Ebola outbreak spreads to Gabon

GENEVA (June 26, 2002 12:47 a.m. EDT) - Experts investigating a possible outbreak of the deadly ebola virus in Republic of Congo have found four suspected cases in neighboring Gabon, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

Two people died and two were sick with ebola-like symptoms in the village of Ekata in the remote north of the central African nation, in the Ogooue-Ivindo province, said spokeswoman Fadela Chaib.

Six similar cases, including five deaths, already have been reported in northern Republic of Congo.

Chaib said experts from WHO and the two governments involved had failed to persuade people in the infected communities to give blood samples to confirm that the disease is ebola.

"The local community is afraid of this disease and isn't cooperating with the experts," she said. "But the WHO expert is pretty sure that it is ebola."

One of the people who died in Gabon had recently been in Republic of Congo, Chaib added.

Ebola is one of the world's deadliest viral diseases, causing death through massive blood loss in up to 90 percent of those infected.

It spreads through bodily fluids and attacks internal organs, causing bloody diarrhea and vomiting. Within two weeks, the victim usually dies from massive blood loss.

The last ebola outbreak in the region lasted from October to February, killing 43 people in Republic of Congo and 53 in Gabon, according to WHO.

WHO says that outbreak, was sparked after contact with an infected gorilla. Primates can also contract the virus and die of it.

WHO says over 1,000 people have died of the disease since the virus was first identified in 1976 in western Sudan and in a nearby region of Congo

The following is an exerpt from the book The Hot Zone that is truly one of the most frightening reads out there....especially when yo consider that it is 100% true! And the funny thing is that it was so darn interesting...yet so scaringly blood-curdling at the same time.

And honestly if viruses like Lassa,Marburg, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan, the Kyansanur Forest Brain Virus, the rabies like Mokola and Duvenhage, O'nyongnyong, the Nameless Sao Paulo, Crimean-congo, the Semliki Forest Agent, Chikungunya (i wonder what that one does), Q, Oropouche, Machupo, Junin, LeDantec, Guanarito, Ebola Reston etc etc keep on emerging, one wonders whats next. People look at HIV and they think it is bad....but HIV is 'only' a level 2 virus....Ebola and its aggressive cousins like Marburg are level 4 viruses. And they have already started leaping continents...for example Ebola Reston is found in the Philippines (actually discovered in the US near Washington DC from monkeys from the Philippines in 1990 i believe). And although Reston is basically like the Zaire strain of Ebola, but although it nukes monkeys (and scientists refer to the effects of ebola as nuking since it is virtually living plutonium) it is bening to humans (unlike its cousins ebola zaire and sudan that liquefy humans). However the threat of Reston is that it had not only come to the US, and not only spread to the phillipines.....but that it had become extremely airborne through a simple mutation in its RNA structure. Now imagine if Ebola Zaire or Marburg, or even the 'Kyanasur Forest Brain virus' decided to become perfectly airborne! And remember that Ebola Zaire in its current form only requires three virus particles to infect a person....yet every drop of blood of someone afflicted with Ebola Zaire has over a hundred million individual virus particles per drop! That is overkill.

According to some scientists we are looking at an 'andromeda strain' that would kill over 90% of thew human population! From 6 billion to 600 million in less than a year!

And the funny thing is that as more and more of the Tropical jungles are cut down then more and more of these crazy viruses get exposed to humanity! For example the reason for HIV was a mixture of cutting down west African forests in the sixties and seventies....as well as the construction of the Kinshasa highway (which proved to be a conduit of its spread to nodal points and then to the rest of the world). Actually i have read some scientists claim that Ebola and other filoviruses are natures way of ridding itself of too many humans....a hyper-efficient immune system to take care of the 'human cancer.' What happens if logging in the congo or in the Amazon or in the jungles of Asia unveils some 'andromeda strain' virus that had been in hiding for eons, and unleashes it on humanity...and this time it is not onyl super-contagious like Marburg or Ebola Zaire but also perfectly airborne....and kills like Ebola Zaire! Seems like Apocalypse to me.

And i know i know....for a moment there i sounded like one of those 'environmental freaks' who hug trees and claim development is anathema! I am NOT one of them. However the reason my statements were thus is due tot he following exerpt from the Hot Zone:

