#infectious virus

[physiologicdeadspace]

A nurse with a sick child during smallpox epidemic, Wrocław, Poland, 1963.

[newsoutbursts]

Mildly ill COVID-19 patients might be discharged in nine or more days after symptom onset: Study

Mildly ill COVID-19 patients might be discharged in nine or more days after symptom onset: Study

Scientists have assessed respiratory samples from 35 COVID-19 patients, and found that contagious coronavirus was “rarely detectable” beyond eight days after onset of illness, an advance that can help develop better self-isolation and quarantining protocols to curb the spread of the pandemic. The study, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, analysed 68 respiratory specimens from…

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CCL Labs offers Coronavirus COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 Antibody testing.

Employers COVID-19 testing.

CCL Labs is committed to patient, health and safety

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Zika virus: CDC issues historic travel advisory to Miami

Zika virus: CDC issues historic travel advisory to Miami

For the first time in the CDC’s history, the government agency has issued a travel advisory to an American city in light of the detection of the infectious Zika virus. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an unprecedented travel warning Monday, advising pregnant women and their partners not to travel to a small community just north of downtown Miami, where Zika is actively…

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[elizahgodswood]

Survivors: Chapter two - Day Two

“He asked for you specifically by name,” Devin said, tossing the letter across the table to Bellona. “You’re the boss, now.”

“This must be a mistake,” Bellona picked up the letter and read it over several times. “Me? He named me to lead if this went to shit like it did? What, was he expecting that fucking disaster?”

“You did take charge yesterday, Bell,” Raymond said.

“Because something needed to be done and I wanted it done right then and there,” Bellona reproached. “I didn’t step up to be a leader. I stepped up to get shit done.”

“Isn’t that what a leader should do? Do what needs to be done?”

“Well, yeah, but I did it because everyone else was standing around with their mouths open and doing fucking nothing,” Bellona looked around at all of her friends. “Are you all saying that you want me to lead?”

“You did a damn good job of it yesterday,” Ginny shrugged. “And you know the most about the disease. You were the Head of Research.”

“I still am!” Bellona crossed her arms and sighed. “If you all insist, I will lead for now.”

“More like until you bite the dust,” Devin smirked. “Now that order has been restored, we need a chain of command. We got the big boss, now who is in charge of what?”

“Nothing has changed, Devin. We’re going back to work on research. If we sit on our asses and do nothing, this disease will kill everyone. The sooner we find a cure, the better. Your stations and duties have not changed. I want you to be my second, Raymond.”

“Sure thing. Bell,” Raymond nodded to the door. “We done here?”

“Yeah, let’s get back to work,” Bellona led the way out of the room. The six of them rode the elevator back up to the mess hall where the rest of the base was still eating breakfast. Dozens of pairs of eyes fixed themselves upon Bellona and her friends. She looked around the room, noting how many had managed to survive the outbreak.

“Yesterday was a disaster. Protocol was breached, and many lives were lost. But, things are back in order. I am in charge now, ladies and gentlemen. And unlike the general, I won’t take any pity upon any poor bastard that gets infected. You get bit, you go down, no questions asked. I will not have a repeat of yesterday.

“There are new restrictions in order. Quarantine zones have been established. Those of you on patrol will bring any survivors you find and sit in quarantine with them until you are cleared. Pathologists have assigned quarters above the lab, and you will be monitored twenty-four hours a day. You will be forced into quarantine if you break anything containing the disease, no exceptions.

“Are we clear?”

“Yes, Sir!”

“Then finish up. We’ve got work to do and I want patrols bringing in survivors as soon as possible. The less healthy people out there, the less infected we will face,” Bellona smiled slightly as they all scrambled to finish eating. They were willing to take her orders without question. Having saved their lives won her their loyalty.

“They follow orders well,” Shay said.

“Good, they should be grateful I wasn’t an incompetent fool. They would have all died if I hadn’t done something,” Bellona snorted slightly. “Let’s get suited up. I want to be out on that first patrol.”

