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.
Don’t know what to say about last post. If I click that link now, that part is gone.
Unreal..BURIED in this story is the fact that Vinson called CDC several times TELLING them she had fever. .asking if it was OK for her to get on plane.
IF this is true something IS SERIOUSLY WRONG.
I’m on my phone- very hard to post thread in this but it needs to get out there.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3215671/posts
Thanks to Chgogal for the thread on the previous post:
Lockdown lifted- per your link. ..says pt not in contact with traveller from West Africa
BREAKING: Texas Elementary School Alerts Parents To Possible Ebola Exposure!
http://madworldnews.com/texas-school-parents-ebola/
This is all maddening. One story says one thing, the next story says something completely opposite.
Thanks
I know ..the blessing/curse of 24/7 news from multiple sources.
The Experiment Continues ...
It may be that the virus burns hotter and quicker [meaning it's more contagious and easily spread].
No. If the virus "burns hotter and quicker", it kills faster, so the victim has less of a chance to spread it before dying. The rate of viral replication does not relate to its contagious properties, which are a function of how it spreads. The rate of replication would relate to its pathogenic/virulence properties--if it truly replicates faster, the incubation time decreases and the disease hits harder. But the evidence that it is actually replicating faster than previous clades is weak:
We are using tests now that weren’t using in the past, but there seems to be a belief that the virus load is higher in these patients [today] than what we have seen before. If true, that’s a very different bug.
If one is using different tests, results from those tests cannot be compared to previous results without a lot of validation. It is not unusual to see differences in sensitivity of thousands-fold when using a different test.
It turns out that in limited studies with the evacuated patients, they continued to express virus in blood and semen. What does that mean? Right now, we just don’t know.
Peter Jahrling should be familiar enough with the literature on Ebola to 1) know that virus in convalescent semen was documented decades ago, and 2) viral RNA fragments can be found in convalescent blood for months after recovery. I would expect him to know, since he wrote many of the papers on Ebola, and his protégé Tom Geisbert is also an author of many Ebola papers.
So there is a potential for the thing to acquire an aerogenic property but that would have to be a dramatic change.
At least he got one thing (sort of) right. For Ebola to become aerosolizable from the human respiratory tract, it would have to make a LOT of dramatic changes. That isn't very likely; the virus spreads fine just the way it is, so has no evolutionary pressure to change either its cell tropism, its stability, or its size to become transmissible by a different route.
I do not want to say anything bad or too critical about Jahrling. I wonder if this article is accurate, or what was going on here.
“...so has no evolutionary pressure to change...”
Just because it doesn’t “have” to change doesn’t mean it won’t. The changes are random. If it changes to something less effective it will die off. If it changes to something more effective, it will thrive.
Its effectiveness is only related to the conditions in which it currently survives. In order for it to change to be able to survive under different conditions, it would have to cross a transition where it wouldn't be able to survive in either set of conditions. That is highly unlikely to happen.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply.
He does seem to be vague on some of this- my thought was he’s seeing new behaviors in this virus and is perplexed.
Something(s) have changed- we’ve not seen Ebola do what it’s doing now in terms of length of outbreak and numbers of fatalities.
“Its effectiveness is only related to the conditions in which it currently survives. In order for it to change to be able to survive under different conditions, it would have to cross a transition where it wouldn’t be able to survive in either set of conditions. That is highly unlikely to happen.”
Good point. But it does survive for awhile on hard surfaces, or in droplets out in the environment. So it isn’t confined to just one environment.
But - it has already been around observed for numerous years and not gone airborne - so hopefully it will stay that way. (I’m guessing that it has been in wild animals for hundreds/thousands of years?)
I certainly hope Ohio PH officials perform better but until I see actual action, I’m not going to assume they follow through on their statements.
Fool me once. . ..
BREAKING: #Ebola Patient #AmberJoyVinson Flew On Plane With Other Nurses WITH UPDATE
http://gotnews.com/breaking-ebola-patient-amberjoyvinson-flew-plane-nurses/
The article says these nurses have been treating patients, up until today.
They were returning from a nursing convention.
In Dallas.
(I’ll wait while you boggle)
Some of these were Cleveland Clinic nurses.
Yep. I posted that on another thread, earlier. Yipes.
Ok, I’ve got so many different sources open I knew I’d read it somewhere LOL.
It made its way into populated areas, and spread for months before it was identified. The situation is a perfect storm for the virus, and it is going to take some time to eradicate it.
Hundreds of thousands of years. It probably is in bats.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.