Marburg Virus

[Gotham Gal]

I had never heard of Marburg until I watched MM. At first, I thought the writers had made it up, but quickly learned that it existed IRL and really was a pretty awful hemorrhagic disease that can kill (but not always.) I've since seen signs warning about it in international airports and in certain locations in Africa, particularly Central Africa. It seems Ghana may possibly be facing an outbreak according to this article from the UN. It's factual, meant to inform, and is not alarmist: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/07/1122242

Kind of a quirky thing, but it is really quite interesting. Hopefully they'll dodge the Marburg bullet.

[The Old Man]

Sorry I missed your topic Gotham. Yes, I’d never heard of it either until Millennium. Hope that flare up was contained, terrifying virus.

[seesthru]

I'd heard of it from reading "The Hot Zone"  by Richard Preston.  Scared the bejeezus out of me.   So when it popped up on Millennium, it made the episode super frightening to think about.  I'd often wondered why they didn't put the super-bad Ebola Zaire  in the episode.  However, mixing  Marburg and prions was undoubtedly more deadly than any of the ebola variants out there thus far.

[The Old Man]

Nasty stuff. You wouldn't want that in your morning coffee! That said, I had a Covid-19 booster last Friday afternoon, and by Sunday night I had such a fever I thought I had Marburg. It was gone though next day but the ache in my arm spread down to my fingers and I could hardly close them. All gone by yesterday though, just a little achey. Unsure if I'd have another one though! 🤔

 

[seesthru]

You had a good immune response.   I  hardly react to the shots at all, meaning my immune response is weak. That should translate into you being more immune to  a serious bout if you get COVID, or possibly no bout at all.

 

I  have seldom run fevers, not high ones.   If i hit 99.9 I think I have marburg, LOL

[seesthru]

And no, I'd not want any  variant of Ebola in my coffee, for sure. Certainly not the  Mad Cow/Marburg variant in  Millennium!

[The Old Man]

2 hours ago, seesthru said:

You had a good immune response.   I  hardly react to the shots at all, meaning my immune response is weak. That should translate into you being more immune to  a serious bout if you get COVID, or possibly no bout at all.

I  have seldom run fevers, not high ones.   If i hit 99.9 I think I have marburg, LOL

Thanks Doc! That's interesting, I never knew what that meant. When I have an annual flu jab, I rarely have a response to it.

Mad cow disease, a lot less like: 

[Gotham Gal]

@seesthru, Yes, prion diseases ARE scary. This from the official USA NIH:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9551214/

It was really quite prescient of the MM writers!

[Gotham Gal]

@TheOldMan, Sorry to hear of your trials and tribs w/the jab. It's obviously a decision one must make in consult w/their doc, but for me, I've kinda given up on the Covid shots. I'm fairly young and reasonably healthy, Thank God, so I think I'm going to wait until more studies are done. They WERE rushed thru b/c it was a very sudden pandemic. That said, I'm supposed to be going to Shanghai in two months, and I recall the horrible stories of ppl locked down screaming out of their apt. windows or of the white-clad monitors taking away Covid-pos. patients' cats and leaving them out for trash pickup out of fear the pets wld. transmit the disease. Horrible! So maybe I should reconsider my position lest I have nightmares about being locked up in China...

[The Old Man]

Thanks Gotham! Enjoy your amazing trip!

I skipped the previous booster as I wondered why bother, I hadn't left the house since 2017 except for the odd appointment. None of the previous Covid jabs caused a response that I can remember. If I was going somewhere, especially abroad, I would definitely have my jabs though. Stay safe!