Anyone following the ebola outbreak?

[Bonam]

Experimental drugs and/or vaccines will likely be available if/when it hits Western nations. The urgency of the research in this field has increased hugely, and it seems like it's not that difficult of a disease to deal with from a biological standpoint.

[NewLiberty]

Experimental drugs and/or vaccines will likely be available if/when it hits Western nations. The urgency of the research in this field has increased hugely, and it seems like it's not that difficult of a disease to deal with from a biological standpoint.

I also hope it gets contained.

By not so difficult, you mean that there is not really a lot that can be done at this time?
Isolation, monitoring fluids and electrolytes, not so hard yes.

The management of the biological waste, the availability and use of negative air-flow isolation units, and the virulence and risk to medical staff are significantly more difficult than most disorders.
There is also the social factor.  Folks tend to panic.  Medical staff, ambulance drivers (who are not at all equipped for this), sometimes just do not show up.
Even highly trained professionals make mistakes.

The two in Atlanta were handled in a special unit set up by the CDC.  Not every hospital has such units.  There is a lot of effort currently underway to be more prepared, but right now, we very much are not prepared.

If people are thinking that if they can just make it to the USA that they will live, that may cause some problems also.

[dodgecharger]

Clearly somebody infected with the virus could theoretically get on a plane and spark an outbreak – probably in a hospital – anywhere in the world. However, as with the Mers virus, which arrived in London via a patient who was taken to St Thomas' hospital, infection control measures are so stringent in more affluent countries that it is probable the virus would be very rapidly contained

[bryant.coleman]

Clearly somebody infected with the virus could theoretically get on a plane and spark an outbreak – probably in a hospital – anywhere in the world.

This has already happened. Patrick Sawyer, an infected individual from Liberia sparked an outbreak in Nigeria resulting in dozens getting the disease. Another example is the recent outbreak in Senegal. One infected individual from Guinea traveled to Senegal (although by road) and resulted in several people getting the disease. In both cases, the patients were under observation for Ebola. But due to incompetence from the authorities, they were allowed to travel.

[Bagatell]

But due to incompetence from the authorities, they were allowed to travel.

The authorities have been deliberately flying Ebola carriers around the world for some time now. This isn't incompetence, it's strategy.

[bryant.coleman]

The authorities have been deliberately flying Ebola carriers around the world for some time now. This isn't incompetence, it's strategy.

I don't want to get in to the conspiracy theories. But your post remembers me of an incident which happened during the 1980s.

At that time, HIV was a disease which was almost 100% confined to the homosexual community. A lot of people were dying of the disease (there were no ARVs back then), and the gays were accusing the government of deliberately exterminating them by releasing a previously unknown virus. So some of the homosexuals in California invented a strategy. They encouraged the infected gays to donate blood (hiding their status), so that more and more individuals from the general population would get the disease. That strategy was a total success. A lot of attention was generated, when people like Ryan White got infected.

[NewLiberty]

But due to incompetence from the authorities, they were allowed to travel.

The authorities have been deliberately flying Ebola carriers around the world for some time now. This isn't incompetence, it's strategy.

You would think if there were an organised and deliberate activity underway, there might be some effect of this?

In 2006, Ebola was identified as an "extinction event" to the WHO if an outbreak went uncontained.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-2006-mathematical-model-shows-how-ebola-could-wipe-us-out

[centauribit]

What is Ebola?
Ebola virus disease, which used to be called Ebola haemorrhagic fever, was named after the river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where one of the first two villages to report cases in 1976 was located. The other was in Sudan. Ebola is a severe viral illness with a sudden onset that comes from direct contact with infected living or dead rainforest animals, including chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, fruit bats, forest antelope and porcupines. It kills up to 90% of those who are infected.

[Balthazar]

centauribit

Are you trying to increment your post counter?

[itsAj]

The authorities have been deliberately flying Ebola carriers around the world for some time now. This isn't incompetence, it's strategy.

I don't want to get in to the conspiracy theories. But your post remembers me of an incident which happened during the 1980s.

At that time, HIV was a disease which was almost 100% confined to the homosexual community. A lot of people were dying of the disease (there were no ARVs back then), and the gays were accusing the government of deliberately exterminating them by releasing a previously unknown virus. So some of the homosexuals in California invented a strategy. They encouraged the infected gays to donate blood (hiding their status), so that more and more individuals from the general population would get the disease. That strategy was a total success. A lot of attention was generated, when people like Ryan White got infected.

