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:
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.
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.
as inconceivable as dioxin contaminated soup?
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