What do u think is the most deadliest viruse??

Hey i just had a thought, but i really dont know if this is in the right topic or not, just let me know. But In your opinion what do you think is the most deadliest viruse ever???? And what do you think would happen if all viruses would combine together????

Past history shows bubonic plague(black death) as the worst 25 million.In five years had died and the disease continued onward for 3 more centuries.Lets not forget aids as of today thats killed millions and has more then 40 million people infected worldwide.
wwwn.cdc.gov...
www.themiddleages.net...
Ebola virus has to be the worst killing 90% of its victims.The Avian flu could be the worst type if infection of all.As it goes airborne through transmission of human to human contact just like the normal flu.With no vaccine or cure in sight.

Sorry i should have done this in one post,i didnt see your other question.If you look at some forms of Stds,they do travel in packs,in a sense u could catch syphilis,chlamydia and other stds at a one time contact of transmission.A virus needs a human host.So in a sense i can see a virus becoming merged with another virus since they can mutate.Could i see all these germs coming one?Impossible and if they did all ban together.Human race as we know it would be wiped out rather quickly.

[edit on 20-5-2008 by alienstar]

reply to post by alienstar


Yea ebola is a bad mofo but it is a lot more manageable than airborne viruses, so most likely wouldnt get to epidemic/pandemic levels.
The plague was also very bad but when someone comes down with it now days usually a good round of antibiotics will take care of it.
I guess the biggest potential threat could be avian flu but as far as the worst that man has seen, well I'd put my money on the spanish flu in 1918, even if they had antibiotics it would have done them no good.

I would have to say HIV. It has killed 22million and infects more tan 36 million with no end in sight. The scary thing is we do not know for sure if this is man made or not. As it remains a conspiracy at this point.
To think that we have the ability to make such a deadly virus and control the spread of it is very scary.
Heres the stats from microbeworld.org

The Deadliest, Scariest of All

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV causes the disease we know as AIDS. AIDS is a pandemic—a disease outbreak that is happening all over the world. In 2000 alone, 3,000,000 people died of AIDS. Since the AIDS pandemic began around 1985, almost 22,000,000 people have died from the disease. Right now, HIV infects more than 36,000,000 people across the world, so that death toll will definitely get a lot bigger over the next several years.

Another great site for info:
Ask A Scientist

This is a good answer to your question from WikiAnswers

Influenza is a virus that causes the flu. Over history it is responsible for more deaths than any other. In 1918, the Spanish flu killed more than 50 million people worldwide. The Human Immunodefiency Viris, HIV, is a more recent virus which is just as deadly, so it doesnt have the numbers that Influenza does. Influenza also has the ability to adapt and form new strains every flu season, making it hard to combat and making the innoculations, or flu shots less hardy and reliable each year.
In regards to what virus kills the quickest, Ebola wins first place. It kills when your vital organs basically liquify in place and you die. This can happen within the 24 to 48 hours from exposure to the virus.

Hope this helps.

reply to post by palehorse23


Whilst I see your point, I'd have to disagree.

Avoiding HIV is relatively easy, avoid sexual promiscuity, use protection, don't use IV drugs not forgetting that donated blood is also screened in western nations - avoiding airborne viruses is much more difficult.
Also HIV affect less than 1% of the planets population.

Ebola is nasty, but is pretty much a victim of itself - it kills so quickly, it doesn't have much time to spread. However if it ever becomes airborne we could be in big trouble.

Bird flu could be the next big killer, or a variant of plague.

Originally posted by alienstar
A virus needs a human host.So in a sense i can see a virus becoming merged with another virus since they can mutate.
[edit on 20-5-2008 by alienstar]

That is exactly what the fear is with the bird flu. Birds have their yearly flu viruses going around just like we do, and they change every year too.

The virus can mutate so it infects people (and it has) but if it mutates so it is easily communicable we are in trouble. Also some animals can get infected by both the bird flu and human flu strains, like pigs, and if they have both the viruses can potentially can cross breed in the host to create a new strain that can infect humans (which would be bad now as the bird flu strain the last few years has been deadly). Thats what happened with the Swine flu epidemnic a few years back, the virus bed in pigs and changed, then became a big problem for humans.

