Topic: Covid-19 could have been a lot worse - could a blood poisoning virus end us? - page 2. (Read 783 times)

So I was reflecting on stats from other viruses in comparison to coronavirus. While bubonic plague killed 95% of infectants in 1666, it wouldn't cause as serious a problem now if it became a pandemic (which is unlikely because I haven't met anyone with a pet flea)...

However, ebola has been known to kill in the west and has statistics of around 10-20% mortality rate associated with it in developed countries even if people are hooked up to external circulatory and ventilation systems - taking ebola as an example I'd suggest:
5-20% mortality rates
40-60% machine aided circulation and ventilation
80-100% hospitalisations (this may just have been on the safe side in the past but it seems like it'd likely happen this way again at least to start with)...
(these figures assume we have an abundance of all resources)

Of course, ebola didn't travel throuugh the air, it travelled through blood. But there may come a time when a virus like this occurs (airbourne and affects immune system cells in the blood) in which case we're almost all fucked.

People living on remote islands have a potential to get infected too since I think it's been proven that a wind can take a virus up into the atmosphere - below freezing point - and keep bringing it back down. It only has to come down once in the right place to affect others.

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Side note: if there was a really intelligent alien species, what's the chances they've made a tube that's currently floating towards us carrying one of these viruses......