Why an Ebola epidemic is spinning out of control

Why an Ebola epidemic is spinning out of control


By Laurie Garrett, Special to CNN

updated 2:03 PM EDT, Thu July 24, 2014

Editor's note: Laurie Garrett is senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/24/opinion/garrett-ebola/

I dunno but they sure seem to be slinging bodily fluids around like Gatorade from a broken sprinkler.

Judging by the way that the outbreak is maintaining it's momentum, West Africa does seem to have opened up all kinds of opportunities for this virus that the Congo couldn't afford it, but when you break it all down it's still spreading because of third world hygiene, distrust of modern medicine and downright irresponsible funeral practices.
I agree with Chuck about the concern over airborne transmission - while it would change the way this disease spreads, it's not a given that it would do it more efficiently by that route. More importantly, it would take some serious mutations to take it from a virus spread primarily by contact with bodily fluids to one that could be pushed out in the kind of long lived aerosols that influenza can produce with a sneeze. To do that, it would have to be able to specifically irritate the victim's airway which would require it to bind to completely different receptors to the ones that decades or even centuries have adapted it to. EBOV has been shown to infect epithelial cells in the airway, but it looks as though it's one of the ways it gets into the body, and not how it goes on to infect other hosts.

onefluover wrote: It won't have to be airborne but I'm not convinced that it's not already in some way airborne transmissible.

Onefluover - I think you're right. It is to a certain extent, but not efficiently. Physical contact with a victim or fomite still seems to the principal means of transmission.

CRS, DrPH wrote: onefluover wrote: I dunno but they sure seem to be slinging bodily fluids around like Gatorade from sprinklers. I agree.  Concern on AFT about airborne diseases is a bit overplayed, as the effect of airborne disease is time limited and very short range.  However, an Ebola patient who is churning out virus in saliva, perspiration, and eventually leaking blood and diarrhea can contaminate all sorts of surfaces before crashing & bleeding out.   This is exactly how Noro virus spreads explosively on cruise ships - contaminated railings, door knobs, surfaces in toilets etc.  I don't know that we've ever really had an Ebola outbreak extend into urban areas before, this is an interesting experiment.  Rural areas don't tend to have the hard, nonporous surfaces (stainless steel, plastic, etc.) that urban areas have, and I believe most of the Ebola in the bush is from direct, hands-on contact by family members with the ill.   Let's watch and wait.  If a patient gets onto an international airplane, bar the door.

How long is Ebola active in a fluid deposit? Is it an "As long as it's wet?" or like Hepatitis, "As long as it's there?"

And you're exactly right: It is not only currently interesting, but will get to be more and more if things start to get out of hand there.

Think we might start looking to close our borders if things go haywire?

Good stuff from the Canadians! 

American doctor in Liberia tests positive for Ebola virus

Published July 27th 2014
FoxNews.com

In this 2014 photo provided by the Samaritan's Purse aid organization, Dr. Kent Brantly, left, treats an Ebola patient at the Samaritan's Purse Ebola Case Management Center in Monrovia, Liberia. On Saturday, July 26, 2014, the North Carolina-based aid organization said Brantly tested positive for the disease and was being treated at a hospital in Monrovia. (AP Photo/Samaritan's Purse)
An American doctor working in the African country of Liberia has tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus, an aid organization said Saturday.

Samaritan's Purse, based in North Carolina, said in a statement that Dr. Kent Brantly was being treated at an isolation center in a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia's capital. Brantly is the medical director for the aid organization's case management center in the city.



Brantly, 33, has been working with Samaritan's Purse in Liberia since October 2013 as part of the charity's post-residency program for doctors, group spokeswoman Melissa Strickland told The Associated Press. The organization's website says he had worked as a family practice physician in Fort Worth, Texas.

The highly contagious virus is one of the most deadly diseases in the world. Photos of Brantly working in Liberia show him in white coveralls made of a synthetic material that he wore for hours a day while treating Ebola patients.

Brantly was quoted in a posting on the organization's website earlier this year about efforts to maintain an isolation ward for patients.

"The hospital is taking great effort to be prepared," Brantly said. "In past Ebola outbreaks, many of the casualties have been healthcare workers who contracted the disease through their work caring for infected individuals."

Strickland says that Brantly's wife and two children had been





living with him in Africa, but they are currently in the U.S.






"We ask everyone to please pray for him and his family," the statement from Samaritan's Purse concluded.

A woman who identified herself as Brantly's mother told the AP family members are declining comment at this time.

The deadly disease has killed at least 672 in several African countries since the outbreak began earlier this year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


www.foxnews.com/health/2014/07/27/american-doctor-in-liberia-tests-positive-for-ebola-virus/?intcmp=latestnews

um....... What?

onefluover wrote: Interesting Chuck. So anyone with a home deep-freeze (most go -20 f) can store Ebola infected blood viably for still a very long time. You don't need a lab or lab quality or industrial quality freezing methods or equipment or science background to keep that and most other bugs viable for timing of an attack.

I find it almost unbelievable that either Doctor, African or American would not have understood the risks and taken precautions for physical contact transmission. And if they did and still got it then it must be airborne viable at least to some degree. Maybe it wouldn't travel airborne to Burbank on the trade winds but if in close quarters that is still airborne. But even if it had zero airborne transmissibility, a contact to contact transmission could easily survive over here. Not rampant like over there but it could take hold even here.

onefluover wrote: I find it almost unbelievable that either Doctor, African or American would not have understood the risks and taken precautions for physical contact transmission. And if they did and still got it then it must be airborne viable at least to some degree. Maybe it wouldn't travel airborne to Burbank on the trade winds but if in close quarters that is still airborne. But even if it had zero airborne transmissibility, a contact to contact transmission could easily survive over here. Not rampant like over there but it could take hold even here.

OK so "airborne" in that use makes sence to me. Ebola, like hepatitis is a blood-borne pathogen. I would only add that in tattooing, because of the very high mechanical frequency of strokes, the vibration will put off something similar to a vapor of potentially pathogenic laced blood into the air that when viewed under special lighting will resemble smoke and will travel virtually the entire room onto every surface. Of course right here right now we don't have to worry about that and Ebola but now that I've made some of you cringe, you should know that this is a true dirty little secret and one reason why I finely left the industry. However, we are not supposed to work on anybody with any of these type of diseases. But it is up to the client to be honest.

Sorry. I meant airborne not pathogen in my quote above and edited it too late. Anyway.

Yeah. Hate to say it but :

Reading a piece on MSN this am
http://news.ca.msn.com/world/ebola-fears-grow-in-nigeria-after-plane-scare
and it's talking about the city/country being 'on edge' and how they are trying to trace people who were on flights with the man who flew into city. They state it's almost impossible as the ones on his flights have travelled to other cities. They also state it's not 'catchable' until signs are showing (nice calming sentence) but then later in article they said he was vomiting and having diarrhea on one flight..... has anyone checked up on the poor staff who got stuck cleaning that plane/washroom?!?! They wouldn't have been in full protective gear like the doctors (who are catching it anyway).
Just saying... to me they'd be 'most exposed' as cleaning up the mess...

No, not exactly.  As Chuck says it depends on how you define airborne.  Yes it was transmitted between the pigs and monkeys by air, but they were shut up in the same "room".  This was just a dramatic demonstration of droplet transmission.  That is quite bad enough but not the same as airborne.  Airborne viruses survive and produce aerosols which travel much further and last far longer.

Kind of like the differance between blowing a spit wad through a straw accross the room and the smell from hundreds of feet away, indoor or out of a Colorado joint... -I mean, marijuana cigarette.

couldn't help that.