The most deadly? That would have to depend on the circumstances

1) Ebola: As noted NOT airbord yet , but mortality rate is staggering 80-90% . Once you do get it you are pretty much done.

2) Far lesser known than Ebola, the Marburg virus, a kissing cousin of Ebola, is just as deadly

2) H5N1: If it mutates into a form that facilitates human to human transmission. In fact Influenza in a variety of forms remains a big killer

4) Small Pox. What makes is so deadly is the incubation period allows it to be spread before its recognized and diagnosed making containment efforts almost impossible.

5) HIV: Not as scary as it once was due to treatment options, it remains a huge killer. As noted above far easier to avoid in developed countries with behavior modification etc.

Ebola is not the most deadly.

Because of the huge fatality rate, it sort of "kills itself off". Infected people die before having a chance to kill others.

H5N1 hypothetical variant could well prove lethal, but it hasnt transmuted yet.

SARS could have been bad, but never really caught on (thankfully )

HIV is only a problem if you have unprotected sex... yet another reason to not be a fool and wrap your tool.

I would say either bubonic plague (killed millions during the middle ages), or Spanish Influenza (killed people more than WW1).

An interesting side note is that viruses and diseases fortify human gene pools because they tend to kill off anyone with a weaker immune system. For example, 10% of swedes have immunity from AIDS (they can carry HIV but will never get AIDS) as a vestige of their CD4 cellular pathways being modified from surviving plague. While any outbreak would be deadly and destroy civilization, itll take more than a little parasite to kill off humanity

I agree with the above posters that if Ebola ever became airborne the entire population would be in big trouble.

But there are several that if became airborne would be bad, not sure it's possible for these but: rabies, and HIV.

I think airborne viruses are a bit more frightening that some of the others, only because it is difficult to avoid them. That being said any one of them in the right environment will be deadly.

After spending some time doing a bit of research, I think that in terms of being the deadliest virus (not the most widespread or one which has caused most deaths) it's got to be ebola.

There are also sub-strains of ebola which suggests that it is very capable of mutating, and there has also been a case of ebola being airborne between monkeys in a lab - although a nurse was thought to have contracted ebola by airborne transmission, it was never proven that this was the case (Nurse Mayinga - zaire ebolastrain mayinga)

So in terms of the capacity to kill the most people, most quickly, who become infected, it has to be ebola.

it's flu, it's always, always going to be flu. doesn't even need to be avian flu, could randomly mutate and kill everyone. flu is without doubt the deadliest virus. ebola is just nasty, a bad way to die.

I thought the Ebola killing too quickly to be of major concern was a myth?

Ebola as a 2 - 21 day incubation period but typically averages about 9 days and even then can infect anyone who comes into contact with the incubatee enough to come into contact with body fluids or long term (up to a few days) exposure to skin.

Also there was a potential airborne transmission of Ebola between some monkeys at a Lab in America. There is also some debate as to whether Mayinga N'seka (an African Nurse) who got Ebola but no decision as been made as to how Mayinga actually contracted it but it is considered possible that it is the only human to human airborne case of transmission of Ebola so far.

en.wikipedia.org...

Anyways, I remember reading an article about someone dieing of Ebola on a plane at Heathrow a little while ago. No idea what came of the event since it was practically never talked about. Even the tabloids practically never covered it.

/mtndf

www.abovetopsecret.com...


Put if we are on about a rapid outbreak then it would be some kind a Mutant Flu strain I reckon.


[edit on 21-5-2008 by Marshall Ormus]

Thanks u guys, ive been asking this question for quite a long time and u guys are a lot of help. Thanks

www.disgrunt.com...

Spanish Flu -- It circulated until early 1920, with virtually everyone on Earth eventually exposed to the virus.

