« Timing, timing, timing. | Main | No, Signor da Vinci. Nessun elefanti, nessun cavalieri. »
May 22, 2006
Forget snakes on a plane...
A WOMAN who arrived in London on a flight from Africa yesterday is reported to have died from the deadly and contagious ebola virus.Panic has spread among cabin crew and hospital staff after the death of the 38-year-old Briton.
The unnamed woman is understood to work at an embassy in the African kingdom of Lesotho.
Aparently the syptoms matched that of haemorragic fever (which are similar to malaria and typhoid), they're waiting on a post mortem to identify the fever. The cabin crew have been told to monitor their health.
Richard Preston's "Hot Zone" as a fairly good, primer (take it with a grain of salt, it is rather sensationalized) on the history of Ebola (Sudan, Zaire and particularily the Reston strain) and Marburg, and he had the prescience to mention that "we are only an airplane ride away from the outbreak of a pandemic.". Both "Level 4: Virus hunters of the CDC" by Joe McCormick and Susan Fisher-Hoch, and "Virus Hunter" by C. J. Peters are far better, though a little drier, having been written two CDC workers with extensive experience and a leading epidemiologist respectively.
And, if you've no idea what these filoviruses can do to people, here's a snip from Preston's book (only about 10% of victims 'crash and bleed' liker this):
Ebola ravages every organ system of the human body except for the muscles and bones. It is the perfect virus because it uses every part of the body to replicate. It thickens the blood until it clogs veins causing parts of the body to die due to lack of blood. The skin begins to rash and liquefy. Sometimes the skin will split open and bleed from the slightest touch. Ebola turns every opening in the body into faucets of blood. The lining of a victim's throat begins to sloth[sic] off. The body begins to vomit up black bile. It is black as a result of being filled with the remains of dead cells. The brain also deteriorates causing the infected person to go insane.
The best way to describe the effects of Ebola on a person is to take the victim’s insides, liquefy them a blender, and spill its contents across a floor. Of course, its saturated with the virus.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at May 22, 2006 01:23 PM
Comments