Ebola news.
A near relative of the Moon Bat?
Thanks. Very scary to think of the impact if it got into the animal population here.
Fruit bats, however, are widely eaten in rural west Africa – either smoked, grilled or in a spicy soup
I’ll pass.
I was at a postoffice in Houston on Thursday, waiting in line. The black woman behind me was finishing some paperwork for priority mail. I glanced at it and she was sending envelopes to the Cammeroon Embassy in Washington DC. I looked up Camaroon on a map and it wasn’t good.
She didn’t cough or sneeze on me and I didn’t touch anything she had touched but it gave me a creepy feeling just standing next to her.
“The 17-strong team of European and African tropical disease researchers, ecologists and anthropologists have spent three weeks investigating the outbreak of the disease in Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Nigeria.”
About as believable as one of BLS’s statistics!
FR: Report: Ebola Virus Spread Because of Lax Quarantine Enforcement
Apparently bats are a well known vector for the virus.
Mixed Ebola strains now in new outbreak in Congo
“Dr. Niman over at rhizalabs is noting his concern about the reporting of a possible Ebola recombinant.
Dr. Niman comments:
Media reports describe the two confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as a Sudan cases and a mixture of Sudan and Zaire, raising concerns of a recombinant.
Dr. Niman’s next post follows:
Congo declares Ebola outbreak in northern Equateur province
KINSHASA Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:42am IST
Numbi said that one of the two cases that tested positive was for the Sudanese strain of the disease, while the other was a mixture between the Sudanese and the Zaire strain — the most lethal variety. “
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/08/24/us-health-ebola-congodemocratic-idINKBN0GO0R520140824
Bring Out Your Dead
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...
Now that the ecologists are involved global warming will be the cause.
Speaking of fruit bats anyone been to the west coast lately/s
Ping...
I have to point out that this is speculative. The boy was only pinpointed as patient zero through a retrospective analysis; how he fell ill is a guess.
Bats have been implicated in carrying Ebola, but no one knows for sure if they are the primary reservoir.
The little boy could have found a dead animal—bat or any other animal—in the forest and played with it. Or he could have touched some contaminated surface. We will never know.
I’ll remember not to play with fruit bats...