Posted on 06/29/2013 7:27:20 AM PDT by LibWhacker
A scary virus is sweeping Saudi Arabia. Six million religious pilgrims are about to descend on the country from across the world. The result could be disastrous.
When the Black Death exploded in Arabia in the 14th century, killing an estimated third of the population, it spread across the Islamic world via infected religious pilgrims. Today, the Middle East is threatened with a new plague, one eponymously if not ominously named the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV, or MERS for short). This novel coronavirus was discovered in Jordan in March 2012, and as of June 26, there have been 77 laboratory-confirmed infections, 62 of which have been in Saudi Arabia; 34 of these Saudi patients have died.
Although the numbers -- so far -- are small, the disease is raising anxiety throughout the region. But officials in Saudi Arabia are particularly concerned.
This fall, millions of devout Muslims will descend upon Mecca, Medina, and Saudi Arabia's holy sites in one of the largest annual migrations in human history. In 2012, approximately 6 million pilgrims came through Saudi Arabia to perform the rituals associated with umrah, and this number is predicted to rise in 2013. Umrah literally means "to visit a populated place," and it's the very proximity that has health officials so worried. In Mecca alone, millions of pilgrims will fulfill the religious obligation of circling the Kaaba. And having a large group of people together in a single, fairly confined space threatens to turn the holiest site in Islam into a massive petri dish.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
Thanks for trying to set me straight.
But if you read my post it was not a comment on the hazards of the current situation. I clearly cited the reference to the plague on the Islamic World in the Middle Ages as the “story” with the “bright side.”
The humor intended works only when read in the context in which it was made.
As set forth in their cultic poop sheet, these sand goblins are required to wipe their b*tts with one hand and eat with the other. Now, given that they have been marrying their first cousins for the last millenium or so, a goodly number of them are, for all intents and purposes, line bred and hence exhibit sub-room temperature IQs. Hence, they are very often confused as to which hand is for eating. And there, QED, is your giant petri dish.
Based on the way New Yorkers behave, some thinning of the herd wouldn’t be a bad idea there either. I mean just consider they have Bloomberg for their current mayor and want to replace him with “Schmeckel Boy” Wiener!
Is this the coronavirus we’ve been hearing about or something bigger and badder?
Hmm, I didn’t get one of those. No idea why you are getting one. I do have a pop-up blocker. Maybe that helps; I’m not sure.
Fair enough...I hear what you're saying.However,once it hits NYC how long is it before it hits Philly...or Bakersfield?
threatens to turn the holiest site in Islam into a massive petri dish.
Just the place for a virulent bacteria...sterilize it.
“And there, QED, is your giant petri dish. “
Oh man, I needed that! You are spot on! The added “feature” is the number of islamocriminals in the crowd who have been punished by having their “eating hand” cut off. They are your number one “disease carriers.” Just hope that wander around the “holy sites,” shaking hands with everyone!
I do not know if there's such an extension for Explorer, if that's what you're running. If not, you might want to switch. However, if you do, you should first be aware that NoScript can be a high maintenance bit of a PIA (every time you go to a new site, you have to stop and decide exactly how much blocking you want to do for that site, which really slows you down).
“However,once it hits NYC how long is it before it hits Philly...or Bakersfield? “
I guess I should have added a sarc note. It’s just that when you watch the morons on the street in NYC being asked basic questions about what’s going on in the country ( like who is the VP) and you get glassy stares or some remark that they are too busy “with their lives” to know or care, you finally come to the conclusion that a serious herd thinning would be a good thing. And as far as Bakersfield is concerned, you may be right there too. Just drive down highway 99 from Sacramento to Bakersfield and note the number of mosques alongside the road. We think we have a problem here in CA with Hispanic illegals. At least most of them work. Don’t know what the rag heads do here other than run a convenience store and plot to “convert” us,
I think people tend to forget how many of these pilgrims live in the U.S.
Not sure, but I think it is a new strain. Or a mutated version of it. Guess we will know soon.
I don’t expect it to happen; but wouldn’t it be ironic if they ended up calling the Israelis for help by asking them to send medical teams to help out.
