Experts discounted the possibility that terrorism is the source and believe it almost certainly is a contagious infection that spreads most easily from victims to their doctors, nurses and families through coughing, sneezing and other contact with nasal fluids.
I love this. Seems to me like all it would take is half-a-dozen or so martyrs from the religion of peace willingly exposed to the contaminant, and then once contagious, sent on a world-wide shopping spree for 24 to 48 hours.
Technically, no. But in effect, yes. Because if a virus is too lethal it kills its host before the host can pass on the virus. Thus as the virus continues to mutate, the less lethal variations are the ones that are spread more widely. It is speculated that the common cold viruses originally were quite lethal, but over time it is the less lethal variations that survived. From a virus survival perspective, it is better to cause only enough injury to spread and no more.