An unknown illness kills over 50 people in part of Congo with hours between symptoms and death
An unknown illness kills over 50 people in part of Congo with hours between symptoms and death
Health experts say an unknown illness first discovered in three children who ate a bat has rapidly killed more than 50 people in northwestern Congo over the past five weeks.
The interval between the onset of symptoms and death has been 48 hours in the majority of cases, and “that’s what’s really worrying,” Serge Ngalebato, medical director of Bikoro Hospital, a regional monitoring center, told The Associated Press.
The latest disease outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo began on Jan. 21, and 419 cases have been recorded including 53 deaths.
According to the WHO’s Africa office, the first outbreak in the town of Boloko began after three children ate a bat and died within 48 hours following hemorrhagic fever symptoms.
"Why do we send all these people food"
So they don't have to eat fucking bats with covid-9000
It's hard to explain international politics. This was a great example of doing it right.
covid-9000
Sweet name for a Nu Metal band
It's exactly nine thousand!
HAL was a virus the whole time
“Why do we send all these people food”
Because we have excess and they don't.
the first outbreak in the town of Boloko began after three children ate a bat
You’re kidding me
Inb4 congo virus lab conspiracy theory
there have been legitimate concerns that the ongoing violence in the DRC could result in lab leaks and whatnot. I believe there are or at least once were some small lab outputs in DRC bush set up to help with monitoring for diseases.
EBFO? Eat a bat and find out.
Do we need awareness campaign for "don't fucking eat bats"? Didn't know we were that hopeless as species.
Economic desperation and lack of education. Think back to how dumb humans were just like 400 years ago, which is what 20 generations or something? Essentially no grasp of diseases in the modern sense. We are biologically 99.9999% or whatever the same as them.
Ebola spread during that ~2015 outbreak in large part because local customs meant washing the dead and otherwise being in close physical contact. Sadly, people simply didn't know better.
I doubt these kids had many food options dude .
The interval between the onset of symptoms and death has been 48 hours in the majority of cases, and “that’s what’s really worrying,”
That's also great news because it's easy to identify infections, quarantine, and contain. What would be really worrying is a hemorrhagic fever with an incubation period of 5-21 days a la covid.
Just because they died right after showing symptoms does mean that's when they were infected. Maybe you're contagious for 3 weeks then cough twice and die.
Have a nice day.
Yeah, these kids could have been bat-snacking for quite some time before they came down with any symptoms. Or they'd eaten bats without problems before they lost "bat roulette" and ate one with this particular disease.
Absolutely!
Another example is HIV: Initial infection is just a minor flu, you're then infectious and active for 5-10 years before becoming seriously ill with AIDS (of course this is for untreated HIV). This allowed the illness to spread for decades adapting to humans before finally being identified in the 80s, killing millions.
Just gonna tack on here that everyone's favorite presidential whipping boy, ol' Ronnie shithead Reagan, was partially responsible for allowing it to continue spreading. Hell, his press secretary or some equivalent laughed at the one reporter that actually asked about it and implied the reporter was a homosexual. He also abandoned his buddy Roy Cohn because of it too.
May he rot in piss.
That quote doesn't tell us anything about the incubation period unfortunately.
Unless there's a longer dormant period where this is contagious, but shows no symptoms, this disease kills too quickly to become a world pandemic.
Anyone that's played plague Inc knows how this goes. It's not a winning strategy.
I learned how to be in a relationship from visual novels.
Not with that attitude
That's true with a higher mortality rate.
It has killed around 10 percent of victims, so it can be spread by the rest.
That's looking on the bright side of things I guess
It also depends on its mortality rate. The, article says 50 died but over 900 infected.
Still incredibly high, but initially it seemed like it was much higher. If enough asymptomatic, or non deadly people catch it and pass it on, it's still pandemicable, just less effective.
When this civilization falls and the next one is beginning there's going to be a religious ban on eating bats.
If it flaps, you slaps. Amen.
Confused, currently fapping my slap.
The Bible already addresses this:
https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/what-does-the-bible-say-about-bats/
Fuck yes! A deadly pandemic without long drawn out suffering? Sign me up!
Sadly, that makes this unlikely to go pandemic. If it kills too fast it can't spread.
We'll have to live a little while longer... 😒
Yeah those 48 hours don’t look too fun either though.
Feel awful for those affected.
I'd rather have a few months of major discomfort than the two days of hard-core body horror that they just went through.
