Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: dubious
  • Music: Garden Verge, 'Shadow of a Habit.'

In other news, plague.

Researchers have found out what made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly. Because that's always a good idea. Basically, there's a three-gene sequence which tells the virus go 'you know what? The upper respiratory tract is dull. Let's go have a party in the lungs!' This leads to pneumonia, which leads to death. And since it's viral pneumonia, rather than bacterial pneumonia, it's both droplet-based and unperturbed by silly little things like antibiotics. Whee!

To quote the article: "The three genes -- called PA, PB1, and PB2 -- along with a 1918 version of the nucleoprotein or NP gene, made modern seasonal flu kill ferrets in much the same way as the original 1918 flu, Kawaoka's team found." Now. Maybe I'm being a little silly here, but does building a better flu really sound like a good idea? To anybody? I've read The Stand. I don't feel like moving to Colorado. I love pandemics in history and in theory, but I'd really rather not have 'They Fucked Around With Flu' stamped on mankind's collective tombstone.

In other news, small boys still hold firecrackers in their bare hands, because maybe this time, it's going to go differently.
Tags: mad science, pandemic time
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  • 52 comments

siliconshaman

January 8 2009, 10:11:17 UTC 8 years ago

Evil Genius of the world, take note!

seanan_mcguire

January 8 2009, 15:30:38 UTC 8 years ago

Yes. Please take note, and remember that fucking with the flu is never a good way to take over. Unless you want to take over a necropolis, in which case, be my guest.

siliconshaman

January 8 2009, 17:07:49 UTC 8 years ago

Well, not entirely true...the 1918 flu had at most a 20% infection rate, even assuming a worst case scenario with a 90-99% mortality rate, that's still only a maximum of 19% of the population dead.

If we assume a doomsday virus, with a maximum rate of infection/mortality of 90% that would still leave 10% of nearly 7 billion people alive, or around 600 million world-wide ...and it's a fair bet that any evil genius would also have the sense to treat their side with a vaccine and be ready to exploit the chaos to gain control.

Humans would survive ... civilisation probably wouldn't.
Unless that is, someone had prepared for it happening and was ready to take charge immediately and rebuild.

Not that I'd advocate doing anything like this.

seanan_mcguire

January 11 2009, 21:18:20 UTC 8 years ago

Of course not. I hear nothing that sounds like advocacy there at all.