Question: What is the most deadly disease thatcan be transfered the easiest

Jane Charlesworth answered on 7 Mar 2014:

Great question and a really tricky one to answer!

I was going to say something like Ebola virus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus), because it’s very deadly (280 out of 300 cases died in a recent outbreak) and spreads easily between people, but more common viruses like influenza kill a lot more people–the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak killed 50-1oo million people worldwide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic), so that’s a very successful disease both in terms of spreading itself and killing people.

Flu is so nasty because it can mutate the proteins on its surface and escape detection by the human immune system, which works by recognising viral and bacterial proteins as markers of invaders that shouldn’t be in your body. That’s why every year scientists and doctors have to develop a new flu vaccine, and why everyone got so scared about bird and pig flu a few years ago.