They're calling it Disease X. It's a mysterious illness circulating in a remote part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Current figures: almost 400 cases and 79 deaths. International health authorities are monitoring.
Disease X is actually a concept. In academia, Disease X is covered in infectious disease focused courses, it is a placeholder concept referring to a pandemic pathogen which has not yet been characterized. Its purpose is to encourage proactive thinking and research about pathogens that could cause a pandemic. To see the term thrown around is pretty wild, but hopefully it's a bit of an overzealous or incorrect use of it. Not even sure if there's enough data available yet to classify it as Disease X, but it's R~o~ value is steadily on the rise, which is always concerning for a novel pathogen.
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.
Just adding to the confusion when that's already what musk's site is.
Jokes aside, probably a little bit, and then a lot.
Guess we'll see who has more sway: the folks who think diseases are a hoax, those who only care about profit, or the people doing the science.
Probably doesnt help when the first group is being funded and fed disinfo by the second group.
It's hard to imagine that Elon's next venture could be even more disastrous, but here we are.
Just put it on the pile with the couple dozen other existential threats.
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.