Thanks for the information. RockLobster made a good response also.
The question that came to mind, is if this is like AIDS or is it an actual virus.
If it is a virus, then perhaps there is a window of potential cross infection. Then that window closes.
My concern had been if this was an immune deficiency sort of issue and if it was going to be an ongoing threat.
Both of you seem to believe it is not, and you have posted reasons for your belief.
I hope you’re both right. It would reduce my concern significantly.
The question that came to mind, is if this is like AIDS or is it an actual virus.
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Ebola is a ‘filovirus’ Filoviruses belong to a virus family called Filoviridae and can cause severe hemorrhagic fever in humans and nonhuman primates. So far, only two members of this virus family have been identified: Marburg virus and Ebola virus. Four species of Ebola virus have been identified: Ivory Coast, Sudan, Zaire, and Reston. Ebola-Reston is the only known filovirus that does not cause severe disease in humans; however, it can be fatal in monkeys.
Link: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/Fact_Sheets/Filovirus_Fact_Sheet.pdf
One way I have heard Ebola described is that it does, in a couple of days, what it takes AIDS 10 years to do. I will try to hunt that reference down because I think I saw more info to go along with that. If I find it, I’ll post it to you.
Ebola is a rather simple virus-as simple as a firestorm. It kills humans which swift efficiency and with a devastating range of effects.
Ebola is distantly related to measles, mumps, and rabies. It is also related to certain pneumonia viruses: to the parainfluenza virus, which causes colds in children, and to the respiratory syncytial virus, which can cause fatal pneumonia in a person who has AIDS. In its own evolution through unknown hosts and hidden pathways in the rain forest, Ebola seems to have developed the worst elements of all the above viruses. Like measles, it triggers a rash all over the body. some of its effects resemble rabies-psychosis, madness. Other of its effects look eerily like a bad cold.
The Ebola virus particle contains only seven different proteins-seven large molecules. Three of these proteins are vaguely understood, and four of the proteins are completely unknown-their structure and their function is a mystery. Whatever these Ebola proteins do, they seem to target the immune system for special attack. In this they are like HIV, which also destroys the immune system, but unlike the onset of HIV, the attack of Ebola is explosive. As Ebola sweeps through you, you immune system fails, and you seem to lose your ability to respond to viral attack. Your body becomes a city under seize, with its gates thrown open and hostile armies pouring in, making camp in the public squares and setting everything on fire; and from the moment Ebola enters your blood stream, the ware is already lost; you are almost certainly doomed. You can't fight off Ebola the way you fight off a cold. Ebola does in ten days what it takes AIDS ten years to accomplish.
It is not really known how Ebola is transmitted from person to person. Army researchers believed that Ebola virus traveled through direct contact with blood and bodily fluids (in the same way the AIDS virus travels). Ebola seemed to have other routes of travel as well.
Many of the people in Africa who came down with Ebola had handled Ebola-infected cadavers. It seems that one of Ebola's paths goes from the dead to the living, winding in trickles of uncoagulated blood and slimes that come out of the dead body. In Zaire during the 1976 outbreak, grieving relatives kissed and embraced the dead or prepared the body for burial, and then, three to fourteen days later, they broke with Ebola.
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From the link: The True Story of Ebola in Reston, Virginia
In October 1989 people in the community of Reston, Virginia went about their daily lives not realizing that a serious crisis was developing right in their back yards that would not be entirely resolved until March 1990. It was a serious calamity that could have wiped out the entire population. This dire emergency was described twenty years ago by Richard Preston in his non-fiction book, “The Hot Zone.” The “hot zone” refers to an “area that contains lethal, infectious organisms” also dubbed “hot agent,” an “extremely lethal virus, potentially airborne.” (Richard Preston, The Hot Zone, Random House, New York, 1994, p. 296) The people in the book are real, two victims’ names have been changed, and the narrative and dialogue were masterfully reconstructed from interviews and memories of those who participated in the crises.