Good points; e-coli is one of the things that you actually can get from just touching something touched by someone else whose hands were contaminated.
Another interesting thing is the place where it began. I have read that there are a lot of chemical and pharmaceutical research facilities in Northern Germany, and I was talking to somebody who wondered if perhaps it was an escaped mutant virus from one of the plants. Or if it was created by a biologically knowledgeable German jihadi...
The fact that it combines a supertoxic form with one that enhances its speedy colonization in the gut is pretty strange.
“horizontal gene transfer” is another term for “genetic manipulation”
yes, Hamburg Germany is home to one of the world's select few Level 4 Biowarfare containment labs, with work on tropical diseases. One of these pathogen's contributors is prevalent in Central Africa.
But to this layman, from what I read, e coli is apparently so easily manipulable, experiments describing how to transfer genes are high school science fair projects.
The Chinese sequenced this monster's DNA within 3 days - someone knows or suspects if it is likely manmade or a natural mutation. There seem to be a lot of posting about techies arguing whether this is a “new” pathogen or re-emergence of one seen in the past, or a fairly simple logical mutation of one seen in the past. Even one of its toxic e coli predecessor strains has been suspected of being artificially engineered.
If it is a natural mutation, has it sickened or killed its host? A lot of people hear “e coli” and immediately suspect manure or human feces contamination. Shouldn't something so toxic sicken or kill its animal or human host? This should not be too difficult to determine with all of Europe's investigative assets. Are there dead pigs, chickens cows goats or sick waiters or field hands or processors somewhere in the field-to-shelf chain?
Or is there one lucky “typhoid mary” walking around somewhere in a migrant camp in Spain or a food warehouse in Germany?
This makes a great suspense story, assuming you are not one the unlucky 520 mortally ill people (identified to date) fighting to survive HUS.