MERS on the Move, Person to Person

Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome is still out there, adapting to the human host. Interestingly, it appears to be taking those of baby-boomer age.

South Korea will quarantine, and almost certainly contain it, but it will remain in the middle east, probing and pushing the human immune systems there, seeking an effective mutation to spread more easily. If resources collapse, and people there begin starving, it will travel farther into them, and begin to adapt more quickly. After a good tear through the shanty-towns in Gaza and Egypt, it could easily emerge on the world scene ready for action.

If I am not mistaken, Smallpox got its start in the Nile River valley, when a human bumped into a unique mutant of Mousepox which just happened to mesh with the human host particularly well.

All over the world, there are weak diseases festering in small pockets, their adaptation and spread held in check by the strength of the human immune response in the potential victims around them. Weaken those humans, and the disease will move forth into them, mutate, and become more deadly as it spreads. Let the collapse begin and as the host weakens, the disease will grow stronger, all as the medical infrastructure fails due to resource shortage. It could easily be a perfect storm, the likes of which we can’t imagine.