Posted on 03/28/2014 6:34:35 PM PDT by Kartographer
Fears are growing that the most lethal form of the Ebola virus can mutate into an airborne pathogen, making the spread of the terrifying disease more difficult to check. It was previously thought the untreatable virus, which causes massive internal bleeding and multiple organ failure, could only be transmitted through contact with infected blood. But now Canadian researchers have carried out experiments showing how monkeys can catch the deadly disease from infected pigs without coming into direct contact.k
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It was helped to be airbourne?!?!?!?!?!?
Outbreak was a very enjoyable movie.
“But don’t forget, Islamic clerics will still be opposed to vaccinating their own people”
We have a bunch right here on FR who would be opposed to being vaccinated because they just “know that Big Pharma is just doing it to make money”.
And the Clancy novel “Executive Orders”.
I thought it interesting that as this thing “escalated so to speak, Uganda let their people know that BATS are forbidden to eat.
And RATS are probably not a good idea to eat.
Until RATS are also forbidden, I’m skeptical that this will jump to a civilized country.
There may be something in it for them to scare us though.
Well, isn’t that just lovely!
PING!
If I remember right, Ebola has a recorded outbreak of an airborne strain right here in the U.S. and the strain was named after the town were it was identified, Ebola Reston.
Reston, Virginia was home to a strain that luckily, was only dangerous to simians, but it was airborne, so its not beyond the realm of possibility for a strain to develop that harmful to humans.
These filoviruses are extremely hard to grow in a lab as they obliterate the cell cultures rapidly and make them hard to study. Plus, now the labs that work with them have a myriad of safeguards to protect everyone, unlike when I worked with just gloves and a hood.
Life, death, undeath.
May God have mercy on our poor souls. Amen.
Lassa fever, like what might infect those cute monkeys the animal rights nuts were carrying out of a lab two at a time?
I’d laugh my butt off if that were to happen.
There’s a whole lot of nasty diseases that fortunately aren’t airborne transmitted, and hopefully never are, because we would be in a world of hurt.
Society would quickly come undone.
68%
“Hmmm, how is it that we never heard of this sort of disease from the annals of the early explorers?”
There weren’t any early explorers. The African continent is a plateau making its rivers, other than the Nile, unnavigable from the sea.
Parts of Africa were never explored until 1900 and that includes the Congo, where ebola lives. The first known case occurred in 1976.
I think about 1976
Back in 1980 or '81 I spoke with an American doctor named Bruce Johnson, IIRC, in Nairobi, who was doing research on hemorrhagic fevers - Ebola, Marburg, etc. Not much was known at the time and he needed specimens from victims in order to do his research.
He gave me several articles to pass along to the various bush medical personnel I worked with and asked that they notify him of any possible cases. I volunteered to fly the specimens back to Nairobi. (Note to self: Not such a bright idea, in retrospect!)
There had been an outbreak in Southern Sudan in the late 1970's that killed 126, IIRC. The effects were so horrendous that the entire hospital staff ran away.
There was also an outbreak in Marberg, Germany in the 1970's related to a shipment of monkeys from Central Africa. Also, a schoolgirl in Western Kenya who fed the monkeys developed acae, but I believe that she recovered. There is also a milder Rift Valley Hemorrhagic Fever. They had a case near Kijabe, Kenya
Ebola has also been found in a small antelope, as well as chimpanzees and gorillas.
Those must be the same monkeys that my drivers took pics of jumping from tree to tree on upper 84N in upstate NY in 1991?
I think the Black Death can be airborne and is called the Pneumonic Plague. The Pneumonic Plague is spread by airborne droplets.
air travel puts te whole world in danger
if intercontinental travel was restricted to ships, it could be contained. but since a person can be infected, board a plane, and travel from Africa to the US before symptoms begin showing.... we’re all hosed
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