Tracking Nipah Virus -What you don't know

Like Hanta Virus, which an ever present threat which I have been posting about for a decade, Nipah is a highly dangerous newly discovered virus which can spread to people and is deadly.

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/03/22/470803523/disease-detectives-find-a-really-good-reason-not-to-drink-date-palm-wine

Published March 22, 2016

In Bangladesh in recent years, there have been repeated mini-outbreaks of a disease called Nipah virus – three people here, four there.

Some people develop no symptoms. But in others, the virus can progress from a fever to fatal brain inflammation within a week.

A few years ago, epidemiologists figured out that people were likely getting Nipah from drinking raw date palm sap, a sweet drink popular in the winter, when the sap is easy to tap from trees pierced with a spigot.

Bats also like the sap and were caught on infrared camera licking streams of it dripping into collection pots. "So you get bat saliva into the stream," says Dr. Stephen Luby, an epidemiologist at Stanford University who worked on solving this initial mystery few years ago.

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So far in Bangladesh - Nipah has a 70% mortality rate. It is more deadly in some strains than Ebola.
"The disease was spreading person to person - killing off families. No one could predict... when it might end."

Medclinician

jacksdad wrote: Yep, nasty bug. The MEV-1 virus in the 2011 movie "Contagion" was based on Nipah, except they toned it down and gave it a much lower CFR. Since it was first popped up in the Malaysian village that gave the virus it's name in 1998, it's gone through long periods when it effectively disappeared, but Bangladesh (and to a lesser extent, India) now experiences outbreaks almost annually. The recent discovery that MERS probably originated as a bat virus should wake us up to their potential as a vectors for diseases that may ultimately become adapted to humans. There are a lot of bugs out there just itching to meet us, and we're conveniently building the roads that will carry them out of their traditional stomping grounds. Smartest animals on Earth, huh?

Hello Jacksdad. As I watched the video and failed to post- the later part of it does a fair job of covering many of our emerging viral problems - especially H5N1. To paraphrase - short of a all out nuclear exchange - a virus such as Nipah becoming airborne could be the worst even in human history - wiping out most of the human race.

Lots of movies with worried people running about in Hazmat suits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazmat_suit
The United States Department of Homeland Security defines a hazmat suit as "an overall garment worn to protect people from hazardous materials or substances, including chemicals, biological agents, or radioactive materials."