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Asked by to Naomi, Mathew, Ian, Edward on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Naomi Osborne answered on 19 Jun 2014:
Personally I think haemorrhaging diseases (ones that make you bleed inside and out) along with a horrible fever would be the worse – there’s a virus called Ebola, which is a tropical disease in Africa that does this….the death rate can be 90% – nasty stuff!
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Ian Stephenson answered on 19 Jun 2014:
There’s some interesting maths that actually limits how nasty an infection can be. The thing is that if your a bacteria or virus, its really not in your best interests to be nasty.
A disease like Ebola which is super-nasty, and kills almost everyone who gets it really quickly ensures that it can never really spread. An infection which kills you has just made itself homeless, and perhaps even worse stopped you giving the disease to someone else. Ebola outbreaks tend to kill a small number of people very quickly, (which is horrible for the those people), but then is quickly contained, so they kill far less people than say colds or flu.
A far better strategy is for an infection to be much milder. Don’t kill your host, and keep them alive so they can spread the disease around. In fact the most successful bacteria don’t make you sick at all, (and in fact can be quite helpful) so your body doesn’t kill them off – better for you, better for them.
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