Posted on 10/26/2014 5:07:51 PM PDT by nomad
That is exactly what airborne means.
airborne,
adj carried through the air. In health care settings, viruses or bacteria may become airborne, e.g., when someone sneezes or coughs - Mosby’s Dental Dictionary, 2nd edition. © 2008 Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved.
airborne /air·borne/ (ar´born) suspended in, transported by, or spread by air - Dorland’s Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers. © 2007 by Saunders, an imprint of Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved.
You are answering a question that wasn’t asked.
Aerosolized is not the same as "airborne" in the classic understanding of the term. But, it's a virus in its like, what? 25th generation in this outbreak. It's already weakened itself in order for its host to live longer and pass the infection along with a greater chance to find a new host. It people are picking it up from either surfaces or inhaled particles, it's really hard to tell. Best options are to expect that it will kill the over-confident, inattentive, or arrogant. Plenty of targets for that here in the U.S.
I’ve watched Canada geese walk on the ground for hours. This is proof that Canada geese are unable to fly.
Under specific conditions yes.
But, it will not mutate to an airborne virus that spreads like the common cold or flu.
I believe he was citing this study on the temp differences in viral survival http://www.mdpi.com/1999-415/4/10/2115/pdf
I believe that is absolutely true.
In 1983, at Fort Dettrick, they were studying Ebola in monkeys. They had a group of monkeys who they had given Ebola. They also had a control group who had not been given the virus who were in the same room but on the other side. They shared the same air. The Ebola infected monkeys were given various antibiotics and other things to see if any of it would work. None of it did and all the Ebola-infected monkeys died. Days later, the control group got sick and soon had Ebola and they died. They only thing they shared was the air they breathed. So, yeah, it got airborne.
I suspect that it goes airborn shortly before death, which explains why healthcare workers are the ones mostly getting and spreading it.
I see by reading other of your posts, that we are generally agreed on the basics.
No one has addressed the “when” in the course of the disease, is the most infective stage.
Most of those returning from Africa were treating very ill patients, those close to death. Would the likely hood of airborne transmittal be greater at this time?
Compare to someone infected who is just now coming down with some symptoms. There seems to be no one infected from Duncan’s early stages, but rather the later stages.
Mutant Ebola warning: Leading U.S. scientist warns deadly virus is already changing to become more contagious
I have been posting extensively on the fact that Ebola is not transmissible by aerosols, and I have even commented on that website before. Please look at my posting history.
That article claims to quote the USAMRIID BlueBook, but those quotes that are supposedly in the BlueBook are not actually there. I would post exactly what the BlueBook (7th edition, Sept 2011) says about transmissibility, but it is impossible to copy/paste from it. The passage I would quote starts at the sentence that begins at the bottom of page 106 and continues to the end of the paragraph on top of page 107. It says that airborne transmission is frequently considered possible, but occurs rarely if at all. It mentions that the Reston virus “apparently” spread by the respiratory route—but does not include the details that indicate that the Reston facility where those monkeys were kept was quite dirty, and there was plenty of opportunity for virus to travel on clothing, shoes, cages, etc., to infect monkeys in a different room.
That pissonroses blog also claims that Ebola infects cells of the respiratory tract. It does not. It infects connective tissue cells. It gets into the blood because it infects cells that line blood vessels and certain blood cells. That blog also describes respiratory viruses, substituting in the word “Ebola” for an actual respiratory virus name. The blog also cites studies where Ebola was artificially aerosolized—which show that an Ebola infection can occur if one breathes in virus particles, but it does not show that animals naturally aerosolize virus (they don’t). The environment in which those aerosol studies are conducted is very unnatural—the animal is confined in a box, immobile, while an aerosol is mechanically generated and blown into its face. I can’t think of any natural situation that is equivalent.
Ebola does not typically cause respiratory symptoms, but if something makes an Ebola patient sneeze, and the mucous contains blood, the large particles could contain virus. This is what is known as “droplet” transmission, and is a form of direct transmission—the three foot distance you are recommended to put between yourself and an Ebola patient is to keep you out of range of droplets the patient might generate.
Anyway, I didn’t go over every item, but the bottom line is that that blog is not very accurate. I notice that whoever posted that blog is trying to sell stuff—and that is the main purpose of the sensational claims, to scare people into buying the stuff the blogger is selling (or to just donate to the blogger).
I hope this helps.
Slyfox,
That strain may have been E. Reston.
The one that’s decimating w Africa is E. Zaire IIRC.
Different type & tranmissibility.
He`s saying that the present studies show that the tiniest droplets of, lets say a sneeze of cough, do not pose as great a danger in the hot and humid environment of Equatorial Africa as the virus will quickly go inactive due to environmental stresses, but, as the USAMRIID study showed, lower the temps and relative humidity and the virus has a much longer survivability outside the body.
Now for the virus embedded in it`s droplet which is floating thru the air, this opens the window of infectious opportunity. Someone sneezes in a cold and dry space, like a subway, and that droplet, with it`s cold preserved Ebola virus, floats around for extended periods of time and should be capable of causing infection.
Maybe you should have watched the Congressional hearings with the CDC.
Thank you. The CDC had to admit in the Congressional hearings that within a 3’ radius an Ebola victim could infect others. Although it’s not called airborne as that has another meaning, it is from sneezing, coughing, and other close things from ‘breath’.
The doctors also had to admit that the reason the airplanes were being scrubbed was that Ebola can live on a dry surface for hours. So a sneeze, cough particles can land on a surface like seats, windows, floor, and trays for hours, meaning a next flight could still be infected without the cleaning.
The aerosol form described in that paper is artificially generated, in which the animal is confined, immobile, while an aerosol is generated directly into its face. The virus does not even have time to dry out in that condition (drying kills it).
Getting sick from breathing an aerosol does not mean that one who is sick can generate an aerosol. For example, people who get sick from breathing anthrax spores are not contagious at all.
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