Viruses

Lots of waffle...

Smallpox is a old favorite for germ warfare, but antrax is still the
best (or worse). It's very contagious - 95%+, but only 60%+ letal. But
that's OK for germ warfare. One factor of germ warfare is that it good to
have a large chuck of poeple in hostipal using the country resources
and man-power up - it also add to the terror.

One interesting fact is that there are a whole set
of virises that attack bacertia, and can be use to figth them - some
one infected with the illness can be given a large dose of the virus
which then wipes out the bacteria... The Russia use to do this during
WWII as they didn't have any pencillin.

Any way in the next hundred we will be back to the middle-ages as all
our drugs stop working.

Dave implied that virii are clever - nah, it takes then hundreds/thousands etc
of generations to become immune to a drug. Unluckly this may only be a few
years...

One plus, is that there is little evidence that there new disease springing
up. HIV was probably around in Africa for centuries before it became
pandenic. On the bad side who knows what indenics are out there waiting
to spread.

Daniel

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Daniel Celano said:
Didn't have any penicillin? DIDN'T HAVE ANY PENICILLIN? Didn't they
know that that's just the "normal" green mould you get on mouldy
bread? Or didn't they have any bread or something?

(oops, maybe time to extract foot from mouth ;-)

---

Nick Waterman. Network Consultant / Sysadmin - LEOnet
Beating tomorrow's technology into submission.
nick-sig@ Team *AMIGA*!
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.

Try eating moulding bread and you are more likely to get ergo posioning that
a cure for your headache - especially in Eastern European (rye bread and
all that).

I don't quite agree with the picture Dave painted of an virus outbreak.
In the middle ages when we had less control and medical skill the worse
pauge killed 60%, but didn't mutant or go on to kill the rest. I may
be wrong here, but to mutant requires some evolutionary pressure, a virus
which is able to inflect 60%+ is not under much pressure to mutant as
it is already quite successful. Disease which are checked by some
means - drugs, nature barriers etc, are the ones which go on to mutant.

Daniel

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Nortel Ltd, E-Mail : celano@
140 greenway,
Harlow Business Park, TEL : (01279) 405316
Harlow,
Essex.
CM19 5QD FAX : (01279) 405070

=====================================================================

At 11:14 09/02/98 EST, Daniel wrote:
few years...

Which was my point. They are not intelligent per se but they adapt very
quickly. From what I know there are no cures to virus related infections,
no anti-virus agents in the same way as you get antibiotics. The only
option is innoculation so your immune system is primed to recognise the
virus and attack it. As we have eradicated many viruses, anthrax, smallpox
etc, nobody has been inoculated against these. If these where released into
the population they would infect people rather quickly.

Using Anthrax as an example, it only kills 60+% of the population. Hmmm,
well that is only around 2.5 Billion people. Living as we do in crowded
population centers imagine the carnage as just over 1 in 2 people die
within weeks of contracting the virus. You have the problem of secondary
diseases caused by a lot of unburied corpses. Even the bubonic plague did
not kill that many, that fast.

So, 40-30% of the population survive, the virus has now mutated. It attacks
again and gets a few more percent of the population, who know do not have a
skills, expertise and resources to develop a cure.
And the problem is still the resistant strains we have produced due to
innoculation and antibiotics.

Dave "pesssimistic to the last" Barlow
Bring me my Broadsword, | http://www.sartar.demon.co.uk
And clear understanding | BBb Bass player extraordinaire.

Previously, Daniel Celano said:
I'm not sure, and I expect someone out there can correct me, but I think
penicillin was only just coming into use during WWII. In any case, using
these anti-bacterial viruses might be a good idea, as the bacteria are
no longer trying to out-evolve our antibiotics, but instead are locked
in a struggle to out-evolve the viruses that prey on them, which in turn
can evolve to counteract the bacteria's evolution, and so on. Sort of a
microbiological arms race. So instead of fighting our immune systems,
the germs are fighting each other (which should hopefully give the
immune system time to sneak up behind the bacteria with a club :-)).

Later,

Steve :-)
_
__
(oO)
/||\

In article <E0y1xYe-0002ag-00@>, "Daniel Celano" <celano@> wrote:
[...]
Sanitation works.

The main progress that has beem made with health and life expectancy is the
business of piped fresh water and not emptying sewage into the streets. In
historical campaigns the most important thing to mention when describing,
say, C16 London, is the *smell*.

We will not go back to the Dark Ages unless we give that up, too.

ObSF: one of the things they don't mention too much in SF is the smell of
spacecraft and spacesuits. I can think of a few exceptions: "2001"; "The
Forever War"; or "Podkayne of Mars" - but generally SF authors seem to
forget that the inside of a starship after it has been recirculating air for
6 months will smell terrible. We certainly know that, with the interesting
sanitary facilities in space, the Space Shuttle and Mir both have a sort of,
well, miasma. (The sanitary facilities in the Space Shuttle consist, I
believe, of a great big vacuum cleaner. Presumably without a "blow"
setting...)



Simon

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simon@ said:
Simon, you are back on my "sick and disgusting" list.

---

Nick Waterman. Network Consultant / Sysadmin - LEOnet
Beating tomorrow's technology into submission.
nick-sig@ Team *AMIGA*!
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling