Posted on 08/10/2014 12:46:23 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe
Agreed. Especially since one of the Liberian minister’s executive assistants has already died from this.
The start of human trials of the first Ebola vaccine yesterday day is incredibly good news
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/11101638/Briton-is-first-to-try-Ebola-vaccine.html
and, in particular, these two statements:
”The funding will also allow GSK to begin manufacturing 10,000 additional doses of the vaccine at the same time as the initial clinical trials …… “He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that a fast-track process could see the vaccine being trialled in West Africa by the end of the year …”
This means numerically significant field testing of an Ebola vaccine sixty (60) days faster than my most optimistic hope a month ago, when I first learned of the fomite transmission threat.
I still don’t see a reasonable possibility of saving the tribal areas of West and Central Africa, but it might be possible to save the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, and particularly the countries with real governments. I’m dubious about the Islamic areas of Nigeria given their cultural backwardness and the power of the Boko Haram terrorists. The latter’s opposition to Western ways such as public health vaccinations will be a self-solving problem, but will still kill millions who might be saved.
Even under the best circumstances, though, human to human transmission of Ebola will remain endemic in the most affected tribal areas. This means the truly nutball Arab terrorists will be able to get samples in West Africa (smallpox is pretty much locked up by a few governments) and, eventually, not die horribly while weaponizing the stuff. Ebola virus can be frozen, revived and recultured, which means it can be smuggled into developed countries. Once terrorists learn how to weaponize Ebola from cultures and produce it in sufficient quantity without first killing themselves, they can grow cultures in secret labs (think meth labs) in the target countries and distribute it with vaporizers, plant it on fomites, infect winos with it, etc.
This is only a question of time.
Which means that mandatory mass vaccinations against Ebola are coming in developed countries. That may happen anyway to defeat the present epidemic when it spreads from sub-Saharan Africa, which CDC Director Frieden said is a “certainty”. IMO it is also almost certain that Nigeria will suffer a major Ebola epidemic before enough vaccine is available there to head it off. And, IMO, Nigeria will be the first major country to suffer such an epidemic. I just hope it will be the only one, and that the Nigerians delay this long enough for delivery of millions of doses of vaccines there to save most of their people. That would necessarily mean we’ll be able to avoid the mass quarantines which absolutely and for sure would wreck our economy.
But mandatory mass vaccinations against Ebola in the US are IMO inevitable. It might happen next year, but hopefully won’t. I’d rather wait for really thorough trials to develop the most effective and safest vaccine. We might have to go with what we’ve got next summer. We can only pray.
If they weaponize it, vaccines will be useless to fight it.
Vaccines will protect against the strain they use TO weaponize it. Not a weaponized strain.
The anti-HIV strategy of small molecules that inhibit binding and reproduction of the virus are more effective, and affordable, long term strategies.
With 300 million people, a $50 mandatory vaccine would be $15B dollars. Just to start.
And the drum beats of war and plague get louder.
They do indeedy.
Weaponization means development of a means of infecting people by means other than naturally occurring processes. Injecting of Ebola virus into suicide volunteer Charlie Jihadi who then boards the MTA and transmits the virus by standing close to them is not weaponization, even if Charlie caught it from the injection:
Did he ever return?
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn'd
He may ride forever'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned!
Weaponization of the anthrax used on us after 9/11 took an enormous amount of work in making the spores tiny enough to be "floaty" without clumping, and stable enough for long-term storage. IMO it was the product of an unsuccessful military weaponization program, which cost way too much to be produced in militarily useful quantities. What was used on us was probably a substantial proportion, perhaps most, of the experimental program's production.
Terrorists just don't have the resources (yet) to modify the current Zaire strain of Ebola causing the West African epidemic so it won't be susceptible to vaccines. Weaponization for them means figuring out how to grow sufficient quantities of Ebola for terrorist use, and distribute it to victims/create dangerous amounts of fomites, without killing themselves first.
This will of course change as biotech becomes accessible for terrorist use, but Ebola vaccines will be necessary as well as useful for years. Their use will also reduce public panic, and I expect that will be a big factor in government decisions to make Ebola vaccinations mandatory.
