Posted on 10/06/2014 2:26:07 PM PDT by blam
The number of people infected with this virus is insignificant compared to the number of animals infected with this virus which constitute its natural reservoir. That is most likely bats, but we don't know with 100% certainty.
It's possible this virus has been around a long time. Even it it didn't exist very long before the first human cases in the 1970's, it certainly infected hundreds of thousands of bats. No airborne mutations occurred. There is no case study of airborne infection in any species susceptible to infection.
Why the sudden increase in the last 90 days?
No. That’s not the convention used in epidemiology.
“Airborne disease” may be one of those terms like “workplace violence” or “mass shooting” that has a specific technical meaning that may not jibe with what many people would assume it to be.
Just because it’s not airborne doesn’t mean you can’t breath it in. An airborne bug is one where people who have it exhale it and it can be inhaled. Ebola doesn’t do that. But particulates from blood or other effluvia can carry it even when dried and THOSE can be inhaled. Think about the 4 corners hantavirus, it was carried in mouse pee, which then dried into virus laden dust, which got stirred up and inhaled, not an airborne virus by the definition of the term, but inhaled all the same.
The NBC cameraman who got infected was wearing protection and isn't sure how he got infected. He guesses he might have gotten infected when he was using chlorine to disinfect a car that had previously had an Ebola victim.
To a layman like me, that sounds like it is damn easy to get infected.
Another jerk having a “Slow Joe Biden” moment!
The aerosols described in that article are vaporizers produced for the purpose of weaponizing the virus in droplets on the order of a micron in size, something which the virus doesn’t do in the human respiratory system.
The Reston Monkey Virus, a form of Ebola that only affected monkeys, was spread through the ventilation system at the Reston, VA research facility. Just after the outbreak, the Army was called in to destroy monkeys in only one wing but it quickly spread and they had to whack all the little critters. Doubt it was droplets of mucus and such that found its way through the ductwork and filters.
The virus lies in dormancy for upwards of two weeks before manifesting itself in somebody infected.
Unless the cameraman, for example, only was in Africa for less than a night, it’s possible he might have gotten it when he used some facilities, a shower or a toilet or perhaps he used salt from an inadequately washed salt shaker.
Although that is what is known about Ebola, needing physics contact with body fluids, it’s not impossible for it to be transmitted otherwise in a minority of cases.
Which is why I used the descriptive term “lawyer-speak”. It won’t be a reputable epidemiologist that makes that lame excuse, it’ll be a lawyer.
If you're talking about why are there suddenly so many human cases, it's a breakout event, almost certainly caused caused by a combination of bad hygiene, bad public health policy, high population density, and more rapid travel in and out of West Africa, and not because of any sudden change in the virus itself. Why do we "suddenly" have a break out event of foot-and-mouth disease from time to time? Those events are rare in the US but happen in the Third World all the time, killing thousands of people. A significant population foothold gets established, and burns through the victim population until it's contained; not because the virus has changed.
It most certainly will not go airborne until the election is over.
Colloidal Silver is a common (but frowned on) substance that has been sold in the US for years now. All I know that it works on any cold or flu that I ever had. Here is an interesting report (Ebola related) from an Air Force department, apparently.
This breakout event has exploded in the number if infected folks in the region. Where in the past it has been very steady for years, a low number of infections, then it calms down
Joe Ebola has projectile vomit and it's vapor droplets are breathed in by someone within a few feet of this, it's airbourne, and that unlucky person now also has Ebola.
“there’s almost no chance of that happening.”
ROTFLOL!
You morons forgot to mention the possibility that fanatically evil genetic scientists who hate the guts of all that the West stands for would weaponize Ebola by deliberately tweaking it! Shouldn’t be that hard to do actually: just splice the right piece of an influenza virus into the Ebola package, and whammo: “THE STAND” here we come!
A gaseous suspension of fine solid or liquid particles.
Thats what is meant by airborne. An aerosol is particles of virus in some kind of body fluid suspended in the ambient atmosphere...for minutes. Perhaps dozens of minutes. And aerosols can travel.
Vomit, sneeze, projectile diarrhea - these are not aerosols. Those can certainly transmit pathogens - but you can see them.
Aerosols or airborne pathogens you cannot see and you can ingest/absorb them.
Thats the issue with "Is It Airborne?"
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
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