“I am wondering if this is the next AIDS virus to decimate the world’s population? “
Decimate means to kill one in ten. I don’t know the total numbers killed by AIDS, but the yearly flu kills 30,000 in the US alone. I suspect that the normal flu has well exceeded the death toll of AIDS in the years that AIDS has been here. Ebola may be the next pandemic. The last big one was before and during World War 1. It killed 22 million in its first four months, the approximate death toll the war caused in four years. (The “Spanish flu” was not very well known in the war because of censorship. It is called the Spanish flu because only Spain had no censorship.)
Yes. I chose it specifically. I realize the population wasn’t decimated by AIDS, but it could have been excepting our aggressive research into it. I was working in one of the finest hospitals in the country when the AIDS crisis began. Everyone knew it could easily slip into the heterosexual community via bisexuals.......but the citizenry was warned about it’s avenues of transmittal. The Blood Banking community acted pretty aggressively too, after that was identified as a way of transmission. Now AIDS is pretty much more of a nuisance than a deadly virus. Ebola needs more research and I suspect that Emory will be very careful while looking for a way to stop Ebola. So maybe I should have used ‘pandemic’.