Ebola

If this were the case, it would show up in the larger population, not just in healthcare workers. If the virus has gone airborne or if asymptomatic carriers became infectious, you would be seeing entire populations dying off. So far, the spread is consistent with the known modes of transmission which are bodily fluids from symptomatic patients.

I'm not sure that's very reassuring.The disease has a high mortality rate and I think that is what makes it a worrisome issue, not the technicalities on how it is spread.

I'm quite sure you are incorrect. Given the high fatality rate, if Ebola were to mutate to the point where the virus could be transferred via air, we would have no hope of stopping the spread of Ebola before half of us (everyone in the world) were dead.On the other hand, if Ebola was spread only through sharing needles and having unprotected sex with a symptomatic patient, the viruses high fatality rate would result in the virus becoming self defeating.It is in fact the combination of relatively easy transmission and high fatality rate that make Ebola so dangerous. If it became possible to catch Ebola from an asymptomatic patient, that would present a substantial additional danger.

There is no record of any virus, ever, mutating to become capable of airborne transmission where it wasn't before. I realise you were making a rhetorical point here but I think it's worth pointing out how unlikely this scenario is. Ebola is not relatively easy to transmit; it transmits comparatively poorly - with a r₀ of around 2. This is why all previous Ebola outbreaks burned out pretty rapidly.

As some said early on, the evidence seems to point toward improperly followed procedures. I was thinking about how one would remove a pair of latex gloves after handling an Ebola patient without contaminating oneself. Once you've pulled the right one off, how do you pull the left one off without touching it with your right hand.So they double-glove, but I don't understand how that solves the problem. You pull the right one off, then contaminate the one underneath it when you pull the left one off. Same problem.So they must disinfect, pull off the outer gloves, then disinfect again, then pull off the inner gloves. Or maybe they have glove puller-offers?And that's just the gloves. How does one remove one of those outfits with headgear and gloves without contaminating something?So after thinking about this I'm still not so sure the possibility the virus isn't more virulent than it was before can be eliminated. There *have* been some minor genetic changes - in fact, the changes help track the pathway of the disease through human populations. Maybe it's just a little more resistant to disinfectant? Maybe it survives outside the body just a little longer? Maybe it adheres to surfaces just a little better?--Percy

She traveled by air to and from Ohio after treating the 1st Ebola patient. Should she have known that was not a good decision?

I am not in the know, but that is what I would suspect as well. Double gloving is usually used to protect against a tear in the outer glove, or unexpected contamination of the outer glove. I use double gloving when handling radioactive samples so that if something drips on the outer glove I can get rid of it quickly and still be protected. Virulence usually refers more to the lethality or the damage that a pathogen does instead of how easily it is trasmitted, although the terms can intermingle a bit. Grammar Nazi moment over . . .I wouldn't be surprised to see a virus that is a bit hardier in terms of surviving in the environment a bit longer since this would help transmit the disease in bats. However, I wouldn't expect to see resistance to disinfectants since the virus has become highly evolved in the absence of disinfectants. On top of that, most of the spread has been outside of hospitals in third world nations where disinfectants are rarely found.

Ah, yes, the bats.The Ebola virus has shown in West Africa because the people there eat roadkill en masse.When will we be ready to rightly attribute the cause of this outbreak to bad and inferior cultural practices?And, more so, will we be ready to actually start doing something real about these bad cultural practices?Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

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She traveled by air to and from Ohio after treating the 1st Ebola patient. Should she have known that was not a good decision?

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Apparently she called the CDC and told them she had a temp of 99.5. They said, "Hey, it's below the cutoff -- no problem, go wherever you want."

Ebola's greater spread in this outbreak can be adequately explained by greater mobility in the affected population, and the fact that it reached major urban centers. High rates of infection in medical personnel have been features of previous outbreaks as well, so they don't necessarily indicate any change. In this outbreak, MSF has had few of its workers infected, thanks to rigorous procedures, proper equipment and good training.Other comments:
You don't have to be paranoid or hysterical to be concerned about an uncontrolled epidemic of a disease with a 70% case fatality rate and virtually no natural immunity.An R0 of 2 is lower than for many viruses, but it's about the same as most influenza epidemics. I don't find that very reassuring.

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Ah, yes, the bats.

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The Ebola virus has shown in West Africa because the people there eat roadkill en masse.

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When will we be ready to rightly attribute the cause of this outbreak to bad and inferior cultural practices?

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And, more so, will we be ready to actually start doing something real about these bad cultural practices?

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They don't eat roadkill; they eat wild game, the same as people all over the world have done since forever. And eating game to avoid malnutrition is hardly a bad cultural practice. My brother-in-law eats wild game that he catches in the Midwest. Is that a bad cultural practice too?

You are right. It is technically called bushmeat. But it is very different from the sorts of animals typically hunted in the Midwest. Being malnourished is.

More bone-headed failures that have allowed Ebola to spread.Good idea or bad:I know the answer. Do you?

I gave some examples of what would be easy and hard transmissions. I don't see how you can dismiss a remark about 'relative' ease of transmission by citing an absolute number.Regarding an r0 of 2.0. Not all that comforting:Flu Transmission

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Some analyses report that influenza typically has a transmission rate of about 10. But others suggest that flu is not as highly transmissible in a community setting as has been imagined. The R0 for the 1918 pandemic was estimated to be only 1.8 in one study, while the 1918 pandemic strain's R0 was estimated at around 2 by another estimate.

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duplicateEdited by NoNukes, : No reason given.