Scientists Find New 'Ebola' Like Virus in Africa., page 1

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Topic started on 29-5-2009 @ 03:06 AM by ChemBreather

-< LuJo >- The Lusaka/Johannesburg virus.

Hey, this is exactly what we need, a new and deadlier Ebole style virus.
Let us hope this one died out with these few people.

5 people in all were infected, 4 died, so that is an 8-10 ratio and we do not want this floating around.. Read Up !!

>> Source Link Fox News <<<

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Print ShareThisATLANTA — Scientists have identified a lethal new virus in Africa that causes bleeding like the dreaded Ebola virus.

The so-called "Lujo" virus infected five people in Zambia and South Africa last fall. Four of them died, but a fifth survived, perhaps helped by a medicine recommended by the scientists.

It's not clear how the first person became infected, but the bug comes from a family of viruses found in rodents, said Dr. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist involved in the discovery.

"This one is really, really aggressive" he said of the virus.

A paper on the virus by Lipkin and his collaborators was published online Thursday on in PLoS Pathogens.

The outbreak started in September, when a female travel agent who lives on the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia, became ill with a fever-like illness that quickly grew much worse.

She was airlifted to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she died.

A paramedic in Lusaka who treated her also became sick, was transported to Johannesburg and died. The three others infected were health care workers in Johannesburg.

'' Investigators believe the virus spread from person to person through contact with infected body fluids.

"It's not a kind of virus like the flu that can spread widely," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped fund the research. ''

reply posted on 29-5-2009 @ 10:24 AM by weCreatedYourSun

This is getting abit wierd isnt it ? so much strange things going on around in the world..

reply posted on 29-5-2009 @ 10:29 AM by FlyersFan

Wanna scare yourself silly?
Read 'The Coming Plague' By Laurie Garrett.
She wrote, indepth, about all these virus' and upcoming plagues.
Ebola was in the book. Chapter 6 was SWINE FLU.

reply posted on 29-5-2009 @ 09:42 PM by CultureD

FlyersFan- spot on, re: The Coming Plague.

If you also read Barry's "The Great Influenza" there are terrific descriptions of hemmorhagic-like deaths in the most virulent form of the 1918 H1N1 strain- so much so that people thought it was a tropical disease (at the time, Ebola and others were either unknown or unclassified). Others became so cyanotic, they turned blueish black as they drowned in their own pulmonary fluid, and people thought it was plague.

These things tell us influenza can look like a whole host of infections.

Now- the question is: are we seeing influenza in Africa, acting like a hemmorhagic fever, and dismissing it as such because it's Africa; are we seeing a new emerging virus for the same reason we have a flu outbreak- overpopulation, global travel, no public health infrastructure, encroachment on ecosystems in which the vecotrs live, etc.; or, are we seeing a combination- a reassortment of the current strains of influenzas infecting a population who are vulnerable to both flu and a new virus? Could it be a chimera?

Any of these scenarios is troubling- and I wouldn't bet the farm on getting a clear answer from WHO. It's a shame Jonathon Mann is no longer with us- he'd have solved this in 3 weeks- and Anthony Fauci has been captured by CDC and FDA. Where's Josh Lederberg? If anyone finds his opinion, please post, as I will.

reply posted on 30-5-2009 @ 08:04 PM by qonone

If i am not wrong

i am confident LuJo was isolated last year. Four people died and there was (i think) one survivor.

Still these arenaviruses are worrisome to us in South Africa. If you leave South African borders to upper Africa it comes with medication, well with most African countries some "backup" is required.

reply posted on 6-6-2009 @ 06:00 AM by ChemBreather

We do have three new sicknesses now, SwineFlu, Lujo and Fear of Aids Disease in China..

reply posted on 6-7-2009 @ 06:49 AM by deltaalphanovember

reply to post by ChemBreather

I posted about this originally in October last year:
Link

It had a high death rate but luckily did not spread far.

On a related note, Ebola may potentially have a vaccine:
Link

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