ViroBlogy

By Elizabeth Palermo, Staff Writer
Published: 08/15/2014 01:58 PM EDT on LiveScience
The Ebola virus has now killed more than 1,000 people in West Africa. Although the mortality rate of the most recent outbreak isn’t as high as in previous events, it’s still the case that most people who become infected with Ebola will not survive. (The mortality rate is about 60 percent for the current outbreak, compared with 90 percent in the past, according to the National Institutes of Health.)

1. Rabies

2. HIV

3. Influenza

4. Mosquito-borne viruses

5. Rotavirus

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Amen!  I have a fondness for Ebola simply because it is so spectacularly nasty, but it has killed fewer people in 40 years than flu or rotavirus does in 1.

Seriously: just like charismatic animals like elephants and tigers get all of the headlines when it comes to being endangered, rather than the humble tree frog(s), so do Ebola and Marburg get all of the attention when it comes to reportage on virus epidemics / pandemics.

See on Scoop.it – Virology and Bioinformatics from Virology.ca

This entry was posted on 20 August, 2014 at 13:24 and is filed under biofarming, biotechnology, Ebola, Evolution, General Virology, HIV, Vaccines: General, Viruses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.