Word: viruses
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...virus (or one strikingly similar to it) has been the unseen evil in major Hollywood productions (Outbreak, with Dustin Hoffman), books of fiction (Outbreak, without Dustin Hoffman) and even, most famously, a best-selling nonfiction treatment (The Hot Zone), and with good reason. The virus has all the makings of a 21st century horror: It is invisible, lightning quick, mysterious and horrible...
...Ebola virus can be spread through any sort of close physical contact, especially with mucous membranes. This makes family members of infected individuals and medical personnel the most likely to contract the disease. In fact, in specific previous outbreaks, up to a quarter of deaths have come from medical personnel infected by their patients. In the laboratory, Ebola has been shown to be transmittable in aerosol form (i.e. through the air, just as a cold or a flu can be transmitted in a sneeze or a cough) but no human infection has been confirmed to have occurred through air-borne...
...monster strikes notoriously quickly. While incubation times have been known to vary from two to 21 days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that death usually comes within one week after infection. Those who succumb to the virus usually have not developed a significant immune response. In other words, it seems that the virus often replicates so quickly that it overwhelms the body before the immune system can even register that an infection has occurred...
Ugandan health officials suspected, and tests in South Africa two weeks ago confirmed, that this ghost was real and goes by the name Ebola. A lethal virus first identified in northern Congo in 1976, Ebola attacks almost everything in the body except bone, destroying the immune system in fast-forward and causing organs to melt down, hemorrhage and then bleed out through the body's orifices. The period between infection and the onset of sickness is three to 14 days. Death follows within a fortnight. Ebola-Zaire, the first strain identified, kills 90% of those infected. The strain that...
Experts say they cannot pinpoint the first infection in this outbreak until the virus is contained. But if Esther Owete was the first case, then ground zero is her mud hut, now boarded up. There, minutes after her death, according to neighbors, Owete's distraught mother cried out for her grandson, Owete's one-year-old son Sam, to "suck your mother's last milk so you too can die. There is no one here to look after you now." He survived just four days. The Ebola was really moving by then, rushing through the family as members cared...