Calling all virologists, again. True or false?

sneakysnail said:

I'm speaking of the virus here. Not the one that's in the injection, this one has also been genetically engineered. It's sort of a decoy virus.

Does the statement make sense?

"They had never seen anything like this, the authorities were comparing it to the bubonic plague, it seemed that it was being transmitted from rodents to humans. This was a very scary concept. Zoonotic viruses weren't uncommon, there was Anthrax, West Nile, Avian flu, and the Plague. What was unusual, was that it was presenting like a seasonal flu, and not an endemic to the region of origin."

Click to expand...

The bolded diseases come from bacteria not viruses (assuming plague is the bubonic plague). You could replace bubonic plague with hantavirus which also is transmitted through rodents.

The rest of it seems fine except I'm wondering why they think the virus is transmitted through animals when it behaves more the flu virus. But perhaps that is explained elsewhere.

ETA: If the plot of this story relies heavily on finding the origin of a mysterious disease, I suggest looking at some real life examples of this. Like the AIDS, hantavirus, lime disease, etc. Lime disease is bacterial but it is transmitted through ticks so it might be applicable.

sneakysnail said:

"They had never seen anything like this, the authorities were comparing it to the bubonic plague, it seemed that it was being transmitted from rodents to humans. This was a very scary concept. Zoonotic viruses weren't uncommon, there was Anthrax, West Nile, Avian flu, and the Plague. What was unusual, was that it was presenting like a seasonal flu, and not an endemic to the region of origin."

Click to expand...

Not a virologist, but just in case it's helpful:

• that first sentence there is a run-on. You probably need a semicolon or period after 'this', and a 'because' instead of the next comma.
• if I'm being super pedantic, bubonic plague was bacterial and transmitted by fleas rather than the rodents themselves.
• you need a colon after 'uncommon' and you need 'were' instead of 'was' (as you are talking about multiple viruses.)
• you can't have the Plague or anthrax in a list of zoonotic viruses when they're both bacterial
• you need to remove the comma after 'unusual'
• in the last sentence 'an endemic' doesn't make sense - an endemic what?

I agree with MAP.

If you are trying to dream up a great new disease, then I think that it would be easier to start with an existing one and moving on from there.

Rodents aren't a vector for WNV or Avian Influenza, so they don't make sense in the way the sentence is structured either... For WNV you should look at Entomology, and Avian Influenza would only really cross mutate between pigs and birds. Other species' DNA sequences are too different. The reason mice are typically such a problem with plague is more from their feces (pneumonic), and fleas (if you kill off the mice, you're left with the infected fleas).

I guess you know that capitalizing diseases is a question of style. In my health articles I do not capitalize them.