9 diseases that keep epidemiologists up at night
And reading this:
Raina Plowright of Cornell University says that even in the small proportion of bat species that have been studied, the animals carry thousands of viruses, "and we have no clue how many present risk," she says. "We don't have the technology to take a sequence and say with certainty whether it can infect humans or can transmit from human to human. We're blind, really."
Not to mention that variants pose threats, she says. "Just the tiniest genetic change can have a profound effect. What if we had [a pathogen] with a 50% fatality rate that transmitted efficiently?"
It made me wonder, yes what if?
Remembering the coronacrazy, considering how the world reacted hysterically to the virus with 1% or even less mortality rate, how would people react to the disease spreading as fast as Covid but having 50% or more mortality rate? Could you let your imagination run wild? What would happen?