You’re not wrong there, hopefully the pathogen is sequenced soon and researchers start working on an approach to prevent further spread and treat those already infected.
The fact the numbers are like this in a remote area of Africa demonstrates when it gets to a more dense population, it will only get worse. More viral infections means more mutations. A virus will always mutate, it’s how they survive. These mutations almost always result in a novel version of the virus better adept to spread in the host’s population. There’s also a good portion of these new versions which are no longer infectious as well. It’s basically a numbers game for the virus.
But Disease X by definition will always start in one specific area, then spread throughout the population.
Surely a potential pandemic pathogen. This is still an epidemic, isn’t it?
You’re not wrong there, hopefully the pathogen is sequenced soon and researchers start working on an approach to prevent further spread and treat those already infected.
The fact the numbers are like this in a remote area of Africa demonstrates when it gets to a more dense population, it will only get worse. More viral infections means more mutations. A virus will always mutate, it’s how they survive. These mutations almost always result in a novel version of the virus better adept to spread in the host’s population. There’s also a good portion of these new versions which are no longer infectious as well. It’s basically a numbers game for the virus.
But Disease X by definition will always start in one specific area, then spread throughout the population.