So what about all the US service members who are now coming back home from the ME in big numbers after the drawdown of troops in that region? Do you think the possibility of bringing and commuting this virus back to the US is limited only to Muslims?
And what about the American business people, those who are contractors for American oil companies and other Americans, many of them non-Muslims who travel internationally for business? And FWIW, they don’t even have to travel directly to and from the ME but could be in some major European or Asian airport hub waiting for a connecting flight and come in contact with another traveler who was in the ME or someone who came in contact with someone who came in contact with someone who came in contact with someone who had just been to Mecca, Medina, and Saudi Arabia's holy sites.
FWIW, the company I work for manufactures conveyor belting and power transmission components used in both the mining and oil industries among other many other industries word wide. And we have sales people who travel not only domestically but all over the world including to the ME selling our US manufactured goods. Do you think just because they are not Muslims that that makes them immune from contracting a virus and passing it on to others?
Just the place for a virulent bacteria...sterilize it.
This is a virus and not a bacteria and unlike a bacterial disease like Typhoid or Cholera which is contracted and spread by contaminated food and water and human feces and kept under control for the most part by our modern sanitation in the US, a virulent virus like the 1918-19 pandemic flu is much more easily contracted by casual contact – someone nearby sneezing or coughing and like the Spanish flu, this could be spread by troop movements in addition to normal international travel.
And while the article is correct that the Black Death killed many in the Middle East during the Middle Ages, the actual disease called bubonic plague originated not in the ME but in China or Central Asia and it is not a virus at all - bubonic plague is not an airborne contagion or spread directly person to person – rather bubonic plague or “yersinia pestis” is a bacterial disease spread by infected rat fleas much like malaria is spread person to person by mosquitoes. In other words if you come in contact with someone with bubonic plague you will not catch it directly from them but you will catch if an infected flea bites you or bites an infected person and then bites you. While that vector of transmission is nothing to “sneeze about” (pun intended) the spread is not that fast and contraction not as likely as with a virulent viral airborne disease like we saw with the 1918-19 “Spanish Flu” that killed an estimated 100 million people worldwide over a short span of 2 years and much of the rapid and world wide spread of the flu virus is attributable to troop movements during WWI.
Some scientists and epidemiologists today think that while yersinia pestis was responsible for some waves of “plague” during the Middle Ages, some outbreaks might not have been bubonic plague at all but a viral disease similar to Ebola given the speed of which it spread and reports of how contagious it seemed to be given the written accounts of the time and some of the symptoms that are not at all consistent with what we know about bubonic plague as it is still a disease that pops up now and then.
A virus in the ME that so far kills mostly Moslems and could potentially kill many more Moslems traveling on a pilgrimage to Mecca might sound like a win-win to some here, but a potentially airborne flu virus simply doesn’t care about or ask you about your religious or political affiliation and doesn’t respect boarders or nations. It doesn’t take but only a few people to vector a deadly novel airborne human to human flu strain from one country to the next and next..
When that virus hit, quarantine wards were set up in hospitals. People who might have had it were put in quarantine, and had to stay there as long as the hospital saw fit. I would not be surprised if more people died from quarantine health care than from the virus.
It almost seemed like a test run. If the population gets too ornery this summer, will a "quarantine" be declared and everyone told to stay inside? Wouldn't surprise me.
What's my source? I collapsed with a very bad case of pneumonia and got stuck in one of those horror chambers, several days past when they knew I wasn't contagious with anything.
Amen, and put a block on their entry into the country. If you've been at mecca worshipping satan and his minions, you can't come back in until you've been in isolation for 20 years or so.
My first thought when I heard about this. Similar to AIDS.
Untrue. Nothing original has ever come from a muslim country. In the case of algebra, it was imported from India, along with 'arabic' numbers. The only thing that comes from satan is death and destruction.
According to the article we don't even have a specimen of the virus to study. There IS a way to protect us, while fulfilling your concerns. Mossad needs to get the virus to Israeli scientists and have them develop, and sell vaccines and/or drugs against it. The skills exist there. Those willing to buy and use Israeli will. Those not willing will be sorted out by Allah. Everyone — left — will be happy!
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