Monday, November 16, 2009

Well, THIS is not encouraging

A DEADLY plague could sweep across Europe, doctors fear, after an outbreak of a virus in Ukraine plunged the country and its neighbours into a state of panic.

A cocktail of three flu viruses are reported to have mutated into a single pneumonic plague, which it is believed may be far more dangerous than swine flu. The death toll has reached 189 and more than 1 million people have been infected, most of them in the nine regions of Western Ukraine.

President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko has called in the World Health Organisation and a team of nine specialists are carrying out tests in Kiev and Lviv to identify the virus. Samples have been sent to London for analysis.

President Yushchenko said: “People are dying. The epidemic is killing doctors. This is absolutely inconceivable in the 21st Century.”
'Inconceivable'[/sicilian accent], no; unusual, yes. Possibly three viruses getting together and mutating? Would be rare and unusual as hell, but I would think is possible(I am not a virologist, nor do I play one on blog). Whatever it is, sounds nasty as hell. The Random Nuke gentleman had a post on this a while back, and this new information doesn't sound any better; maybe worse.

Thanks to Sondra for pointing to this new stuff

3 comments:

wolfwalker said...

The death toll has reached 189 and more than 1 million people have been infected,

189 deaths out of 1,000,000 cases is not a particularly serious strain of flu. Normal seasonal flu strains kill more than that.

Firehand said...

True enough, normal flue whacks a lot of people. My problems with this apparent strain are two:
1. How accurate is the reporting? Over-counting for some reason, or maybe under because they don't want the real numbers to get out?
2. Anytime a virus or two does something like this, it worries me.

Wee Jock said...

as inconceivable as dioxin contaminated soup?