That is disgusting. I do not have anything against gay people. However if someone were to purposefully try to get other people infected with an incurable disease/virus then they are truly evil and should be prosecuted. If this kind of thing had not happened then it would be possible that people with the virus had simply died off and it would cease to have spread.

[bryant.coleman]

Hmm.... maybe now it is the time to take this epidemic more seriously, as it seems that it will arrive in the European Union in a few days time.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2746452/UK-ebola-fear-21-000-African-students-countries-affected-regions-arrive.html

Meanwhile, Ebola continues to spread in Port Harcourt (Nigeria). 3 cases have been confirmed till now. Remember that Port Harcourt is home to a large number of EU citizens, who work in the petroleum sector.

[jason miner]

Ebola won't be that bad for the world, though. It needs proper conditions to thrive,
and it's too efficient to spread fast enough.
That's also not mentioning the fact that something
like Ebola would be shot down in a first world country's hospital

[dKingston]

I hope that they find a way to solve the problem.
Ebola is a virus that involves people a close contact and with more
exposition to the sick people, but the lethality is very high anyway.

[RedDiamond]

Here are the latest numbers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone: As of 6 September 4269 cases and 2288 deaths. 47% of deaths has occured in last 21 days.

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/132834/1/roadmapupdate8sept14_eng.pdf

[bryant.coleman]

Ebola won't be that bad for the world, though.

It can get extremely bad for the world, if some of the crowded slums in Lagos or Monrovia gets infected.

It needs proper conditions to thrive, and it's too efficient to spread fast enough.

What you said might have been true a few decades ago. But nowadays, tens of millions of people do international travel everyday. And it takes just a few hours to travel from one country to another, which is much shorter than the average incubation / gestational time for Ebola.

[bryant.coleman]

News coming in that Bill Gates has donated $50 million to fight Ebola. May god bless him.

More than 1,200 people have died of Ebola in Liberia, and just two out of the 15 counties are currently Ebola-free (Grand Kru and Maryland). Alarmingly, as the treatment centers are full, hundreds of infected individuals are being turned away untreated back to their villages right now.

[RedDiamond]

The current ebola virus is mutating very rapidly, therefore some experts are worried that it will become airborne:

"some of the nation's top infectious disease experts worry that this deadly virus could mutate and be transmitted just by a cough or a sneeze.
"It's the single greatest concern I've ever had in my 40-year public health career," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota."

"It's frightening to look at how much this virus mutated within just three weeks," said Dr. Pardis Sabeti, an associate professor at Harvard and senior associate member of the Broad Institute"

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/12/health/ebola-airborne/

[bryant.coleman]

The current ebola virus is mutating very rapidly, therefore some experts are worried that it will become airborne

I am not 100% sure, but as far as I know, a non-airborne virus will not mutate to airborne virus. There is not a single example in recorded history for something like this happening.

Meanwhile, there is good news from Senegal. So far, the disease seems to be limited to the first reported case. None of the others are infected. But at the same time, the news from WHO is that an unrelated Ebola epidemic is rapidly spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

[RedDiamond]

The current ebola virus is mutating very rapidly, therefore some experts are worried that it will become airborne

I am not 100% sure, but as far as I know, a non-airborne virus will not mutate to airborne virus. There is not a single example in recorded history for something like this happening.

Agree that it is unlikely. However, it has already been shown that Ebola can spread through the air between infected animals: "Here we show ZEBOV transmission from pigs to cynomolgus macaques without direct contact" http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00811/full/srep00811.html?message-global=remove&goback=.gde_4429892_member_187356406

"Under conditions of the current study, transmission of ZEBOV could have occurred either by inhalation (of aerosol or larger droplets), and/or droplet inoculation of eyes and mucosal surfaces and/or by fomites due to droplets generated during the cleaning of the room."

[NewLiberty]

The current ebola virus is mutating very rapidly, therefore some experts are worried that it will become airborne

I am not 100% sure, but as far as I know, a non-airborne virus will not mutate to airborne virus. There is not a single example in recorded history for something like this happening.

Meanwhile, there is good news from Senegal. So far, the disease seems to be limited to the first reported case. None of the others are infected. But at the same time, the news from WHO is that an unrelated Ebola epidemic is rapidly spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mutation is not necessary to weaponize the virus, aerosolizing it would create the threat of airborne distribution.
Mix an ebola patient, a drone and a single insane person and we have some serious problems.