Quotes About Virus

What made it particularly interesting was that it multiplied easily in various species, in monkeys, humans, guinea pigs. It was extremely lethal in these species, which meant that its original host was probably not monkeys, humans, or guinea pigs but some other animal or insect that it did not kill. A virus does not generally kill its natural host.

Possibly this epileptic splashing of blood is one of Ebola's strategies for success—it makes the victim go into a flurry of seizures as he dies, spreading blood all over the place, thus giving the virus a chance to jump to a new host—a kind of transmission through smearing.

A monkey directs its attacks toward the face and head. It will grab you by the head, using all four limbs, and then it will wrap its tail around your neck to get a good grip, and it will make slashing attacks all over your face with its teeth, aiming especially for the eyes. This is not a good situation if the monkey happens to be infected with Ebola virus.

Marburg virus (the gentle sister) affects humans somewhat like nuclear radiation, damaging virtually all of the tissues in their bodies. It attacks with particular ferocity the internal organs, connective tissue, intestines, and skin.

One man infected his wife with Marburg through sexual intercourse.

They had been injected with the hottest strain of Ebola known to the world. It was the Mayinga strain of Ebola Zaire.

The monkeys showed no facial expression, not even pain or agony. The connective tissue under the skin had been destroyed by the virus, causing a subtle distortion of the face. Another reason for the strange faces was that the parts of the brain that control facial expression had also been destroyed.

The classic Ebola face made the monkeys look as if they had seen something beyond comprehension.

According to standard doctrine, there are basically three ways to stop a virus—vaccines, drugs, and biocontainment. There was no vaccine for Ebola. There was no drug treatment for Ebola. That left only biocontainment.

Ebola is distantly related to measles, mumps, and rabies. It is also related to certain pneumonia viruses: to the parainfluenza virus, which causes colds in children, and to the respiratory syncytial virus, which can cause fatal pneumonia in a person who has AIDS.

Are you worried about a species-threatening event?" He stared at me. "What the hell do you mean by that?" "I mean a virus that wipes us out." "Well, I think it could happen. Certainly it hasn't happened yet. I'm not worried. More likely it would be a virus that reduces us by some percentage. By thirty percent. By ninety percent.

A virus makes copies of itself inside a cell until eventually the cell gets pigged with virus and pops, and the viruses spill out of the broken cell. Or viruses can bud through a cell wall, like drips coming out of a faucet—drip, drip, drip, drip, copy, copy, copy, copy—that's the way the AIDS virus works.

A virus can be useful to a species by thinning it out

Looking at Ebola under an electron microscope is like looking at a gorgeously wrought ice castle. The thing is so cold. So totally pure.

A virus does not "want" to kill its host. That is not in the best interest of the virus, because then the virus may also die, unless it can jump fast enough out of the dying host into a new host.

Variola is now exotic to the human species, highly infective in humans, lethal, and difficult or impossible to cure. It is generally believed to be the most dangerous virus to the human species.

staff. A characteristic of a lethal, contagious, and incurable virus is that it quickly gets into the medical people.

ROSCO: Rosco is on. MARK: Try morphing into something a little less combat-ready. ROSCO: It's a glitch in my program. Travolta virus. You could call the help-line…

An amplifier host is a creature in which a virus or other pathogen replicates—and from which it spews—with extraordinary abundance. Some aspect of the host's physiology, or its immune system, or its particular history of interaction with the bug, or who knows what, accounts for this especially hospitable role.

Identifying the new virus was only step one in solving the immediate mystery of Hendra, let alone understanding the disease in a wider context. Step two would involve tracking that virus to its hiding place. Where did it exist when it wasn't killing horses and people? Step three would entail asking a further cluster of questions: How did the virus emerge from its secret refuge, and why here, and why now?

Will the Next Big One be caused by a virus? Will the Next Big One come out of a rainforest or a market in southern China? Will the Next Big One kill 30 or 40 million people?

Viruses face four basic challenges: how to get from one host to another, how to penetrate a cell within that host, how to commandeer the cell's equipment and resources for producing multiple copies of itself, and how to get back out—out of the cell, out of the host, on to the next. A

Horses aren't native to Australia. They are exotic, first brought there by European settlers barely more than two centuries ago. Hendra is probably an old virus, according to the runic evidence of its genome, as read by molecular evolutionists.

Viruses face four basic challenges: how to get from one host to another, how to penetrate a cell within that host, how to commandeer the cell's equipment and resources for producing multiple copies of itself, and how to get back out—out of the cell, out of the host, on to the next.