Goofing around with technical and possibly misleading definitions is just one of the variations of the hubris that will get people killed.
If it isn't airborne, it is damned sure airmobile.
( nice one that, Joe ) -----------------------------------------
I've been with you on this for a long time. CDC and Lab rats should take all the studies with a big grain of salt. This ain't the same Ebola of 1976 or whatever. It's a new critter, similar but that 3% genetic difference maybe makes it different.
There are doctors and nurses fighting this on the ground. MSF has been there and done that before, and they're telling us it's different. My money is on them, not the Unka Sugar paper shufflers.
The actual genetic difference is about 1.5%, and it means very little as far as the pathogenicity of the disease goes. All viruses, especially RNA viruses, mutate quite readily, so that when a person is sick with a virus, they are sick with a population of different viruses, and not with millions of identical viruses. This outbreak is Ebola Zaire, the original strain of Ebola that was identified in what is now the DRC.
The differences we see with this outbreak have nothing to do with the virus, but everything to do with the circumstances of the outbreak. Ebola has always emerged in rural areas and died out before it could reach population centers. This time, it managed to make its way to population centers. There had never been an outbreak of Ebola in these countries before, so medical staff thought it was malaria or Lassa fever, both of which are endemic to the region. It took months before a doctor who is familiar with Ebola noticed that patients were hiccuping; this led to the appropriate testing and identification of the disease. By this time, it had been spreading for 3 months. These countries have been engaged in civil wars for years, leaving them with almost no infrastructure and grossly inadequate healthcare systems, so that they are unable to contain Ebola the way other countries can contain it. And so on.