“You guys go ahead,” Shay shook her head vigorously, “I’ll just stay here and help tend to whoever the patrols bring back….”

Bellona held her gun at her side and pressed her ear to the door. The faint sound of a child whimpering came from the other side. Bellona reached for the door knob, but Raymond stops her. “Shine a light under the door, just to make sure there are no infected in there.”

Bellona nodded, cursing her own hastiness. She pulled the flashlight from her belt and waved the light around under the door. The sound of gurgling started. Bellona backs away from the door as the infected inside started pounding on it. Raymond tossed his pistol from hand to hand and shot through the door. The silenced pistol still made the others jump. Raymond opened the door and steps over the infected lying on the ground. Bellona raised her pistol again and proceeded towards the back bedroom while Raymond and Nikko fanned out over the kitchen and living room. Ginny, Devin and Phoebe moved on to the next appartment.

Bellona opened the bathroom door and looks around. A woman was lying in the bathtub with a knife in her head. Bellona shook her head slightly, gagged at the foul stench and checked the bedroom. Two more dead infected were inside. She checked under the bed and in the closet before slowly opening the large wardrobe. Two young children were cowering inside. They tried to hide themselves behind the clothing. Bellona touched the two of them on the shoulder and coaxed them out of the wardrobe.

“You’re safe now; you’ll be fine,” She said over and over again

She led the two girls out of the room and down the stairs to the street. She set the two in the back of the jeep and told them to stay put and stay hidden from view. That said, she walked back up the stairs and ran to catch up to the others as they continued searching the other apartments. They went through the rest of the apartments on the floor, finding infected locked in various rooms. They found a few people who had committed suicide after being bitten or for no apparent reason.

After searching the rest of the floors and finding a woman with two children, a man and his wife, and a man and woman hiding in closets on the upper floors, they returned to the base, packing the cars beyond their limit. Raymond led Devin, Ginny, Nikko and Phoebe back into town once the refugees had been dropped off. Bellona escorted them into the base, reassuring them all that they would be safe here and just had to undergo quarantine before being assigned a room and getting a hot meal.

As they reached the quarantine area, Bellona spotted Shay fumbling around all over the place, handing people water and bread and constantly pushing her glasses back up her nose. The patrols had brought back thirty people in total now. Far more than anyone had expected so soon. Bellona pulled Shay aside once every one of the refugees has gotten food for the long night of quarantine, “Shay, you’ve done more than enough; go to the barracks and take a break. Call in a few of the medics to take your place.”

“Yeah… a break sounds great,” She says.

She left the room. A few minutes later, seven men and women took her place and began checking up on all of the refugees. They all seemed tired, and many asked for hot food rather than just bread and water. It pained Bellona to deny them hot food, but if any were infected, feeding them anything else would be expending precious resources. Once they all had been examined, Bellona bulled one of the doctors aside.

“Has anyone shown immunity to the disease yet?” Bellona asked.

“Sadly not. The scientists are working as fast as they can to undo the virus. But, it’s a nasty piece of work. They’re testing it on animals right now, but the disease has evolved to use humans as its host.”

Bellona shook her head, “They need to be testing people…. I know that sounds harsh, but they need to take some infected and restrain them and test their cures on the people, rather than infecting animals.”

“No one has the guts to try and restrain the infected. They’re still agile while the disease is seeding itself in the brain.”

“Well, then I’ll get someone to do it,” Bellona replied, “This needs to be figured out soon, or this thing will get too far out of hand. The faster we get a cure going and get it sent out to the affected areas the better; we’ll avoid a global scale pandemic.”

She watched the other doctors scramble around the sick. With checkups completed, they now drew blood and samples. One of the men huddled in a corner yelped as one of the doctors yanked him from his spot. The guards in the room immediately seized the man and dragged him from the spot. Bellona scrambled after them, “Get him on a gurney and restrain him. He’s going to the lab.”

