The Hypochondriac's Guide to Which New Killer Disease Will Kill You
The World Health Organization has had a busy couple of weeks keeping track of three deadly strains across the world, and world travelers have probably been equally overcome with fear. And while the public-health group has been realistic in combatting a worldwide freakout at least it's been a bit more proactive than local governments in check-ups on novel coronavirus, Chinese bird flu, and now wild polio in Africa the WHO did confirm over the weekend that the SARS cousin, NCoV, can spread between humans in the same room. If you're already afraid of humans in the same room as you, here's how to responsibly freak out on the viral news before it goes viral in the wrong way.
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Because if you haven't been to any of those four countries of late, none of the three viruses have escaped them. The new bird flu, H7N9, has spread across the provinces of China. The newest cases of NCoV were found in France after a traveler came from Dubai the United Arab Emirates still don't face a threat, but a large number of cases of the disease stem from Saudi Arabia. Oh, yeah, and the WHO issued an alert on Saturday that "wild poliovirus" was found in Somalia preliminarily, but still: a confirmation that it was spreading "would constitute a serious national and international risk to public health." But even for the far-flung, there's this....
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If you have been to China, you should only freak out if... you like to hang out with people who hang out with Chinese poultry farmers.
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Because if it was the pig-bat in Contagion, it's the chicken in China.Though there have been reported cases of bird flu in Chinese people who were not exposed to poultry, WHO and Chinese health officials continue to stress that there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission of H7N9. So: Most of the people who got the disease were exposed to poultry, and most of the people who got it who weren't exposed to poultry were exposed to other infected people, like family members, for too long but there's not enough evidence that, you know, you'll be getting the bird flu by touching the same subway strap in Shanghai on your business trip.
In fact, Shanghai put a halt to its emergency response to H7N9 over the weekend, Forbes's Russell Flannery reported.The city "will end its emergency response measures following theabsence of new cases in the past 20 days," Flannery reports, gleaning information from local reports throughout the region. See that? No new cases in 20 days. Take a chill pill.
As Business Insider's Jennifer Welsh reports, fever is one of the symptoms of bird flu along withpneumonia and respiratory failure. But the people who have died from H7N9, or are suffering from it, tend to be older people with weaker immune systems. "What we're seeing is that half the serious cases are above 60 years of age," Benjamin Cowling,associate professor at HKU's public health research center, told CNN.
What's more,China's Global Times reported on Monday that a 31-year-old in Taiwan made a full recovery. More good news for the young and previously healthy: another recovery story includes a 4-year-old boy."To date, a total of 131 laboratory-confirmed cases of human infection with avian influenza A(H7N9) virus including 32 deaths have been reported to WHO," reads the latest update from the WHO, meaning the majority of people infected have recovered. Which is a good thing!
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The Hypochondriac's Guide to Which New Killer Disease Will Kill You