Ok. Doing my part to help....
Posted on 09/11/2014 11:23:51 PM PDT by DouglasKC
THE Ebola epidemic in West Africa has the potential to alter history as much as any plague has ever done.
There have been more than 4,300 cases and 2,300 deaths over the past six months. Last week, the World Health Organization warned that, by early October, there may be thousands of new cases per week in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria. What is not getting said publicly, despite briefings and discussions in the inner circles of the world’s public health agencies, is that we are in totally uncharted waters and that Mother Nature is the only force in charge of the crisis at this time.
There are two possible future chapters to this story that should keep us up at night.
The first possibility is that the Ebola virus spreads from West Africa to megacities in other regions of the developing world. This outbreak is very different from the 19 that have occurred in Africa over the past 40 years. It is much easier to control Ebola infections in isolated villages. But there has been a 300 percent increase in Africa’s population over the last four decades, much of it in large city slums. What happens when an infected person yet to become ill travels by plane to Lagos, Nairobi, Kinshasa or Mogadishu — or even Karachi, Jakarta, Mexico City or Dhaka?
The second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air. You can now get Ebola only through direct contact with bodily fluids. But viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Airborne illnesses are NOT the same as respiratory droplet illnesses!!! While some may overlap in their mode of transmission (see recent discoveries re: influenza), in medical circles these terms mean very different things. The latter describes illnesses where viruses and bacteria are passed between people by clinging to relatively large droplets expelled during coughing/sneezing, which can only travel 1-2 meters in the air before succumbing to gravity and becoming much less of a threat. The former, on the other hand, describes conditions such as chicken pox and tuberculosis (and possibly influenza, through aeresolization) and others, where the infectious particles are small and light enough to be able to travel longer distances through the air, following air currents without being pulled down to the floor immediately. From what I can tell, while researchers do believe ebola (and flu) may be able to travel via large droplets, there is no evidence or suggestion thus far that ebola is possibly becoming airborne.
These distinctions are hugely important in terms of how one handles infections, as well as implications of infection in terms of others around the patient. Droplet precautions only require masks, gloves and sometimes gowns; AIRBORNE precautions require negative-pressure ventilation to ensure no/little transmission to others via a very infective route. Airborne is WAY more concerning in general, at least in terms of transmission. This is sloppy reporting at best.
Ok. Doing my part to help....
Yes. That’s exactly my point. He was sounding the same alarm way back then.
Woa there, not so fast! Go out and hit everything in sight first! I will miss you, but think of the hundreds you’ll save by offing yourself.
If you haven't done it yet, read the "Hot Zone" available on line. It's not fiction. It details some of the Ebola outbreaks up until the time it was written in the mid-90's. Ebola, in the lab, is treated as a class 4 virus and is always worked on in a negative pressure environment. The book also details Ebola Reston, which was definitely airborne in every sense of the word. Ebola Reston is so similar to Ebola Zaire (the kind in West Africa and the most deadly to humans) that they at first thought they were dealing with Eboloa Zaire. Anyways, I would recommend the book to ramp up the learning curve about Ebola and the various strains. It's well written and a fast read.
Ok, so, back to killing myself to stop the spread of Ebola.
A distinction without a difference.
It’s being passed via public taxis in Monrovia.
Precautions sufficient to prevent transmission of HIV, also not airborne, have proven insufficient to prevent transmission of this strain of ebola. Just ask all the dead and dying medicos. Including western trained ones. I’m not ready to believe that hundreds of trained medicos all made the same exact type of mistake.
Also note how MSF garbs their people. They are going way beyond gloves, mask and gown. And so far have lost the fewest members to this.
I’d listen to MSF, they’re probably the organization with the MOST experience actually TREATING this disease.
It IS an excellent comment — thanks for pointing it out.
The simple thinkers here will never grasp it, however. That along with illegals causing all illness /sarc.
Well, you have a 10 to 40 percent chance of surviving if you get it. I think those odds can go up if you're one of the first ones in your neighborhood to get it. You'll be able to be kept hydrated via IV and constant medical attention/treatment. After a few hundred though you're pretty much screwed. :-)
This is a flat-out false statement, is totally unsubstantiated and is not even supported by the subsequent text.
Incorrect. The CDC is on the forefront of this. Emory has experience actually curing (at a 100% success rate) the Americans who contracted it and who got to the Emory Campus. The Emory hospital is joined at the hip with the CDC. The CDC has 60 on-site people in Africa, and 400+ are at work at the Emergency Operations center.
Michael T. Osterholm, the author of the article, is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
I would say he knows what he's talking about.
The full text of that thought is "The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years. Each new infection represents trillions of throws of the genetic dice."
This is absolutely true.
Even if I never get Ebola, I am so screwed.
Incorrect.
MSF has been handling ebola outbreaks since the mid 90’s.
Boots on the ground treating outbreaks.
For 2 decades.
CDC just showed up to the game.
How many CDC employees are physically in the isolation wards for shift after shift, hour after hour, for the past 6 months? Vs. MSF medicos?
A Laz in time saves nine.
“hyper-evolution” DOES NOT EQUAL transmission. It could be more properly equated to rapid genetic change. There has not been; the rate of change has been relatively constant and similar to other virus species.
LOL!
Ok. I'm not here to convince you of a damned thing. I'll just have to sit here and know what I'm freakin' tawkin about. LOL
It is not “a distinction without a difference”. As you know, if the virus were airborne, a large proportion of Africans would be dead now — millions or tens of millions — not a few thousand.
I'm sure you're a good guy and smart too. But you don't have the bonafides the author of the article has on the subject.
Ok, so when did the CDC personnel start treating patients in the isolation wards?
You obviously know the answer, tell us?
And tell us how many as well.
How many were treating patients in the isolation wards in March, April, May, June, July, August, Sept.
Also, how many CDC personnel were treating patients in Kikwit in ‘95 vs. MSF?
And the outbreaks since then...
I’m not talking ‘epidemiologists’ and ‘contact tracing’ people, I’m talking people cleaning up the puke, poop and other bodily fluids, starting IV’s and picking up the bodies of patients who’ve managed to fall out of their beds.
How many?
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