Airborne Transmission of Ebola

American Thinker ^ | August 24, 2014 | Ronald R. Cherry, MD

[right-wing agnostic]

The public has been misinformed regarding human-to-human transmission of Ebola. Assurances that Ebola can be transmitted only through direct contact with bodily fluids need to be seriously scrutinized in the wake of the West Africa outbreak.

The Canadian Health Department states that airborne transmission of Ebola is strongly suspected and the CDC admits that Ebola can be transmitted in situations where there is no physical contact between people, i.e.: via direct airborne inhalation into the lungs or into the eyes, or via contact with airborne fomites which adhere to nearby surfaces. That helps explain why 81 doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers have died in West Africa to date. These courageous healthcare providers use careful CDC-level barrier precautions such as gowns, gloves, and head cover, but it appears they have inadequate respiratory and eye protection. Dr. Michael V. Callahan, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital who has worked in Africa during Ebola outbreaks said that minimum CDC level precautions

“led to the infection of my nurses and physician co-workers who came in contact with body fluids.”

[steve86]

those of us who pointed out the "sudden" change in narrative that perfectly fit the 0bama regime's importing of ebola into the US.

That's schizoaffective type thinking. Unwarranted and delusional. I don't imagine the current residents of the white hut want to die from Ebola in the U.S. any more than you do. And I have trouble picturing Michele willingly sacrificing her kids for "the cause". And, no, there aren't enough doses of anti-viral to go around for all the Obamas, Bidens, Pelosis, Reids, et. al.

[COBOL2Java]

I’m waiting for a jihadi to intentionally infect himself, then strap on a suicide vest and aerosolize himself in a crowded environment. To the world, it would look like a standard suicide bomb. But 3 or 4 weeks later, the survivors in the crowd will have symptoms. And over those 3 or 4 weeks, a much larger group will have been exposed.

My Son-in-Law did two tours of duty in Djibouti. He said there are enough hopeless men there who, if promised by the warlords that their families would be taken care of, would be more than willing to do just as you described.

[Smokin' Joe]

There are many variables that these opinions never consider simply because the writers are emotionally compromised or don’t understand the lax precautions and protocols used in these clinics, particularly early on in the outbreak.

All things which would be somewhat unusual for the MD who wrote the article.

[Veto!]

Some FReepers have read the 20-year-old bestseller, The Hot Zone, which describes in detail the grisly deaths of hundreds of monkeys kept for experimentation at a Reston, VA facility. Ebola Reston most assuredly spread from one closed monkey room to another via air ducts.

A few people were exposed, one slit his finger through layers of heavy gloves while dissecting a monkey carcass riddled with ebola virus threads. He did NOT get ebola, nor did anyone else.

[FatherofFive]

It's already there in Lagos, has been for a while.

Thanks for that. I need to start paying closer attention

[The Sons of Liberty]

“Never let a crisis go to waste” - spoken by your kenyan commie himself. No, I ‘m not schizo and I have certificates on file to prove it. Can you say the same. As for sufficient doses for the king and his court, how the hell do you know?

[PJ-Comix]

If this were a Hollywood virus contagion movie...

The victims would turn into vampires.

[Gamecock]

In the past cohple of days I have passed through airports in Hong Kong,Taipei and L.A.

In both of the Asian aiports there were health officials scanning the masses that were arriving. In Taipei they had infared cameras pointed right down the corrider that people needed to pass through. Hong Kong might have had the same and I just didn't notice.

Guess what LAX had? </rhetorical question>

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Smokin' Joe]

A few people were exposed, one slit his finger through layers of heavy gloves while dissecting a monkey carcass riddled with ebola virus threads. He did NOT get ebola, nor did anyone else.

While no one came down with the symptoms, iirc, they did have the antigens present in their blood. They were infected, but Ebola reston doesn't affect humans the same as the monkeys.

[Smokin' Joe]

You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!

[Smokin' Joe]

I don't imagine the current residents of the white hut want to die from Ebola in the U.S. any more than you do.

Virtually every vehicle the POTUS travels in has air filtration to prevent NBC agents from contaminating the cabin. He'd be golfing in Hawaii long before that happened.

[steve86]

True.

[Cold Heat]

The test referred to in the article stated the cages were 10 feet apart.

The second test mentioned in the article, (to which I am commenting upon) had the cages three feet apart.

The Reston test, and there was no test at Reston, was a anecdotal observation made by one of the employees who had contracted Reston. He stated that he believed that the virus must have been airborne because a group of monkeys in another room that they thought were unaffected, also got the disease. The fact is that they never could establish that there was no cross contamination, the place was a crap hole.

So it was not a test and was only a anecdote.

That is hardly a scientific basis to support a conclusion that the virus was airborne. But a lot of people believe it because a writer presented it that way to gain attention, I suspect..

[Cold Heat]

That’s my opinion....

So I suppose what I am saying is that the writer is misinformed. Or is trying to get attention.

Being a MD in my reality, is not necessarily a automatic qualification.

[Smokin' Joe]

Being an MD, from a scientific standpoint, means unlike someone just spewing whatever on a blog who can get up in the morning and spew about something else, the guy has skin in the game.

He has a reputation on the line, for good or ill. In some circles your reputation can make you or break you, professionally.

It would be decidedly uncharacteristic for a Medical Doctor to stick his professional neck out and say the CDC was recommending insufficient PPE for medical personnel unless he or she had darned good reason to believe they were correct and unless he or she could lay out evidence to that effect.

