History's Worst Epidemics

[Drone]

Plague of Justinian killed upwards of 100 million people in just two short years between 541 and 543 A.D. I didn't know that. Black Death killed millions as well.

 

[Frick]

The Black Death was the bigger star man.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Because children's songs were written about it. XD

I think the #1 killer would be all flus combined. It probably takes a million per year and it does it every year for millennia.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Malaria will be right up there too.

 

[TheMailMan78]

That chart isn't accurate. The "Spanish Flu" during and after WW1 killed about 70 million people world wide. It was far more deadly than HIV and as far as death count goes was far closer to the Bubonic plague. In all honesty there are a few major plagues missing from that chart. Its actually way off of reality. Antonine comes to mind.

 

[hat]

When it comes to Ebola I don't believe everything I see. All about how it's hard to catch, and about people being monitored who don't have the virus, so on and so forth. I don't believe "they" (whoever "they" are, the CDC, some other part of the government, the media, whoever) will come out and say there is a major catastrophe. If there really is a major crippling problem I believe it would be covered up to prevent panic and whatnot.

One more point that came to my mind, though mostly off topic... look at how fast they came up with effective medicine to combat Ebola. And look at our DC research (F@H, WCG) utilizing the most power supercomputer in the world (that is, the distributed computing network) and what's come of it? Not too much, that I've seen. I will continue "fighting" by donating my computer to the research but I wonder how efficiently all of our results are being used.

 

[D007]

Because children's songs were written about it. XD

I think the #1 killer would be all flus combined. It probably takes a million per year and it does it every year for millennia.

Agreed but generally the flu only kills people with weakened immune systems like the elderly.
The black death killed you no matter what pretty much.\

As for Ebola. They cured that nurse from what I heard so it's more hype than reality about Ebola.

 

[64K]

I was reading an article this morning on Ebola and it states that 7 out of 10 infected will die from it. The article didn't state what percentage would die with top notch medical treatment though.

It also had this chart to perhaps put things in perspective.

Data sources: David Ropeik/Harvard University, National Weather Service, World Health Organization, Northeastern University Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-Technical Systems, National Geographic, United States Census.

 

[qubit]

I do wonder just how many people would be on this planet if there were no diseases and wars to thin the herd? Likely to die of starvation instead.

 

[Drone]

Ebola is at least 16 million years old, finds new study:

Members of the Filoviridae, a family of viruses to which Ebola and its relative, Marburg virus, belong, are between 16 and 23 million years old – far older than previously thought, according to a new study.

 

[Solaris17]

I find it staggering that people actually down play ebola. and even the flus for that matter. Im not trying to sensationalize but the reality is when george washington was alive they still did blood letting if you got sick let alone medicine in 541AD

I look at the bigger picture and understand these issues today. We have made leaps and bounds in the medical field and yet now we are slowly grinding to a hault. Sure Ebola has been around for 16 million years lets say and you can preach that the news is over playing it but for a sickness that isnt played with everyday who is to day it wont mutate like the flu? The sickness isnt really what concerns me or really catching it. Its what happens after these illnesses are allowed to get widespread enough to adapt to our most powerful medicine.

What then? will it still be over played and hyped when Ebola v 2 cant be stopped? As it stands right now (assuming you understand what im saying thus far) the only effective treatment for ebola is supportive medicine. Nothing else is proven even for the people that just walked out of the CDC.

It is still common place to basically take an ebola patient. strap some saline bags to their arms give them 800mg of ibuprofen and hope to see them on the flip at the end of the week.

 

[ShiBDiB]

Ebola is kinda meh... It's not contagious enough to be a huge threat. And it's also not going to be weaponized for that plus a few other reasons.

The survival rate if you're in a first world hospital isn't that bad. The only way Ebola becomes a big deal in the modernized world is if it mutates and goes airborne.

 

[Solaris17]

Ebola is kinda meh... It's not contagious enough to be a huge threat. And it's also not going to be weaponized for that plus a few other reasons.

The survival rate if you're in a first world hospital isn't that bad. The only way Ebola becomes a big deal in the modernized world is if it mutates and goes airborne.