If you want to stay up for a few nights, read The Hot Zone, which is about Ebola. Those bats are gonna kill us all someday, and there are so many of them!
It's not the bat's fault really. If us humans would stop encroaching further into their territory and stopped warming the planet to the point of no return, we might not be having such extreme issues with zoonotic viruses we've never encountered before trying to kill us.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51N5u7HMbaL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg
This one will keep you up at night, it was SO fucking interesting. It's basically a story about a crime fighter who goes in and solves really complex crimes...but all the crimes are weird diseases, like strange brain swelling diseases that are gonna kill a ton of people in the US, and the detective has to figure it out before a bunch of people die.
We have the technology to solve insane cases, but we are completely hamstrung by mentally deficient politicians like our current idiot and his party. And how we still prevailed despite their obstructions.
The image link is to the cover of The Premonition by Michael Lewis.
The earth will be ok. One day we'll be gone and she'll be just fine.
Frankly, she'll be better off.
Its too bad I don't care about the rock we're floating around in space on and mostly care about me and my loved ones.
They had a previous outbreak in December that was diagnosed as malaria. This outbreak is not that one but malaria has not been confirmed as the culprit.
In any case, please don't go to Congo to bring whatever it is to the rest of the world. Let WHO experts figure it out....if only a removed president had not pulled funding for that vital global health organization.
I am thinking a Congo vacation might be the cheapest thing I can do to save America. Go straight fro the Congo to a Republican fundraiser.
I can think of cheaper!
We can insult Trump without restoring to ableist slurs.
I haven't seen the r-slur used since the mid 2000s, and now suddenly it's everywhere in the past 2-3 weeks. Why are we back-pedaling on even the most basic decencies?
Literally society regressing in front of our eyes.
ate a bat and died within 48 hours following hemorrhagic fever symptoms
Are we seeing another Ebola outbreak? Or is this a different viral hemorrhagic fever?
All samples were negative for common hemorrhagic fever diseases, although some tested positive for malaria.
Looks like at minimum, it's a strain of Ebola that's different enough not to register on a test.
I apologize in advance for my ignorance. But why do people like to eat bats? Are they particularly nutritious? Or is it a matter of access to foods and resources? Are they really yummy? And why didn’t Ozzy contract any weird deadly disease?
This is why we had programs like USAID. To keep people from starving and eating infected animals harboring endemic viruses we know nothing about.
Even in the US, it's highly inadvisable to eat animals/bush meat infected with CWD even if it technically can't infect humans ...yet.
Pretty sure you eat anything possible when you're starving, and these children may have been.
We ordered the one that infects "red hat", not "fed bat". Blame a bad connection, but we're not paying for this Congo Labs. Try again. (Edit: forgot /s)
ITT: People that think only bats get human-transmissible diseases.
Exactly, it can go bat -> livestock/pet -> human just as well.
No, but they get some nasty stuff that if transmitted to humans more often prove lethal. It is due to bats having an incredibly high body temperature (even more so than most other flying things though most of them are high). Human fever really cannot compete with that and our bodies may just kill themselves with the viral response IIRC.
I'm just one person wondering why it seems like bats are involved so often in stories like this.
Because of the physiological and energetic demands of flight, bats are tolerant of a wide range of viruses.
Yeah who has ever heard of bird flu?
It was a sick ostrich
Allegedly
Was gonna say unexpected letterkenny but then I saw you come from lemmy.ca so...
Guess I need to change my dinner plans for tonight.
Unknown.... Ate bat. The entire gebuz loving world said they wouldn't eat bats anymore, but some kid somewhere in Congo found them tasty again. WTF! Bats look ugly for a good reason. They carry diseases! Stop eating bats! Eat chicken instead! Please eat chicken!
Fuck! Dudes! I strictly repeated several times to not eat bats so we could prevent another covid! WTF was wrong with these people? Bat= not food!!! Other not foods include but not limited to Stork, venomous things, pets, people, clouds, poop, teeth, big cats, other cats, armadillos, rinos, elephants and other nature show animals. Food animals... Chicken, tilapia, cow, pig.
Now the next and most important thing to do is: 1) don't go to Congo to see or touch or be near the dead. 2) don't come back from Congo if you saw, touched or were near the dead. Easy peasy.
Obviously this was a mutant rabies virus. Let's call it RabiesUltra25...RU25 for short. Thanks for reading! Look out! Behind you! Gotcha!
"Drugs are bad, m'kay?"
Rabies takes waaaaaay longer to kill you than whatever those poor kids got from bats.
