“The bacterium Escherichia coli (E. Coli) takes about twenty minutes to divide. So after one hour, one E. Coli cell has turned into eight. After only six and a half hours, there will be over a million bacteria!” GermsBacteriaMicrobesE Coli Author:Jennifer Gardy
“Epidemiologists-scientists who study the spread of disease-use a special number to describe how contagious a virus is. It's called the basic reproduction number, or R0 for short. It's complicated to calculate but simple to understand-it counts how many people one sick person is expected to infect over the course of his or her illness. If I'm sick with a cold and I make two other people sick, the R0 of my virus is 2. Colds and seasonal flus typically have R0 values of around 1.5 to 2. The 1918 flu pandemic R0 was estimated to be 2 to 3, while diseases like polio and small pox have R0 values of around 5 to 7.” ScienceVirusesEpidemiology Book:It's Catching: The Infectious World of Germs and Microbes Source: It's Catching: The Infectious World of Germs and Microbes
“Many fungal diseases, like aspergillosis or coccidioidomycosis, start when you inhale a small fungal particle called a spore. The spore settles in the lung, where it begins to grow and divide. The ball of fungus grows larger and larger and can eventually make it difficult to breathe.” FungusSpore Book:It's Catching: The Infectious World of Germs and Microbes Source: It's Catching: The Infectious World of Germs and Microbes