My virus's name is the silly virus. The host animal of my virus would be bats because they have numerous qualities that would help it spread. Calisher, Childs, and others name a few of those qualities in a study that they did writing, "Bats are abundant, diverse, and geographically widespread" (Calisher, Charles H et al). Due to these qualities, the likely hood of the virus infecting humans is higher. The first symptom is fatigue/drowsiness that causes confusion and the victims to act "silly" or out of the ordinary (where it gets its name). Then a very high fever sets in with nausea, vomiting, body aches, and a horrible cough to follow. Once a human is infected, it takes about 7 days for the first symptoms to set in. This is an RNA virus, so it is able to mutate quickly causing multiple different strains of the virus making it hard to get rid of. Quammen writes about RNA viruses saying, "They can reside in a body for longer stretches of time, content to get themselves passed along by slower modes of transmission..." (Quammen 310). Having a longer lifespan help the virus be more successful. This virus spreads from bats to humans by airborne transmission. This would allow the virus to go global, spreading quickly. Quammen writes about the success of airborne viruses when he says, "The influenzas are well adapted for airborne transmission, which is why a new strain can circle the world within days" (Quammen 290). The cough that you get as a symptom from the virus is what allows it to go airborne. The bats can live with this disease for their whole life and eventually die due to old age or other natural reasons that cause death. When this virus gets into humans though, it only takes a week to kill them after the first symptoms appear. Humans die from a lack of oxygen to the lungs. In order to stop this virus from spreading any further, people infected or people who have been around/helped people infected without any protective gear must be sent away to a special hospital where they are isolated and treated and then released once their blood tests don't show any sign of the virus in them anymore. International travel in and out of the countries that are being affected would have to be halted immediately until the cases dwindle significantly.
Calisher, Charles H et al. “Bats: important reservoir hosts of emerging viruses.” Clinical microbiology reviews vol. 19,3 (2006): 531-45. doi:10.1128/CMR.00017-06
Quammen, David. Spillover: Animal Infections and the next Human Pandemic. W.W. Norton, 2013.