• Question: What is the most deadly virus?

    Asked by jabber8 to Aime, Akshat, Diana, Gemma, Judith on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Judith McCann

      Judith McCann answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      I think its AIDS, not necessarily by how quickly it kills you but that more people die of AIDS related diseases and there’s no cure. Either that or malaria maybe?

    • Photo: Gemma Sharp

      Gemma Sharp answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      In terms of how many people have died from it, I’d probably go for influenza (flu). There are loads of different strains (including bird flu and swine flu). In 1918 a particularly bad outbreak of bird flu killed 50 to 100 million people worldwide in one year!

      Remember, AIDS is a set of symptoms (not a virus!) caused by HIV (alright, that is a virus). Malaria isn’t a virus, it’s a parasite spread by mosquitos.

    • Photo: Akshat Rathi

      Akshat Rathi answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Gemma is right for a class of virus, the flu virus has been the deadliest in human history. And within that the deadliest virus is the Influenza A virus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus). It caused the Spanish flu in 1918, and as Gemma said, killed far too many people. 🙁

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