Thread by @Laurie_Garrett

Boy, I goofed. I confused in my memory banks two different original outbreaks -- Lassa and Marburg, mis-recalling things I wrote nearly 30 years ago.
I apologize. And here, I will quote a section of THE COMING PLAGUE referring to #Marburg in a thread.

2/"In August 1967 three factory workers in #Marburg, German, reported in sick, suffering from muscle aches & mild fevers. The three men were employed at Behringwerke AG, the vaccine-producing subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Hoechst AG, and though their ailments looked.."
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"...like nothing more than flu, it was quite unusual for influenza to appear during Germany's hot summer months. The men were referred to #Marburg University Hospital.
The following day the three became nauseated, their spleens enlarged and were tender to the touch..."
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"...and their eyes became increasingly bloodshot. The attending physicians noted that 'the patients had a sullen, slightly aggressive or negativistic behavior.'
"Day by day more workers from the pharmaceutical plant fell ill, as did a doctor and a nurse who tended..."
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"...the patients. By September, twenty-three patients lay in agony in the #Marburg Univ Hospital wards Some fifty miles away in #Frankfurt, six more individuals contracted the same mysterious disease at the German government's Paul Erlich Institute. Four were also..."
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"...workers employed in pharmaceutical research, one was their treating physician, and the 6th was a pathologist who performed laboratory analysis of the cases."
"At the same time a third outbreak occurred in #Belgrade, Yugoslavia, involving a veterinarian and his wife."
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"All of the original cases in Germany and Yugoslavia involved men who worked with monkeys. Furthermore, investigators discovered, each of the men had handled animals, of the tissue of animals, from the East African nation of #Uganda.
"The investigators hit pay dirt..."
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"..when they determined that all the monkeys came from three shipments of wild animals transported from Uganda to Belgrade, then on to #Marburg and Frankfurt. When the first shipment of the animals arrived in Belgrade, 49 of 99 monkeys were dead, & the survivors were..."
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"placed in quarantine."
WHO research in Uganda found the virus in wild monkeys, apes and other animals. The hosts appeared to be vervets and red-tailed monkeys.
Years later, in 1975, an Australian traveler contracted #Marburg in South Africa, after being bit by --

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an unknown animal. Some of the medical team who treated him at #Johannesburg Hospital were also infected.
While the entire 1967 European outbreak started w/workers in a pharma plant, it was really about exposure to the monkeys.
I want to thank Michael Balter and others who

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pointed out my error. It was suggested that I delete my original tweets, regarding Uwe Brinkmann (which was #Lassa, not as I mistakenly said, #Marburg ).
But deleting is cowardly, and obscures the information. I made an error and I own up to it.
Moreover...

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Lives are at stake. #Marburg outbreaks are unfolding.
It seems terribly important to determine whether monkeys in the W Africa & Tanzania situations today are carrying the virus. Moreover, evidence it can have a bat reservoir must be tracked down.
As for my screw-up:

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Haste makes waste. Again, I apologize. And I hope everybody using Twitter will, similarly, please own up when they post faux pas, setting records straight.

Again, mea culpa and I am sorry.
Don't read conspiracies into this -- it was just me, messing up.