Bob's Links and Rants

Welcome to my rants page! You can contact me by e-mail: bob@goodsells.net. Blog roll. Site feed.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Marburg Virus

If you've ever read Richard Preston's The Hot Zone or Tom Clancy's Executive Orders, you know about the horrible, usually fatal diseases known as hemorrhagic fevers. (Of course, you could know about them without having read those books.) Causing the body to bleed inside and out, the diseases are highly contagious. The Ebola virus is probably the best known hemorrhagic fever, but the Marburg virus can be just as deadly.

As it is right now in Angola. The deaths of 155 Angolans so far, and the possibility of thousands more combined with the very real threat of the virus spreading far and wide, is a much more important story than the deaths of a brain-dead Floridian or an elderly Polish gentleman in Rome. You sure wouldn't know it by the press coverage, though.