I remember that. Good Lord I’m old....
I remember some of us asking her about Ebola. She had worked on it, and told us that the likely origin was going to be a fruitbat cave in Kenya.
She also said Ebola wasn’t going to be a crowd killer, that it wasn’t all that easy to catch. It pretty much requires blood to blood contact.
But she was resigned to that idea that we are due for a near extinction event. More than Black Plague level. In her opinion it would be from a hybrid flu, like 1918.
Something respiratory, easily spread, doesn’t kill quickly, gives you plenty of time to wander around spreading the infection.
Hybrid flu is particularly good for this since it can provoke a cytokine storm, leveraging your immune system against you. You can literally drown in your own antibodies and cellular detritis. Hybrid flus can kill the young and healthy faster than the old and immune impaired.
Andes variant Hantavirus apparently shares some of those characteristics. And a 50% mortality rate is nothing to sneeze at, pun intended.