[Pelham]

This appears to be a series of interviews with someone who studied hemorrhagic fevers- fun stuff like Ebola and Marburg virus. If you read the book The Hot Zone you’ll be familiar with these nightmare viruses.

She also makes some interesting comments regarding the recent avian and swine flu outbreaks. The CDC and WHO have been accused of hyping the threat of H1N1. This Mother Abigail points out that they have to plan for the worst. If the virus proves to be mild then people are out a few bucks for a vaccine. But if it proves to be a dangerous flu and no one has manufactured enough vaccine then you could have a situation like 1918.

[redgolum]

A few years back, there was a very odd outbreak of Marburg. Odd in that the transmission of the disease was not following its typical patterns, and that the fatality rate was much higher than normal.

There were a number of threads of people talking about it, and MA was on them a lot. These threads were so good there were researchers posting on it to bounce ideas off of people on occasion. Mother Abigail was one of those posters, and had some very interesting insights.