Posted on 10/15/2014 1:26:35 PM PDT by Mozilla
President Barack Obama, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NiH) keep reiterating that we the American people need not worry about the Ebola virus – that it stands no chance of blowing up across the country.
President Obama himself said, “The chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low.” According to HealthDay, back in late July, CDC official Stephan Monroe asserted that “the fact that most flights between West Africa and the United States require one or more stops in other countries make it unlikely that a sick person could make it all the way to America and spread the Ebola virus.” And according to the Journal and Courier, about a month ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that “a virus that doesn’t replicate, doesn’t mutate.”
Yet we now know for a fact that a nurse who was treating now-deceased Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan contracted the disease, despite the fact that she was adorned in full protective gear.
Furthermore, according to Purdue University Professor David Sanders, this notion that Ebola cannot mutate into an airborne virus is patently false:
“I don’t want people to get worried right now, but for people to say there’s zero chance is simply incorrect,” Sanders said. “It’s not something to be dismissed.”
. . . “Ebola virus disease is not an airborne infection,” according to the World Health Organization. “Airborne spread among humans implies inhalation of an infectious dose of virus from a suspended cloud of small dried droplets. This mode of transmission has not been observed during extensive studies of the Ebola virus over several decades.”
Sanders didn’t dispute that stance. It’s medically inaccurate and disingenuous, however, to dismiss research showing that Ebola could actually mutate to become airborne.
“I can’t put a number on it, but I can tell you it’s a non-zero number,” Sanders said of the odds of Ebola spreading through the air. “The longer it persists, the more cases there are, the more likely it is.”
Speaking of which, National Geographic revealed last week that “six African countries have already banned or suspended flights from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, and others have instituted other travel restrictions.” And The Guardian reported earlier today that the British government has cancelled direct flights from the UK to Sierra Leone “because of fears over Ebola.”
Yet President Obama continues to resist the push by numerous legislators on both sides of the aisle to impose some sort of travel ban.
The Blaze adds the following:
The CDC continues to insist that stopping people traveling from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone from entering the United States would be counter-productive to the goal of stopping Ebola in West Africa.
Now remember what Professor David Sanders said: “The longer it persists, the more cases there are, the more likely it is” that Ebola will mutate into an airborne virus.
Think about that . . .
Louie Gohmert: CDC Has Collective Heads ‘Up Where the Sun Doesn’t Shine’
"It can enter the lung from the airway side," Dr. David Sanders told TheIndyChannel.com. "So this argues that Ebola is primed to have respiratory transmission."
Sanders, who has been studying Ebola since 2003, believes that the longer Ebola mutates, the greater chance people will catch it via the air.
"We need to be taking this into consideration," added Sanders. "This is not a crazy, 'What if?' This is not a wild, 'What if?'"
Sanders said the chances for an average American to catch Ebola now are very low, but emphasized that Ebola needs to be contained and eradicated in West Africa. President Obama has sent thousands of U.S. troops to West Africa to protect researchers and doctors combating Ebola, but has been slammed by Republicans and Fox News for doing so.
ANY virus that isn’t air-born can mutate and become so. Anyone knows that. However ... the chances are remote.
Even if it cannot survive in dry air there is nothing to say it cannot survive in teeny tiny droplets of cough spewtum or aresolized into a sneeze...
Potentially any action concerning liquid contact such as the flushing of a toilet AFTER it has been used by an ebola carrier could aresolize it enough to be breathed it with a few moments of the toilet being flushed within a certain radius of the toilet......
To say nothing of a droplet of urine on a toilet seat that contains ebola and then is sat on by someone who is in a hurry or is too young to realize proper hygene...
While this article is most likely theoretical at this time, there’s a lot of confusion over what “airborne” means.
äirborne means it can float free in the air. In the past, at least, Ebola can float around briefly as part of a mist of droplets in the air from a cough or sneeze...which is not exactly the same as what the term means in this context.
Not being airborne does not mean that the mist isn’t infectious.
The whole discussion is disingenuous though. This “debate” appears to be over it acquiring the ability to become either significantly dry, or like a “spore”, and maintain continuous viability as a submicron particle in the air.
The REALITY though, is that it appears to be readily transmissible through aerosolized particles in a wide variety of sizes and in-air “hang times”. This is in a moistened or semi moistened state, and the virus is probably viable over a range of times from X Seconds to Y Minutes or Hours depending on particle size, moisture content and particle virus load. There is, or should be no, debate over that, it’s been essentially demonstrated by numerous people in a variety of sub optimal protective suits acquiring the illness.
The virus has a very real possibility of being a disaster under the aerosolized scenario.
I take it empirically that the virus has an extremely LOW chance of becoming airborn (becoming spore like and/or being able to exist viable to reconstitute as a submicron size dry particle). When a scientist says a probability number is “non zero” that’s scientist over-jargon speak for “there’s a lot of zeros to the right of the decimal place of this less than 1 number”. I.e. it’s in the asteroid impact odds realm or worse that this will happen, but that debate doesn’t mean s*** with what we’re concerned with, with regards to Ebola spread.
The spread of the Ebola now is very similar to the great plague (Black Death, and NOT saying they are the same organism like some tools are).
The initial foothold of the disease [Plague] was gained by people contracting it from rat fleas, or handling dead ones, or fomites associated with them, but the real "stack the bodies" tolls came from the bacteria being transferred as an aerosolized particle amongst people in close quarters.
You may have to work at getting Ebola into a local population from monkey or bat meat or unicorn turds, but once it gets entrenched and manages to infect multiple people who are in a population dense environment, you are going to get aerosolized transmission, and you are also going to see natural selection select for the virus variants that optimize the aerosolized dispersion.
Every time the Ebola virus copies itself, it mutates. These mutations could change the way the virus behaves. Right now the Ebola virus is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids, such as blood and vomit. But if it mutates it will be bale to get it by coughing or sneezing. It is not out on probability that it will happen.
People will bad hygiene or no idea what to do will get it quickly and it will spread faster as people do not know what to do.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
Thanks for the ping!
I wonder if this professor Sanders even thought about this before saying it. In order to go airborne, Ebola would have to 1) change the cells it infects, 2) change its size, and 3) change its structure to become dessication resistant.
None of these things are particularly likely to happen. A virus must be able to bind to a cell in order for the cell to pull the virus inside where the virus can replicate. This binding is very specific--it is like a key fitting into a lock. If you change one of the little teeth on your house key, it won't fit into your front door very well, but it also won't gain the ability to fit into your neighbor's door. To gain the ability to fit your neighbor's door, most or all of those teeth would have to be changed at once. To be more in line with the viral analogy, those teeth would have to change randomly, as well (mutations are random). And in order to "survive", the key has to be able to fit into a door. That's like the virus--if it cannot bind a cell receptor, it does not survive. Furthermore, once the virus gains access to a cell, it has to be able to recruit proteins in that cell to be able to reproduce. If the cell does not have the specific proteins that the virus needs, the virus won't grow. And each cell type has different proteins.
It's the same thing with the virus changing to become resistant to drying or changing to become smaller so it can become airborne. These would require so many drastic changes that the likelihood of them happening all at once is almost non-existent. You might as well expect a winged pig to hatch from a chicken egg.
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...
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