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Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Betsy Johnson, Joe Corsiglia, President Trump, Henry Heimuller, VP Pence, Pat Robertson, Debi Corsiglia’s dog, or Claudia Eagle’s Cats. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Standard Disclaimer.
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Bats are thought to be the originating species For the New Coronavirus epidemic. This virus is considered to be an “epizootic disease.”
Coronavirus
With the possibility of a world-wide epidemic the coronavirus is raising concerns throughout the world. With quarantine facilities set up for people flying from China at this time. That will change immediately and there will be limited flights in and out of that country. There have been numerous cases in other regions other than China. There will be 11 airports in the US which will allow flights from a China, this will only allow US citizens to fly in and they will be in a 14 day quarantine. But where did this virus come from? Scientists have been working nonstop to identify the origin. And they have come up with the answer. A new study provides more clues to the virus' origins, and points to bats as the most likely hosts. The researchers analyzed 10 genome sequences of the novel coronavirus, dubbed 2019-nCoV, obtained from nine patients in China who were sick with the virus. They found that all 10 of the genome sequences were extremely similar — they shared more than 99.98% of the same genetic sequence, the authors said. This suggests the virus made its "jump" to humans very recently, because if that jump had happened long ago, the virus sequences would have differed more, given the fast rate at which viruses tend to mutate and evolve. It is striking that the sequences of 2019-nCoV described here from different patients were almost identical," study co-lead author Weifeng Shi, a professor at the Key Laboratory of Etiology and Epidemiology of Emerging Infectious Diseases in Universities of Shandong Province. This finding suggests that 2019-nCoV originated from one source within a very short period and was detected relatively rapidly. Despite emerging in humans only recently, the virus has already infected about 6,000 people and caused 132 deaths in China, while spreading to 15 other countries, according to the World Health Organization. Most of the initial cases occurred in people who worked at or visited the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, China, where a variety of wild animals were sold. To learn more about the virus' origins, the researchers compared the 2019-nCoV genetic sequence with those in a library of viral sequences, and found that the most closely related viruses were two coronaviruses that originated in bats; both of those coronaviruses shared 88% of their genetic sequence with that of 2019-nCoV. (When compared with two other coronaviruses known to infect people — SARS and MERS — 2019-nCoV shared about 79% of its genetic sequence with SARS and 50% with MERS.) Based on these results, the authors said the 2019-nCoV likely originated in bats. However, no bats were sold at the Huanan seafood market, which suggests that another yet-to-be-identified animal acted as a steppingstone of sorts to transmit the virus to humans. "It seems likely that another animal host is acting as an intermediate host between bats and humans," said study co-lead author Guizhen Wu, of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, the outbreak of 2019-nCoV "again highlights the hidden virus reservoir in wild animals and their potential to occasionally spill over into human populations," the authors wrote. A previous study suggested snakes, which were sold at the Huanan seafood market, as a possible source of 2019-nCoV. However, some experts have criticized the study, saying it's unclear if coronaviruses can infect snakes. Where ever it comes from we must continue to study the virus, and we must continue the quarantine to keep it from spreading to the mass populations. The 9 deadly viruses that are on the earth. Humans have been battling viruses since before our species had even evolved into its modern form. For some viral diseases, vaccines and antiviral drugs have allowed us to keep infections from spreading widely, and have helped sick people recover. For one disease — smallpox — we've been able to eradicate it, ridding the world of new cases. But as the Ebola outbreak now devastating West Africa demonstrates, we're a long way from winning the fight against viruses. The strain that is driving the current epidemic, Ebola Zaire, kills up to 90 percent of the people it infects, making it the most lethal member of the Ebola family. But there are other viruses out there that are equally deadly, and some that are even deadlier. Here are the nine worst killers, based on the likelihood that a person will die if they are infected with one of them, the sheer numbers of people they have killed, and whether they represent a growing threat. Scientists identified Marburg virus in 1967, when small outbreaks occurred among lab workers in Germany who were exposed to infected monkeys imported from Uganda. Marburg virus is similar to Ebola in that both can cause hemorrhagic fever, meaning that infected people develop high fevers and bleeding throughout the body that can lead to shock, organ failure and death. The mortality rate in the first outbreak was 25 percent, but it was more than 80 percent in the 1998-2000 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as in the 2005 outbreak in Angola. The first known Ebola outbreaks in humans struck simultaneously in the Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976. Ebola is spread through contact with blood or other body fluids, or tissue from infected people or animals. The known strains vary dramatically in their deadliness, Muhlberger said. One strain, Ebola Reston, doesn't even make people sick. But for the Bundibugyo strain, the fatality rate is up to 50 percent, and it is up to 71 percent percent for the Sudan strain, according to WHO. The outbreak underway in West Africa began in early 2014, and is the largest and most complex outbreak of the disease to date. Although rabies vaccines for pets, which were introduced in the 1920s, have helped make the disease exceedingly rare in the developed world, this condition remains a serious problem in India and parts of Africa. In the modern world, the deadliest virus of all may be HIV. "It is still the one that is the biggest killer. An estimated 36 million people have died from HIV since the disease was first recognized in the early 1980s. "The infectious disease that takes the biggest toll on mankind right now is HIV," Adalja said. Powerful antiviral drugs have made it possible for people to live for years with HIV. But the disease continues to devastate many low- and middle-income countries, where 95 percent of new HIV infections occur. Nearly 1 in every 20 adults in Sub-Saharan Africa is HIV-positive. In 1980, the World Health Assembly declared the world free of smallpox. But before that, humans battled smallpox for thousands of years, and the disease killed about 1 in 3 of those it infected. It left survivors with deep, permanent scars and, often, blindness. Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) first gained wide attention in the U.S. in 1993, when a healthy, young Navajo man and his fiancée living in the Four Corners area of the United States died within days of developing shortness of breath. A few months later, health authorities isolated hantavirus from a deer mouse living in the home of one of the infected people. More than 600 people in the U.S. have now contracted HPS, and 36 percent have died from the disease. The most deadly flu pandemic, sometimes called the Spanish flu, began in 1918 and sickened up to 40 percent of the world's population, killing an estimated 50 million people. During a typical flu season, up to 500,000 people worldwide will die from the illness. Dengue virus first appeared in the 1950s in the Philippines and Thailand, and has since spread throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the globe. Up to 40 percent of the world's population now lives in areas where dengue is endemic, and the disease — with the mosquitoes that carry it — is likely to spread farther as the world warms. Dengue sickens 50 to 100 million people a year, according to WHO. Although the mortality rate for dengue fever is lower than some other viruses, at 2.5 percent, the virus can cause an Ebola-like disease called dengue hemorrhagic fever, and that condition has a mortality rate of 20 percent if left untreated. Two vaccines are now available to protect children from rotavirus, the leading cause of severe diarrheal illness among babies and young children. The virus can spread rapidly, through what researchers call the fecal-oral route (meaning that small particles of feces end up being consumed). Although children in the developed world rarely die from rotavirus infection, the disease is a killer in the developing world, where rehydration treatments are not widely available. The WHO estimates that worldwide, 453,000 children younger than age 5 died from rotavirus infection in 2008. But countries that have introduced the vaccine have reported sharp declines in rotavirus hospitalizations and deaths. Even with modern medicines, deadly viruses are still a huge threat to humans. And with global warming there will be more viruses that will appear as the ice melts- deadly viruses that have been dormant for millions of years will come to life and plague mankind. The possibility of a worldwide epidemic, of an unknown virus is highly possible and will result in millions of deaths. It just might be a very bumpy time for mankind.
Tammy
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