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From Pigs to Monkeys, Ebola Goes Airborne (Nov 2012!)
Healthmap ^ | Nov 21, 2012 | Jane Huston

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.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: ebola
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To: Innovative

I remember reading in the 1990s about Ebola being transmitted by airborne mechanism.


21 posted on 08/03/2014 7:52:17 PM PDT by reasonisfaith ("...because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." (2 Thessalonians))
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To: Innovative

I would not be shocked if Drudge gets a call from the Feds soon to change his headline.


22 posted on 08/03/2014 8:15:32 PM PDT by PghBaldy (12/14 - 930am -rampage begins... 12/15 - 1030am - Obama's advance team scouts photo-op locations.)
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To: lgjhn23

I have the same suspicions - and I am no tin-foil hat guy ...

I despise conspiracy mongers; but, considering the facts of Obama - that his is a satanic Marxist agenda - including: sodomite “marriage;” obamacare (death panels, rationed care, euthanasia); unrestricted abortion on demand; his aiding and abetting of disease-ridden trespassers across our southern border and releasing of same into high population areas; his IRS/NSA/EPA war on Americans; his refusal to uphold legitimately passed laws, etc. ...

Further considering his relationships with Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground, and diverse Marxist revolutionaries, who are on record as advocating (and likely plotting) the murder of 25 million Americans ...

And moreover ...

His desire to “fundamentally transform America”

His contempt for our “flawed” constitution, and his disdain for the separation of powers ...

His purposeful corruption of our military ...

His hostility towards the Christian Religion ...

His embracing of Islam ...

Thus, I must conclude that Barrack Obama is capable and likely willing to carry out such an evil action.


23 posted on 08/03/2014 8:39:50 PM PDT by WTFOVR (I find myself exclaiming that expression quite often these days!)
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To: Innovative

“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.”

A vaccine is useless in a patient with the virus. A vaccine elicits an immune response thus protecting an individual against an infection. Someone infected with Ebola is already eliciting the required immune response in an attempt to live. Vaccines are only useful prior to infection.

What is useful is immune globulin from an individuale that had ebola and survived. His blood is full of antibodies that will attack the ebola virus until the patients own immune system can elicit a response and produce its own antibodies.

The patients that have survived ebola have done so by supportive care to avoid end stage organ failure. If you can live long enough your own body will produce the antibodies to defeat the disease. In essence if you survive a few weeks your own body will defeat the disease. Unfortunately depending on the strain, most do not survive long enough for an immune response to kill the disease. The game is how quick can you produce the immune response and the antibodies.

Ebola is a strange disease. A disease with this extreme lethality should be self limiting as your vectors for transmission die quickly and thus the spread. This leads one to believe there is a host vector that it does not kill. There is some animal species that has the virus but is not killed by it. It may not be just one species.

This may get ugly.


24 posted on 08/03/2014 8:43:23 PM PDT by cpdiii (deckhand, roughneck, geologist, pilot, pharmacist. The constitution is worth dying for!)
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To: cpdiii

Depending on how it mutates, yeah, it could go through us like the Black Death. Unlikely in this country but it could happen..


25 posted on 08/03/2014 8:50:48 PM PDT by tumblindice (America's founding fathers: all armed conservatives.)
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To: Innovative

Paging Dr. Nancy Snyderman.

26 posted on 08/03/2014 9:20:26 PM PDT by bgill
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To: Innovative

Follow the money with that vaccine.


27 posted on 08/03/2014 9:24:44 PM PDT by bgill
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To: tumblindice

Why unlikely in this country? A few well placed infected individuals would cause it to spread like the Black Death. A restaurant worker on a university campus right before Christmas break. A gambler in Vegas. A housekeeper at a Disney hotel. A flight attendant. A passenger on the NY subway. A taxi driver in Los Angeles. A cashier in Kansas City.

Sure, it’s probably just a coincidence ICE is holding those poor widdle unaccompanied kiddies for *23 days* at the camps, right?


28 posted on 08/03/2014 9:41:47 PM PDT by bgill
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To: Innovative

Google “Reston Zaire Sudan.” Plenty of people know. Ft Dietrich knows. Ebola mutates.


29 posted on 08/03/2014 9:44:12 PM PDT by golux
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To: Fungi

What I came here fomite not what I leave with.


30 posted on 08/03/2014 10:22:41 PM PDT by Eagles6 (Valley Forge Redux. If not now, when? If not here, where? If not us then who?)
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To: 2ndreconmarine; Fitzcarraldo; Covenantor; Mother Abigail; EBH; Dog Gone; ...

Ping...


31 posted on 08/04/2014 3:42:38 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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