Zoonotic diseases, those which have an animal as the reservoir but may be transmitted to humans, are often known as zoonoses. That’s one of those awesome words, like Uranus, that reveals a lot about people based on how they pronounce it. Some folks just go all out and say “zoo-noses”. Others are worried that people might think they’re referring to an elephant’s proboscis and carefully say, “zoh-o-nosees”. Extra points if you wrinkle your nose and sound a bit British.
Regardless of pronunciation, though, I can tell you that having a mnemonic device practically built into a vocab word is loads of help during a final following a semester of slaving over this 10-lb monster.
In any case, North Vietnam (Communist Vietnam? Just Vietnam? Whatever we’re calling it these days) is having food safety issues right now, too—except the prime suspect in theirs is gastrointestinal anthrax. We don’t see GI anthrax in the US, though it is common in some areas of the world. The case fatality rate in N Vietnam’s outbreak is lower than expected with GI anthrax; the article reports that 1 in 13 of those reported infected has died, while the normal expected rate is as high as 60%. Maybe we just sent them some particularly gnarly salsa? Their health agencies are currently analyzing samples for definitive ID.
If most of your knowledge of anthrax comes from media reports in 2001-2, GI anthrax is practically friendly compared to inhalation anthrax, which is what we were dealing with in the whole “anthrax attacks” thing. That nastyness has a case fatality rate of close to 100%.
Still, it’s not too yummy with your Bo Xao Mang.
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