I would also like to kindly invite any other experts in virology or biochemistry. No degrees needed.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

We have made leaps and bounds in the medical field and yet now we are slowly grinding to a hault.

a) blame politics, especially two varieties:
a1) trend of socializing of healthcare globally: there's no incentive for most healthcare systems to preempt a disease. They only do it when enough people are dying in their own country to cause it to be politicized and thus, politicians ordering (and funding) them to find a solution. It doesn't matter what part of any system you look at, the more it is socialized, the less responsive it becomes.
a2) research on rare, contangeous diseases like ebola is heavily regulated by countries. Regulation is a disincentive for research.
b) ebola only effected a small population in a remote part of Africa. Private industry doesn't care until people with means to fund the research and buy the final product are afflicted. Case in point: when ebola came to the USA via Texas, the FDA and NIH started fast-tracking private projects that were already out there for ebola. This ties back into a2.
c) looking at the broader picture, there is a ton of medical research going on but it is largely kept secret because it is funded by private companies. The only research you generally hear about come from universities and they have motives of their own (see the recent story about Iowa State University) and generally lack the resources to do anything revolutionary. Just because we don't hear much doesn't mean it isn't happening behind closed doors (e.g. did any of us know there were several ebola drugs in the works before it got the media's attention?).

Sure Ebola has been around for 16 million years lets say and you can preach that the news is over playing it but for a sickness that isnt played with everyday who is to day it wont mutate like the flu? The sickness isnt really what concerns me or really catching it. Its what happens after these illnesses are allowed to get widespread enough to adapt to our most powerful medicine.

It's a virus and viruses are pretty easy to kill/maim/control. The one exception to that is HIV which is a really, really clever bastard. It's microorganisms (aka bacteria) that evolve at a rapid pace (because like humans, some of them are immune) and are diminishing the effectiveness of antibiotics (see MRSA). There's a reason why soap has that "kills 99.99% of bacteria" qualifier. That 0.01% could become the next resistant strain.

What then? will it still be over played and hyped when Ebola v 2 cant be stopped? As it stands right now (assuming you understand what im saying thus far) the only effective treatment for ebola is supportive medicine. Nothing else is proven even for the people that just walked out of the CDC.

Living on Earth has always been a biological arms race. So far, we (humanity and other non-extinct organisms) have proven victorious. Remember, there's trillions of cells that make up everyone of us and the only way they survive is if we survive. They, like us, have a vested interest in winning that battle.

It is still common place to basically take an ebola patient. strap some saline bags to their arms give them 800mg of ibuprofen and hope to see them on the flip at the end of the week.

Most die from dehydration; intravenous hydration, thusly, prevents a lot of deaths.

 

[Solaris17]

Maybe Ford is right. Besides re-iterating what a cretin could understand about the system perhaps the best thing to do is nothing and let the whole business sort itself out like the past. History repeats itself as it were.

 

[64K]

Have you guys seen this?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/29/ebola-nurse-maine/18105327/

A nurse should know why she is being quarantined and not resist it. She could spread Ebola to more people if she has it even though she hasn't shown symptoms yet.

 

[twilyth]

It's a virus and viruses are pretty easy to kill/maim/control. The one exception to that is HIV which is a really, really clever bastard. It's microorganisms (aka bacteria) that evolve at a rapid pace (because like humans, some of them are immune) and are diminishing the effectiveness of antibiotics (see MRSA). There's a reason why soap has that "kills 99.99% of bacteria" qualifier. That 0.01% could become the next resistant strain.

I think you need to actually learn about some of these things before you try to talk about them. Some viruses like HIV are difficult to deal with for a variety of reasons. One is the fact that some mutate very quickly and therefore developing immunity to one strain doesn't give you immunity to another. Flu viruses are a perfect example of this. They mutate their shell proteins (hemagglutinin and neuraminidase) so quickly and there are so many variations that you need a new flu shot every year. The core proteins tend to be more stable but these aren't presented as readily to the immune system.

Also, HIV is a retrovirus that copies it's genetic code into the DNA of the nucleus of a cell. In fact, our genome is littered with DNA sequences believed to be of viral origin. So to cure something like HIV, you have to either also kill the cells that encode it's proteins or find a way to excise the viral code.

