Marburg virus feared in Germany as two hospitalised

https://au.news.yahoo.com/marburg-virus-feared-germany-two-192928623.html

34 Comments

  1. owlshapedboxcat on

    Hang on, isn’t Marburg closely related to Ebola? Luckily won’t spread far because it’s not airborne but I feel very sorry for anyone who catches it, it’s incredibly grim.

  2. DR_van_N0strand on

    “Guess who’s back, back again, Marburg’s back (in Germany) tell a friend… guess who’s back guess who’s back guess who’s back…”

    Wild it’s back in Germany 60 years later

  3. Lord_Vesuvius2020 on

    The Germans dispatched teams in hazmat suits to spray the hell out of every surface in rail stations the 2 infected people passed through. I hope this works.

  4. Disc-Golf-Kid on

    Oh shit

    >People become infected through direct contact with the body fluids of those infected, such as blood, but not through the air.

    A little comforting, I feel for the people infected. We definitely have PTSD from Covid, let’s not overreact.

  5. Here most of us thought climate collapse was gonna take us out.

    Anyone have side bets on repeated pandemics?

  6. This is the virus that you hope doesn’t mutate to spread easily. Almost 90% fatality rate back when it started.

  7. Controversial opinion: Doctors who travel to treat patients with dangerous infectious diseases should quarantine before returning home. 

  8. nylonsbrunette on

    bro if anyone wants an interesting book to read on Marburg and Ebola i can highly recommend “The Hot Zone”. it’s a great book that basically puts you into the perspective of the first outbreak with patient 0

  9. If you’re interested in this topic I highly recommend the book Spillover by David Quammen. It’s simply amazing.

  10. JudgementOfTheCrowd on

    I strongly recommend reading the book The Hot Zone written by Richard Preston!

    The book covers the Reston monkey incident of 1989 in Virginia (near Washington D.C.). In this case, monkeys imported from the Philippines were infected with an Ebola-like virus (**Ebola and Marburg are both filoviruses and have very similar properties**).

    During the Reston monkey incident, **a very high percentage of monkeys died (>66%** – I can’t recall the exact number). **The virus was capable of airborne transmission. Interestingly, six monkey caretakers tested positive for the virus, but none of them died.** A military team **arrived over two days, euthanized about 400 monkeys**, and then treated themselves to huge McDonald’s meals after the operations.

    The book also describes Marburg, Ebola, and several other viruses through individual stories. I read it on a flight over East Africa, and it was the only flight in my life where I couldn’t eat the onboard meal because of the intense nausea—the descriptions in the book are truly gut-wrenching.

    Here are some facts I found fascinating and remember:

    * **An Italian monkey trader released sick monkeys on an island in the northwest of Lake Victoria (one of the Ssese Islands). This island has likely become a fascinating place for viruses (or even immunity).**
    * There were several expeditions to Kitum Cave, as both a boy and a man were infected with the Marburg virus (likely from the cave). Despite taking samples, no virus was found in the cave.
    * In the 1970s, up to 20 percent of the female population in Kinshasa were sex workers. This, along with the Kinshasa Highway, contributed to a massive spread of HIV toward East Africa. In the US and Germany, HIV-1 subtype B is particularly prevalent, and it spread significantly through blood donations from Haiti in the 1970s and early 1980s.
    * **The Ebola-Zaire virus had a mortality rate of up to 90% during one outbreak—one of the deadliest viruses ever.**
    * **Ebola viruses “liquefy” internal organs and cause severe bleeding, a horrifying and brutal disease progression.**
    * Bats are considered the likely natural reservoirs for filoviruses, but despite extensive research, the virus has never been directly found in them.
    * **Symptoms of Ebola and Marburg often begin like the flu but worsen quickly, making early detection difficult.**
    * Ebola is classified as a “Level-4” virus, the highest security level for dangerous viruses that have no cure and are deadly upon direct exposure.
    * During the Zaire Ebola outbreak in the 1970s, two doctors were flown to Central Congo to investigate an Ebola outbreak in remote villages. There, they found nearly abandoned villages where the virus had run rampant. Some villages had implemented radical isolation measures and had no contact with neighboring communities out of fear of the virus.

    The book is incredibly gripping. I devoured it in two days while in Kenya—I recommend it 10/10.

  11. doctorlongghost on

    > “close to Ebola, which is the same sort of virus”

    Thanks, Yahoo, for that highly technical breakdown

  12. serrated_edge321 on

    Good thing I just started a fully-remote job and decided not to attend Oktoberfest this year!

    (I’ve been to the annual super- spreader event enough times, don’t need such illness again this year!)

    *Hiding in my little apartment in Bavaria*