[rwmj]

Also, a new coronovirus in France and the middle east, which although it's killed 50% of the people who've caught it so far is probably not going to kill us all[1].

Also H7N9 (a new bird flu), although it's a bit of a lightweight having killed a mere 20% of sufferers. It may not spread human to human, although we don't know that, and this one hasn't yet reached "the West".

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23179570

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H7N9

[skue]

In med school I learned about a mailing list primarily for infectious disease specialists tracking potential outbreaks worldwide. After a few months I stopped reading it -- it was too terrifying.

Update: It was probably ProMED-mail[1]. The WHO also posts disease a outbreak news[2].

[1] http://www.promedmail.org/

[2] http://www.who.int/csr/don/en/index.html

[adolgert]

For the coronovirus, people tend to check the type of infection only when the infection is bad. The people who have died all had comorbidities, meaning they were already sick with something else, so that 50% death rate is a result of a very strong observation bias and unlikely to be a characteristic of the disease.

[hkmurakami]

I remember hearing that the bird flu (during the original outbreak) was called H1N1 so I got curious to find out how many substrains have been identified thus far.

I was surprised to find that there are currently 35 strains of bird flu listed! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_influenza_virus#Contract...