Marburg Mania

[clayhornik]

Well, finally the "main stream media" has mentioned this. There's a Marburg outbreak in Angola. (NYT link, registration needed, but register once and you get a cookie.)
Ninety percent fatality rate.
But it's all right, since they're largely poor people. Someplace besides America.
Marburg.
Holy cow.
And this has been going on for at least two weeks. For some reason the paucity of coverage bothers me more than the actual outbreak itself.
--
I'd forgotten about a big purchase we had at one of my previous stores- like thirty copies of The Hot Zone for a local school system. They'd developed a multi-disciplinary study system based on the book: math class would discuss the math in propagation of a virus and such ( a disease has a mortality rate of x, and an infection rate of y. it hits a village of 124 people. how many coffins should they buy?), social studies looks at the geographical factors involved (we're here. find them on the map), science discusses the biological processes of the virus, and English class does creative writing based on the book (Hot Zone fanfic!).
This is at an elementary school level.
How cool is that?
I helped them out by re-reading the book looking for "questionable material"- that is, anything parents could take offense at. Aside from the grisly details, it's almost a g-rated book. All I think I found was a single instance of the word "fuck." And within the context of the book- someone thinks she's just exposed herself to a Level 4 virus- it's a perfectly acceptable reaction.

Comments

[spimby.livejournal.com]

"For some reason the paucity of coverage bothers me more than the actual outbreak itself."

You might want to go to Google News, search for "marburg" and then arrange the results by date. The "mainstream media" (in the US, too) has been covering the outbreak since it started. It just became a larger story in the last day or so because it's become a potential international event rather than a local one.

[strega42.livejournal.com]

I love that book! Need to get a new copy, actually, and let the daughterface read it. Do you happen to remember the title of the book about the Reston, VA outbreak? That's another one that went walkies on me.