Ebola outbreak 2014

[drsmith]

The following ABC article covers a broad range of possibilities and non-possibilities,

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-10/how-you-can-and-cannot-get-ebola/5803250

Oh, and Ebola zombies aren't real either

In recent days, reports that three people who died from Ebola later rose from the dead have spread widely across social media: one report alone has been shared more than 500,000 times on Twitter and Facebook.

It really should go without saying, but it is not real.

Snopes, the Independent, the Huffington Post and many, many others have the full debunking.

But honestly, there are better things to do with your time. Like go find out more about some real mental health issues.

 

[CanOz]

You can't catch Ebola in Australia. It wouldn't matter if a thousand infected people arrived, it can't spread here.

There are plenty of better things to be scared of.

Sorry if I missed this, but what are the odds of a mutation?

 

[Weatsop]

Sorry if I missed this, but what are the odds of a mutation?

With decades of experience and no significant mutation in that time, the chances are minimal.

It is true that the virus will mutate much faster in human hosts - we're not the natural host - and that absolutely is a slight concern. But "faster" in the context of a virus this lethargic is pretty close to nothing.

We're more likely to get it from any of, literally, millions of other virus species.

For example, Australian bat lyssavirus has a 100% death rate so far. If it goes airborne, we could be screwed (well actually, rabies vaccine should work, but we're not sure). Rabies itself still has a near 100% death rate (if you show symptoms). Why aren't we worried about that? Because it hasn't changed significantly for as long as we've had samples.

Most new viruses came from animals, and some were devastating to human populations when they arrived. Measles could kill well over 50% of a population when it first hit, and spreads like wildfire. Syphilis was actually too good at killing, and nearly wiped out the areas where it first emerged, until a milder version came along and got established.

There are almost certainly thousands, if not millions, of virus species in you right now. Another set of harmless viruses are in your dog. One mutation in a ubiquitous virus that makes it deadly, and... trouble. We get a new measles tomorrow - and one day we will - it's going to be hell.

The chance of a novel virus occurring is a function of: the human population; changes with our interactions with animals; and the amount of travel we do. All are at all-time highs. We've had lots of new ones lately. HIV, SARS, and Ebola are some of the more famous ones, but there have been a LOT.

Eventually one will be a big killer, it's inevitable.

Focussing on Ebola, one virus that has actually proven how stable it is, is probably not the most useful course of action.

---
Qualifications to say this stuff: I recently resigned from my job as the pandemic planning officer for an international organisation, to trade while I finish my medical science degree with a plan to get into virology research down the line. So yeah, pet subject.

 

[SirRumpole]

Focussing on Ebola, one virus that has actually proven how stable it is, is probably not the most useful course of action.

One question. If an infected person sneezes on someone who then inhales the mucus, is the second person infected ?

If so it can be spread by airborne germ, although at close quarters.

What about air-conditioning on aircraft circulating the disease around ?

 

[skyQuake]

With decades of experience and no significant mutation in that time, the chances are minimal.

It is true that the virus will mutate much faster in human hosts - we're not the natural host - and that absolutely is a slight concern. But "faster" in the context of a virus this lethargic is pretty close to nothing.

+1

Qualifications to say this stuff: I recently resigned from my job as the pandemic planning officer for an international organisation, to trade while I finish my medical science degree with a plan to get into virology research down the line. So yeah, pet subject.

You leave for one minute and all hell breaks loose!

One question. If an infected person sneezes on someone who then inhales the mucus, is the second person infected ?

If so it can be spread by airborne germ, although at close quarters.

What about air-conditioning on aircraft circulating the disease around ?

If the person inhales very deeply and quickly into the lungs then yes. Ebola isn't airborne unless you count the time its in the air from a sneeze.

It can't survive in air, aircon will kill it. So a plane is actually fine.

 

[Weatsop]

You leave for one minute and all hell breaks loose!

Meh, there's always something, and we had some Ebola outbreaks in DR Congo and Uganda the year before last, so I got to write a lot back then, and recycle it a bit when things were starting back at the start of the year.

MERS was more interesting (though looks boring now), and H7N9 looked touch and go there for a second (we were waiting to see where the bird migrations would take it, but nuthin'. SUCK IT, nature!)

Spent a lot of time digesting 2009, too. Wussiest pandemic of all time, but we were running almost at capacity on ventilators. In other words, if it had been twice as bad, we would have had a 50% death rate among those people who needed mechanical ventilation. Like, the first thousand all live, but every single person over that dies. That sort of thing.