The global death toll from the pandemic is unknown. In the 1920s, it was estimated to be about 20 million. A more complete analysis in 1991 raised that to 30 million. One in 2002 said mortality “may fall in the range of 50 to 100 million.”

You guys are missing the OP's question. It was, what is the deadliest virus, not what was the deadliest virus.
Don't you believe in statistics?
The mere fact that HIV has no end in sight is why it is the deadliest. And it is just plain stupid to say that just avoiding unprotected sex relieves you from the possibility of getting AIDS. What about all the hospital workers that have to deal with blood and body fluids on a regular basis? A guy you work with cuts off his finger and you rush over without gloves on and try to help him out meanwhile getting some of his HIV infected blood on a scrape you have on your hand. It's as simple as that. It's not just about sex and drugs you guys. Of course it is a huge part of it. Another example is if a phlebotomist sticks themselves with a needle they just used to draw an HIV patient's blood. Oh yeah, HIV resides in saliva as well.
If there was a close second, I would give it to the flu on the lone fact that it has the ability to mutate at a very rapid rate. Something that we will never get a grasp of. And who knows, maybe the flu will even surpass HIV.
Those that usually die from the flu are the elderly and those infected with an autoimmune disease (HIV for example). That is the big kahuna, if you will, as far as HIV goes. HIV attacks by not allowing your immune system to combat even the simplest of infections. That is why most HIV patients die of things such as pneumonia.
One thing I forgot to add was something I agree with that FredT said. It depends on the circumstances and how specific you want to be. When you look at the big picture, it would absolutely suck to have exposure to any of these viruses.

[edit on 5/21/2008 by palehorse23]

reply to post by palehorse23



I believe that there is ample evidence to suggest that AIDS was man-made but that's another topic.

What is undeniable though is that there has been a US patent out since 1997 called:

"Method of curing AIDS with tetrasilver tetroxide molecular crystal devices"

Accordingly, humans injected in this manner, upon being inspected after three weeks or more had elapsed and compared with similar humans that had been given placebos, were completely cured of AIDS. The control group still manifested AIDS....
patft.uspto.gov... =5676977&RS=5676977

And that's not even looking into the patents in the early 1990s by Kaali et al from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

However, I personally follow the work done by Dr Robert Beck (RIP)


Definitely worth researching.......

Bubonic Plague or the Black Death as it was called is an infection of the lymphatic system and is caused by Yersinia pestis. A Bacterium NOT a virus.

For my 2 cents worth. HIV is a useless virus, it may infect many people but that is not through it's own efforts as it is not a particularly easy virus to be infected by.

Plain old fashioned infuenza is by far the deadliest virus doing the rounds. It routinely kills 50,000 very old or very young people a year in the US and 20,000 in the UK and no-one says anything particularly because these numbers are now considered normal. (even with vaccination)

H5N1 would be a deadly virus if we all inhaled bird feaces, the reason being that it kills healthy people not the old or very young like influenza does.

Smallpox is covered by the fact that we have an effective vaccine

Marburg virus is simply the European outbreak of a viral haemorrhagic fever from Africa. Marburg is a university town in Germany where the virus was being studied. Very similiar to Ebola in symptoms terms.

If we take the virus diseases we have vaccines for (usually indicative of the fact that at one time we considered them dangerous)
Hepatitis is a good candidate some vaccines available, polio would be a good one, (Iron lung anyone!!), Measles kills, blinds or otherwise incapacitates kids. The list is a long one.

In summary .... the flu .......

Originally posted by Deharg

H5N1 would be a deadly virus if we all inhaled bird feaces, the reason being that it kills healthy people not the old or very young like influenza does.

I agree with your points, except H5N1 is not influenza? It of course is. Maybe that was a typo. Also the Spanish Flu targeted primarily young, healthy people too. It killed a lot of soldiers.

The concern is not so much about inhaling bird feces (though of course if that were a common practice it would increase the likelihood of the virus mutating). The concern is it will mutate into a form easily transmitted between people. Flu viruses frequently mutate and are shared between different species.