Talk:MERS

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Zoonosis?
This is categorised as a zoonosis, but there's no mention of this in the text. The fact that it also infects camels does not make it a zoonosis until someone catches it from a camel. I'm going to be bold and remove the category and template. Sophie means wisdom (talk) 18:50, 11 May 2014 (UTC) Ignore previous message - sources found. Sophie means wisdom (talk) 19:12, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

mers in search box
If I type "mers" into Wikipedia's search box, I see an article about certain regions of India, with an "unreferenced" box for the whole, generally inscrutable article. I would have to know to click on disambiguation even to see a link to Middle Eastern Respiratory Virus article. Due to the comparative serious importance of the virus, I think searching for "mers" (all lowercase) should at least bring up a disambiguation page directly, or maybe even better, link directly to the virus article with a disambiguation link to see the obscure geographical article. Ryvr (talk) 17:45, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

lede
User:Pgcudahy, I've reverted your edit to the lede. Betacoronaviruses are not found in camels, they are found in bats, the natural reservoirs for MERS-CoV. The MERS infection has been found in camels and humans. I also left off the mention of the number of patients so far, as this will have to be updated frequently, and therefore the lede will be stale on a frequent basis. Having a number like that in the lede also makes it susceptible to vandals since changing numbers, along with brackets, names, etc., is easy and quick. An editor on vandal patrol has no real way of knowing if an edit like that is accurate, so s/he might leave it stand. The patient count is already in a table in the article on the outbreak. Editors there have been keeping the count up to date. Also well done on the signs and symptoms section. It's not the usual format, so don't know what others will make of it, but the content is good. Thanks. SW3 5DL (talk) 03:46, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

User:SW3 5DL, Previous betacoronaviruses have been found in bats, but I don't now how you can say that they are not found in camels (http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/3/e01146-14). MERS epidemiology so far has focused mainly on camels. The selected lit review at the end of the most recent WHO update (http://www.who.int/csr/disease/coronavirus_infections/MERS_CoV_Update_09_May_2014.pdf?ua=1) focuses exclusively on them and a prior review only linked known cases with exposure to camels and sheep (http://currents.plos.org/outbreaks/article/state-of-knowledge-and-data-gaps-of-middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-mers-cov-in-humans-2/). Do you have a reference for the link to bats or any evidence for transmission from bats to humans? Overall, I just think the info on the possible link to bats as minor and doesn't belong in the lede. Maybe a number isn't right either, but the impact of the outbreak on humans is the reason why people are interested in the topic. Pgcudahy (talk) 06:48, 21 May 2014 (UTC)


 * User:Pgcudahy Humans and camels are getting infected from the virus. They are not the source of the virus. The bats are the natural reservoirs of betacoronaviruses. They are the source of the virus. The link to bats is not minor. With the current outbreak, the exact means of how the bats are infecting camels and humans is not known. But it is known that this is a betacoronavirus and it is known that these viruses are from bats. Also, see WP:Indent. SW3 5DL (talk) 15:13, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
 * User:SW3 5DL Previous coronaviruses have had bat reservoirs, do you have references for MERS specifically? It's weird semantics to say that camels are infected but not the source. This isn't a parasite with intermediate and definitive hosts, it's a virus and if you catch it from a camel, that's the source. Regardless, I still don't see why the (unsourced) link between one of the isolated viruses and a bat is so important that it needs to be in the lede. And the statement that it is "derived from bats" is also unsourced. I would suggest "Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is a viral respiratory infection caused by the newly identified MERS-coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Since it's first discovery in 2012 it has led to a persistent outbreak of human disease in the Arabian peninsula that has been linked to camels, sheep and bats." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pgcudahy (talk • contribs) 02:41, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Pgcudahy Leave the lede stand as is. It's correct. I know a bit about this field. It's bat. There is no such thing as a camel betacoronavirus. You are thinking that the camels are the source. They are the means of transmission to humans which is very different. This is not a camel virus. It is a bat virus. How the bats got it to camels is not known, but it is suspected that they simply bite the camels. Bats are predatory and will bite and urinate to mark a threat. The bat bite would transfer the virus to the camel, yes, but not in the way you are thinking. Once the camel either dies or recovers, the camel can't transfer anymore virus as the camel doesn't have it anymore. Its immune system has dealt with it. This explains the antibodies.


 * But the bat that infected the camel in the first place, can transfer the virus again and again and again. The bats are the natural reservoir for the virus to exist in nature. Without the bats there would be no MERS-CoV. The camels are the intermediary link for some of the cases. But in the case of the index patient there was no intermediary link. He got it directly from a bat. He didn't need a camel. The people who got it from him didn't need the bat. But without the bat, none of the camels, none of the people would have gotten sick in the first place. Do you see? SW3 5DL (talk) 03:11, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

interwiki links
Many Wikipedias in other languages have fused the information about MERS with the articles about the MERS-virus: de:MERS-CoV es:Síndrome respiratorio por coronavirus de Oriente Medio and many others --Thirunavukkarasye-Raveendran (talk) 19:35, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

False redirect
Maher caste is a community from Gujarat India. Somehow the page on this is getting redirected to the page on a disease called Middle East respiratory syndrome This needs to be changed back. Someone please help.Jonathansammy (talk) 21:03, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Packing the lead with links
We have an epidemiology section. We do not need to pack the lead with links to all the possible subpages of the topic. Thus removed this  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 13:50, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Chart
Is this new cases or cumulative? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:29, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Critical care management
10.1186/s13054-016-1234-4 JFW &#124; T@lk  06:50, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

