i think one misconception is that it just suddenly jumped from an animal at a wet market to a human and immediately started jumping from human to human. because that is not exactly how zoonotic diseases spread. for example, the H5N1 bird flu which has a high mortality rate took years before it developed the ability to spread human to human and only rarely. which is why when it's found in poultry, millions of chickens have to be culled in order to prevent it from gaining that ability through genetic mutation.
what likely happened is that this coronavirus has been infecting people for at least months if not longer before it gained the ability to spread among humans. and it's likely people knew about it. it definitely came from a wet market, but which one and when is up for question. the first people showing signs of illness would be workers at the market in direct contact with the animals. one problem with detection is the seemingly low mortality rate of 2.5-3.5% and the alarmingly and unsure long incubation rate ranging from 3.5 to up to 14 days. also, that it only seems to cause death in older or people with weakened immune systems. so far the youngest person to die was a healthy 36 year old male. these factors can cause recognition of a new or emergent disease harder to detect.
thus you would have only a few older people becoming ill at first, most would've recovered and people would think it was something else. this would be the first stages of a pandemic. since the virus could only jump from bat to human or from bat to intermediate host to human. but eventually this scenario will repeat multiple times. during this time the virus is continually infecting the intermediate host, the animal that will have closer genes to humans -most likely a pig. or it will be an animal that is less exotic and is in more sustained contact with humans. so you see, for a zoonotic disease to become transmissible among humans, IT DOESN'T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT. SARS which had a 10% mortality rate and MERS originated in bats, and masked palm civets (a mammal native to Asia and Africa) and camels served as intermediate hosts between bats to humans.
the good news is that never in the recorded history of mankind has a virus ever given up or changed it's ability to infect or contagiousness in order to increase it's mortality rate or become more lethal. that doesn't mean it can't happen since you are talking about random mutations being the driving factor. but it doesn't make sense for a virus to do it. deep down a virus wants to survive and spread not kill it's host. viruses are not intelligent, they follow physical laws and the accompanying rules of nature. as long as they have a natural reservoir, like bats, to reside in and survive while not emerging they are happy to keep doing their thing in those hosts. which raises an interesting question, why haven't viruses like ebola given up it's mortality rate to become more contagious? yet, HIV is an exception with a long incubation rate and high mortality rate. which possibly makes it the most dangerous virus in history. yet HIV doesn't kill directly. it lowers immune systems and another disease causes death.
but i digress. the Wuhan coronavirus could've been around for a year before going global outbreak. and at some point someone in authority definitely would've taken notice. the WHO praised China for it's response. but that is pretty much who the WHO is these days. they are beholden to their funding investors. in comparison the Bill Gates foundation's budget is larger than the WHO. one man. can't buy access to that. it's highly likely that the people that eventually knew about this new emerging global threat concealed it for their own reasons- whether that reason was due to profit loss or bad publicity or both.
the bad news is this new virus is here to stay forever. unlike SARS and MERS which was and can be contained, the Wuhan virus is a little different with it's longer incubation period and lower mortality. but that could be a premature prediction until the intermediate host is found. yet at this point with such human to human transmissible, we could end up being the primary host. a 3.5% mortality rate doesn't sound like much, but for comparison, the Spanish flu or the 1918 flu had like a rate under 3% yet killed 50 million people due to the environmental circumstances.
this new disease was preventable. and it should've been prevented. and as a result there are individual people who are indirectly responsible for this. and who probably knew about it before it became uncontainable. worst case scenario if it keeps spreading the way it is, by march 5th 2020 every person in China will have been infected with it.
what likely happened is that this coronavirus has been infecting people for at least months if not longer before it gained the ability to spread among humans. and it's likely people knew about it. it definitely came from a wet market, but which one and when is up for question. the first people showing signs of illness would be workers at the market in direct contact with the animals. one problem with detection is the seemingly low mortality rate of 2.5-3.5% and the alarmingly and unsure long incubation rate ranging from 3.5 to up to 14 days. also, that it only seems to cause death in older or people with weakened immune systems. so far the youngest person to die was a healthy 36 year old male. these factors can cause recognition of a new or emergent disease harder to detect.
thus you would have only a few older people becoming ill at first, most would've recovered and people would think it was something else. this would be the first stages of a pandemic. since the virus could only jump from bat to human or from bat to intermediate host to human. but eventually this scenario will repeat multiple times. during this time the virus is continually infecting the intermediate host, the animal that will have closer genes to humans -most likely a pig. or it will be an animal that is less exotic and is in more sustained contact with humans. so you see, for a zoonotic disease to become transmissible among humans, IT DOESN'T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT. SARS which had a 10% mortality rate and MERS originated in bats, and masked palm civets (a mammal native to Asia and Africa) and camels served as intermediate hosts between bats to humans.
the good news is that never in the recorded history of mankind has a virus ever given up or changed it's ability to infect or contagiousness in order to increase it's mortality rate or become more lethal. that doesn't mean it can't happen since you are talking about random mutations being the driving factor. but it doesn't make sense for a virus to do it. deep down a virus wants to survive and spread not kill it's host. viruses are not intelligent, they follow physical laws and the accompanying rules of nature. as long as they have a natural reservoir, like bats, to reside in and survive while not emerging they are happy to keep doing their thing in those hosts. which raises an interesting question, why haven't viruses like ebola given up it's mortality rate to become more contagious? yet, HIV is an exception with a long incubation rate and high mortality rate. which possibly makes it the most dangerous virus in history. yet HIV doesn't kill directly. it lowers immune systems and another disease causes death.
but i digress. the Wuhan coronavirus could've been around for a year before going global outbreak. and at some point someone in authority definitely would've taken notice. the WHO praised China for it's response. but that is pretty much who the WHO is these days. they are beholden to their funding investors. in comparison the Bill Gates foundation's budget is larger than the WHO. one man. can't buy access to that. it's highly likely that the people that eventually knew about this new emerging global threat concealed it for their own reasons- whether that reason was due to profit loss or bad publicity or both.
the bad news is this new virus is here to stay forever. unlike SARS and MERS which was and can be contained, the Wuhan virus is a little different with it's longer incubation period and lower mortality. but that could be a premature prediction until the intermediate host is found. yet at this point with such human to human transmissible, we could end up being the primary host. a 3.5% mortality rate doesn't sound like much, but for comparison, the Spanish flu or the 1918 flu had like a rate under 3% yet killed 50 million people due to the environmental circumstances.
this new disease was preventable. and it should've been prevented. and as a result there are individual people who are indirectly responsible for this. and who probably knew about it before it became uncontainable. worst case scenario if it keeps spreading the way it is, by march 5th 2020 every person in China will have been infected with it.
Comment