Ebola is out of control

[Brian4Liberty]

An update on the Sacramento scare:

Sacramento patient tests negative for Ebola, CDC says

SACRAMENTO -- A Sacramento hospital patient has tested negative for the Ebola virus, state health officials announced on Thursday.

CBS Sacramento reports that doctors and public-health officials said tests sent to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta came back negative.
...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sacramento-patient-tests-negative-for-ebola-cdc-says/

 

[Acala]

That's what we have been told.

My question still stands:

Ebola has been around for at least forty years. And even in the least hygenic countries in the world with the worst health care in the world, only about two thousand people have died from it. Very deadly + few have died = not very contagious.

 

[CaptUSA]

Very deadly + few have died = not very contagious.

Not the case. Very deadly. Extremely contagious. But the virus has a short lifespan. And, because it kills its victims so quickly after contraction, the signs of infection are recognized relatively early. As for airborne infection, bodily fluids can become airborne through coughing and sneezing. Infections can happen through inhalation of bodily fluids.

The problem is that the researchers still don't know why the outbreaks stop all of a sudden. From their perspective, they think the virus may mutate to a unsustainable form and dies on its own. I agree with this and expect it to happen again. If it should mutate to a form that is perpetually sustainable - meaning it doesn't die out on its own - God help us.

 

[PRB]

Did any more Americans die? No? Okay back to sleep ZZZzzzZZZzzzZZzzz...

of course, it's not our job to police or doctor the world, NON INTERVENTION is the best and most Christian foreign policy (and health care policy, for the matter)

 

[pcosmar]

. From their perspective, they think the virus may mutate to a unsustainable form and dies on its own. I agree with this and expect it to happen again. If it should mutate to a form that is perpetually sustainable - meaning it doesn't die out on its own - God help us.

My concern is that the sick fucks in Labs are meddling with it.

And it may not "mutate" on it's own,, but have help.

 

[69360]

Ebola is out of control

No it's not. 1400 deaths, while unfortunate, is nothing in the big picture. 50 times that die each year in the US a developed country with modern health care from influenza virus.

Ebola is not very contagious, now if it mutates and becomes airborne, different story.

 

[CaptUSA]

Ebola is not very contagious,

I'm not sure where you are getting this... Ebola is EXTREMELY contagious. The idea that because the number of deaths is relatively low that this virus is not contagious is not based in science at all. The various mutations of Ebola viruses all have different characteristics, but one of them is that they are incapable of being defended by human immune systems. If you come in contact with these bodily fluids, and that could include through inhalation of a sneeze or cough, then there is a huge possibility that you will become infected.

But again... I have to stress. These mutations usually run themselves out. They leap from host to host mutating, but eventually die out on their own. It is clear that the virus is learning and getting stronger, but in my opinion, we are still pretty far away from the virus finding a perpetually sustainable mutation.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

This thread is giving me the panics.

 

[Philhelm]

Lol. Ok, or it could be that.

Let's regroup in a year and see, K?

A year!? With those things running around we won't last seventeen hours! They're going to come in here just like they did before, and they're going to kill us!

 

[Philhelm]

of course, it's not our job to police or doctor the world, NON INTERVENTION is the best and most Christian foreign policy (and health care policy, for the matter)

Get real. Helping foreign countries with medical aid isn't even in the same ballgame as bombing them. Of course, if its funded involuntarily then there is a problem, but that's for another discussion.

 

[Anti Federalist]

A year!? With those things running around we won't last seventeen hours! They're going to come in here just like they did before, and they're going to kill us!

Game over, man! Game over!

 

[Carlybee]

Pretty sure I had Ebola yesterday, I had liquid diarrhea all day long, but I defeated it, so am now immune.

If you had Ebola you would be leaking blood out of all of your orifices

 

[RonwasRight]

I'm not so sure about that.



http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/pdf/fact-sheet.pdf

That particular paragraph is referring to Ebola Reston- that is- Reston, Virginia, where that particular strain spread in a monkey holding facility, from room to room, through air vents. It was airborne, yet it never infected humans, only the crab-eating monkeys at the facility. The caretakers at Reston were not equipped, nor did they take the precautions for what they were dealing with, and yet, none were infected, because that strain could not pass into or survive our bodies.