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External links modified (January 2018)
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In need of updating?
It seems that no developments since 2015/2016 have been included into this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.7.53.72 (talk) 17:59, 2 June 2019 (UTC)


 * indeed, the table "MERS confirmed cases and deaths" lets us expect data up to 2020 ("From June 2012 to January 2020") but looking into the sources unveils that this data is old, mostly from 2014, published 2015. Thus the sub-headline of the table is misleading. 2001:16B8:A55:5600:9866:61DC:4427:622C (talk) 11:06, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Copyright cleanup
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World Health Organization advisory
"The World Health Organization advises avoiding contact with camels and to eat only fully cooked camel meat, pasteurized camel milk, and to avoid drinking camel urine."

I had considerable difficulty believing the last statement; I assumed it was bigoted vandalism. It is not; it is a controversial area of Islamic prophetic medicine. To avoid this misconception, the WHO's statement should be cited, but I'm not sure how to do that properly. The WHO article can be found at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-(mers-cov)

Thanks.

CLSwiki (talk) 03:38, 28 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Good point, and thanks for finding the reference. I've added it now, this tutorial explains how I did it. the wub "?!"  10:38, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

"COVID-12" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect COVID-12. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 May 15 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. CrazyBoy826 (talk) 17:54, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 15 December 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: There's consensus that this is the primary topic for the capitalized version of the acronym. (t · c)  buidhe  10:27, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Middle East respiratory syndrome → MERS – Per WP:COMMONNAME, WP:RECOGNIZABILITY, WP:CONCISE, and consistency with SARS. This situation seems essentially identical to that of SARS, which was just settled with a nearly identical and unanimously supported RM that was just closed at Talk:SARS. , the name change will reduce the "Middle East" blaming problem, as it is somewhat POV to name a disease after a place, nation or culture. The proposed target name already redirects to the current article title, and I am confident there is no question over whether this is a proper WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the term and no question over whether the proposed target name is more widely recognized than the current article title. See also the March 2021 RM that resulted in moving to, as recorded at Talk:COVID-19/Archive 17. WP:ACROTITLE says "Acronyms should be used in a page name if the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject", and that is the case here. WP:ACROTITLE also says "In general, if readers somewhat familiar with the subject are likely to only recognise the name by its acronym, then the acronym should be used as a title," and it is certainly the case that some laypersons who are somewhat (but only minimally) familiar with this subject are likely to only recognise the topic by the acronym rather than the spelled-out phrase. Also see and. When looking for high quality sources, Google Scholar shows 1M hits for the proposed title and only 71k hits for the current title. Google Ngram also shows the proposed name being dramatically more frequently used (see here). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:33, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 18:11, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: I haven't considered the broader merit of the proposal, but I am not so confident that it is the primary topic for Mers (disambiguation). In particular, Mer (community) would appear to have a sufficiently strong claim to being primary via long-term significance that the usage claim of this disease results in there being no primary topic. BilledMammal (talk) 04:07, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The people of the Mer (community) would be Mers, not MERS. This proposal is about, which already redirects to the disease and has for more than six years. I have not claimed that the disease is the primary topic for "Mers" – only that it is the primary topic for "MERS" (with all letters capitalized). The disambiguation page can stay where it is. —&#8288;&#8202;&#8288;BarrelProof (talk) 05:34, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Good point. In that case, I'll have to have a think about whether the capitals are enough to distinguish in the case, as well about the broader merits of the proposal. The other thing I've noticed, that I'll mention now, is that ngrams shows significant, and increasing, use of "MERS" pre-2012. As such, a lot of the use that is registered on the ngrams is likely to refer to other things; I would estimate that this is at least a third of usage. BilledMammal (talk) 09:31, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I struck through a sentence above because it is arguable that the disambiguation page should be moved to . But my overall point is the same – this RM is about, not . —&#8288;&#8202;&#8288;BarrelProof (talk) 16:41, 16 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Support per nom. LSGH (talk) (contributions) 11:56, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. --awkwafaba (📥) 13:12, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. When we add the alternative capitalization of "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome", and when we consider the significant and increasing usage of "MERS" prior to the virus emerging in 2012, we find that the Ngrams usage disparity becomes significantly smaller, to the extent that it is not sufficient reason to move. I also note that the other evidence presented, Google Scholar search results, is not conclusive, because of WP:GOOGLELIMITS, because of the existance of other things referred to as "MERS", and because Google Scholar searches do not distinguish between capitalizations; when I search for ""MERS"", my top results all reference authors with the last name "Mers", rather than the syndrome. Added to the question of whether the MERS is sufficiently distinguished from Mers, I believe that it is clear we are better off leaving this article in its current location. BilledMammal (talk) 02:41, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Again Britannica uses "MERS".  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 18:51, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per nom, this is clearly analogous with SARS. Elli (talk &#124; contribs) 03:09, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Mers (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 10:04, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think that RM discussion really affects this page – at least not directly, although it affects the destination of what is currently a redirect to this article. I suppose the bot put the notification here because  is (currently) a redirect to here. —&#8288;&#8202;&#8288;BarrelProof (talk) 16:37, 16 December 2021 (UTC)