{"id":1700,"date":"2013-01-25T00:18:49","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T18:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2013-01-25T00:18:49","modified_gmt":"2013-01-24T18:18:49","slug":"greetings-from-planet-flu-and-a-few-thoughts-on-the-virus-in-the-bird-saviors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/01\/25\/greetings-from-planet-flu-and-a-few-thoughts-on-the-virus-in-the-bird-saviors\/","title":{"rendered":"Greetings from Planet Flu, and a Few Thoughts on the Virus in "The Bird Saviors""},"content":{"rendered":"

So I should say “Greetings, Fellow Flu Victims!” as it seems everyone I know, have ever known, or will know has the flu right now, which is to some extent why I haven’t posted anything in a while. My bout with it wasn’t too bad, but bad enough to knock me out for several days. The best flu\/literature story I have is that way back when (1979?), when Stephen King’s The Stand<\/em> was first published, I read it one holiday season in college when I was sick with the flu and could not go home for Christmas. I did research on viruses for my novel The Bird Saviors<\/em>, which features a wicked virus outbreak, though much less damaging than the bird flu pandemics often imagined, such as in the film Contagion<\/em>. The virus I cooked up is actually more realistic, I think, than these doomsday scenarios, and boils down to mortality rates. One of the scary things about a potential bird flu outbreak, if it were easily transmitted airborne particles, is that mortality rates for it now are upwards of 50% of people infected, which is a very high mortality rate for any virus. The one I imagined is a more difficult virus to understand (like HIV), yet with a much lower mortality rate, say 5-10%. That would be catastrophic for the world, and would probably be classified as a pandemic (if it circulated widely), but would not cause the extreme social disruption often imagined with a virulent bird flu outbreak. Why I think this is more realistic: There are a great number of virus outbreaks in the world over any given period of time (say, a decade or two), and most of them, even the worst, have lower mortality rates than that astronomical 50% figure. Which brings us to the current flu outbreak: It’s bad, but of course it could be much worse. I hope all you sufferers are feeling better, or will get better soon.
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So I should say “Greetings, Fellow Flu Victims!” as it seems everyone I know, have ever known, or will know has the flu right now, which is to some extent why I haven’t posted anything in a while. My bout … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,33],"tags":[156,190],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-booksfilm","category-viruses","tag-the-bird-saviors","tag-viruses"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t