3 ms·
Depends on your definition of "deadly". The MERS virus was much more deadly than this thing, and that wasn't very long ago. The problem with it was that it wa
by magduf 7y ago
Depends on your definition of "deadly".
The MERS virus was much more deadly than this thing, and that wasn't very long ago. The problem with it was that it was too deadly: it killed people off pretty quickly. Pathogens that are highly deadly usually aren't very good at starting plagues, because they kill off their hosts too quickly and for that reason don't spread that much. This one is worse because it has a really long incubation period with few or no symptoms and then does its thing, but still with a relatively low mortality rate.
I guess what would really cause civilization to collapse would be a virus that has a very long incubation time with no symptoms, and then sudden very high mortality.
- Jeema101 7y agoI mean, that's kind of what HIV was up until the mid-late 90s anyway. No symptoms for years and then nearly 100% mortality. It's killed millions but still hasn't wiped out civilization.
- magduf 7y agoHIV didn't spread very quickly because it required fluid transfer (and usually sexual, even kissing generally didn't spread it). It's hard to have an "outbreak" when a virus is so difficult to spread between people.