Something silly and sort of scary for a Sunday morning.

[seanan_mcguire]

I (as Mira Grant) was asking to put together a list of potential pandemics for Buzzfeed. I like anything that gives me an excuse to wallow in delicious virology, so

Comments

Reassuring...I think.

[polyfrog]

"medical science is more interested in keeping you alive than it is in cutting you up and reassembling you as a shambling horror."

"more interested" implies that "cutting you up and reassembling you as a shambling horror" is still also on the list, though. Just further down.

Hm.

RE: Reassuring...I think.

[seanan_mcguire]

Well, yes.

[sarahfish]

I see polio is on that list. You may be interested in this article: Vaccine-Resistant Polio Discovered

Also a nit-pick, but Black Death was (is?) caused by Yersinia pestis -- a bacterium, not a virus. Though VIRUSES ARE CLEARLY SUPERIOR, DON'T GET ME WRONG. Not biased because I study viruses. Nope. Not at all.

[seanan_mcguire]

Except that if you read the list, you will see that I subscribe to the school of thought which believes that the bubonic plague is NOT the Black Death, and that the Black Death was caused by a yet-unidentified hemorrhagic fever.

[sarahfish]

Ooh, I see. Sorry, got confused :/

[seanan_mcguire]

It's okay!

I understand why y. pestis keeps getting fingered, but I really feel like we need to look further.

[anne_d]

Well, that certainly made my morning.

[seanan_mcguire]

Yay!

[pbrim]

Um, Yay for being old enough to have had a smallpox vaccination? But I wonder it that's one of those that wears off without boosters.

And I've been double vaccinated for Polio. I changed school districts during the school year and had to eat those sickly sweet sugar cubes twice, because no-one believed I had done it before.

I also remember TB tests being given to everyone in the school every couple of years as just routine, as well as lining up all the kids in school for polio or smallpox vaccine, or routine vision tests and scoliosis checks. We don't seem to take epidemics (or public health in general) as seriously as we used to, maybe because we haven't had one is quite a while.

[seanan_mcguire]

That's going to change.

[devifemme]

"That's going to change" sure sounded ominous! (On the other hand, I was amused by your "cutting people up" line.)

I'm with the commenter who had the classic smallpox, TB, etc. shots in school. BTW no smallpox booster needed because, inter alia, it's not a threat anywhere (at least currently).

Hugz (not around Ebola victims!),
Justine

[vixyish]

Oh wow, I'd forgotten. I remember the scoliosis and the hearing and vision checks in school. It never occurred to me when I was student teaching in elementary schools in 1998-2000 that nobody was doing them anymore.

[quietchildae]

This made me very happy.

[seanan_mcguire]

Good!