Bacteria on the other hand develop drug resistance in a completely different way. Initially, you might might have one bacterium that develops the ability to expel a drug meant to kill it but that ability is generally coded in a plasmid that bacteria, even of different species, swap with one another like trading cards.

And btw, the chemical used in antibacterial soaps is triclosan which is now understood to be responsible for helping creating bacteria that are drug resistant -http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130919154433.htm

Emma Rosi-Marshall, one of the paper's authors and an aquatic ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York explains: "The bacterial resistance caused by triclosan has real environmental consequences. Not only does it disrupt aquatic life by changing native bacterial communities, but it's linked to the rise of resistant bacteria that could diminish the usefulness of important antibiotics."

 

[FordGT90Concept]

They mutate their shell proteins (hemagglutinin and neuraminidase) so quickly and there are so many variations that you need a new flu shot every year.

That's because we're using a century old technique to combat them (and even then, it's only about 60% effective). Nano-machines that can read DNA could eliminate an entire strain of viruses including all future versions of the virus so long as their numbers in the body are sufficient to destroy infected cells at a faster rate than the virus can reproduce. Our antibodies are well adept at handling viruses anyway (excepting HIV). As pointed out previously, people that die from the flu have a weakened immune system already.

And btw, the chemical used in antibacterial soaps is triclosan which is now understood to be responsible for helping creating bacteria that are drug resistant -http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130919154433.htm

Which is a damn shame. We need a new solution.

 

[twilyth]

The reason flu vaccines aren't always completely effective is because of the fact that manufacturers have to try to predict which strains will be prevalent that season. Since the process has to start months in advance, those predictions can be wrong. Plus you have that pesky mutation issue.

There is a universal flu vaccine in the works though, one that targets conserved proteins rather the highly mutable shell proteins - http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/ScienceResearch/ucm353397.htm

An influenza vaccine developed by scientists at Okairòs (Rome, Italy), and tested in animal models by scientists at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has potential as a “universal” vaccine to protect humans against a broad range of influenza viruses. The FDA scientists have been studying related universal influenza vaccines, and chose to study theOkairòs vaccine because it is based on a virus to which humans have no prior exposure, thus avoiding any issue about prior immunity.

Like a variety of other universal vaccine candidates, the vaccine triggered immune responses against conserved antigens—viral protein targets that mutate only slowly. These proteins are similar among many strains of influenza viruses, and therefore can generate immune responses that cross-react among virus strains.

 

[manofthem]

That's because we're using a century old technique to combat them (and even then, it's only about 60% effective).

But...

 

[FordGT90Concept]

...I don't know what the odds are of getting it the next year without a flu shot.

 

[erocker]

7.8 Million dead per year from heart disease (in 2008), probably about the same if not more per year. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs317/en/

 

[W1zzard]

Ebola is kinda meh... It's not contagious enough to be a huge threat. And it's also not going to be weaponized for that plus a few other reasons.

The survival rate if you're in a first world hospital isn't that bad. The only way Ebola becomes a big deal in the modernized world is if it mutates and goes airborne.

+1. QFT.

Viruses don't just mutate to change their mechanism of transmission. Good read: http://www.virology.ws/2014/09/18/what-we-are-not-afraid-to-say-about-ebola-virus/

 

[twilyth]

But interviews with several infectious diseases experts reveal that whereas such a mutation—or more likely series of mutations—might physically be possible, it’s highly unlikely. In fact, there’s almost no historical precedent for any virus to change its basic mode of transmission so radically.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-the-ebola-virus-will-go-airborne/

In fact, I read someplace that attempts to engineer pathogens to make them airborne have always failed because the changes required were so radical that the resultant strain was either less virulent or simply couldn't survive. The article above talks about the sorts of changes Ebola would have to undergo to make it airborne. When you consider just how simple viruses are, it starts to make sense that it would be difficult to change how a particular one works very radically.

 

[Delta6326]

That's why I do pest control, we are trying to keep disease carrying rodents and insects down. aka Bubonic plague