VIRUS SECRET’S JOURNEY FROM KANSAS INTO THE HOT ZONE OF THE CDC
“There is nothing so patient, in this world or any other, as a virus searching for a host.”
―Mira Grant, Countdown
There is nothing so amazing and admirable in this world as a virus, trying to survive. That is something beyond life or death, virus is a super machine that decided it will make it, no matter what. The centuries of the Earth’s organic genesis haven’t erased the viruses as the perfect organisms which are lurking for their hosts. In opposite, they have encouraged them to evaluate themselves into the natural born killers.
I have always been impressed with the potential of viruses to gravitate from the invisible enemies into the visible damage makers. The thousands of them, ready to attack in every single moment when we fail down to protect ourselves or we forget that we are so vulnerable in spite of all our advanced technology. They are so superior in the world of our inferior fear from the unknown. They watch us, feel us, study us….with everything they are not. The absence of their social intelligence could be understood as the presence of their predator instinct for survival. We can call them crystals but when those crystals are attached to our cells, the challenging dance will be the last for us.
Someone mentioned the Bourbon virus? People always link the Bourbon with the famous Bourbon whiskey, American whiskey made from corn and typically memorized with the American South. But, there is a Bourbon county too…not only in Kentucky but also in Southeast Kansas, with the protected areas of Fort Scott National Cemetery and Fort Scott National Historic Site.Now, the Bourbon county will be the place of the birth of a new and mystical virus,the Bourbon virus. Now, the taste of Bourbon whiskey when the sunset falls down on the fields of the Bourbon county will never be the same because the virus has taken the peace away.
We must go back to 2014, the bad time for the farmer from Bourbon County that has been hospitalized because of the hard health conditions: high fever, nausea and rash. The doctors have been convinced it is a Lyme disease but the diagnosis and clinical tests have it denied. The another and unknown living organisms has been found in the farmer’s blood and it was unknown. The man has been bitten by ticks but the virus that has been developed within him was something new for a science. The Bourbon virus.
The medical experts did not know what they are dealing with.Panic and anger because they couldn’t have solved the enigma. The death because the infected 50-year-old man haven’t had enough time to fight back the unidentified enemy. However, the CDC has not wasted the time to discover the subject of the crisis and very fast they categorized the virus as a novel RNA virus :“The CDC places the Bourbon virus in a group of viruses called thogotoviruses. These viruses are found all over the world, and some can cause people to get sick.Medical professionals don’t yet fully understand how the Bourbon virus infects its hosts, but it likely spreads through tick or other insect bites.There is no vaccine or drug that prevents or treats the Bourbon virus. To avoid contracting the Bourbon virus, people should take precautions against tick and other insect bites when they spend time outside. Measures include using insect repellent, wearing long sleeves and pants, avoiding overgrown and wooded areas, and performing tick checks”
The problem with this virus is multidimensional. First, the family that virus belong to is the known as capable to cause the severe inflammation of the lining of the brain, or a brain inflammation called encephalitis. The Bourbon killer cause also the problems with the blood cells and it makes the problem bigger because it confuses the scientists that we are dealing with bacterial and not viral infections. The similar symptoms that could lead to another newly born virus, the Heartland virus, just takes the precious time and let the disease being faster and aggressive. How to set up the right diagnosis when the indicator is totally new one and unknown ? The ticks and mosquitoes have been always the vectors and reservoirs of some of the most dangerous and deadliest diseases. But, not every insect is infected and not every bite we experience will deliver us the death.That random journey of the unknown viruses from one species to another and from one host to another turn the field of science into the magical stories of hopes that one test will be positive and the first and primary reservoir will be detected. Then, we will be able to talk about the cure and treatment with the 100% successful outcome.
The vital centers of the nature are damaged by the accelerated industrialization of the natural habitats of so many different species. We destroy the borders between our world and micro world and we simply wake up the sleeping cells of the stealth killers. The hidden caves, the undiscovered underground places, the pure rivers….they are all polluted with the greedy mankind’s interest to colonize nature and its welfare. The money determine the destiny of the deluded humanity. The loyalty disorder, or we will be for us or we will be against us. But, who is who in that race?At the end of the day, everything we do against the nature is everything we do against us as living beings.
The Bourbon virus is just one of many what will come on our way and rip the victims for its own survival logic. The answer is in the wrong written DNA of the mankind. We are too much selfish to see the difference between existence and coexistence, but on this Earth, there is a place for anyone, even for a virus. That must be remembered, the worst plague ever have been stopped at one point, but in the meantime, the people have learnt the most crucial lessons, to not be so egoistic and to respect and not demolish what doesn’t belong to them. Simply, some doors should never be opened.
SARAH MAX RESEARCH 
Thank you, Sarah, for such an insightful article. Even though the patient referred to in the article reported multiple tick bites on his body, it is not known how the patient got the Bourbon virus. Scientists are still learning about how the Bourbon virus infects us.
Since this virus is in a family of viruses that can be spread by insects, we should avoid bites from ticks and mosquitoes. A better and permanent solution would be fixing what we have damaged of our nature, and wisely use the doors of discovery and advancement.
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Thank you so much, Sarah, for this enlightening article ! It’s amazing how new viruses develop and at such a rapid rate !
This is an integral part of your work regarding viruses. In fact, Sarah, you have already written a plethora of pertinent and critical virus-related articles, namely Rabies, NIPAH, Monkey Pox Outbreak, Possible Silent Hill, Hantavirus, Brazil in torment: Yellow Fever Outbreak, the Dark Rainforest: Factory of Deadly viruses, the Bolivian Black Typhus, the Lujo Virus, and many more !
