So, once again I have watched a TED Talk for a blog (Its fun!) This time the video is about rabies. Now, I know most people think rabies is a disease form the past. But, there still is a huge amount of people who die every year due to this disease. 60,000 to be exact. The disease is in 3rd world countries and is spread by vampire bats.  I don’t think people understand what a horrible disease rabies is, maybe you think its foaming at the mouth or something small that has a cure. But, no. If not treated in time rabies has a 100 percent fatality rate. The terrifying thing is that most people affected by this disease is under 17 years old. So, the real question is how do we get rid of this. Well, first they tried vaccinating the people, but that never really worked just because there was such a mass amount of people being bitten and they had almost no way to track where the bats were going. So, they tried to use historical data to figure out the flying patterns and mating patterns. Even then. how are they going to vaccinate bats? Give them tiny little shots? well when looking at the mating patterns they saw that rabies had so many genome mutations that adapted. These are fostered by the bats mating, each pair creates a slightly different genome. So, this is obviously going to take a long time, but if they can eradicate one family at a time eventually rabies will be gone. I know, i still haven’t explained  the vaccination strategy. They are still testing ways to vaccinate, maybe a spreadable powder, a bit like pollen, or something edible would be much easier than tiny needles. I thought this was a truly amazing TED Talk. Of course more people need to know about this, heck I didn’t know this and I watch A LOT of TED Talks, please show people that this disease is still out there and is really scary. We need to do something about it.

Questions: I wonder when this will become bigger and people will realise how serious it is? If we eradicate all the virus’s will it affect the ecology? Will this affect our population in a good or bad way?