How to Survive the Top 5 Most Deadly Viruses

5 min read

You called in sick yesterday because you thought you had the flu, but today you feel even worse. You have heavy bleeding and delirium because you’ve got one of the world’s most deadly viruses. What are your chances of living through it?

A virus is a sneaky threat. You can’t see or hear it, but it can enter your body and cause irreversible damage or even kill you. Once you develop symptoms, it could be too late. Today we put together a list of the most lethal viruses. Keep watching, and you just might survive them. Which contagious disease can leave you blind?
How could you get infected by hunting? Which virus kills almost 100% of its victims?

5. HIV

Its origins have been traced back to the 1800s. The human immunodeficiency virus likely passed to humans when they hunted chimpanzees in Central Africa and came in contact with an infected ape’s blood. HIV spreads through sex, drug injection equipment and other ways. Once you get infected with HIV, it will attack your immune system. But if you don’t treat the virus, it’ll lead to AIDS.

This is the most severe phase of the infection. The virus damages the patient’s immune system so badly that they’re deeply vulnerable to severe illnesses. When the disease reaches this stage, your chances of surviving are extremely low. The W.H.O. states that at the end of 2020, 37.7 million people were living with HIV. Although there’s no cure for the virus, antiretroviral therapy can help control the infection.

4. Smallpox

The variola virus causes smallpox. It is an old disease that existed for at least 3,000 years, and since 1900 it has been responsible for more than 300 million deaths. This contagious disease spreads from person-to-person through direct contact with the skin. Nose and mouth droplets from coughs and sneezes spread it too.

First, you’d likely feel a high fever, fatigue and intense back pain. Next would be a rash on your face and hands. Inside the bumps would be a clear liquid that changes to pus then forms scabs. Those scabs leave nasty scars. But that’d be the least of your problems, as this virus made people go blind. But luckily for you, vaccination efforts around the globe eradicated smallpox in 1977.

3. Marburg

Marburg virus disease is a severe hemorrhagic fever caused by an animal-borne virus. It’s in the same family as the Ebola virus. The African fruit bat hosts the Marburg virus. Infected bats don’t show any obvious sign of illness and can transmit the infection to primates, including humans, through direct contact with infected bat feces.

A person with the Marburg virus can spread it to others through their blood or body fluids. The incubation period can last up to 21 days. Around the fifth day, you could get a rash on your chest or back. As the disease progresses, it will cause inflammation in the pancreas, massive bleeding and dysfunction in your organs. The worst part is realizing there’s no specific treatment for Marburg disease, although doctors can try to maintain your oxygen and blood pressure levels to keep you alive. The best thing you can do is avoid contact with fruit bats, their feces and infected animals.

2. Ebola

Researchers have identified six strains of the Ebola virus. The most deadly strain drove the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and killed 90% of the infected people. The disease can cause unexplained heavy bleeding and organ dysfunction, which can kill you. The first Ebola virus disease outbreaks happened in 1976 in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Even though scientists still don’t know where the virus originated, they speculate that certain animals carry it. People who came in contact with the tissue, blood or body fluids of infected animals got the virus and then spread it to other people through direct contact with a sick person’s body fluids. Thanks to scientists, there are now a few vaccines that can protect you against this lethal virus. The Ervebo vaccine has been used in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help control Ebola outbreaks.

1. Rabies

You can get this disease from your pet. In most cases, domestic dogs spread the virus through bites and scratches. In humans, the symptoms start with difficulty swallowing, drooling and strange behavior. But once symptoms appear, the disease is almost 100% fatal. In the last stage of the disease, rabies causes seizures, coma and death.

Wild animals like raccoons and foxes can get rabies too. A rabid animal often has foaming at its mouth and extremely aggressive behavior. The good news is that rabies is a preventable disease. If you own a pet, keep its rabies vaccinations up-to-date. And don’t try coming too close to or touching wild animals.

That was a close call, but you managed to survive the top five most deadly viruses. But viruses aren’t the only microscopic threat that can kill you. Do you know how to survive a bacteria responsible for killing more than 50 million people?