Anyway, it`s an intriguing site with scary links, submitted for your Halloween perusal.
I bookmarked the site the other day but only now has my work schedule allowed me to read it.
0bola just flies to the US. Of course it’s airborne.
Yes. Water vapor from your breath carries thru the air. A sneeze, cough or just normal breathing spreads this water vapor. The distance varies. It only depends on how contagious whatever your breath is carrying.
The scariest ebola scenario I heard was written years ago by Tom Clancy. Muslim extremists take a contagious nurse/nun, extract the virus and weaponize it. You hear zero mention of that book in the news. Does anyone remember it? What is the name of it?
"COMMUNICABILITY: Communicable as long as blood, body fluids or organs, contain the virus. Ebolavirus has been isolated from semen 61 to 82 days after the onset of illness, and transmission through semen has occurred 7 weeks after clinical recovery"
SURVIVAL OUTSIDE HOST: Filoviruses have been reported capable to survive for weeks in blood and can also survive on contaminated surfaces, particularly at low temperatures (4°C) Footnote 52 Footnote 61. One study could not recover any Ebolavirus from experimentally contaminated surfaces (plastic, metal or glass) at room temperature Footnote 61. In another study, Ebolavirus dried onto glass, polymeric silicone rubber, or painted aluminum alloy is able to survive in the dark for several hours under ambient conditions (between 20°C and 25°C and 30–40% relative humidity) (amount of virus reduced to 37% after 15.4 hours), but is less stable than some other viral hemorrhagic fevers (Lassa) Footnote 53. When dried in tissue culture media onto glass and stored at 4 °C, Zaire ebolavirus survived for over 50 days Footnote 61. This information is based on experimental findings only and not based on observations in nature. This information is intended to be used to support local risk assessments in a laboratory setting.
I’ve been all over this for eight weeks, and, as best as I can tell from the data, the answer is “no”.
Ebola can, of course, be transmitted by respiratory droplets (coughing or sneezing), but, as you no doubt know, that’s not what “airborne” means.
any virus that makes it to the lungs will be present in water vapor when the patient exhales.
the question is... what’s the range.
the CDC had posted in august that 3 feet was the range ... as well as prolonged exposure in a small room (like an airplane)
Come let us reason together.
The virus is transmitted through bodily fluids.
The virus can live on a hard, flat surface for hours.
All fluids are capable of becoming airborne.
Ergo, the ebola virus is capable of becoming airborne.
Oh, hell yes! Put him on a plane and ship him anywhere but here!!
Oh, wait - I though the thread title was “President Ebola”. Nevermind...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1997182/pdf/ijexpath00004-0007.pdf
I just scanned it, but it seems to say that Ebola can be transmitted in aerosol form, but not that it similarly contagious as influenza.
There are rational discussions, and then there are discussions in which government agencies become involved.
Certainly arosol but I had not heard this.
Aerosolized is not the same as "airborne" in the classic understanding of the term. But, it's a virus in its like, what? 25th generation in this outbreak. It's already weakened itself in order for its host to live longer and pass the infection along with a greater chance to find a new host. It people are picking it up from either surfaces or inhaled particles, it's really hard to tell. Best options are to expect that it will kill the over-confident, inattentive, or arrogant. Plenty of targets for that here in the U.S.
Under specific conditions yes.
But, it will not mutate to an airborne virus that spreads like the common cold or flu.
In 1983, at Fort Dettrick, they were studying Ebola in monkeys. They had a group of monkeys who they had given Ebola. They also had a control group who had not been given the virus who were in the same room but on the other side. They shared the same air. The Ebola infected monkeys were given various antibiotics and other things to see if any of it would work. None of it did and all the Ebola-infected monkeys died. Days later, the control group got sick and soon had Ebola and they died. They only thing they shared was the air they breathed. So, yeah, it got airborne.
I suspect that it goes airborn shortly before death, which explains why healthcare workers are the ones mostly getting and spreading it.
“Mutant Ebola warning: Leading U.S. scientist warns deadly virus is already changing to become more contagious”
I have been posting extensively on the fact that Ebola is not transmissible by aerosols, and I have even commented on that website before. Please look at my posting history.
That article claims to quote the USAMRIID BlueBook, but those quotes that are supposedly in the BlueBook are not actually there. I would post exactly what the BlueBook (7th edition, Sept 2011) says about transmissibility, but it is impossible to copy/paste from it. The passage I would quote starts at the sentence that begins at the bottom of page 106 and continues to the end of the paragraph on top of page 107. It says that airborne transmission is frequently considered possible, but occurs rarely if at all. It mentions that the Reston virus “apparently” spread by the respiratory route—but does not include the details that indicate that the Reston facility where those monkeys were kept was quite dirty, and there was plenty of opportunity for virus to travel on clothing, shoes, cages, etc., to infect monkeys in a different room.
That pissonroses blog also claims that Ebola infects cells of the respiratory tract. It does not. It infects connective tissue cells. It gets into the blood because it infects cells that line blood vessels and certain blood cells. That blog also describes respiratory viruses, substituting in the word “Ebola” for an actual respiratory virus name. The blog also cites studies where Ebola was artificially aerosolized—which show that an Ebola infection can occur if one breathes in virus particles, but it does not show that animals naturally aerosolize virus (they don’t). The environment in which those aerosol studies are conducted is very unnatural—the animal is confined in a box, immobile, while an aerosol is mechanically generated and blown into its face. I can’t think of any natural situation that is equivalent.
Ebola does not typically cause respiratory symptoms, but if something makes an Ebola patient sneeze, and the mucous contains blood, the large particles could contain virus. This is what is known as “droplet” transmission, and is a form of direct transmission—the three foot distance you are recommended to put between yourself and an Ebola patient is to keep you out of range of droplets the patient might generate.
Anyway, I didn’t go over every item, but the bottom line is that that blog is not very accurate. I notice that whoever posted that blog is trying to sell stuff—and that is the main purpose of the sensational claims, to scare people into buying the stuff the blogger is selling (or to just donate to the blogger).
I hope this helps.
It’s as airborne as the common cold already. If someone has Ebola and sneezes the virus is there. The common cold is spread mostly by touching an object that has been touched or coughed on by someone with the virus and then by that person rubbing or touching their eyes, nose or mouth. Ebola spreads the same exact way.
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...