“The answer is no. If it were insect borne, the world would have been battling this decades ago.”
This is the sort of dogma that’s hindering an effective response to this.
The ONLY WAY to answer this question is to set up a fairly simple science experiment (which should have been done months ago) that TESTS THE QUESTION FOR THIS STRAIN OF THE VIRUS.
This virus is different in so many obvious ways. CIDRAP just yesterday was saying that the source of the breakdown in response to this is using what they THOUGHT THEY KNEW about SIMILAR VIRUSES to combat this one.
You don’t know the answer to the question until you conduct an experiment and collect the data. Then you publish the results to national health authorities in other countries and have them conduct the same experiment, and then compare the results.
Absence of evidence is simply not necessary here.
I am not trying to pick a fight. Honest.
But if you work the logic, there are many, many more insects flying around Africa than there are here. Wouldn’t there be a million cases there by now? As there are with Malaria?
And second, who is going to do this testing? One of the reasons there is not much known about this stuff is that no one wants to be the one to work the needles and what not. No one wants to touch this virus, even in a level 4 habitat.
Agree.
“We don’t know” does not mean “it can’t happen”