7 ms·

The Middle East Plague Goes Global

20 points by Rickasaurus 13y ago

itchitawa 13y ago
The site asks for sign-in. Just invent any email address to read the article immediately.
- hmans 13y ago
  How weird, it didn't a minute ago.
- humbledrone 13y ago
  Alternatively, in Chrome, right click on the sign-in window, click "Inspect element", scroll up a bit, highlight the <div> elements with ids TB_overlay and TB_window, press delete, close the inspector window, and enjoy. (I'm sure it's just as easy in other browsers.) ;)
  - diggan 13y ago
    Yeah, because you want to do all then when the website shows that they don't care about you as a visitor on their site.
    - humbledrone 13y ago
      Well, 90% of the time I just hit "Back" when a canopy like that is thrown in my face. Sometimes I want to read the content, though, and would prefer to do so a bit subversively rather than giving in and signing up.
- dimitar 13y ago
  Or you can Ctrl-U and copy the article HTML (I mean the actual article).
  - Tichy 13y ago
    What is Ctrl-U? "Copy Under the popup banner"?
- mtgx 13y ago
  You can use Adblock to block it (right click on it). It might take 2-3 tries to get rid of everything.
- gambiting 13y ago
  Or just click cancel as soon as the text appears, so the log-in screen never pops-up. Works just as well.
Flavius 13y ago
Apocalyptic news from a site that needs your email? Sure, why not?
- ak39 13y ago
  Yip, my thoughts exactly! :-( Evernote Clearly for Chrome solves the need for a login quite nicely. http://evernote.com/clearly/ http://evernote.com/clearly/
nakedrobot2 13y ago
To avoid the hassle of signing up with a fake email address, here is the article. Split into 3 parts to avoid the maximum comment length on HN. Part 1: When the Black Death exploded in Arabia in the 14th century, killing an estimated third of the population, it spread across the Islamic world via infected religious pilgrims. Today, the Middle East is threatened with a new plague, one eponymously if not ominously named the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV, or MERS for short). This novel coronavirus was discovered in Jordan in March 2012, and as of June 26, there have been 77 laboratory-confirmed infections, 62 of which have been in Saudi Arabia; 34 of these Saudi patients have died. Although the numbers -- so far -- are small, the disease is raising anxiety throughout the region. But officials in Saudi Arabia are particularly concerned. This fall, millions of devout Muslims will descend upon Mecca, Medina, and Saudi Arabia's holy sites in one of the largest annual migrations in human history. In 2012, approximately 6 million pilgrims came through Saudi Arabia to perform the rituals associated with umrah, and this number is predicted to rise in 2013. Umrah literally means "to visit a populated place," and it's the very proximity that has health officials so worried. In Mecca alone, millions of pilgrims will fulfill the religious obligation of circling the Kaaba. And having a large group of people together in a single, fairly confined space threatens to turn the holiest site in Islam into a massive petri dish. The disease is still mysterious. Little is understood about how it is transmitted and even less regarding its origins. But we do know that MERS is deadly, with a mortality rate of about 55 percent -- a remarkably higher lethality than that posed by its close cousin, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus, which in 2003 terrified travelers across the globe but posed a fatality rate of only 9.6 percent. The MERS coronavirus is new to our species, so mild and asymptomatic infections seem to be rare, but the human immune response to infection is itself so extreme that it can prove deadly in some cases. Like SARS, the MERS virus spreads between people via close contact, shared medical instruments, and coughing. Once inside the human lung, the MERS virus sparks a series of reactions that all but destroy normal lung function. Patients can descend into pneumonia so severe that they require machine-assisted breathing to stay alive, in as little as 12 days. Unlike SARS, the MERS virus is also capable of attacking the kidneys and can be passed on to others via exposure to contaminated urine. And for some of those who survive acute MERS, years of rehabilitation may be necessary, just like for some of the 2003 SARS victims. And like back in 2003, when health officials worried about airplane travelers in confined spaces transmitting the virus across the globe, the hajj poses a unique risk of transmission, one that could catapult this still-small outbreak into a full-fledged pandemic. Containment will become nearly impossible as millions of pilgrims flock from virtually every country on the globe to the kingdom during the holy month. Indeed, MERS has already crossed continents; two suspected cases were reported in France as recently as June 12, and confirmed cases have been reported in Germany and Britain. The first patient in each of these cases had traveled in the Middle East before reaching his/her home destination, only then to be diagnosed with MERS.
sounds 13y ago
In case you missed it: (thanks, nakedrobot2, for providing the text) This situation will hopefully influence patent debates about DNA everywhere: (yeah, ok, maybe it might) But that one foreign laboratory was fortunate to get the samples sent to it at all, since the Saudi Ministry of Health has also been embroiled in a "patent" dispute surrounding MERS that has reportedly stymied research efforts by foreign scientists. Last summer, a Dutch team from Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam received two patient samples from an Egyptian scientist working then in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The Dutch sequenced the MERS DNA and claimed ownership of the samples. All scientists hoping to work on the MERS problem must either obtain samples directly from the Saudi Ministry of Health or sign legal agreements with Erasmus. For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is still waiting to receive samples of MERS for testing that were collected in October 2012 because the legal teams from the CDC and Erasmus cannot negotiate agreeable terms for a material transfer agreement. These legal delays are unusual, especially during a disease outbreak such as this, and Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, publicly criticized Erasmus for putting patent laws ahead of protecting "your people."

