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.
ever heard of grow-lights?
Now if everyone who has Ebola will kindly only infect two people, those numbers will be right.
Fomite transfers do not appear to be taken into account, and rightfully so, because the presence of Ebola Fomites in a modern urban area is unprecedented.
The problem, though, is that Ebola is compared with diseases that don't kill as many of the infected (with the exception of HIV/AIDS--which can be slowed down quite a bit with treatment, and SARS, which is rare because it was dealt with appropriately). If two people are infected with Ebola, under the best of circumstances one will die. Measles? Infect 18, and you expect them all to live.
It only covered five acres.
Now, put all that under grow lights and pay the electric bill.
The further north you go, the longer you need to run the lights this time of year.
Where I live now, you can get nearly 16 hours of daylight in midsummer (48 degrees North), but in the depth of winter, those 16 hours are dark, and the sun never gets overhead. It is always in the South. That doesn't deal with heating the building, either.
And could complicate diagnosis of symptoms...
Gallows humour alert!
never let a good crisis go to waste...
...because that worked so well...
I think, just maybe, were this gov't serious about controlling this monster - they might allocate the money to 'pay the electric bill"
Maybe they could just designate a 'stimulus bill'
Or maybe 'borrow' a few million out of the next payments to Palestine and Pakistan -
Personally, I think getting this available should be the top priority in the country - in the world - right now.
Silly me...
That was a very good article. It seems that the US authorities haven’t learned from the experiences in this area-underestimating this virus and it’s potential for spreading.
bflr #3027
Anything can be accomplished, given enough money, time, and the right people (look at the Manhattan Project, for example).
The sad part is that short of private industry doing it, it won't get done under this Administration.
They have assured us this is not a problem, that it won't happen here, that it is under control, and will continue, if need be, to step over bodies in the street and spew the same line because they have committed themselves to a course of inaction on this disease and will only double down, not change direction, no matter what.
That has been the consistent pattern of policy modification for the last six years: If it doesn't work, do more of it, harder (and shell out more money).
Not once have they said they were wrong, and set out to fix it.
For private industry, though, there would have to be enormous greenhouses, heated and grow-lit (although part of the heat might come from the lighting itself), and they would have to contain good soil for tobacco.
Depending on what part of the plant is desired, the mature plant will take up between 12 and 18 square feet, not allowing for room for cultivation or harvesting between the rows. The leaves are long and broad and will shade out adjacent plants if they are too close.
Whoever works among the plants will pick up 'tobacco gum', the sap and leaf resin from the plants, rich in tar and nicotine (yep a transdermal tobacco 'fix'). The CDC, FDA, OSHA, BATFE, and a host of other agencies would likely have something to say about that.
Doubtless, the techniques of enhancing growth used by the pot growers could be used to enhance tobacco growth as well, perhaps with modification.
Logistical problems:
Siting--farther south, less overhead.
Soil type
Construction
Federal Oversight
Supply (obtaining that many grow lights and wiring in the power, coupled with demand on the local grid. Perhaps staggering lighting periods in a series of buildings could reduce serious demand spikes.
Ventilation: you have to get CO2 to the plants.
Yes, it could be done, but the actual growing might not be the problem, the genetic modification of the plants might be the bottleneck, or the processing might not be scalable as a process.
Add to that an unknown: I am not sure what special hazards, if any, the modified plants present to people working among them.
They aren't the tobacco plants my grandpa raised.
Another nasty filovirus. (Ebola's lethal cousin)
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