WHO Virologists Would Say That

In August 1967, a viral haemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola hit the quiet university town of Marburg in what was then West Germany. The case fatality rate of over 20 per cent wasn’t quite on a par with the Black Death, but it was bad enough. Luckily, the initial outbreak affected only twenty-five people and was quickly contained, so total cases were limited to thirty-one and total deaths to seven. Germans, it seems, have a healthy aversion to contact with the body fluids of dying relatives, and hospitals were sufficiently well-equipped to safely handle infectious patients oozing their insides out. One laboratory technician did however fall sick after he cut himself during an autopsy on a patient who had died of the disease. Accidents will happen, even to Germans.

The mystery illness came to be known as Marburg Disease, back in the days when it was still socially acceptable to name diseases after the places where they first appeared. Its source was traced to a batch of African…