The other day i was reading a novel called "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston...and discovered an awful lot about viruses and how they work...its just amazing that viruses, which are made up of one strand of RNA are capable of bringing down beings that are unimaginably huge than the parasite itself!!
The classification of viruses is done on the basis of the danger that they present to the hosts(usually experimental animals)...the most deadly being the Bio-Safety Level four viruses...also called as HOT viruses...any fluid or material that contains these viruses is termed a LEVEL FOUR HOT AGENT...the greatest threat that was posed to mankind was from Ebola, which threatened to wipe out primates(inc. humans) from the face of this planet!!The symptoms start showing up very soon after contracting the virus...and i dont want to evn speak about how the virus devours its victims...suffice to say that it makes each and every organ in the human body into liquid gooey stuff...i think u get the picture,..They say "The scariest thing about Ebola virus is not what it has done but what it might do".
(i) Lets start with Marburg...it is one of the viruses belonging to the family of Ebola viruses and appears to have been the mildest form of the Ebola family of viruses...this virus kills every 2 people in 10 who are affected by it...
(ii)Next up is Ebola Sudan...it is a deadly level four hot virus and is believed to having killed every 5 people out of 10 that have come into contact with it...
(iii)And last but not the least...there is Ebola Zaire...the most deadly form of the Ebola viruses..it kills almost 9 in 10 people that come into contact with it...
All these viruses have been found in the jungles of Africa and are presently not posing a very great threat to the race of humans...there is also another form of virus called the Ebola Reston which affects only monkeys...so not much of a problem there...
Its not actually these details that i was interested in rather than what all this fuss is all about...what can somethin as small as one strand of RNA do to the world??if we actually think about it...this small strand of RNA has all the information for the virus to bleed humans to death from each and every hole in the human body!!...let me tell you this...consider a viruulent being in ur cell...which replicates itself so fast that the cells of your body start rupturin within days from contracting it..scary right??
so here i take my leave hopin i didnt cross anyones threshold and didnt hurt anyone with all these details...i kno you could have looked all this up in the Inet...but then...watevr!!!
PEACE
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