Deadly diseases like Sars, Mers hunt for special victims to facilitate their quantum leaps and ‘go viral,’ scientists say
Investigators claim to have seen echoes of Typhoid Mary in recent outbreaks, referring to female cook who spread the infectious bacterial fever in New York a century ago
Deadly viruses like Sars, Mers and Ebola are all quite different in nature, but they share a common tendency of cherry-picking their victims as they hunt for so-called “super spreaders,” or those capable of helping the disease make a quantum leap from just a few individuals to masses of people, according to a new study by Chinese scientists.
A person who is genetically predisposed to deliver many more viral strains than normal simply by coughing, for example, would be a strong contender to make the list.
The researchers carried out a comprehensive analysis of historical data related to the spreading of the three viruses, and they found that a number of major outbreaks were all driven by super-spreaders.
To rank as one of these, an individual must be capable of infecting a disproportionately large number of people. In such cases, a small fraction of a country’s population could be responsible for more than 50 per cent of the total number of infections.
The case of Mary Mallon (“Typhoid Mary”), a cook from Ireland who migrated to New York City and lived there in the early 1900s, sheds some light on the issue.