Posted on 08/10/2014 12:46:23 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe
I have spent a little time compiling links to threads about the Ebola outbreak in the interest of having all the links in one thread for future reference.
Please add links to new threads and articles of interest as the situation develops.
Thank You all for you participation.
Those are secretions, but they are not derived from blood. The cells that secrete those liquids are not cells that the Ebola virus attacks. So, unless the secretions are bloody, they are not infectious.
I read one report where viral RNA was detected in bloody saliva (of one patient), but it was not infectious. The researchers thought that perhaps immune molecules in the saliva destroyed the virus.
In spite of the fact that one of the major symptoms is ‘bloody nose’.
That would be later in the disease, when the patient is quite infectious through a number of routes. Not all patients bleed. I suspect that not all patients are equally infectious. Bleeding is the virus’ way of trying to infect a new host.
I agree. Person to person transmission of Ebola is not a significant threat to any developed country.
>>> So, unless the secretions are bloody, they are not infectious.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. See “Assessment of the Risk of Ebola Virus Transmission from Bodily Fluids and Fomites” in the Journal of Infectious diseases at
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/196/Supplement_2/S142.full
Table 1, in which various fluids of ebola patients were tested:
breast milk 100% positive
saliva 67% positive
stool (acute) 50%
tears 100%
nasal blood 100%
semen 50%
...
Admittedly, the pool size of samples was very small (sometimes only 1 or 2 samples taken), but the evidence is clear...
The simplest answer here is a misplaced decimal point in transcription.
I hope those of you that are convinced Ebola is not a significant threat in the US if it does get here have taken into consideration all of the illegal (and even many legally here) migrants (from countries all over the world) that continue their third world sanitation habits even though they live here.
I had a conversation with a man that supplies porta-johns this morning. He supplies many to farm fields where many of the workers are not even illegals but have work permits and are living here. He said legal requirements for farmers is that they provide the porta-johns, hand wash stations, antibacterial soap, the works for sanitation for field workers. The man told me few workers use the porta-johns, most use them for cover and go to the bathroom behind the porta-johns instead of inside them. The workers are using only small amounts of antibacterial soap- what would last a day in many locations will last a month or more. They use small amounts of toilet paper and water as well. He said worse than that the farmers still have problems with the employees simply going to the bathroom in the field where they are harvesting crops...
We have many pockets of third world sanitation in this country. Many migrants live in such crowded housing conditions there is no possible way sanitation is what we would consider standard. I am not just speaking of the Hispanics from Mexico and Central America that get all the attention- I have read about Chinese workers living clumped together in third world slums in New York City and other locations. This will not just be a regional issue, there are third world living conditions in pockets in most large cities.
We might be a developed country, but not every part of this country is what you are considering developed when it comes to sanitation and most of our third world neighborhoods are within cities.
I’ve read that article and others several times—how do you think I am able to speak of virus transmissibility in bodily fluids?
The only column that matters as far as transmissibility in Table 1 of that article is labeled “Virus culture positive, no. (% sample type tested).” The RT-PCR test can only tell you that viral RNA was present in the sample, but cannot tell anything about the condition of the virus. In a similar manner, you can use RT-PCR to test for and find cow RNA in a steak, but that doesn’t mean you have a living cow on your dinner plate.
Culturing the virus is the only way to know if a sample is infectious. I notice that many of the fluids listed in that table that contained viral RNA did not, in fact, contain active virus. The single saliva sample that had live virus in it probably contained blood. From the number of saliva samples that contained RNA but not culturable virus, it would seem that saliva inactivates the virus (which is not surprising; we have many antiviral and antibiotic molecules in our mucous secretions). The only two fluids I saw that concern me are the breast milk and semen. They contained live virus during the acute phase of the illness, and continued to harbor live virus for a period of time after symptoms subsided. Not in this study, but in another, live virus was cultured from a semen sample collected 82 days after symptoms appeared. *That* is very concerning.
I thought that skewed R0 was from the locals propensity to kiss the recently dead on the forehead.
You've described great conditions for spreading cholera or E. coli O157H7, and probably a few other bugs--people do, in fact, get sick from eating raw produce frequently--but not Ebola. With an upper incubation period of 21 days, and average of 8 days, the chance that an illegal immigrant would be able to travel from Africa to a field in the US before becoming symptomatic is almost nil. They would probably die in the desert as soon as the coyotes bringing them abandon them for signs of illness.