More funding for public health, y'all. Using all your beds when it's quiet it stupid.

My planning was all pretty much adaptable to anything anyway, so they'll have brushed it off - probably the first time anyone else ever read the damn thing. Serious, when I took the role a few years ago, I found the old plan was missing three chapters. Intro paragraph for each was there, but the rest was just gone. Exec signed had off on it.

Sigh.

Ebola, as horrible as things are going now, is pretty much old news.

We know exactly how to knock it on the head, we just don't have the local resources - the chief resource we're lacking being "trust".

The only thing that looked new was the Spanish folk who decided that a pet dog might carry it. If they had any reason to think that was true, they should have isolated the thing and observed wot came out of the damn thing. That would have been new. We know dogs can be infected in a lab, but could it actually happen in real life? Would the dog shed enough virus to infect people?

Instead they kill it, which is perfectly half-arsed. Either it wasn't necessary, in which case, don't kill a dog for no reason, or dogs CAN catch and spread Ebola outside of a lab, in which case we REALLY need to know that. Either way, don't kill the dog.

Looks like a minister's-office sort of decision.

 

[skyQuake]

Good stuff weatsop,

I played a pandemic simulation game a while ago, was lots of fun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_Inc:_Evolved

You play as the disease trying to wipe out humanity and evolve on your merry way.
If nothing else, it's taught me if you become too deadly you'll garner unwated research attention and get wiped out by the combined medical community

 

[darkhorse70]

My bad. Clearly I was not well Informed this time. I accept defeat haha

 

[artist]

Eventually one will be a big killer, it's inevitable.

“Messieurs, c'est les microbes qui auront le dernier mot." (Gentlemen, it is the microbes who will have the last word.)”

― Louis Pasteur

 

[Weatsop]

My bad. Clearly I was not well Informed this time. I accept defeat haha

Dude, there are plenty of people who should know better, saying stupid stuff. Not surprising people get the wrong idea.

Saw the odious Dr Oz (who is either an idiot or a liar, and possibly both) this morning saying that treating Ebola in the US is like jumping out of a plane while you're still learning to put on the parachute - how can we possibly know what to do or what will happen when we've never had it before? Because of course, if it hasn't been done in America, it hasn't been done.

Uganda has stomped Ebola flat on multiple occasions. Hell, the east end of DR Congo is basically a ****hole full of Hutu ex-genocide-by-machete militiamen whose favourite pastime is raiding the local villages for people to rape and murder, and THEY'VE managed to contain Ebola.

And now America can't? Pffff.

 

[darkhorse70]

Haha weatsop, that made me crack up. Atleast I can tick one worry off my mind then.

 

[Craton]

Thanks weatsop for the great info and good luck on your academic pursuits.

 

[CanOz]

Agree, thanks weatstop!

 

[bellenuit]

Ebola crisis: Nigeria declared free of virus

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-afric...ng&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=news_central

 

[Weatsop]

Good stuff weatsop,

I played a pandemic simulation game a while ago, was lots of fun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_Inc:_Evolved

You play as the disease trying to wipe out humanity and evolve on your merry way.
If nothing else, it's taught me if you become too deadly you'll garner unwated research attention and get wiped out by the combined medical community

Was thinking about this game today. If you were designing the perfect killer, you'd go with something that can spread during the incubation period, and which had an incubation of a few years. Get everyone infected first, THEN start killing 'em.

(Which is actually sort of what syphilis did - when it first arrived it killed within weeks - really horrible stuff. Only that sucked at spreading, so it nearly wiped itself out. The more mild version that ended up spreading around could be passed on for years before you showed symptoms).

And you know, that's what mad cow's disease looked like for Europe, in the early stages. vCJD was incurable, had a really long incubation period, and we had absolutely no idea what proportion of the population was infected. It *could* have been that everyone who had eaten beef in Europe in the past ten years was about to hit the end of that incubation period.

We were seriously looking at a complete unknown, with one possibility being nearly 100% of all humans in Europe (and a fair number from other areas, too), dying within years.

Turned out it was really hard to catch (thank god), but really, we were a bad dice-roll away from a massive death-toll.

Makes you wonder what the next one will be. Maybe the stuff they use to coat iPhone screens kills you ten years after exposure...?

 

[SirRumpole]

Was thinking about this game today. If you were designing the perfect killer, you'd go with something that can spread during the incubation period, and which had an incubation of a few years. Get everyone infected first, THEN start killing 'em.

Like asbestosis, except it's not an epidemic.