Ebola Zaire attacks every organ and tissue in the human body except skeletal muscle and bone. It is a perfect parasite since it transforms virtually every part of the body into a digested slime of virus particles. The skin bubbles up into a sea of tiny white blisters mixed with red spots known as a masculopapular rash. the rash is likened to tapioca pudding. The red spots merge to fom huge spontaneoue bruises,and the skin goes soft and pulpy and may tear off if touched. Your mouth bleeds, and you bleed around your teeth, and you may have hamorrahages from the salivary glands....literally every opening in the body bleeds, no matter how small. The surface of the tongue turns brilliant red and then sloughs off, and is swallowed or spat out. It is said to be extraordinarily painful to lose the surface of ones tongue. The tongue's surface may be sloughed off during the rushes of the black vomit (you vomit your stomach lining mixed with dead blood cells....it is black). The back of your throat and the lining of the windpipe may also slough off, and the dead tissue slides down the windpipe into the lungs or is couphed up with sputum. Your heart bleeds into itself, and the heart muscle softens and has hemorrhages into its chambers, and the blood squeezes out of the heart as it beats and bleeds into the chest cavity. The brain becomes clogged with dead bllod cells, a condition known as 'sludging of the brain.' The lining of your eyeballs is attacked, filling the eyes with blood...you may go blind. Droplets of blood stand out on your eyelids...you may weep blood. The blood runs from your eyes down your cheeks and refuses to coagulate. You may have a hemispherical stroke, in which one whole side of your body is paralyzed, which is invariably fatal in Ebola. Your liver bulges up and turns yellow, beginning to liquefy, and then it splits apart. It goes putrid. The kidneys get jammed with dead blood cells and stop functioning. The blood becomes toxic with urine. The spleen turns into a huge hard blood clot the size of a base ball. The intenstines may fill up completely with blood. The lining of the gut dies and sloughs off into the bowels, and is defacated with large amounts of blood. In men the testicles bloat up and turn black-and-blue. In women the labia turn blue livid and massive bleeding occurs. In both sexes the nipples bleed. Pregnant women spontaneously abort their babies (who are born usually ebola ridden with bleeding noses and red eyes). The brain is destroyed leading to grand mal seizures. Each DROP of blood contains around a hundred million individual virus particles (note only THREE particles are required for infection). By the time the person dies his internal organs had died days ago!

Nice!

I was re-reading my post (no.3) and I was thinking of the impact of the world going from 6 billion to 600 million in under a year (in the event of an 'andromeda strain' variant of Ebola Zaire or one of the myriad of viruses that keep popping up if they decide to become perfectly airborne) and it shocked me.

What would happen to all of those bodies? Would the rot not lead to more problems like cholera and dysentry? (Although seeing billions 'crash and bleed' out of every pore and orifice would probably make death by typhoid or cholera welcome)! That would be a virtual end to the world as we know it! And with current logging procedures in the rain forests it is only a matter of time before those loggers come into contact with the host (which is actually unknown in most cases...but usually the virus jumps from its host to some primate, and then to the humans working there). Then it is only a matter of time before the infected human reaches a 'node of global reach' like a city or port, and suddenly the virus is global! After all how did Ebola Reston get to the Phillipines?

Now i have to wonder....what happens if some killer strain (with Ebola Zaire's potency) is 'discovered' by some loggers eating the flesh of some duiker for lunch, and this super virus not only has the potency of Ebola Zaire but is airborne like Ebola Reston, has an incubation period of two weeks (to allow for proper dispersal), and instead of killing 90% of its victims it kills 99%! And obviously being a virus it has no cure!

It makes those verses in Revelations of a 'third of humanity' dying off start to sound extremely possible! Darn it...now i am scaring myself! And if you look at all those viruses i posted in post # 3 you have to bear in mind those are only SOME of the ones that have emerged within the last decade or so! And they all emerge from locales next to logging in tropical jungles as the loggers come into contact with the vector/host of the virus (which had before never come into contact with humans), and from the loggers it goes to truckers, prostitutes, travellers, businesspeople, third graders etc etc! And if the andromeda strain (or even an 'improved' version of Ebola Zaire that can be transmited perfectly through the air) then we look at the mortality of 90%+ of the human populace in less than a year! Actually that was the first time i ever re-read a post of mine as if i did not write it (that is no 3).

Someone say Extinction Level Event

The good thing about these viruses is that the fatality rates help to limit their spreaad. Nevertheless, your description of Ebola's effects are stomach churning

Yep...at present one could say horrors like Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan and Marburg are 'containable' because they kill so fast that their spread is curtailed. After all one of the reasons HIV has spread is that it has a long incubation period.

However imagine if a killer virus in the league of Ebola Zaire emerged from some jungle sanctuary....and instead of being highly contagious (like Ebola) it is SUPER contagious (like Influenza)! That would be an extinction level event quicker than you could say 'oooops!' After all most influenza (i am saying most but i think it is all) arise from pig farms in and around the HongKong area, and in a matter of weeks spread across the globe like wildfire...ending up finally in the US. Actually the methodology used to prepare stains to make flu vaccinations is to 'intercept' the virus before it hits the US.

Now imagine a super virus....which is as virile as Ebola Zaire yet spreads at a frenetic pace comparable to Influenza! Then it would really not matter whether or not it kills in 14 days since the rate of spread would be faster than the kill rate. This would lead to an extinction level event since the kill rate for 'normal' Ebola is over 90% (6 billion becomes 6oo million within months).

And since there is no cure for the filovirus the only defense would be that employed by the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases)......which is wearing 'space suits' over 2 inner layers of space suits, and taping all seals and carrying a self contained air supply....as well as ensuring decontamination using a mix of UV rays and potent chemicals. After all that is the precautions they take against level 4 viruses like Marburg and Ebola (for comparison purposes it should be noted that HIV is a level 2 virus).

I really doubt many people would be able to undertake such precautions....and thus in the face of an onslaught of a super virus that kills like Ebola yet spreads like the flu it would only be a matter of time before Homo Sapien Sapiens becomes another declining species!

And by the way here is a pic of dear ol' Ebola Zaire:

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