I recently had a job in down town San Jose where I saw what to now was the largest amount of human excrement I’d ever seen in an urban setting. You couldn’t walk 2 steps in a 1 block area there without seeing multiple piles, along with what passed for wiping material scattered around.
A few years back I was sampling a creek in the bay area for e-coli et.al. and needed to obtain upstream samples for the control (spill recordation/cleanup). The upstream samples still had gobs in it from all the indigents that bathe/defecate in the stream...
Being in a secretion is the virus’s way of trying to infect a new host.
It wouldn’t be in *tears* otherwise.
Or sweat.
Particularly sweat.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29248080?
“British Ebola nurse travels to US to try to save victim”
“...His original passport was burned along with other belongings as a precaution to stop the virus from spreading...”
I guess his passport was in danger of throwing up directly on someone perhaps?
http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-ebola-drug-rationing-20140918-story.html#page=1
“A looming problem: How to ration Ebola vaccines and medicines”
Statists everywhere are drooling.
I have professional expertise here. I once broke a defense psychiatrist on the witness stand in cross-examination, and did the research which destroyed Carl Sagan's scientific career over the radiological part of the Nuclear Winter hoax. S.Fred Singer did the deed based on my research. I spotted Sagan's fraud the instant I read it - this is in my FREEP posting history.
The MSDConline (Canadian) website description of Ebola states at:
http://www.msdsonline.com/resources/msds-resources/free-safety-data-sheet-index/ebola-virus.aspx
"SURVIVAL OUTSIDE HOST: The virus can survive in liquid or dried material for a number of days"
and referenced a footnote 23 for this which has since conveniently disappeared from that website.
Dark Wing was entirely correct. Dr. Fauci misled Senator Burr more from reflex PR than for any and all policy reasons. But this will kill far more Americans from fully justified distrust of the federal government concerning Ebola, should there be more than a few cases of it here, than any good which Dr. Fauci's lie here might do.
Fomite transmission of Ebola is a terrifying threat to America. The two are NOT the same.
I know exactly where Dr. Fauci is coming from--he does what many scientists do when asked a question they cannot answer. What I do in that exact same situation is "think out loud" while talking about related matters, to try to come to a logical answer. Then I might eventually arrive at an answer that is close to being the answer to the question, but does not actually answer the question. This is not an attempt at being deceitful or trying to mislead--rather, it is the scientists' attempt at giving a layperson the scientists' perspective on the question.
I happen to be extremely good at talking a lot without ever, in some cases, answering the specific question asked. But, to my thinking, giving an answer on a related subject is nearly as good. I've let my audience know what I know, and hopefully left them with the same shortfalls of knowledge on the subject that I have. I do sometimes preface an answer with "That's a very good question!" which means, "I have no clue what the answer is, but I'm going to talk your ears off anyway." But that's the only hint I ever give that I don't know.
There really are not answers to transmissibility in fomites. The experiments have not been done, for the most part, and the few that *have* been done were inadequate in some very important ways. There is an updated version of that MSDS at http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/lab-bio/res/psds-ftss/ebola-eng.php; from a quick skimming of the document, I would say that its author(s) came up with the same problems that everyone else who reads the literature comes up with. There are no answers, the experiments have not been done.
LOL! I think we will get a lot of mileage out of that one! ;^)
It’s like the doctor that was infected by Patrick Sawyer when she picked up his IV bag. (I posted a link to her story the other night.) She had to leave all of her belongings behind, so they could burn them. They don’t mess around; they burn everything. She was bummed about losing her ipad and cellphone, but was thrilled to be walking out at all.
So it sounds as if this latest Emory patient isn’t doing very well, if Will is flying in to try and save him or her by donating his blood. Sad.
On this I agree with you fully for everything except crowded public transportation in the big cities.
Rush hour in NYC is SRO. Standing Room Only. And you get almost as intimate with the person standing next to you as you would on a date.
I hear ya about burning stuff.
Which is why I can’t understand the people that fly home and then quarantine themselves in their OWN HOMES for 21 days. IF you ARE infected, you will lose EVERYTHING and it’s unlikely Insurance would cover something like that. They’d declare Force Majeure first.
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