“I bet you 10-to-1 that the kid who dropped dead died from the Zombie Virus that makes them all turn into Walkers when they die. My guess is that...”
The guy from the CDC said that everyone was infected so Patrick likely already had the virus. My guess is that the virus is now mutating and starting to kill the carriers. I also think it is starting to infect animals since Violet the pig and the animal in the woods both had strange mottling of the skin and labored breathing.
Something to consider...
Z-virus has two stages. The highly infectious, but harmless, dormant stage. And the Active stage.
They all have the dormant virus, but no one turns until normal life functions cease. This explains the CDC diagnosis and why Shane turned after being shot. Possible mechanism would be a prion based micro-virus that is normally consumed by healthy white blood cells.
Live virus will cause a fever and kill you as it over-writes the DNA in otherwise healthy cells. The prions already having a compromised cellular vector from the Walkers system that healthy white blood cells can’t handle. Explains pretty much everyone else bitten, dying from it, and coming back.
I don’t have cable, but I’m catching up a year back off of Netflix. ;-)
Note: pigs are a pretty close match systemically for humans. Our guts and immune systems are close enough for something like a Z-virus to cross over ala zoonotic transmission in reverse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swine_influenza
The CDC guy said everyone in Rick’s group was infected, but that doesn’t mean that everyone on Earth was infected. That kid’s circumstances at the time of the outbreak may have allowed him to escape the initial event which spread the infection unscathed, only for him to later get it through other means besides airborne. Although good point on the animals. It does seem like it’s possible the virus is mutating to affect animals.