Ebola

[River Song]

I see no confirmed reports from reliable sources. Infowars.com et al are not IMHO reliable sources

[CharlesHarris]

Some reliable sources:

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/
http://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publication...il2014.pdf
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/ebolaMar...fault.aspx
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-1.2/Ebola.htm


Airborne Ebola?
A theory that won't fly
Ebola and other deadly viruses have been much in the news lately, and much in people's minds. Not just for what they are­­deadly at close range­­but for what, with sinful human intervention, they might be: rampant, random, long-distance killers, borne on the winds.
Popular culture has a recurrent fascination with doomsday pathogens. Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain was a classic incarnation of this scary scenario. The recent sci-fi film "Species" is its latest iteration, although this time the evil incarnate has shed its viral coating: It is naked DNA sent from outer space and embodied in an alien-supermodel hybrid. In Richard Preston's book The Hot Zone and the film "Outbreak," we're frightened by real viruses, specifically Ebola. In the film, a new mutant strain, carried by a monkey, will depopulate California unless Dustin Hoffman can save the day, and he has only an hour or so to do it.

The ostensibly responsible media are not immune to the temptation to stir these fears. In a May 12 editorial, the New York Times declared: "A modest genetic change might enable Ebola to spread rapidly through the air..."

That very same day, in the news section, Times reporter Lawrence K. Altman, M.D., handled the matter more soberly. Reporting from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, he wrote, "The deadly Ebola virus continues to spread in Zaire, chiefly affecting health care workers... [It] apparently spread initially among [doctors] and nurses who operated on a patient in Kikwit." Dr. Altman, an infectious-disease specialist who once worked at the CDC, added, "Transmission presumably was through contaminated blood..."

Can a bloodborne or body fluid-borne virus be transformed by a single mutation into an airborne agent (a "flyer"), as the scare scenarios imply? It's conceivable. But it's "probably unlikely," according to virologist Beth Levine, M.D., director of virology research in the infectious diseases division at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. "Single amino acid mutations can change the tropism [the residential preference] of a virus" in some experimental situations, Dr. Levine says, "but there haven't been any examples of such mutations actually occurring in nature, changing a virus from a bloodborne or bodily fluid route of transmission to a respiratory route."

So, says Dr. Levine, "The media's claim is not totally without scientific basis. But there are no precedents for it, and it's unlikely.

"I think it's irresponsible to raise that concern," she added, "because in general viruses are very well-adapted to their milieu­­and they don't just suddenly change their environment." Will this kind of level-headed assessment quell media hysteria? Stay tuned.

David R. Zimmerman

DAVID R. ZIMMERMAN, adjunct professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, is the editor of Probe, a newsletter of science and media criticism. He has taught at the New School for Social Research.

[Tartar Horde]

Some of the media sources are quite suspect and sensational in nature, and I certainly don't accept anything from "Infowars" or any other fringe outlet. I also think that we put far too much stock in what experts say, especially when they say things like (Dr. Levine says, "but there haven't been any examples of such mutations actually occurring in nature, changing a virus from a bloodborne or bodily fluid route of transmission to a respiratory route.") We have only had "scientific method" for a few centuries now, micro Biology is a relatively new science, and yet we are arrogant enough to tell Mother nature what she can and can't do. How does Dr Levine know that these mutations have not occurred in the past, he does not!! he is talking about observations in the modern world, how can he speak about the whole of evolutionary time with any certainty? Anyone with a basic understanding of evolution through mutation understands that this is exactly how organisms evolve. Dr. Levine, "The media's claim is not totally without scientific basis. But there are no precedents for it, and it's unlikely., for a scientist who is so sure what nature is capable of, "unlikely" is not very scientific is it, it also means it is possible. The man is admitting he doesn't know anything, while making it sound like he does, scientists and medical experts do a lot of that.

[Mortblanc]

And the possibility of a transfer host is also apparent and available, since the original transfer method seems to be the fruit bat of that region.

There is also the situation I read of in one of the early outbreaks, where the victims were coughing huge sprays of bloody sputum that coated the walls of the hospital rooms with a red mist. That transition wiped out most of the health care workers during that village restricted outbreak.

If I remember correctly that was the definition of how the bubonic plague mutated into pneumonic plague back in the middle ages. Also how TB is transferred.

The mist you sneeze is a body fluid!

[Tibbs735]

Ebola is airborne in a sense, in that the virus can travel short distances in droplets of saliva a d blood from the exhalation of victims.

[Devonian]

This still seems to be developing....

http://news.sky.com/story/1274323/ebola-...ne-workers

[Scythe13]

I saw that DEV. The mine workers being taken out. Things are getting more serious. Well worth keeping an eye on. Hopefully a cure will be pushed forward. Even though prevention and containment has been pretty successful at the moment, a cure would bring a big sigh of relief.

[Devonian]

The problem is that even if they found a cure today, which is unlikely, it would still takes years to develop and test it to get it to a stage whereby it could actually be used, so travel restrictions, containment and strict disinfection are the only real options for now.

[Tartar Horde]

This morning on the BBC a doctor from Medecin sans frontier said that the Ebola outbreak is out of control in West Africa now, with 330 deaths in the latest outbreak and the disease spreading they are getting very worried.

[bigpaul]

not going to be a problem for us UNLESS and UNTIL someone from Africa gets on a plane to Europe.