There have been many extremely harmful plague viruses in human history, and the virus we are going to talk about today is a terrorist virus that is currently raging on the land of Africa, with a fatality rate of up to 90%.
Patients infected with this virus often die of pus and blood in just a few days because the treatment speed is far less than the speed at which the virus attacks the human body, and the death is extremely tragic and horrifying.
Because of its strong contagiousness and high lethality rate, the United Nations Health Organization has listed it as one of the most harmful viruses to humans, and this virus is known as the "African Grim Reaper".
Today, let's talk about the beginning and end of the Ebola virus.
In June 2020, a middle-aged man with a high fever was rushed to a local hospital by his family in an ordinary small village in the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although it is said to be a "hospital", in the extremely economically backward Congo, this hospital near the village is just a few ordinary bungalows that resemble a mainland health center.
At first, the patient's family and the doctors at the hospital thought it was just a common cold and didn't take it too seriously.
After all, in the underdeveloped areas of Africa, where sanitary conditions are backward and various malignant infectious diseases are rampant, only diseases with extremely high mortality rates will be taken seriously, such as ordinary plague diseases, and even terminal diseases with a long incubation period such as AIDS, which will not cause much panic among the local people.
But when doctors begin examining the patient's body, it quickly becomes apparent that something is wrong. The male patient, who had already begun to fall into a coma, not only continued to have a high fever of more than 38 degrees, but also showed a gray herpes covered with pus and blood all over his body.
According to the family members who brought the patient to the hospital, yesterday the man began to have severe diarrhea, vomiting and coughing and runny nose, and kept wailing that he felt unbearable pain in the joints and muscles of his body.
Just when the medical staff were still busy diagnosing the condition, the comatose patient suddenly got up, and a large amount of black blood mixed with yellow-green pus spurted out of his mouth and nose, and erosive internal organ debris, and the strong fishy smell suddenly filled the entire ward.
At this time, looking at the patient on the hospital bed, including the eyes, nose and ears, black blood gushed out from all seven orifices, and this familiar horror scene suddenly evoked the memory of the medical staff in the ward, and the doctor who treated the man almost uncontrollably shouted the word that frightened everyone in Africa: Ebola!
It was only two days from the man's fever and severe discomfort symptoms to the massive hemorrhage caused by the damage and melting of a large number of organs in his body!
At this moment, looking at the man who was frantically vomiting pus and blood from the hospital bed, the medical staff in the hospital could only stand aside, watching the former die in a painful howl.
Because everyone in Africa knows that infection with the Ebola virus is certain death, there is no drug that can be used to treat the disease, and even if the drug is forced, the time it takes to take effect is far less than the speed of the virus to destroy the human body. Before the patient realized that his high fever was caused by the Ebola virus, the vital organs in his body had already been frantically eroded by the virus, turning into puddles of pus and blood that emitted rancidity.
Although the local doctors immediately reported the situation after realizing that the patient was infected with the Ebola virus, the Congolese government also activated the emergency plan to inform the United Nations Health Organization, and issued an early warning of the epidemic to the people of the whole country and neighboring countries.
But for the Congolese people at the epicenter of the epidemic, such an early warning is still too late.
In Africa, the reason why the Ebola virus is so talked about is that in addition to its astonishing incidence rate and fatality rate, it is also due to its terrible contagion!
The Ebola virus can be transmitted through the body's bodily fluids, and all secretions of an infected person can be vectors for the virus to spread. Blood, saliva, tears, sweat, breast milk, semen and excrement contain a large number of fresh viroids, and it can be said that any form of contact with an infected person can lead to the spread of the Ebola virus.
Not to mention intimate contact such as kissing, sexual intercourse, breastfeeding, or even touching the bed and bedding where the patient is lying, it will lead to the infection of the Ebola virus, and then invade the human body through the oral mucosa, eyes or skin wounds and other places to quickly cause infection.
As a result, people who die from Ebola virus infection are themselves super-infected with the virus because of severe bleeding and ulceration all over the body, and if not properly treated, a huge amount of live virus can be spread to the outside world in a short period of time.
Even more frighteningly, Ebola is a zoonotic virus, and it is believed that the original Ebola virus was transmitted to orangutans by fruit bats and then to humans.
Ebola infection has an incubation period of 2 to 21 days, but the vast majority of infected people usually die of illness within a week or so. The man who died tragically in the hospital due to Ebola virus infection was like a signal from death, and soon a large number of infected people appeared like a blowout.
Although the United Nations Health Organization (WHO) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) sent a team of professionals to the outbreak area with the latest vaccines developed in recent years, the sudden tragedy ended on November 18 of the same year, resulting in more than 130 people being infected and 55 dying.
This is the 11th Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in fact the Ebola outbreak in the eastern part of the country in August 2018 shows no sign of an end to it.
