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To: DouglasKC
You've got this wrong. The fatality rate for Ebola Zaire (the strain that's in Africa right now) has historically been between 70% to 90%. Right now in Africa the exact numbers are very hard to quantify since the true number of infected and deaths aren't really known. There's no reason to think that it's NOT still between 70% and 90%

CDC table of Ebola outbreaks. The lethality rate of Ebola Zaire ranges from 47% to 89% (I do not count the single cases since an outbreak of size n=1 is either 0 or 100%). I really do not know how the WHO comes up with the 70% number for the current outbreak; my calculations show the CFR as being far lower.

Marburg death rates run between 24% to 88% according to WHO

I quoted that 83-90% Marburg fatality figure directly out of the MMWR report on the imported Marburg case that I previously linked. If that number is incorrect, take it up with the authors of that report.

I'm not sure where you get this idea. Ebola is very virulent. The virus literally pours out of the bodies of victim and it takes a very small amount of the virus to infect someone. And even if you believe that it's NOT contagious...we had better treat it like it is highly contagious because of the high death rate.

Virulence (pathogenicity) is not contagiousness. A disease can be highly virulent without being at all contagious. Malaria, dengue, chikungunya, tick-borne encephalitis, all fall into the virulent but not contagious category.

In general, virulence is inversely related to contagiousness. Common colds, for instance, are very contagious but not very virulent. This inverse relationship between the contagiousness of a microorganism and its virulence has been observed so often that it is almost a paradigm among microbiologists and other infectious disease experts.

Virus does not "pour out" of Ebola patients. It is contained within bodily fluids, and in order to get Ebola, one must have close contact with the patient or with the infected fluids. This means that Ebola is not very contagious. It is, however, highly infective since only a few viral particles are capable of causing clinical disease.

58 posted on 09/30/2014 6:23:17 PM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: exDemMom
Virus does not "pour out" of Ebola patients. It is contained within bodily fluids, and in order to get Ebola, one must have close contact with the patient or with the infected fluids. This means that Ebola is not very contagious. It is, however, highly infective since only a few viral particles are capable of causing clinical disease.

The body fluids "pour out" of Ebola victims and all of these body fluids are heavily virus laden. Sweat, puke, diarrhea, vomit, snot and blood all exit the body in copious amounts and leave the virus wherever they touch.

But again you're completely missing the point. It's highly virulent AND has an extremely high death rate. That's why people are concerned. It's a very dangerous disease.

Did you ever read the Hot Zone yet? I'm pretty sure it's been linked multiple times.

59 posted on 09/30/2014 6:29:07 PM PDT by DouglasKC
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