The AIDS viruses have been confined for millennia to African monkeys or isolated human groups until civilization's encroachment on the forest let them expand their range. Various events then combined to launch AIDS as a global plague. Two particularly susceptible groups, a number of highly promiscuous gay men and abusers of intravenous drugs, were portals for its entry into the United States. Researchers in Marburg, Germany, died from the disease after working with African Green monkeys, but the source is still unknown. The symptoms begin with a sore throat, high fever, headache, diarrhea, chest pains, and skin rash.
Victims complain of headache and fever before hemorrhaging starts throughout the body.
Lassa goes for the organs and causes violent vomiting, coma, and eventually death. Far more alarming is Hantavirus , which has taken up permanent residence in the United States by infecting rodents. People are infected when they breath in virus particles that are shed in rat droppings and blown into the air. Of 88 people known to have been infected, more than half have died. The virus, present in a mouses's urine and droppings, can be inhaled when the excretions are dry.