20 points by Rickasaurus 13y ago

itchitawa 13y ago

The site asks for sign-in. Just invent any email address to read the article immediately.

hmans 13y ago
How weird, it didn't a minute ago.
humbledrone 13y ago
Alternatively, in Chrome, right click on the sign-in window, click "Inspect element", scroll up a bit, highlight the <div> elements with ids TB_overlay and TB_window, press delete, close the inspector window, and enjoy. (I'm sure it's just as easy in other browsers.) ;)
- diggan 13y ago
  Yeah, because you want to do all then when the website shows that they don't care about you as a visitor on their site.
  - humbledrone 13y ago
    Well, 90% of the time I just hit "Back" when a canopy like that is thrown in my face. Sometimes I want to read the content, though, and would prefer to do so a bit subversively rather than giving in and signing up.
dimitar 13y ago
Or you can Ctrl-U and copy the article HTML (I mean the actual article).
- Tichy 13y ago
  What is Ctrl-U? "Copy Under the popup banner"?
mtgx 13y ago
You can use Adblock to block it (right click on it). It might take 2-3 tries to get rid of everything.
gambiting 13y ago
Or just click cancel as soon as the text appears, so the log-in screen never pops-up. Works just as well.

Flavius 13y ago

Apocalyptic news from a site that needs your email? Sure, why not?

ak39 13y ago
Yip, my thoughts exactly! :-( Evernote Clearly for Chrome solves the need for a login quite nicely. http://evernote.com/clearly/ http://evernote.com/clearly/

nakedrobot2 13y ago

To avoid the hassle of signing up with a fake email address, here is the article. Split into 3 parts to avoid the maximum comment length on HN. Part 1: When the Black Death exploded in Arabia in the 14th century, killing an estimated third of the population, it spread across the Islamic world via infected religious pilgrims. Today, the Middle East is threatened with a new plague, one eponymously if not ominously named the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV, or MERS for short). This novel coronavirus was discovered in Jordan in March 2012, and as of June 26, there have been 77 laboratory-confirmed infections, 62 of which have been in Saudi Arabia; 34 of these Saudi patients have died. Although the numbers -- so far -- are small, the disease is raising anxiety throughout the region. But officials in Saudi Arabia are particularly concerned. This fall, millions of devout Muslims will descend upon Mecca, Medina, and Saudi Arabia's holy sites in one of the largest annual migrations in human history. In 2012, approximately 6 million pilgrims came through Saudi Arabia to perform the rituals associated with umrah, and this number is predicted to rise in 2013. Umrah literally means "to visit a populated place," and it's the very proximity that has health officials so worried. In Mecca alone, millions of pilgrims will fulfill the religious obligation of circling the Kaaba. And having a large group of people together in a single, fairly confined space threatens to turn the holiest site in Islam into a massive petri dish. The disease is still mysterious. Little is understood about how it is transmitted and even less regarding its origins. But we do know that MERS is deadly, with a mortality rate of about 55 percent -- a remarkably higher lethality than that posed by its close cousin, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus, which in 2003 terrified travelers across the globe but posed a fatality rate of only 9.6 percent. The MERS coronavirus is new to our species, so mild and asymptomatic infections seem to be rare, but the human immune response to infection is itself so extreme that it can prove deadly in some cases. Like SARS, the MERS virus spreads between people via close contact, shared medical instruments, and coughing. Once inside the human lung, the MERS virus sparks a series of reactions that all but destroy normal lung function. Patients can descend into pneumonia so severe that they require machine-assisted breathing to stay alive, in as little as 12 days. Unlike SARS, the MERS virus is also capable of attacking the kidneys and can be passed on to others via exposure to contaminated urine. And for some of those who survive acute MERS, years of rehabilitation may be necessary, just like for some of the 2003 SARS victims. And like back in 2003, when health officials worried about airplane travelers in confined spaces transmitting the virus across the globe, the hajj poses a unique risk of transmission, one that could catapult this still-small outbreak into a full-fledged pandemic. Containment will become nearly impossible as millions of pilgrims flock from virtually every country on the globe to the kingdom during the holy month. Indeed, MERS has already crossed continents; two suspected cases were reported in France as recently as June 12, and confirmed cases have been reported in Germany and Britain. The first patient in each of these cases had traveled in the Middle East before reaching his/her home destination, only then to be diagnosed with MERS.

sounds 13y ago

In case you missed it: (thanks, nakedrobot2, for providing the text) This situation will hopefully influence patent debates about DNA everywhere: (yeah, ok, maybe it might) But that one foreign laboratory was fortunate to get the samples sent to it at all, since the Saudi Ministry of Health has also been embroiled in a "patent" dispute surrounding MERS that has reportedly stymied research efforts by foreign scientists. Last summer, a Dutch team from Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam received two patient samples from an Egyptian scientist working then in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The Dutch sequenced the MERS DNA and claimed ownership of the samples. All scientists hoping to work on the MERS problem must either obtain samples directly from the Saudi Ministry of Health or sign legal agreements with Erasmus. For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is still waiting to receive samples of MERS for testing that were collected in October 2012 because the legal teams from the CDC and Erasmus cannot negotiate agreeable terms for a material transfer agreement. These legal delays are unusual, especially during a disease outbreak such as this, and Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, publicly criticized Erasmus for putting patent laws ahead of protecting "your people."