Unfortunately, many forums have confused Reston with ALL of Ebola, and it is simply not true. The Ebola mutations we know about are not airborne. The blood, even when sprayed all around the room when a patient crashes and bleeds out, simply does not aerosolize well at all.

BTW, both Writebol and Brantly probably caught Ebola when they were working in the de-containment area, which is one of the most dangerous areas to be working, as often the helpers interact with live virus without necessary protection.

Although Ebola cannot spread like the flu, it is extraordinarily interesting, in what it does and how it does it. At a certain point, it strives to turn the human body into itself. This is called amplification. At this point, the patient has been throwing up vomit negro for some time. A patient will do this long after the stomach is empty. This vomit is often comprised of organ linings, tongue linings, blood, etc. It is hot with Ebola. If you looked at it under a microscope, you would see little black squiggles. If you looked at those under an electron microscope, you would find bricks of compacted ebola. They are called crystalloid structures, and when the patient crashes and makes quite the bloody mess, these seedlings spread far and wide, looking for a new body as the former no longer has any use for the virus.

In West Africa, the virus has no need for airborne qualities: it has abject poverty, a general lack of medical supplies, and a general distrust of hospitals and aid workers. Of course times have changed a bit since Ebola Zaire raised its ugly head along the Ebola River, in the area of Bumba, on September 1st, 1976. In those days, nurses were so often given five syringes to use through the entire day, only one pair of gloves, and a certain ignorance- that early Ebola symptoms looked a hell of a lot like Malaria. So what happens? In most cases of Ebola as well as Marburg, someone brings it in to the village. Perhaps they were hunting or fishing, or more likely, they were cutting down trees and building roads through the jungle. Either way, they got sick. They spread it first to their family, and eventually, at some point, they sought care at the village hospital. The nurses took blood samples, and diagnosed them with malaria. The hospital is where Ebola kills a village. When aid workers reached Bumba after several weeks without radio contact, they at first found a large pile of burnt mattresses in the soccer field. Then they found Yambuku Hospital. Two nuns and one doctor were still alive. Ebola Zaire burned through everything else. One of the nuns at Yambuku flew to Kinshasa to seek treatment, after realizing she had been infected. From her it spread to a young nurse at the hospital, named Mayinga N'Seka. Her name is infamous. It is the name written on several vials of ebola at USAMRIID, because it was her blood that was the first to arrive for testing in the US. The story of Mayinga is a very sad story of a young nurse desperate to arrange travel to Europe to begin her advanced training, WHILE dealing with the symptoms of the most deadly form of Ebola.

Her picture is famous. Look up Ebola Mayinga, and the first picture on google is of a hospital room, with Mayinga herself laying in bed, and two nurses attending her. They have plastic covers on their shoes, and one nurse is looking right at the camera. She is scared shitless.

 

[Acala]

My concern is that the sick fucks in Labs are meddling with it.

And it may not "mutate" on it's own,, but have help.

Surely that was done and in the can long ago.

 

[Acala]

of course, it's not our job to police or doctor the world, NON INTERVENTION is the best and most Christian foreign policy (and health care policy, for the matter)

You should absolutely doctor the world to your heart's content. If you do decent job of it, I might even contribute. Of course you won't be the first. Private medical assistancefor the poor in the world has been around a long time. Rand Paul just gave a demonstration of how it works. And he didn't have to use force to amke anyone participate! How nice.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

A year!? With those things running around we won't last seventeen hours! They're going to come in here just like they did before, and they're going to kill us!

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

 

[KEEF]

Not the case. Very deadly. Extremely contagious. But the virus has a short lifespan. And, because it kills its victims so quickly after contraction, the signs of infection are recognized relatively early. As for airborne infection, bodily fluids can become airborne through coughing and sneezing. Infections can happen through inhalation of bodily fluids.

