Incubation periods for this Ebola and prior Ebola are the same. It has always been about "as quickly as 2-5 days" but with a mode of about 8-12 days.
As far as how long one could potentially be a carrier, early research showed 21 days as an outside limit and that became the dogma, but one perfectly valid research project showed 4% of individuals were still infectious at 21 days, 1% at 25 days (IIRC), so really we should be using 27 days to be safe.
The comparison between Congo/Zaire and these west african countries, with respect to their dysfunctional health care systems, isn't really valid. There is a huge difference between remote village areas in the Congo and the cities. Had Ebola broken out in Kinshasa it would have looked like the current outbreak.
But in Kinshasa, the bush meat is a long way from the bush and long processed, so there is no chance of Ebola going from bat reservoir to duiker/monkey to human in those settings. The outbreaks in Congo/Uganda etc. have involved, most or all of the time, direct contact with fresh bush meat right near or in the settlement that was affected. In this particular outbreak, patient zero is a little kid. She probably did not get Ebola from bush meat, but more likely (in my opinion) directly from discarded fruit from an infected fruit bat.
As far as going airborne, I've come down on the no it won't side for reasons that have to do with evolutionary theory. I wrote this up here:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregla...
You are absolutely right about the lack of up to date info. That seems to have dropped out of the picture entirely. Personally, I'm guessing that the number of "new cases" is actually fixed by the number of beds that become unoccupied by someone dying or getting better. That makes the information pretty useless anyway.
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Incubation periods for this Ebola and prior Ebola are the same. It has always been about "as quickly as 2-5 days" but with a mode of about 8-12 days. As far as how long one could potentially be a carrier, early research showed 21 days as an outside limit and that became the dogma, but one perfectly valid research project showed 4% of individuals were still infectious at 21 days, 1% at 25 days (IIRC), so really we should be using 27 days to be safe.
The comparison between Congo/Zaire and these west african countries, with respect to their dysfunctional health care systems, isn't really valid. There is a huge difference between remote village areas in the Congo and the cities. Had Ebola broken out in Kinshasa it would have looked like the current outbreak. But in Kinshasa, the bush meat is a long way from the bush and long processed, so there is no chance of Ebola going from bat reservoir to duiker/monkey to human in those settings. The outbreaks in Congo/Uganda etc. have involved, most or all of the time, direct contact with fresh bush meat right near or in the settlement that was affected. In this particular outbreak, patient zero is a little kid. She probably did not get Ebola from bush meat, but more likely (in my opinion) directly from discarded fruit from an infected fruit bat. As far as going airborne, I've come down on the no it won't side for reasons that have to do with evolutionary theory. I wrote this up here: http://scienceblogs.com/gregla... You are absolutely right about the lack of up to date info. That seems to have dropped out of the picture entirely. Personally, I'm guessing that the number of "new cases" is actually fixed by the number of beds that become unoccupied by someone dying or getting better. That makes the information pretty useless anyway.