Comment Re:How is this good? (Score 1) 172
One of the most nasty things a disease can do is to slowly replicate without causing symptoms. These long incubation periods are why Ebola, Tuberculosis, and Rabies are so dangerous.
It is necessary to add some measures of infection and transmission (transmissibility). If a person is infectious for a long period
with no or difficult to detect symptoms the world has a massive problem if the end result is kin to the final week or two of a hemorrhagic
fever like Ebola.
Transmissibility i.e. the evolutions of a virus ability to infect others is missing in the original article.
A virus could become benign OR it could combine the long incubation of HIV and Ebola but acquire the
rapid transmissibility of influenza and run wild across the globe reducing the population by +80%.
The 80% is a personal SWAG that assumes the collapse of health care that today gives Ebola victims
a fighting chance.
Another risk is for a very infectious hemorrhagic fever class virus to emerge and attack livestock, poultry,
fish and swine. Oceanic fish infections scare me.... Any of these might cause global or regional famine
and global or regional conflict.