Ebola Outbreak Continues To Expand

symbolset writes in with the latest about an ebola outbreak spreading across West Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to monitor the evolution of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. The current epidemic trend of EVD outbreak in Sierra Leone and Liberia remains serious, with 67 new cases and 19 deaths reported July 15-17, 2014. These include suspect, probable, and laboratory-confirmed cases. The EVD outbreak in Guinea continues to show a declining trend, with no new cases reported during this period. Critical analyses and review of the current outbreak response is being undertaken to inform the process of developing prioritized national operational plans. Effective implementation of the prioritized plans will be vital in reversing the current trend of EVD outbreak, especially in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Comments

Coming to a plane journey

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming to a plane journey near you, has that chap near you coughing just clearing his throat or is he seriously ill ?
Is he sweating from the heat or fever ?

Re:Coming to a plane journey

[Trepidity]

It also doesn't transmit very easily. So far there are no known cases of it being transmitted in a plane or airport, despite several known Ebola cases having flown on planes. In each case everyone who had flown with them was monitored, but nobody developed the illness.

It helps that it doesn't travel by air or aerosols.

Re:Coming to a plane journey

[mspohr]

The problem is that people move around... a lot. Ebola has an incubation period of up to 21 days so that gives an infected person lots of symptom free time to travel to visit his neighboring village or go to the city or get on a plane to visit relatives anywhere in the world.

Re:Coming to a plane journey

[Anonymous Coward]

The black plague had a much lower mortality rate than ebola does. The plague also had a very good vector in the fleas on rodents. It wasn't spread as much by human to human transmission as it was by flea bite. Also, the statement that viruses with a very high mortality rate tend to be self limiting is indeed true - although the slower the time from infection to death the faster the spread. Ebola kills very quickly and that limits the spread significantly. It will need to develop to be less quickly lethal in order to spread better.

Re:Coming to a plane journey

[Shortguy881]

Actually Ebola can be transmitted through the air. During the initial discovery and research into the Ebola, there were two major groups involved: the CDC and USAMRIID (CDC's military counterpart).

The CDC's lead researcher of Ebola did a lot of onsite visits in Africa with patients and never contracted the virus, so the CDC's stance is that it is not an air born illness. The team from USAMRIID conducted tests on Ebola in a closed environment with an uninfected control group. The control group was in the same room as the infected group but separated by cages on either side of the room so there was no physical contact between groups. The entire control group got infected, so if you ask USAMRIID, its air born.

The result isn't surprising do to the nature of Ebola. The virus destroys all tissues including lung tissue. Any virus that is exposed to the air in the lungs has the chance of being air born.

Research in 2012 also confirmed this with cross species air born contamination in a controlled environment.

Re:Coming to a plane journey

[Shortguy881]

I should note the test/control group was monkeys.

Re:Coming to a plane journey

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I thought my airplane travel was rough. Do you really routinely have "direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids" while flying?

Re:Coming to a plane journey

[pspahn]

All this.

This is why Ebola is dangerous. It doesn't matter how long it takes for someone to go from "sick" to "dead", as once they get sick, they probably won't be traveling. On the other hand, you have three weeks of incubation to traipse around the world and get somewhere quite distant from the original vector, then get sick, and now all of a sudden you have a handful of cases in Toronto followed by a handful of cases three weeks later in Mexico City ... and so on.

Does it have Cold resistance level 2

[Anonymous Coward]

and Antibiotics1 and 2

Re:Does it have Cold resistance level 2

[queazocotal]

It's a virus, so has pretty good antibiotic resistance.

To follow on from the other comment.
You're faced with people who you've never seen, look quite different than you, and turn up in suits that cover their entire body.
This happens shortly after, or even before the community notices an issue - as they are surveying populations nearby.
Then people start dying, and these people who don't speak your language want to take the bodies of your loved ones, and desecrate them.

Add to this that education in these places is basically non-existant in many cases.
It's no wonder that people can come to the conclusion that the health workers are causing the disease.

Especially given the centuries long history of exploitation. Fake vaccination programs by the CIA to fine OBL haven't helped either.

Could be worse...

[loimprevisto]

At least it's not Anthrax-Leprosy-Mu!

FNORD!

It is near

[Anonymous Coward]

Disease outbreak...check
Pre-WW3 conflicts...check
Justin bieber...check

Ok im ready for Earth obliteration... time to reset society...

Re:World War Z

[Anonymous Coward]

Except people who get viruses die when they are shot. You don't even have to shoot them in the head. And real people don't cooperate in a herd like manner to climb walls even when they're NOT infected with some disease.

And real viruses have incubation periods long enough that you don't have scenarios where if Brad Pitt doesn't lop your arm off 5 seconds after your hand is bitten you instantly turn into a bloodthirsty rage zombie with a 100% infection rate when you bite someone else.

Could an ebola outbreak be bad? Sure, but don't just make shit up.

Re:Think of it as evolution in action

[TheRaven64]

I, for one, am in favour of removing bread from the human gene pool.

Re:Think of it as evolution in action

[Anonymous Coward]

I knead to know why you think that.

Re:Effective communication

[bill_mcgonigle]

Who was the sad f*ck who decided to make up a confusing three letter acronym for Ebola?

But "ebola" has three syllables and "EVD" only has three.

Re:Effective communication

[Sockatume]

There are five viruses that cause EVD, only one of which is actually called "ebola".

Re:The only solution...

[Sockatume]

From your sarcasm, I'm going to assume that you'd rather that AIDS was characterised as a disease of gay people and minorities who should therefore be ostracised, it wasn't spoken about, and where its very existence was denied?

That's what happened in the 1980s and it caused the fucking problem in the first place.

Re:Think of it as evolution in action

[Applehu Akbar]

Speaking of bread in the gene pool, let's all hope that your hot dog never finds a hot dog bun.

Re:World War Z

[msauve]

What's a "virii?" The plural of virus is viruses. Even if it took the latin form (and it certainly doesn't), it would be viri, not virii.

Re:Dammit

[GTRacer]

But that won't stop them making another sequel to the "zoo animals on safari" movie!

Re:Scale?

[_anomaly_]

I think it's the infection rate that is all the hubbub, to put it lightly. 67 new cases and 19 deaths in the span of 3 days (July 15-17)?

Then, posted not long ago, an update: 45 new cases and 28 deaths from July 18-20.

Re:World War Z

[chihowa]

Viri, the plural of vir (man), means 'men'.

Re:Think of it as evolution in action

[interkin3tic]

Being ignorant of modern medicine is not a genetically-encoded trait. So, despite your best attempts to rationalize it, no, there's nothing good about people dying in this way.

Moreover, you sound like you consider yourself somehow superior to the people who are dying of the disease, though you are undoubtedly too cowardly to actually come out and say it even as AC. You're protected by geography and the fact that the virus doesn't appear to have gotten into a major international airport. At the moment. If it did, you would yourself likely be bread out of the gene pool. You are in no way superior to the people who are dying. In fact, I think a corpse has you beaten on personality.

Re:Vaccine in the 2030's?

[CrimsonAvenger]

was known to be effective by '97

From your link, it was known to have "great potential" by '97.

Which is NOT the same as "known to be effective".