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"The more time you give a virus to mutate and the more human-to-human transmission you see," she says, "the more opportunities you give it to fall upon some [mu
by idlewords 12y ago
"The more time you give a virus to mutate and the more human-to-human transmission you see," she says, "the more opportunities you give it to fall upon some [mutation] that could make it more easily transmissible or more pathogenic."
- Pardis Sabeti, computational biologist at Harvard University
Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/08/28/343734184/ebola-is-rapidly-mutating-as-it-spreads-across-west-africa http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/08/28/343734184/e...
- Someone 12y ago"make it more easily transmissible _or_more_pathogenic_" You probably should be more concerned about the flu or the common cold becoming lethal than about Ebola becoming airborne. Reason? There are way more throws of the mutation dice for the common cold and flu than for Ebola because these are way more common.
- noir_lord 12y agoSomething like the Spanish Flu returning scares the living shit out of me (while I also know it's remote), that fucker does mutate, it is airborne and it has happened and that was in a world with slow transport. That said I'm still more likely to die from Heart Disease or Cancer, statistics ftw.