In case you are bored with the coronavirus, here’s another and more deadly one to worry about: The Marburg Virus (MARV). Boris Johnson’s dad Stanley wrote a book about it 40 years ago – predictably called The Marburg Virus – and has been giving interviews in which he claims he predicted our current crisis!
One of the conspiracy theories around COVID-19 was that it escaped from a lab in Wuhan where scientists were studying bats. That theory has been roundly debunked, but the Marburg Virus was actually released from a lab, in 1967 in Marburg Germany – as well as in Frankfurt and Belgrade – by scientists working on tissue from African green monkeys. Thirty one Europeans got the virus, and seven died.
Since it was identified back in 67, there have been 375 confirmed deaths from MARV throughout the world, most of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo (128 deaths in 1998-200) and Angola (227 deaths in 2004-2005). It has a fatality rate that ranges from 24% to 88% – making it far more deadly than the coronavirus, though it is much less contagious, and therefore more easy to contain.
Although the beautiful town of Marburg is currently dodging the coronavirus with zero cases, Professor Steven Beckler from the University of Marburg is the man coordinating the German effort to find a vaccine.
Given that Marburg is so significant, Rising East is proud to be able to air the experiences of a student from the town as its seventeenth Post From The Pandemic. In the film below Baran Ayik amongst other things appears to debunk the coronavirus myth that alcohol might be the cure we are all looking for.