Plus there are outright cures (medications as treatment) being developed which will be more useful in the long run.
"... and transmits the virus to new victims by standing close to them is not weaponization ..."
There are medicines right now.
Japan has offered 20K patients worth of Favipiravir to WHO for use in West Africa. So far? Crickets from WHO.
It stopped ebola in lab animals after symptoms appeared.
They offered it a month ago. If it’s found to be effective there should be some WHO bureaucrats decorating lamp posts when this is all over.
There is no money, however, in a lot of research into medications for viruses. Medications aren’t indemnified, vaccines are. Medications expire from patent, vaccines do not. Medications aren’t mandated, vaccines are.
There is simply not the ‘carrot’ there for pharma to develop antiviral medications.
Vaccine tech on the other hand is hoppin’.
The issue with weaponization (and these kits can be had for a few thousands of dollars now and if you haven’t been in grad school in the sciences in the US you’ll be delighted to know that most of the grad students are either Chinese or Middle Eastern) is ease of availability of the equipment to manipulate genes. It’s not *quite* walmart scaled yet, but it’s close.
20 years ago I’d agree that the terrorists didn’t have the ability or training to manipulate a viral genome for evil. I don’t agree with that statement now. At all.
Saddam had a bioweapons research facility or two. Those staff and techs went somewhere...
And in the case of ebola, nature is doing that pretty efficiently on her own. This particular strain is only 97% identical to the one in 1976. That 3% is the difference between humans and chimps. The vaccine we develop against this outbreak may well be useless against the next one in 5 years.
And does nothing to protect against any of the other strains of ebola. Or many other hemorrhagic fevers. Or any of the rna viruses in general.
This is a case of where we have a hammer so every problem looks like a nail.
And the cost to just vaccinate Africa’s 1B people would be $50B for a $50 vaccine. It’s more like several hundred dollars for new vaccines now.
And that’s just for one strains of one hemorrhagic fever.
We’ll run out of money long before we run out of jungle diseases to vaccinate against.
I doubt that tune would be much different here among those who consider themselves 'exempt' by virtue of money, celebrity, or other factors.
This is another scary family of jungle viruses.
This one is trying to find humans to run through in Australia right now. Let’s hope the Australian authorities are on the ball with this...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henipavirus
‘Contagion’ the movie was based on this family of viruses.
Sawyer and his buddies were doing that very thing while he was in the hospital in Lagos. Trying to pressure the Nigerian government to let him out.
I’d love to have been a (bunnysuited) fly on the wall when he yanked out the IV’s and tried to run out of the hospital.
Weaponize in this instance is related to finding a means of delivery of an existing strain while keeping it viable in transport and delivery. Vaccines will be fine for that, and I don’t think the Islamists have the technology and handling facilities to get creative with it.
I wonder if anyone, European countries in particular, has staged air assets with an eye on intercepting any unauthorized fleeing aircraft?
I was channel surfing earlier this afternoon and landed on The Doctors, a medical talkshow. I missed part of it, but they were talking about the Ebola outbreaks, US troops, and the potentiality for Ebola to transform and become airborn.
They didn’t offer any solutions, but they seemed scared that a potential pandemic outbreak could occur in the US, due to the openness of travel in and out of the country.
Video:
http://www.thedoctorstv.com/videos/containing-the-ebola-outbreak
We’ll have to disagree. I was in grad school and industry with too many muslims.
Now the aircraft question is a good one.
Speaking of fleeing.
About the time the Nigerian outbreak got started good, I saw a news article where Goodluck Jonathan’s wife was in Eastern Europe for a visit. I wonder if she’s returned to Nigeria just yet. And one of his daughters recently got married. Love to know where she is as well.
If Sirleaf comes down with this or any ministers themselves in Liberia the floodgates of exit will open for anyone not already gone.
Personally, if I was a moderately wealthy Liberian I’d already be gone. If you have *any* medical problem at all you run the risk of catching ebola just from trying to receive basic medical care.
Hi sorry, I just searched forward on the channel as long as I could, but didn’t see it scheduled again right away.
I would imagine they’ll run it again however.
"Saddam had a bioweapons research facility or two. Those staff and techs went somewhere..."
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