Posted on 10/07/2014 11:34:43 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Sex could keep the Ebola epidemic alive even after the World Health Organization (WHO) declares an area free of the disease, one of the discoverers of the deadly virus said on Tuesday.
The WHO is hoping to announce later this week that Nigeria and Senegal are free of Ebola after 42 days with no infections.
The 42 days is the standard period for declaring an outbreak over, twice the maximum 21-day incubation period of the virus.
However, it appears the disease can last much longer in semen.
'In a convalescent male, the virus can persist in semen for at least 70 days; one study suggests persistence for more than 90 days,' the WHO said in an information note on Monday.
'Certainly, the advice has to be for survivors to use a condom, to not have unprotected sex, for 90 days,' said Peter Piot, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a discoverer of Ebola in 1976.
'If we would apply the rule for double the time, that would be 180 days — six months,' he told reporters in Geneva. 'I think it (90 days) is probably a compromise, for practicality.'
Ebola spreads via bodily fluids such as blood and saliva, but it has also been detected in breast milk and urine, as well as semen, the WHO says.
The whole live virus has never been isolated from sweat, however.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Cuz that same advice worked out so well for AIDS.
This reminds me of an old SNL phony advertisement for Bad Idea Jeans...
“I didn’t have a condom, but I figured, when is the next time I’ll be in Haiti.”
Yeah. Use the head to toe variety.
Somebody’s actually gonna want to boink an Ebola survivor?
I'm sure that's gonna work out just fine. (Not)
Well, at least Ebola will kill off a bunch of homosexuals, because they refuse to wear condoms.
AFAIK, there are no documented cases of ebola infections solely from sexual contact.
I read about one a month ago or so.
Gee! I wonder if there is a lot of humpin’, bumpin’ and sweatin’ going on here?
Did I say “sweatin’?” You bet! You don’t think these savages do the dance in air-conditioned huts do you?
Now, about that sweatin’...it’s a body fluid isn’t it?
Yep, that’s what I thought.
How about exchanging mouth slime? Surely they press their lips and exchange mouth spit. How about kissing sweaty parts of the infected host?
The article is totally stupid! It’s like locking the front door and opening all of the windows and other doors in the house and then feeling safe.
I think it has already broken out in Africa and there is no stopping it. Condoms are a joke when it comes to stopping something like Obama/Ebola.
I wonder if transmission through sex is responsible for the recurrence of the outbreak.
Typically, an Ebola outbreak is declared over when 42 days (2 maximum incubation periods) have passed without a new case. Guinea had actually been case-free for a while, and was well on the way towards being able to declare itself Ebola-free.
Then a new case stumbled across the border (with Sierra Leone, IIRC), and the outbreak was on again. The recurrence of the outbreak, given that more than one incubation period had passed, makes no sense to me. If it was passed through convalescent semen, that would explain things.
The difference is the time frame.
All the other body fluids have contagious ebola while you have symptoms. Average time an ebola infection is contagious from the other fluids is six days. That includes the typical quick burial time from the dead body.
But from Semen from a survivor, up to 90 days.
Sexual contact without sweat, saliva, blood? Got a link?
So, the survivors just all need to be educated on how to avoid spreading Ebola by the simple use of a condom, right? What could go wrong?
Looks like the next big money vortex has definitely opened up on that continent. We’ve sent billions and billions to feed them and they’re still starving. We’ve sent billions and billions to help them fight AIDS and it still spreads easily. We’ve spent billions and billions to educate and help them with this or that, and it just doesn’t seem to help yet more and more money is poured into that place. I wonder when they’re going to be allowed to sort themselves out, either for the better or the worse.
Prostitution is much more tolerated in Africa.
The major avenue of spread of STDs has been the truck drivers.
But there are stories of the price of a woman going down because married women start turning tricks right before school starts to pay the kids’ school fees.
Yes, plain sexual contact from a non-symptomatic survivor. It was buried in a story somewhere, I’ll have to find it.
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