Posted on 08/03/2014 6:05:39 PM PDT by Innovative
When news broke that the Ebola virus had resurfaced in Uganda, investigators in Canada were making headlines of their own with research indicating the deadly virus may spread between species, through the air.
The team, comprised of researchers from the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, the University of Manitoba, and the Public Health Agency of Canada, observed transmission of Ebola from pigs to monkeys. They first inoculated a number of piglets with the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus. Ebola-Zaire is the deadliest strain, with mortality rates up to 90 percent.
The piglets were then placed in a room with four cynomolgus macaques, a species of monkey commonly used in laboratories. The animals were separated by wire cages to prevent direct contact between the species. Within a few days, the inoculated piglets showed clinical signs of infection indicative of Ebola infection.
In pigs, Ebola generally causes respiratory illness and increased temperature. Nine days after infection, all piglets appeared to have recovered from the disease. Within eight days of exposure, two of the four monkeys showed signs of Ebola infection. Four days later, the remaining two monkeys were sick too.
It is possible that the first two monkeys infected the other two, but transmission between non-human primates has never before been observed in a lab setting. While the study provided evidence that transmission of Ebola between species is possible, researchers still cannot say for certain how that transmission actually occurred.
There are three likely candidates for the route of transmission: airborne, droplet, or fomites. Airborne and droplet transmission both technically travel through the air to infect others; the difference lies in the size of the infective particles. Smaller droplets persist in the air longer and are able to travel farther- these droplets are truly “airborne.” Larger droplets can neither travel as far nor persist for very long.
Fomites are inanimate objects that can transmit disease if they are contaminated with infectious agents. In this study, a monkey’s cage could have been contaminated when workers were cleaning a nearby pig cage. If the monkey touched the contaminated cage surface and then its mouth or eyes, it could have been infected.
Author Dr. Gary Kobinger suspects that the virus is transmitted through droplets, not fomites, because evidence of infection in the lungs of the monkeys indicated that the virus was inhaled.
What do these findings mean? First and foremost, Ebola is not suddenly an airborne disease. As expert commentators at ProMED stated, the experiments “demonstrate the susceptibility of pigs to Zaire Ebolavirus and that the virus from infected pigs can be transmitted to macaques under experimental conditions… they fall short of establishing that this is a normal route of transmission in the natural environment.”
Furthermore, because human Ebola outbreaks have historically been locally contained, it is unlikely that Ebola can spread between humans via airborne transmission.
However, the study does raise the possibility that pigs are a host for Ebola. If this proves to be true in the wild, there are direct ramifications for prevention and control measures. It is still unclear what role pigs play in the chain of transmission. To continue work on answering this question, the team plans to take samples from pigs in areas known to have recently experienced Ebola outbreaks. The Disease Daily has previously reported on Dr. Kobinger’s work on the Ebola vaccine.
Fomites—learned a new word. Thank you.
ping
Correct me if I’m wrong, but as I recall female pigs can spray backward when they urinate. So the question would be just how close to the pigs were the monkeys?
And why wouldn’t they put enough distance between all of the animals to eliminate the possibility of droplet versus true airborne transmission? Why set yourself up for inconclusive results?
I stand corrected. Here is the journal link: http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00811/full/srep00811.html
I have not read the entire work so my previous comment is not correct.
While Ebola may or may not be effectively transmitted as an airborne virus, if it were truly effective by being transmitted like, say, Influenza, then the human race would be somewhere between %50-%90 less numerous as it currently is as the virus would have wiped out well over %50 of humanity at this point, more than likely.
Perhaps the virus will mutate to a strain that is easily transmitted like the Flu, but at this time it is not as far as anyone knows.
If pigs are a potential reservoir, and they get ebola in the wild here......
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
I’ve read two interesting articles this evening regarding this disease.
One dealt with the two American case workers that have, or are being, flown back to an Atlanta hospital for treatment. Rest assured; they didn’t come back to the USA without Mr. Skittles approval...and he always has an alternative reason for everything.
