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To: palmer
Any enveloped virus would be closer. Herpes, Hep D, coronaviruses (upper respiratory mostly), and a number of other hemorrhagic viruses like Bunyaviridae.

Hmmm, compare Ebola to Herpes, simplex 1 (aka cold sore) I'm assuming? So you want to compare Ebola transmission to Herpes Simplex 1 transmission?

Hep D has the same transmission profile as HIV. Again, not a match for CDC's Ebola profile.

I'm guessing you're thinking Hanta for bunyaviridae? Respiratory vector, which makes its profile very different than that CDC insists for Ebola.

I'm looking at the rate of transmission in the population given the stated transmission vectors. If I used corona or hanta, exdemomom would have kittens insisting I'm spreading misinformation about Ebola and it's airborne status.

Noro makes the most sense to me because it has the closest transmission profile--infected feces, vomit, etc. --to that put forward for Ebola. We can discuss the particular differences between Noro and Ebola, and how those differences affect the two pathogens' rates of spread, but your suggested alternative pathogens don't share Ebola's transmission profile.

If Ebola were like that there would be a million dead by now in Africa.

How do you know there aren't? MSF says the official counts aren't even close to accurate, are off by a factor of at least five. How do you know there won't be a million dead Africans by the end of the month? Given the many, many times the virus has upended official pronouncements of what it can and cannot do, I'm leery of any assurance that we know XYZ.

So let's say that Ebola's transmission is a fourth of that of noro based upon reduced environmental persistence. That's five million cases of Ebola in the US alone (20m annual noro cases/4). Given a 70% mortality rate, that's 3,500,000 dead.

54 posted on 10/13/2014 5:05:51 AM PDT by ElenaM
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To: ElenaM; palmer

I should’ve noted that the 3.5M dead does not take into account any vaccine, post-exposure treatment, etc. It’s just raw numbers.


55 posted on 10/13/2014 5:09:27 AM PDT by ElenaM
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To: ElenaM
So let's say that Ebola's transmission is a fourth of that of noro based upon reduced environmental persistence. That's five million cases of Ebola in the US alone (20m annual noro cases/4). Given a 70% mortality rate, that's 3,500,000 dead.

Very bad math. First of all, noro is already endemic, ebola is not. Think of ebola like malaria. When malaria strikes here (happens fairly often), they track, isolate and spray any infected mosquito populations. At most we end up with a handful of cases. Malaria used to be endemic from Florida to Michigan (actually all the way to the Arctic). Now it is gone.

Granted mosquitoes are the only vector for malaria (a very fragile protoplasm) not contact, not fomites. But the seriousness with which we treat it is representative. Ebola will never be endemic here unlike noro.

56 posted on 10/13/2014 5:34:37 AM PDT by palmer (This comment is not approved or cleared by FDA)
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