Is norovirus evolving increased virulence?
An outbreak of norovirus has caused the temporary shutdown of a Hyatt Regency Hotel in Virginia. It will reopen within a week after a “thorough disinfection”. What is going on here, though? I don’t recall the norovirus ever being this virulent. Now it’s regularly hitting multiple cruise ships each year, and it also hit Catholic University late last year. Is norovirus evolving into a more virulent disesase? Is anyone tracking it?
A few decades from now, are buildings going to be routinely shut down due to disease outbreaks? Or will the virus not ever evolve to be that virulent? Hopefully somewhere in the interim we can come up with a vaccine, so it’ll be a moot point. I’d really like to pick the brain of someone working at the Center for Disease Control. Is norovirus high up on their list of viruses to watch out for? Or is it simply not deadly enough, and its danger pales in comparison to bird flu and SARS?
I have so many questions, yet so few answers. I should go ask the talk.origins people about this. Clearly I’m outside the area of my expertise.
April 19th, 2007 at 09:13
I have wondered if this virus is a biological weapon developed in an Iraqi lab and used against us as a response to Gulf War….I have wondered if its use was used first on cruise ships as a test market or some attempt to test it, start it…perhaps the cruise ships have more Jewish folks than other places./remeber when a number of jewish folks disappeared off cruise ships?..I have wondered if the mad cow thing which appeared in Britain after it helped in the first Gulf War might also have been a biological weapon somehow…I have been wondering if the water or food supply–pets?peoples? here is being tainted by terrorists somehow—slip it in , then slip out and watch the havoc? I may sound paranoid but these folks promised to kill and they didn’t specify how. I am with you on the thought that a mutating virus that may increase in virulence is what we may be seeing. It even seems to me to affect pets as I believe my dog has had it with my entire family. I was interested to hear that this year when it reared its ugly head the authorities suggested that after recovery a person is still able to infect others for the next 10 days!!! Doesn’t that sound ominous?
April 19th, 2007 at 20:47
Yeah, I think this is way too paranoid. Nobody has the ability to engineer viruses to that degree, and certainly not the former Iraq government. If you were going to make a biological weapon, norovirus would be a terrible choice. It’s hardly ever fatal.