Zombie CSU (31 page)

The flu, or influenza to give it its proper name, is an infectious disease caused by an RNA virus of the family
orthomyxoviridae
, and it’s racked up its own disheartening kill rate. And like the other disease, it has attacked in waves over the centuries. There have been documented cases of influenza dating back to the third and fourth centuries
B.C.E
, but modern tracking of the disease as a pandemic began in Africa in 1510. It blossomed on the Dark Continent and then spread like wildfire through Europe.

Influenza is constantly mutating, and when a new and particularly aggressive strain appears, the dying starts. The worst outbreak was the Spanish Flu of 1918, which killed somewhere between fifty and one hundred million people in just eighteen months. It edges out the Black Plague as the worst pandemic in human history.

By comparison the Asian Flu of 1957–1958, which killed about 70,000 people in the United States, is considered “mild.” That’s another thought to digest for a bit.

And there are so many other diseases that have spread to epidemic proportions: chicken pox, measles, typhus, smallpox, tuberculosis, and others. Many of these are diseases we once believed had been eradicated. It’s beyond disturbing to discover how wrong we were about that. Many of these are commonly referred to as Old World diseases because they came with the settlers when the New World was discovered and conquered. It is a widely held belief among historians and epidemiologists that up to 95% of the Native American peoples were killed by these Old World diseases. Before Columbus landed, the Americas hosted a populace of many millions. Chicken pox and measles did more slaughter than bullets in conquering the West; and before you go off thinking that well, this was an “act of God”—there are plenty of recorded cases of settlers giving blankets to the Indians knowing full well that they carried infectious agents. Biological warfare has been going on for a long, long time.

Influenza has an inordinately high infection rate, somewhere near 50 percent. Imagine if a zombie plague got out there, with its 100 percent infection rate.

There are also some spookier diseases of unknown type or origin, such as the one that hit England in the sixteenth century and killed almost instantly. Known as the English Sweat, this disease seemingly struck without warning and literally dropped its victims in their tracks. The disease has not reappeared and it remains as one of several mysteries in the world of epidemiology…and believe me when I tell you that
mystery
and
epidemic
are not words anyone wants to hear in the same sentence.

Nowadays we have a whole slew of slayer diseases:

 


Avian Flu
: Also called bird flu, this is a new bully on the block and has been giving nightmares to infectious diseases experts since 2003. This little monster is carried by various kinds of hosts, including birds, and the carrier is typically asymptomatic, meaning the host does not get sick. This makes it very hard to spot before infection occurs. Heightened awareness of the threat of the disease has been instrumental in preventing its spread.


 

 


Yellow Fever
: In historical novels you often read of ships flying the Yellow Jack to indicate an onboard infection of this disease, and of whole island populations being wiped out. Many people seem to think that yellow fever, a virus spread by mosquitoes, has been eradicated, and indeed there have been significant advances in prevention and treatment. But not in the Third World. In the absence of regular medical care, adequate hygiene, and other poor conditions, yellow fever continues to claim an estimated thirty thousand lives per year.


 


 


HIV/AIDS
: Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a global killer that went from being the disease people didn’t talk about to a pandemic that we can no longer ignore. Over 38 million people are infected with HIV worldwide, and to date more than 25 million have died from it. In Africa and other Third World areas, HIV is running rampant and still not enough is being done to combat it, and there is no true cure in sight.


 


 


SARS
: This is a severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by the SARS coronavirus that apparently began in Guangdong Province, China. Because of the aggressive action of the World Health Organization, the first SARS pandemic claimed only 774 lives between November 2002 and July 2003. In the absence of an organization like that, there would have been hundreds of thousands more SARS-related deaths.


 


 


Ebola
: Properly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, this is a nasty disease that causes organ failure. The virus has a few different known strains.
Zaïre Ebolavirus
, first discovered in 1976, is the most virulent kind, with a 90 percent infection rate and an 83 percent mortality rate.
Sudan Ebolavirus
, also first reported in 1976, is somewhat less aggressive.
Reston Ebolavirus
, discovered in 1989 in Reston, Virginia, was caught before it spread to humans.
Ivory Coast Ebolavirus
, discovered in 1994, was discovered among chimpanzee populations and resulted in one known human infection (in a doctor treating an infected chimp), but the doctor was treated and survived.


 

Expert Witness

“A communicable, or contagious, disease refers to any infectious disease that can be transmitted from one species to another or one person to another,” explains infectious disease expert Dr. Robin Dobson. “A disease that carries with it an extraordinarily high degree of communicability—anything above 30%—is a cause for major concern. Something that carries a 100% communicability—which is luckily very unlikely—would be a potential global catastrophe.”

He adds, “The issue here is complex, however, because communicability is only part of the equation. You also have to consider infectivity, which is how the pathogen enters the host, how it survives in that body, and how it spreads throughout the body. Many diseases spread very quickly from the moment of infection, anywhere from a day or two to a few weeks. It’s unlikely we would see anything capable of replicating and spreading throughout an entire host in seconds or even minutes. It would be hours at the very least.”