Having decided the danger was over, he didn't bother to report the accident, and a few days later he left town to visit an old friend in Boston. Soon after the researcher returned to Yale, he bagan running a fever that reached 103 F. An experimental antiviral drug eventually stopped the illness, but the man had exposed five people, including two children, before being confined to a hospital isolation ward, and another 75 or so healthcare workers after that. The Sabia virus is particularly frightening because it kills in such a grisly way. Characteristic symptoms are high fever, uncontrolled bleeding in virtually every organ and finally shock. The liver turns yellow and decomposes.
Blood can leak from literally every bodily orifice, including the eyes and the pores of the skin.
Sabia was never seen before 1990, when a female agriculatural engineer checked into a hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with a high f ever. Within days she was dead. Fortunately, in the Yale University incident, none of the potential victims died or showed any evidence of symptoms. A book and movie on the Sabia virus's counterpart, the lethal Ebola virus from Central Africa, which is as deadly and as gruesome as AIDS, yet has an incubation period of only one week, was underway at the time and was later released in 1994. Red spots appear on his skin and, spreading quickly, become a rash of tiny blisters, and then the flesh rips.