared to, say, ebola. But obviously MERS is more easily transmissible.

Not to mention that the 55% mortality rate excludes those who currently have the virus and will go on to die from it. Thus the rate will most likely increase as the number of infections increase.
 
Albereth said:
People with compromised immune systems will sick earlier and die. The sheer number will overwhelm the resources necessary to dispose of bodies. People will stay away from work to nurse sick family or out of fear. Economic activity will cease. Estimate 17-20M dead.
Click to expand...

Fear mongering?

Less people are not the worst thing ever. So the middle to upper class will survive the poor will die.
 
The_Assimilator said:
For one country yes. But if this virus spreads to India and/or China, 55% of their populations dead would solve a lot of the world's overcrowding problems.
Click to expand...

Well they do have a slight population issue over there.

Sorry, that's just nasty.
 
Look a lot of the people that have died have been elderly as far as i have read.

I followed this for a while now thanx to http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/ the third article.

I am not buying into this scare again, it's like the third or 4th scare. Everyone freaks out meanwhile in that day of freaking out 1300 people died from a known virus and a thousand from aids. So when i start to see even 49 people dead in one day(not 10 ten weeks) from something like this it might be more scary.

Having said that i understand the mortality rate and so on. It's just i guess aids seems more scary to me because it crosses borders and gets on planes undetected. There is no cure for aids. So i still think this disease that will kill millions is actually aids because it is killing millions we just don't fear it because it isn't airborne.

Airborne is actually easier to contain than a disease like aids, you can confine it and isolate it, aids can move around the globe and only a handful of countries will deny it entry.
 
Last edited:
Killa, they are just being cautious. Nothing wrong with that.
Would you rather that they just ignored it and never warned anybody of a potential outcome?
 
Saudi Arabia Reports 3 more deaths from Virus

Saudi Arabia has reported that three more people have died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing the total number of deaths globally to 30.

The Ministry of Health said Thursday the three deceased, ranging in age from 24 to 60, had chronic diseases, including kidney failure. It says they were hospitalized a month ago.

The Ministry also announced a new case of the respiratory virus called MERS, bringing to 38 the number of those infected in the kingdom. It identified the afflicted person only as a 61-year-old from the Al-Ahsa region where the outbreak in a health care facility started in April.

The World Health Organization said the new germ, a respiratory infection, was first seen in the Middle East and sickened more than 49 people worldwide.


Source : Sapa-AP /sdv
Date : 30 May 2013 12:07
 
Garyvdh said:
Killa, they are just being cautious. Nothing wrong with that.
Would you rather that they just ignored it and never warned anybody of a potential outcome?
Click to expand...

No i am glad they warn us, i just don't really believe they need to pull all their resources together AGAIN for something that is easily contained and showing very little signs of developing into anything really horrific.

Give us a warning but they need to stop acting like this is next million person killer when that already exists. There is a new kind of HIV now as well.

Just saying they make it seem like it is about to explode and infect us all.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter