To Paradise

Anyway. The Erasmus team claims to have discovered a new virus, which they claim once again originated in bats. It too is being classified as a Henipavirus, which means it’s an RNA virus that mutates at a high rate. Back in the 20th century, this Family of viruses was thought to be endemic only in Africa and Asia—though, as the ’39 outbreak proves, Nipah in particular has proven to be capable of frequent reemergence, and has inspired a good deal of research in the last seven years about its ability not only to withstand climatic changes but to adapt zoonotically in hosts—dogs, in the Italian case—it had never before infected. Though it had decimated livestock and other domesticated animals, Nipah had never been too serious a threat to us previously because it was a notably non-transmissible disease among humans, one unable to exist for more than a few days without a receptive host. By the time it did infect humans, it quickly lost steam: Transmission rates were poor, and the virus proved unable to transmit itself onward. After Venice eradicated its dog population, for example, the disease vanished as well.

But now the Erasmus team is suggesting that this new strain, which they’re calling Nipah-45, is capable not just of infecting humans but is both highly contagious and extremely fatal. Like its parent virus, it can be transmitted through contaminated food as well as by the airborne route, and unlike its evolutionary ancestor, it can exist in the host for perhaps months. Their study was of a group of small villages north of Luang Prabang, where the government has been relocating Muslim minorities who come over the border from China. According to them, six months ago the virus was responsible for the decimation of this community: almost seven thousand people dead within eight weeks. The virus switched from bat to water buffalo, and from there into the food supply. The disease manifests itself in humans as a cough, which rapidly leads to full-blown respiratory failure, followed by organ failure—patients were dead within eleven days, on average, after diagnosis. And as shocking as the death rate is, the Erasmus team said that the community’s isolation and inability to travel within the country (the group is denied movement by law) prevented widespread dissemination.

Half a year later, these villages remain isolated. Still, the Laotian government, abetted by the American one, is desperately trying to keep the story out of the news, because, along with the spread of disease, the gravest concerns are (1) the all-but-inevitable stigmatization of these poor people, which might easily lead to their mass murder, as we saw in Malaysia in ’40; and (2) another refugee crisis. Hong Kong’s borders are protected; so are Singapore’s, India’s, China’s, Japan’s, Korea’s, and Thailand’s. So, if there’s another large-scale population shift, it seems inevitable that the refugees will attempt to make their way across the Pacific. Those who aren’t shot on sight off the Philippine, Australian, New Zealand, Hawaiian, or American coasts will (the thinking goes) try to make their way to Oregon or Washington or Texas, and from those countries, over the border to the U.S.