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Preparing for the zombie apocalpyse [View all]
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2015/12/15/preparing-for-the-zombie-apocalpyse/I have a paper out in the Christmas issue of BMJ on the coming zombie apocalypse.
You read that right. And yes, it was peer-reviewed.
I’ve discussed previously how I’ve used the attention paid to zombies to talk about infectious diseases with children and other audiences; and to bring some science to the Walking Dead and other zombie tales. I even include a zombie lecture as part of the talks I give in my position as an American Society for Microbiology distinguished lecturer.
Why?
Like them or hate them, zombies are part of the zeitgeist. The Walking Dead is still one of the highest-rated programs on television, and its spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead, has been renewed for a second season. Early 2016 will bring us Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on film. Even Aaaahnold Schwarzenegger did a zombie movie. The Girl with all the Gifts was a sleeper hit, and a movie version of the zombie fungus video game The Last of Us is supposedly on the way.
So that’s what the BMJ paper was all about. Of course, it’s ridiculous at its core–no one really expects a zombie outbreak. *But*, we do see new diseases emerging all the time. MERS. Zika virus. Chikungunya. Hendra. Nipah. Pandemic influenza. Other, novel influenzas. And of course, the Ebola virus disease outbreak that is still ongoing in Guinea and Liberia (though cases have finally slowed to a mere trickle).
And we’re still unprepared for them when they become explosive, as Ebola did in 2014. Analyses have showed that the delayed response to that outbreak cost lives. And that’s for a virus that is not particularly easy to transmit, as it’s only spread late in the illness via direct contact with infected bodily fluids. If that had been another virus that was airborne instead of bloodborne, the world could have been in a much worse situation. Now imagine that it was the Solanum virus of World War Z (the book version), slowly incubating in infected individuals as they move all over the globe. Definitely unprepared.
You read that right. And yes, it was peer-reviewed.
I’ve discussed previously how I’ve used the attention paid to zombies to talk about infectious diseases with children and other audiences; and to bring some science to the Walking Dead and other zombie tales. I even include a zombie lecture as part of the talks I give in my position as an American Society for Microbiology distinguished lecturer.
Why?
Like them or hate them, zombies are part of the zeitgeist. The Walking Dead is still one of the highest-rated programs on television, and its spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead, has been renewed for a second season. Early 2016 will bring us Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on film. Even Aaaahnold Schwarzenegger did a zombie movie. The Girl with all the Gifts was a sleeper hit, and a movie version of the zombie fungus video game The Last of Us is supposedly on the way.
So that’s what the BMJ paper was all about. Of course, it’s ridiculous at its core–no one really expects a zombie outbreak. *But*, we do see new diseases emerging all the time. MERS. Zika virus. Chikungunya. Hendra. Nipah. Pandemic influenza. Other, novel influenzas. And of course, the Ebola virus disease outbreak that is still ongoing in Guinea and Liberia (though cases have finally slowed to a mere trickle).
And we’re still unprepared for them when they become explosive, as Ebola did in 2014. Analyses have showed that the delayed response to that outbreak cost lives. And that’s for a virus that is not particularly easy to transmit, as it’s only spread late in the illness via direct contact with infected bodily fluids. If that had been another virus that was airborne instead of bloodborne, the world could have been in a much worse situation. Now imagine that it was the Solanum virus of World War Z (the book version), slowly incubating in infected individuals as they move all over the globe. Definitely unprepared.
Tara C Smith, an associate professor of epidemiology at Kent State University, studies zoonotic diseases (and she's completely awesome)
Here's the link to her paper in The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal)
http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h6423.full
Fun, and informative, stuff.
Sid
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