This article is about a viral outbreak that occurred sometime in the year 1999 out in the country in Malaysia. This is a virus that has killed 110 people already and forced the Asian governments to destroy the million or so infected swine in the area. The person who made the initial discovery of the virus is Chua Kaw Bing. Bing is an expert in the field of viral outbreaks and always flies to the origin of any outbreaks. In February of 1999, he was sent to Perth to that an outbreak of some virus had enlarged the joints of 27 people with high fevers in Port Klang. However, a month later, Chua went to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labs in Fort Collins, Colorado, to determine what the unknown virus is using high-tech tools. .
During his flight from just outside of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, he saw the pastures in Ipoh where the disease may have originated. It was reported that there were 26 victims of this new disease just from this area alone. No one had seen such an epidemic in Malaysia in over 25 years. Scientists agreed that the virus must have been Japanese encephalitis, but that would soon prove to be false. The virus quickly spread south to Negri Sembilan which was the main supplier of the Malaysian pig industry. Apparently farmers thought it would be a good idea to smuggle pigs past the quarantine zone just to make some money but spreading the virus was making things increasingly worse. This became a biological catastrophe in which hundreads of people became infected. Most people affected seemed to be strong, adult males coming down with high fevers, delirium, comas and worse. Villages were evacuated and soldiers killed many pigs on several farms to contain the virus. If in fact the virus was Japanese encephalitis or JE, it could be stopped with a simple vaccine. JE is also not directly transmitted to people but rather by mosquitoes. However, any new virus that comes out tends to fool a lot of scientists and researchers because it may be a virus that looks like a familiar virus, but really it is an entirely new composite.