The doctor laid out his evidence. What is yours to the contrary?

[Dark Wing]

>>>The victims would turn into vampires.

Zombie Vampires.

_Sexy_ Zombie vampires.

[Cold Heat]

I have to go back to what I said about his evidence. He used evidence that did not prove his allegations. So his conclusion was just conjecture off the top of his head where he intentionally (being a doctor) misapplied the term “airborne” and conflated it with “casual”.

That’s what he did, and that’s my evidence.

[Cold Heat]

Just for fun, I pulled up a WHO report from April of 2009. From what I am reading in all of these articles using the term "airborne", all seem to relate back to the statements in this article.

Just to be clear, in this article they reference a test where they tested "aerosol' infection routes and using Ebola Zaire in primates, they determined that the "aerosol" or small particle spray of infection containing mucosa or fluids, had a virus load that was enough to infect the primates tested. The term "aerosol" does not mean airborne unless it specifically says so. It does not delinieate that the radius or distance from a infected patient, primate or human, can be small,large or unlimited in the real world. Aerosols, as you can exhibit and test for yourself at home with a spray bottle, do not travel far without assistance from wind or some other natural or artificial aid. And as mentioned in that doctors report, these aerosols can easily deposit virus on nearby surfaces. And aerosols do not mean exhaled breath. (I see no testing in this regard)

There have been no tests of the distances, however it is a fact that flu has this same transmission ability as do other viruses and the experiments were done with fairly close distances between cages..they were not testing for distance, only the viral load/aerosol "via aerosols") So in no case can I find the word "airborne" used with these aerosol infections or "liquid spray" It is still considered to be direct contact with excretions of the infected and why eye protection and masks and gowns are used as protection.

Now you could run some tests as to how a human might aerosolize their excretions, and how small a particle is created, and exactly what protection should be used for that, but I have never seen that research, so I believe what they do act with a abundance of caution with appropriate filter sizes and decontamination of surfaces on a regular basis in any area when infected patients are cared for or were known to have been.

But the term "airborne" carries with it certain connotations in that like a gas, or dust, the contaminant can hang in the air for hours and travel with the wind or simply precipitate where it wants to. It appears to me, reading all this literature, that the term "airborne" is a word that came from a Hollywood movie, decades ago.

They are not saying this in any of these experiments or tests. The purpose of the experiment was only to show that a small particle could carry a large enough virus load to infect.

Here is the quote:

Close or direct contact with the infected blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids appears to be the most likely source of infection of Reston ebolavirus and other Filoviruses. Bodily fluids of concern include: • Faeces – Reston ebolavirus has been detected in the epithelial cells of the gut mucosa in infected primates. Marked ulceration of gut mucosa has been noted during autopsies of infected non‐human primates indicating that viral shedding in faeces is likely; • Blood – evidence from other Filoviruses indicates that contact with infected blood can result in transmission; • Urine ‐ evidence from Filovirus infection in humans and monkeys indicates that the virus is excreted in urine; • Respiratory tract – no experimental inoculation has been performed for Reston ebolavirus. However, respiratory spread between non‐human primates is thought to have occurred during the 1989/90 outbreak in Reston, USA. Of note, experimental infection by aerosol route with Zaire ebolavirus has demonstrated that small particle aerosols are infectious at very low doses. Possible routes of entry include: • Inoculation. • Conjunctival/ocular mucosa – this has been demonstrated for Zaire ebolavirus in guinea pigs but no laboratory experiments have yet been performed for Reston ebolavirus. • Oral infection – this has been demonstrated for Zaire ebolavirus in monkeys but no laboratory experiments have yet been performed for Reston ebolavirus. • Respiratory – see above. Answer 6d: There is conclusive evidence that non-human primates can transmit Reston ebolavirus to humans. The most likely route of transmission is by direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals. Possible routes of entry include inoculation, conjunctival contact and possibly inhalation.

[Cold Heat]

Aerosol:

“A substance consisting of very fine particles of a liquid or solid suspended in a gas. Mist, which consists of very fine droplets of water in air, is an aerosol. Compare emulsionfoam”

Airborne:

“airborne transmission - a transmission mechanism in the which the infectious agent is spread as an aerosol and usually enters a person through the respiratory tract
transmission mechanism - any mechanism whereby an infectious agent is spread from a reservoir to a human being”

Without any limitations on distance of travel, the term is misleading, frankly, neither does the term aerosol limit the range, but a human being is not a atomizer, or nebulizer machine, and the distance that a aerosol created by a human is limited to particle size and what it’s suspended in.

In none of these tests or experiments, is the distance a part of the testing. The one test I did read, it was about three feet, which I would say is well within the range that a animal or human can project aerosol spray. I have seen animals spit at least ten feet, and humans can do three feet easily just by talking. I think they are just using common sense.

In addition, the respiratory tract or portions of it, including mouth and throat do seem to be involved in the transmission of Ebola as indicated by the WHO report, but it’s clearly shown that the eyes are as well and a typical way would be hand to mouth or finger to eye, even if gloved.

Proximity without a mask may also be a transmission method and that is what I believe they showed with the monkey test.

But for a doctor to chastise the CDC, essentially saying that they are lying to people because they did not use the term “airborne’ is utterly shameless in my view as the term Aerosol, covers that aspect in the case of Ebola and many other viruses.

I think he is begging for attention.