If there is any weakness of such a terrible virus, it may be that its fatality rate is too high, and the onset is too fast, not only is it only a week before it is incubated, but the infected person will also fester, turn into a puddle of pus and blood, and die tragically within a few days.
After entering the human body through the mucous membranes or wounds on the surface of the human body, the virus will invade the body's immune system as soon as possible, like the HIV virus, and hide in the lymphocytes that are supposed to shoulder the body's immune function, and grab the nutrients of these cells to multiply in large numbers.
When the total amount of virus reaches a certain amount, the Ebola virus will break down the lymphocytes that host it, rely on the blood to spread to the whole body, and frantically infect all healthy cells in the body.
At this time, the patient will feel nausea, fatigue, vomiting, diarrhea, joint pain and other uncomfortable symptoms. At the same time, due to the concentrated outbreak of the virus in the body, the body's immune system will also fall into a rampage, resulting in a persistent high fever, dense pustules on the skin, and severe inflammation in all major organs in the body due to the indiscriminate attack of the immune system.
However, the Ebola virus, which has taken the lead in breaking the body's immune system, is no longer able to rely on the body's own immune system at this moment, but will increase the speed of the patient's body collapse.
As the virus multiplies and the infection intensifies, the human blood and major organs will be rapidly inactivated, degenerated and necrotic, and then decomposed and digested by the virus, resulting in severe internal bleeding.
What is particularly cruel is that because of the existence of the blood-brain barrier, the Ebola virus is the slowest to infect and erode the brain, so the patient will feel that various organs in the body are dissolved into pus and blood under the attack of the virus while they are conscious, and they will end in endless fear and pain.
So as soon as the Ebola virus is detected in an area, a large number of people living in that area will die within a few months, until the virus lacks a living host sufficient to spread outward, and the spread of the epidemic is forced to end.
So where did a terrible virus like Ebola, which has a high lethality rate and is so highly contagious, come from in the first place? However, even though researchers from all over the world have invested a lot of money and energy in the study of the Ebola virus, this virus is still full of too many unsolved mysteries for mankind.
There are five subtypes of Ebola virus identified so far, two of which are very low in danger to humans and extremely fatal to chimpanzees, a close relative of humans. The other three subtypes have reached extremely frightening levels in terms of infection and fatality rates to humans.
The earliest cases of Ebola infection date back to 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Sudan in Africa, where a 44-year-old male teacher in the northern region of the former was believed to be the first human to be infected with Ebola, when a health care worker mistakenly believed he was infected with common malaria and died of massive hemorrhage after two weeks of treatment.
The case in Sudan was a worker working in a cotton factory, and after its discovery, there was a widespread spread of the epidemic in the area, resulting in extremely heavy casualties.
To this day, it is uncertain how the Ebola virus, which first broke out in these two countries, was transmitted to humans.
Since then, the Ebola virus has been like a deadly haunting grim reaper on the African continent, and no one knows where the virus came from or where it lurks during non-outbreaks. It always appears out of nowhere out of the blue, and after harvesting countless human lives, it quietly lurks in the shadows that no one knows.
The only good news is that the Ebola virus is currently experiencing major outbreaks in parts of Africa, thanks to the terrible fatality rate of the virus. Disturbingly, however, as early as 2014, a study found that a completely new subtype of Ebola virus had been identified in some parts of the United States, the latest of the five previously mentioned subtypes.
Compared with the four subtypes identified in the past, this new subtype found in some parts of the United States, although less lethal, has a longer incubation period and is more infectious to humans. It is conceivable that an outbreak of this new subtype of Ebola virus in a large city with a population of more than one million or even tens of millions would bring unpredictable harm and catastrophic consequences.
There is also a lot of speculation among American netizens about this subtype of Ebola virus that was suddenly discovered in the United States, leaning towards conspiracy theories. Considering that US officials have publicly admitted to deliberately spreading lab-created viruses to obtain experimental data while concealing the truth from the public, it is worrying where this new subtype of Ebola virus came from.
It is gratifying that since the beginning of the 20th century, there has been a lot of progress in the research of Ebola virus in various countries, including China, Italy, Canada and Japan, and other countries have announced breakthroughs in the research of Ebola virus detection reagents and vaccines. In 2014, a pharmaceutical company in Shanghai, China, was the first to develop a trial production that can detect Ebola virus, and it is also the world's first internationally certified Ebola virus test kit.
In the same year, scientific research institutions led by China have also made steady progress in the research and development of Ebola virus vaccines, and some vaccines have also achieved remarkable results in clinical treatment practices in epidemic areas in Africa.
However, Ebola is just one of many consequences of the current deterioration of the environment and the loss of species diversity. If all countries in the world, especially the capital groups led by the developed countries in the West, continue to pay lip service to environmental protection issues, or simply use them as a weapon to restrain developing countries, rather than implementing them, then the plague, which is more dangerous and severe than Ebola, will inevitably appear more frequently and intensively in the future.