The man looked at her in horror as he started hacking up blood and bile all over himself. The guards rushed him to the pathology labs two levels below. The pathologists forcefully restrained him after getting into bio-hazard suits and sped him away. Bellona watched from the observation deck as he slowly stopped his  struggle. He lied still for a few hours, his body slowly showing signs of the disease kicking in. his breathing became rapid and unsteady. His skin had yellowed, and his lips were becoming covered in small black dots. Suddenly, his eyes opened and he looked around the room. He let out a quiet gurgle and tried to sit up. His eyes were yellowing, signs that his liver has already started failing. The black spots on his lips were signs that his body was suffering from vitamin b12 deficiency. She motioned for the scientists hovering nearby, “He’s turned; keep him in observation for a few days before testing on him. We need the disease to be fully incubated and matured so we can understand it first.”

“Yes, Sir,” One of the scientists says.

The infected was pushed out of the room, trying to bite at the men and women pushing the gurney. She looked at the other doctors around her, “That is standard protocol from now on; anyone that is infected is to be strapped down, restrained, and observed for information on the disease. The more infected we study, the better.”

           They nodded and returned to their labs. Bellona returned to quarantine, which was nothing more than a lab that had been cleared after almost everything in it had been destroyed. She watched them almost like someone observing a sleeping animal at a zoo, waiting to see if it would do anything interesting. After two hours, another man and a woman were pulled form quarantine and taken away so they would turn safely. The woman turned faster than the man, but her symptoms were worse, with blood trickling from her ears and nose.

Phoebe stood beside Bellona as she jotted down notes about the infected woman in front of her. Justice lay panting at her feet, gnawing on a dirty tennis ball and thumping his tail against the ground. “We’re back.”

“Good; I think we’ll call it for today. Too much commotion could create a herd,” Bellona said, taking note of how the infected in front of her keeps trying to get at the other infected in the observation room. She continued jotting down notes for several minutes, taking note of changes in behavior, repetitive behavior, and changes in condition. Phoebe puts a hand on her sister’s shoulder, “You’ve been on your feet since six in the morning. Let’s go join the others for dinner and call it a night.”

           “I have to keep taking notes on this; the more we know, the sooner we can find a cure for this mess.” Bellona replied. “It’s already almost three days into the pandemic and it’s already hit Canada, Mexico and into South and Central America. China now has reports of the disease; half of the world’s population lives in China. It will only continue to spread like wildfire unless we do something quickly.”

           “Well you’re not a one person army; get one of your underlings to continue your notes for you. Have them take shifts. If you run yourself into the ground, how are we going to get by?” Phoebe asked, “Come have something to eat, discuss this with your other doctors and get some rest. Between running around town, running the quarantine, and starting to round up infected for study, you’ve done more than enough today on your first day on the job.”

Bellona gave in and left her notes on the chair where she was sitting. She joined the others for a light meal. Ginny and Shay smiled at her as she enters the cafeteria. Devin lifted his glass of water in her direction. “There’s the super soldier; how goes combating the pandemic?”

Bellona sat between Raymond and Phoebe, “Exhausting; we’re finally rounding up infected to start researching. After we compile enough data about the stages from them, we’re going to start taking samples and testing on them. We’ve got a very long way to go….”

“I can work with the pathologists at certain times during the day to help brief them on the stages if that will help,” Raymond says, “My department was responsible for handling the disposal of infected. We knew all about the different stages and what they looked like.”

“We need hard compiled evidence alongside the information you can give us. Identifying each stage and what comes along with it is crucial for finding a right time to reverse the disease before it’s too late. We’ve taken brain samples from infected that we’ve sedated and, depending on how long the disease has been in your system, the brain cells and tissue are slowly damaged and they deteriorate over time. After a certain amount of time has elapsed, the damage is irreversible. We are trying to estimate a time limit we have in terms of treating the disease. Once we have a vaccination, we can actually start a cure. But the whole entire vaccination process is going very slowly. So far, the disease seems to resist any possible cures we’ve come up with. It almost seems to make the disease mutate further….”

