james_davis_nicoll | Thnak you, anti-vaxxers

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The Middlesex-London Health Unit has issued an advisory over concerns someone with the measles may have transmitted the virus to other individuals.

Crossposts: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/4855064.html

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From:

commodorified.livejournal.com

Not just London-Middlesex:

http://theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/health-officials-urge-immunization-amid-measles-outbreak/article17495864/?

Argh, I say. Argh.

From:

w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)

and the recent discussion about neanderthals, the story I'm currently writing needs a plausible disease.

Specifically a plague that devastates a planet of people descended from a small group of humans that were relocated 50k-200k years back, became more advanced, and then sent a ship to investigate Earth in the fifties without taking sufficient precautions, which then returns home with an accidental 'gift'.

Devastation results from lack of resistance and lower genetic diversity from a small founder population.

I was leaning towards using the historical late fifties H2N2 avian flu outbreak, but perhaps measles would be better.

Anyone have other interesting possibilities to suggest?

From:

iayork.livejournal.com

Any of the influenzas (there are theoretically 198 possible strains of influenza A based on surface proteins alone, not even counting the as-yet unknown strains circulating in bats and the like; also flu B and C) are plausible, but have fairly short incubation times so you'd have to get the ship back home within a couple of weeks or so. Measles also has the short incubation time problem, compounded by its incredible transmissibility (at least flu you could argue takes some time to spread through a ship's population). Yersinia pestis has a strong precedent. Tuberculosis and leprosy have long incubations and could spread widely before being recognized, and there are significant genetic components to susceptibility for each. Diseases like norovirus and rotavirus aren't usually fatal in modern humans, but are very contagious and especially norovirus has a strong genetic component to susceptibility too. Obvious other possibilities include mumps, rubella, diphtheria, pertussis, and polio (though that has a low symptomatic rate that isn't obviously influenced by genetics).

From:

scott-sanford.livejournal.com

You're spoiled for choice, really. Remember all of the Eurasian diseases that burned through the American population, and that the two groups of humans had been apart a lot less than fifty kiloyears.

What you pick should have a long enough dormancy period that the explorers return home asymptomatic, but past that it seems wide open. I'm with iayork in thinking an influenza strain is highly plausible if they get home quickly (remember 1918).

From:

fabrisse.livejournal.com

Polio or mumps.

It's also plausible that they pick up a somewhat innocuous strain of flu and it evolves quickly into something resembling the 1918-19 outbreak.

The American soldiers carried it to Europe where it changed quickly in a weakened population and then they brought it back to the US. It's one of the few strains of flu that was more devastating among adults (20-50) than among the elderly or the very young which could have some interesting consequences, too.

From:

w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)

Thanks for suggestions, all. I knew this was the right place to ask about interesting SF calamities 8-)

This is for the sequel to Fall of Doc Future (http://docfuture.tumblr.com/post/34751426243/doc-prologue), which I'm slowly editing for eventual publication. If I'm going to have an 'alien' invasion, I want them to have a plausible motive for hating Earth, even if it isn't really our fault.

From:

iayork.livejournal.com

The mainly-young-adults effect of 1918 is generally believed to be because of residual immunity from a prior flu strain that older people had been exposed to, so it's not likely to be a factor in this scenario. However, the bad news is, what the means is that the 1918 flu actually would have killed just about everyone. The W-shaped mortality curve seen in 1918 was probably the normal U-shaped mortality curve we see with most flu strains, but just with a very narrow base (a V-shaped curve), with prior immunity pushing down the right arm of the U.