It was strongly suggested at the end of Chapter 2 that Rana might be behind Manu's kidnapping. So now at long last it is confirmed. What is she up to? We may just find out… maybe soon… maybe on the next page, even?
Speaking of which, I should be posting another page this week, probably over the weekend, to make up for only doing one page last week. It's a good thing, because this page doesn't really have a good “punchline” like I usually aim for. Speaking of punchlines, what do you call birds who stick together?
Vel-crows!
… *cough*
'kay bye.
The current doomsday bug making its rounds across the globe isn't the only coronavirus out there. Coronaviruses are a subfamily of enveloped single-strand RNA viruses who take their name from the crownlike protein spikes covering their surface (“corona” is Latin for “crown”). Most coronaviruses are not particularly dangerous; they either don't affect humans at all and only target birds or other mammals ranging from hedgehogs to beluga whales, or if they do affect humans they'll typically only give you a mild respiratory infection. But this generally mild-mannered family has produced a few hellraisers. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has an estimated mortality rate of 3.4%, however as always that's not a uniformly distributed average, demographically or geographically. But some of its close relatives make it look rather tame.
(Yes, I know, I'm using virus and disease names interchangeably; you don't need to point these things out to me!)
SARS is the bigger, badder older brother to COVID-19. The disease progresses from high fever, chills, body aches, and diarrhea to potentially life threatening hypoxia and pneumonia. It emerged out of Guandong, China, in 2002 and spread across the globe, infecting 8,098 people, of whom 774 died (there is some dispute surrounding these numbers). The SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) originated in bats and was likely passed to humans through infected civets in the Guangdong wet markets. However, this virus appears to have burnt itself out, as no new human cases have been reported in over fifteen years.
Mortality Rate: 9.5 – 14%
This mystery virus was first discovered in a man suffering from acute respiratory failure in Hong Kong in 2005. After combing through old records, researchers later found that this previously unknown virus was responsible for several cases of serious respiratory illness which had popped up around the world over the past four years. From studying its genome, HCoV-HKU1 appears to have mutated from a mouse hepatitis virus some time in the mid-to-late twentieth century. It appears to be very rare in humans, and data on it is sparse, but the cases in which it has infected humans have resulted in severe symptoms and some deaths.
Mortality Rate: 23%
Nothing good ever comes out of Saudi Arabia. The first case of MERS (Middle east respiratory syndrome) was reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, and since then there have been over 1800 cases reported from Thailand to the United States, though the vast majority of cases occur in Saudi Arabia. Like SARS, MERS is caused by a coronavirus carried by bats. The disease appears to have only just recently in the past 20 years or so made the jump from bats to infecting camels, and from there began infecting humans. Like the other deadly coronaviruses, MERS causes severe respiratory distress and it is easily the most lethal of the bunch, killing nearly a third of those who contract it. The good news is that the majority of cases appear to be contracted in a hospital setting; you're not likely to catch it walking down the street. However, this disease is on the World Health Organization watchlist for likely causes of a future pandemic. There is currently no vaccine or specifically effective treatment for MERS.
Mortality Rate: 9.5 – 14%
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