Posted on 09/04/2014 12:43:46 AM PDT by nickcarraway
A study in the journal Science, released last week, shows that the Ebola strain spreading across Western Africa has undergone a surprisingly high amount of genetic drift during the current outbreak. Experts say the mutations could eventually make the virus harder to diagnose and perhaps treat with a new therapeutic, should one come along.
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, I wrote that in response to the crisis, the Obama administration has stressed that the disease is unlikely to spread inside America. We will certainly see cases diagnosed here, and perhaps even experience some isolated clusters of disease. For now, though, the administration’s assurances are generally correct: Health-care workers in advanced Western nations maintain infection controls that can curtail the spread of non-airborne diseases like Ebola.
But our relative comfort in the U.S. is based on our belief that our public health tools could easily contain a virus spread only through direct contact. That would change radically if Ebola were to alter its mode of spread. We know the virus is mutating. Could it adapt in a way that makes it airborne?
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Thank you for clearing that up, as I was confused by the writer’s use of the term.
Thank you for your explanation, FRiend.
Thanks again.
Thanks for the ping!
You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!
If it gets loose at the mall on the first and fifteenth you have your golden ticket.
Make that the liquor store.
I think that might be a copyright violation. Good book. Cheap on a kindle. Give the brother his due.
In my lifetime the term "airborne" has been used by non-medical/non-scientific friends, family and acquaintances to mean "a disease that may be caught by inhaling the infected exhalations of another person." I think that's a fair definition of the layman's understanding. We both know that by that definition, Ebola is "airborne." I agree that the general public has no concept of the varied degrees and definitions applied in medicine but honestly, that makes the lies by omission that much worse IMO. Instead of announcing the facts, they weasel out of it by saying "technically Ebola is not transmitted by droplet nuclei, the most effective means of airborne transmission." That's going to be a real comfort to those who sicken and die because they inhaled infectious droplets while crammed on a subway or in an amphitheater or wherever, shoulder to shoulder with an infected (and likely unaware) person and clueless of the risk. Patients who picked up three Ebola particles from the elevator button will be relieved to know that the authorities were "technically correct."
MSF and WHO have squandered their credibility with me over the past couple of months for this very reason. MSF has the following heading their Ebola site:
What is EbolaEbola is a virus that can kill up to 90 percent of the people who catch it, causing terror among infected communities. Ebola can be caught from both humans and animals. It is not an air-borne disease. Human to human transmission occurs through close contact with bodily fluids of an Ebola-infected person. Patients need to be treated in isolation by staff wearing protective clothing. Supportive care can help the patient survive longer, and the extra time may just be what the patient’s own immune system needs to fight the virus.
The WHO, in the irony of the age, has a document on their site offering advice on official communications during an outbreak. According to their own document, creating and maintaining trust between officials and the public is critical during outbreaks. They insist that the public be given ALL relevant information to allow individuals to take appropriate precautions which in turn reduces or eliminates mass panic. Read it, it's a short document, and compare it to what we're hearing and reading from officials.
WHO Outbreak communications guidelines
I cannot count the number of times I've read statements from authorities along the lines of "as long as you aren't kissing corpses or mopping up vomit/blood you can't get Ebola." That meme is rapidly failing as we watch doctor after doctor sicken and die. The epidemiologist with no patient contact is interesting, too.
Droplets, however, fall, and so only people within a short distance of the patient (about a meter or so) risk exposure. Droplets do contaminate surfaces, but it is easier to avoid touching surfaces than it is to avoid breathing aerosols.
I simply don't know how to respond to this. How many common, everyday events meet the criteria of being less than 3 feet from someone coughing and sneezing? Mass transit, elevators, lines at a store, classrooms, school buses. . .. "Easier to avoid touching surfaces." Perhaps, if the general public knows they need to consider surfaces potentially dangerous. Have you noticed that none of the medical authorities are talking about that problem? It never comes up in offical statements regarding transmission vectors. We have a population intentionally left in the dark regarding both droplet inhalation and surface contamination risks.
Reasonably intelligent people are listening to the authorities pronouncements, watching video reports of physicians and staff clad head to toe in PPE contracting and dying of Ebola, and noticing the conflict. These people may not be scientists or medical personnel but they're smart enough to realize that it doesn't add up.
So much for that trust thing.
Panicking that Ebola is poised to start a pandemic that could wipe out over half of earth's population is *not* appropriate.
I don't know how many people will die from this outbreak but I think it will be a lot, somewhere in the millions. Given what's happened to date I see no serious effort to implement effective epidemiological controls, eg enforced quarantine. The man who took it to Port Harcourt and the doctor who treated him in a hotel room are precisely the kind of people who will spread this far and wide. I certainly don't believe that Americans are protected from it. We're just farther down the infection chain.
I think it is easy to contain, but extremely virulent. Who is going to put their kids in the shed in the back yard waiting to see if they die? Sure, you might remain well, but you will go insane.
The body fluids come from every opening as your cells are destroyed. Not just the “obvious” ones at your ends. Sweat, tears, finger nails, nose, etc all leak. Your vomiting is projectile and ferocious. The diarheria is explosive. You thrash about in convulsions. This stuff is whipped all over the room.
Keep in mind at the beginng stages the medical personnel die first. Then, a good portion of them take off.
These are the facts as I have seen then described in Preston’s book and other, more recent publications.
Now, picture that scenario in a subway train. Or in Times Square.
In Preston’s book the army said that they had not done a lot of testing to see how long the virus remains virulent in a dry form. They indicated that would be deemed weaponization work. My guess is that they are full of crap and know exactly what it would do. tHAT is the part of this that scares the hell out of me when we see breakouts of multiple strains.
If it were truly airborne more people on airplanes would be coming down with it. Entire plane loads.
I would just prefer it be in bed, 2045, with a 30 year old blonde who’s intent is to work me into a heart attack or stroke for all of my money. Not on a cot in some blue ceramic brick walled room with a drain in the floor.
There are several big advantages that Americans have over other nations.
1) Extremely good personal hygiene and public sanitation. During WWII, the US government launched a never ending program to teach Americans hygiene, sanitation, and decontamination.
2) Standoffishness. When the threat of epidemics hit, Americans quickly forgo mass gatherings like sports events, which are often officially banned early on. They also increase their personal comfort zone distance from others, and definitely avoid being around those who are sick.
3) Health authority obedience. Only a small, if vocal, minority oppose vaccination and other official remedies if offered. Those who are suspicious usually “button up” to try to preserve their health in isolation, which itself is effective.
4) About 10% of the US population has some degree of general immunity to epidemic pathogens, which goes back to their European ancestry and the black plague of the 14th Century. This also renders them partially or fully immune to HIV, influenza, the common cold, etc. The pool of those who are partially immune, who would catch the disease but get better, provides a potentially huge amount of available antibodies for everyone else.
What I have read about viruses is that just one of the protein strands that make up a virus can reweave itself to make a virus either give you the sniffles or bleed you out through every orifice.
Thanks TOL! Actually was able to read the report yesterday. The report is a denial of ebola being able to go airborne.
Wait that graph hasn’t been updated. The lastest count was 3700 as of Aug 31 and that graph is stopping at 3000.
I doubt anyone who knew what they were doing would weaponize Ebola. At least not if they noticed it’s mutation rate. You don’t want to introduce a weapon you can’t control.
That’s not saying low tech Islamists could well try to use it as a weapon just by spreading it around without thinking through the consequences of such as act.
But I think governments fear panics and the economic effects of quarantines and that can certainly contribute to a level of dishonesty about the disease.
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