The problem is that the researchers still don't know why the outbreaks stop all of a sudden. From their perspective, they think the virus may mutate to a unsustainable form and dies on its own. I agree with this and expect it to happen again. If it should mutate to a form that is perpetually sustainable - meaning it doesn't die out on its own - God help us.

This is possible. From what I know about viruses is that unlike our DNA which is a double helix molecule, ebola, like all viruses is a single strand of RNA (basically think like one half of a ladder). Being that RNA is only a single strand, mutations that occur during reproduction of RNA are more likely to happen and proliferate throughout that population because there isn't another nucleic acid strand to "check" the mutation.

So what about dormancy? Basically a virus can go dormant a number of different ways, one way is called episomal latency. In this type, the viral RNA just floats around in cellular cytoplasm until it begins to reproduce again and then express itself. Example of this is chicken pox (which is a type of herpes virus); you get it as a kid, it goes into episomal latency but then can come back later in life as shingles.

Eboli, from what I can tell goes dormant in another way called proviral latency. This is happens when the virus genome integrates itself in with the host DNA and therefore can proliferate from one generation to another by being passed down during reproduction and like a recessive gene, will not be phenotypically expressed unless those genes are induced so to cause the RNA transcription process and inevitable protein synthesis of that virus.

Ironically, eboli outbreaks have been associated with malnutrition and a diet that is lacking selenium (Badmaev, V., Majeed, M., & Passwater, R. A. (1996, July). Selium: A Quest for Better Understanding. Alternative Therapies, 2(4), 59-67.).

The idea is that Ebola may carry several genes with the potential to encode selenoproteins, and one of these proteins may have a propensity to bind with DNA, acting as a repressor of ebola virus transcription. That mechanism could result in turning off the expression of the ebola, hence slowing the
virus proliferation. But once the virus uses up the reserves of selenium in the infected cell. The virus's repressed ability to proliferate is deprepressed
and it infects adjacent cells in a "search" for the unexploited sources of selenium, thereby spreading the infection throughout the body.

For what it's worth...

 

[osan]

Or it could be an international pandemic threatening all human life on earth.

Don't dismiss this too quick.

-t

I for one do not.

Something greater than mere chance governs this world, regulates it, and protects life. Call it "God" or "kitchen sink", it matters not a whit. It is intelligent and I suspect that the greater picture is its major concern and it does not care whether humans are here or are gone. Many of a certain set of religious bents will chafe at this, but I suggest that reality is what it is no matter what one may choose to believe to the contrary. We can argue all day long whether human activity has had so much effect on the planet that this force is now beginning to act to restore a proper balance of circumstances. It may be that we are not as significant in the grand scheme of things as so many of us seem to believe. If that is the case and there is indeed a system of rebalancing ecosystems, then it is by no means a stretch to imagine that if humans become a serious threat to the broader ability of the planet to support life, the mechanism will act to remove the threat. This may not entail global genocide, but it could readily mean the introduction of factors that serve to knock the human population WAY down.

 

[69360]

I'm not sure where you are getting this... Ebola is EXTREMELY contagious. The idea that because the number of deaths is relatively low that this virus is not contagious is not based in science at all. The various mutations of Ebola viruses all have different characteristics, but one of them is that they are incapable of being defended by human immune systems. If you come in contact with these bodily fluids, and that could include through inhalation of a sneeze or cough, then there is a huge possibility that you will become infected.

But again... I have to stress. These mutations usually run themselves out. They leap from host to host mutating, but eventually die out on their own. It is clear that the virus is learning and getting stronger, but in my opinion, we are still pretty far away from the virus finding a perpetually sustainable mutation.

It's not that contagious. Transmission requires prolonged contact with a symptomatic person's bodily fluids. It's not airborne and doesn't live long outside a host.

If the human body was incapable of defending against it, the death rate would be 100%. It's not.

 

[Working Poor]

I want a tequila IV if I get it.