marlap
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The actual mortality rate, it if ever becomes epidemic will be much, much lower. First of all, supportive care will be better and administered earlier if the medical professionals are aware of what they are dealing with. Also, in general most viruses evolve to become less pathogenic, relatively quickly.
And of course, as you said, we have no idea of how many actual cases there are, just a few bad ones so far.
Unfortunately, until a virus gets really hot politically, like HIV did, or really pandemic, like flu, drug companies don't spend hardly any effort trying to come up with treatments or cure. The research and development cost of these types of drugs is way more expensive than the amount of profit. So, sorry Shelby, it'll be awhile yet before someone starts a big effort to come up with a novel drug for it. For now, they will keep trying the drugs that work on other things, and hope to find a treatment/supportive care regimen that is effective.
My job was way cool when I worked on HIV, and I really felt useful. I actually had a big part in the team that worked on one of the best, to this day, drug that is out there. Now, I work as a routine molecular biologist cause not many jobs in virology are out there any more
That's so cool that you were so instrumental in working on good treatments for AIDS...
What was the lowest mortality rate of Spanish flu?
ETA...nevermind, I just looked it up...