“Sounds overly complicated for something as small as a disease,” Nikko snorted, taking a bite of his sandwich. “

“This disease caused a mass pandemic in two days. This disease should have been worked on in a single underground bunker in a remote location, not all over the country in research labs. It’s not small; it’s officially one of the worst pandemics in the world besides the bubonic plague in the middle ages. The death toll in America alone is estimated at over seven-hundred thousand already,” Bellona gave him a scowl. “And that count was at one o’clock this morning. After more than twelve hours, who knows how much higher the toll has risen. China’s reports came in at around four in the morning. With such a dense population, the disease has likely spread faster than wildfire. I hardly consider that to be a small, minor problem. Disease research is far more complicated than you can imagine, Nikko. It’s not just playing around with lab equipment and needles all day. It’s constant trial and error. This disease was designed to resist all known cures. It will take us weeks at the minimum to even start killing the disease. Research takes time. We don’t have time.”

Raymond put a hand comfortingly on Bellona’s knee, “We’re going to pull through. Protocol is mandatory and in effect everywhere. No one is allowed out on the streets. Soldiers deliver supplies door to door. Shelters have been put up everywhere. Ranches and farms have maximum security and they still go one running to keep producing food. The military is working tirelessly to remove the blocks from the highways to allow trucks on the road to deliver supplies. We’re going to pull through this. A lot of people are going to get sick and die. But we’ll figure this thing out.”

“Protocol will fail us after a while,” Devin says, “It’s only a matter of time before our military gets taken out by the disease. What happens once the infected take over the farms? We lose one of the biggest sources of food we have available. There should be just enough perimeter defenses to not leave any gaps, not packing all of our soldiers into such a small area.

“Imagine this; you’re a predator in the woods, hunting for food. You see a few wild turkeys to your left, but you look to your right and there is a massive herd of deer. Which would you go for? The deer obviously; you have a better chance of killing at least one deer out of the huge herd.”

“I see where you are going with that,” Nikko says, “And you’re right, Devin. Our men shouldn’t be in such large numbers; they’ll draw too much attention that way.”

“Knowing our military history, I’d say that they won’t stop with the giant herds of soldiers until it’s too late,” Ginny says.

       “Well, on a happier note…The base in California found out something that may help with figuring out how this started. They think they found traces of the disease within the water supply in Sacramento,” Shay said, eager to change topics.

“The disease doesn’t survive very long in water,” Bellona frowned and absentmindedly rubbed her chin with her thumb. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“But if someone suddenly injected a massive amount of the pathogen into a public water supply, it would still be possible to infect hundreds of people before the disease died….” Ginny rubbed her temples. “So, someone decided to play fucking god and tried to kill us all.”

“That would mean that there had to be more than one person. There are multiple epicenters, each around a large city. They had to be organized, and hidden amongst the ranks. That’s some sketchy shit right there,” Nikko sipped thoughtfully on the beer in his hand. “I don’t like this….”

“It is plausible, and certainly something worth investigating. But, by now, any remnants of the disease would be gone by now.”

“So we’re in the dark….” Phoebe twirled her fork around her plate, pushing around the last few bits of lettuce around. Justice paced around the tables, begging for scraps from the other soldiers. Nikko slipped his bits of meat from his sandwich onto the floor for Justice before retiring to his post for the night. Ginny and Shay left the cafeteria as well, going back to work with the refugees. Phoebe cleaned her plate and left to take Justice out for a walk around the compound before it shut down for the night. Raymond cast a glance at Bellona, “You’ve been stretching yourself thinly today; going on these runs and helping the scientists.”

“This is important; we’re starting research on the disease. All we have now are theories and ideas. Nothing will be certain to us for many weeks.” She replied, “We’re safe here for now. But, it will only be a matter of time before our activity here stirs up a hoard of them.

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Genital Warts Are Caused By Highly Infectious Virus

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[wvoutpost]

We have covered a lot of stories on vaccinations in the past, simply because we have had little trust in the pharmaceutical and vaccine industries. For years they having been pushing these vaccines saying you have to get one to prevent getting an infectious virus. So millions of people willingly receive these shots, just because they are told too. Continue Reading