The other article deals with the Feds ready to try a vaccine on humans by September that they hope is successful.
My fear: He weaponizes this virus just like he did the IRS, EPA, etc, and then denies the vaccine to anyone on the progressives’ “hit list” via of stringent obamacare rules. He gets his 25 million conservative dead that they’ve always dreamed about without firing a single shot, and has got their replacements already flooding the country from the south. Yes, I believe this POS is evil enough to come up with this kind of a plan and to actually do it. I’ll take my tin-foil hat off now.
Exactly my question, not only that but they can shit good distance as well as snort salvia and mucus a foot or so, all of which could have been the source of transmission.
And the real world is nothing like a laboratory, where pigs and monkeys probably don’t mingle much, although pigs snuffle through everything on the ground, including monkey scat.
Pigs and monkeys both eat fruit as do fruit bats which also might be a host reservoir of the virus. If all three animals are feeding and scatting in the same general area, then perhaps infection of pigs and monkeys is through fecal contamination from the bats.
Then a sick pig or monkey (which would be easier to hunt and kill) sickens those who handle the carcass and consume the meat.
Well I have no doubt whatsoever the U.S. government will make damn sure the American people find out more first hand...
Terrorists could use Ebola to create dirty bomb to kill large numbers in the UK, says Cambridge University disease expert
“The deadly Ebola virus could be used by terrorists to create a dirty bomb capable of killing large numbers of people in the UK, a Cambridge University disease expert has warned.
As fears grow over the spread of the disease across parts of West Africa, biological anthropologist Dr Peter Walsh said that although the risk of it reaching the UK was small, a group such as Al Qaeda could use the virus to create a weapon.”
And apparently there is some vaccine which hasn’t been fully explored, but exist, that’s what they gave to the doctor they brought to the US from Africa, and they say he is improving.
Way back I read something along the lines you are outlining — the Federal government is ready to round up people into effectively concentration camps “to keep some terrible disease from spreading” — I wish I had the article.
I just found this article — wonder if the medication they mentioned might work against ebola too — since afterall it is a virus...
It is from Scientific American, 2002:
Oral Drug Halts Smallpoxlike Virus in Mice
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oral-drug-halts-smallpoxl/
‘Researchers reported that an oral drug known as hexadecyloxypropyl-cidofovir (HDP-CDV) stymies smallpox and its kin in tissue culture and in mice. “
FWIW:
Executive Orders & Internment Camps: The Groundwork Has Been Laid for Martial Law in the Event of a National Emergency
March 2014
Text of the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act
2009
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/111/hr645/text
More at:
https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&tab=nw&gws_rd=ssl#hl=en&q=national+emergency+camps
Ask them.
Animal care facilities get hosed down every day during cleaning. If the personnel weren’t instructed to clean in a different manner, they would easily contaminate the entire room.
Here is an article on how they dealt with an Ebola outbreak in one African city in 1995.
http://www.newsweek.com/20-year-old-ebola-treatment-could-save-kent-brantly-262552?piano_t=1
Excerpt: “By the time Robert Colebunders arrived in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo (known as Zaire at the time), on June 15 of 1995, the Ebola virus had ravaged the city of 250,000 and the neighboring area for nearly 6 months. The hospitals in the riverport town were empty; patients and healthcare workers had fled to other parts of the country for fear of contracting the deadly disease, which would ultimately affect 317 people and kill 245.
Eventually, the Kikwit Ebola outbreak was traced back to January 1995, but it wasn’t until the start of May of that year that local public health officials recognized the many sick patients in the area as victims of the infectious disease. On May 8th, the Zairian government officially declared the epidemic, asking the World Health Organization to mobilize international assistance. Soon after, infectious disease experts arrived from the WHO, the CDC, Doctors Without Borders, the South African Medical Institute, the Red Cross, and Belgium’s Institute of Tropical Medicine—which sent Colebunders.
Immediately, the team went to work to contain the disease.”
b ookmaark
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.