As in all of your previous articles, the ultimate truth seems to be pointing at and pivoting around the meddling of mankind with nature and its borders by trying to dominate every single unexplored spot on earth ! It’s all, as you said, Sarah, driven by greed, selfishness, and power !
All of us have to be vigilant when we travel through areas that harbor such known viruses. This includes specifically all tropical areas and other places that are known to breed these viruses !
In closing, I invoke your own statement in your article the Lujo Virus: The African Micro Hunter, namely “The human science is not fast enough to cure as the nature is fast to kill for a survival purposes. The pressure on the Earth is more than it is allowed by any reasonable mathematical calculations. The resources are almost being drained and the climate consequences will punish our agricultural expectations and send us back our future medical problems.Bugs. Many bugs.Oldand new one. Old will mutate and the new will become worse to be identified and categorized. That is the destiny of the world if something is not changed urgently in our relation with the natural habitat.”
As always, thank you, Sarah, for both your enlightening articles and your enjoyable writing style !
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Sarah’s informative and insightful article brought to mind the dysfunctional rapport between elite vested interests in The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); which is a federal US-agency within The Department of Health and Human Services (headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia). The present US-government has passed measures to allow the CDC to enhance and further empower its quarantine detainment authority, under US-federal law; which many civil liberties lawyers fear will be abused by the CDC in association with commercial interests.
The CDC’s Biosafety Level 4 laboratories are among the few that exist in the world, as well as one of only two official repositories of smallpox in the world. The second smallpox store resides at The State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in the Russian Federation. The CDC revealed in 2014 that it had discovered several misplaced smallpox samples and that laboratory workers had been infected with anthrax, ostensibly. Both the Russian and North American elites have an identical commercial interest concerning entities such as Bourbon virus and smallpox (e.g. potential biological weapons).
The top twenty US-pharmaceutical companies and their two trade groups, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and Biotechnology Industry Organization, lobbied on at least 3,000 pieces of US-legislation between 1998 and 2016. According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, pharmaceutical companies spent US$2 billion on lobbying between 1998 and 2015; more than any other industry. During the same period, they donated $150 million to federal candidates and political parties; giving approximately three times as much to Republicans as to Democrats.
The high price of US-prescription drugs has been a source of ongoing controversy… Corporations state that the high costs are the result of expensive research and development programmes. Critics point to the development of drugs having only small incremental benefit. In contrast, the RAND Corporation and authors from The National Bureau of Economic Research have argued that price controls stifle innovation and are economically counterproductive in the long term. The elite connections between The Rand Corporation and the CDC have been documented.
Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients (2012) is a treatise by the British physician and academic Dr Ben Goldacre about the pharmaceutical industry, its relationship with the medical profession, and the extent to which it controls academic research into its own products.
Dr Goldacre argues in the book that ‘the whole edifice of medicine is broken’, because the evidence on which it is based is systematically distorted by the pharmaceutical industry. He writes that the industry finances most of the clinical trials into its own products and much of doctors’ continuing education, that clinical trials are often conducted on small groups of unrepresentative subjects and negative data is routinely withheld, and that apparently independent academic papers may be planned and even ghostwritten by pharmaceutical companies or their contractors, without disclosure. Describing the situation as a ‘murderous disaster’, he makes suggestions for action by patients’ groups, physicians, academics and the industry itself.
For 15 years, the CDC had direct oversight over the Tuskegee syphilis experiment (1932-1972). In the study, a group of African American men (nearly 400 of whom had syphilis) were studied to learn more about the disease. Notably, the disease was left untreated in the research subjects and they never gave their informed consent to serve as research subjects. The Tuskegee Study was initiated in 1932 by the Public Health Service. The CDC took over the study in 1957.
The CDC’s response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s has been criticized for promoting some public health policies that harmed HIV+ people and for providing ineffective public education. The agency’s response to the 2001 anthrax attacks was criticized for ineffective communication with other public health agencies and with the public.
Operation Big Buzz was a US-military entomological warfare field test conducted in the US-state of Georgia, in 1955. The tests involved dispersing over 300,000 mosquitoes from aircraft and through ground dispersal methods. No civilians were informed in the drop zone. Operation May Day was a series of entomological warfare tests conducted by the US-military in Savannah, Georgia, in 1956. The tests were designed to reveal information about the dispersal of yellow fever mosquitoes in an urban area. The operation was detailed in partially declassified US-Army report in 1981.
From 1963 to 1969, as part of Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD), the US-Army performed tests which involved spraying several US-war ships with various biological and chemical warfare agents, while thousands of US-military personnel were aboard the ships. The personnel were not notified of the tests, and were not given any protective clothing. Chemicals tested on the US-military personnel included the nerve gases VX and Sarin, toxic chemicals such as zinc cadmium sulfide and sulfur dioxide, and a variety of biological agents.
In 1966, the US-Army released Bacillus globigii into the tunnels of the New York City Subway system, as part of a field study called A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agents. The Chicago subway system was subject to a similar experiment by the Army. Civilians were not informed of these experiments.
The CDC might just be much more lethal than any disease like the Bourbon virus…
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BERMUDA TRIANGLE: SHIP REAPPEARS 90 YEARS AFTER GOING MISSING! http://www.linkedin.com Havana| The Cuban Coast Guard announced this morning, that they had intercepted an unmanned ship heading for the island, which is presumed to be the
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