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CONFIRMED Ebola case in Dallas

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SlickSnake said:
You all do know there is more than one college and school in Austin, which is probably filled to overflowing with whining, liberal, voting shills, right?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Universities_and_colleges_in_Austin,_Texas

http://www.citytowninfo.com/places/texas/austin/colleges

The last website says 93,682 or more college students. So it looks like closer to at least 150-200k or more of transient, liberal voters there, including part time students and including all the other specialty schools. That's a huge liberal voting block if the majority vote.

While I can't completely ignore that large liberal voting block, it is a constant factor in elections, isn't it? Obviously. But does it change my opinion that a transient, liberal voting population makes Austin a great liberal bastion? No, it does not. Because it does not reflect the conservative demographics of most of the people who actually buy homes there and in suburbs near there, and aren't just passing through once their conservative parents charge cards are maxed out.

And it appears the careless and carefree liberal students there aren't exactly welcomed by the more conservative family types, either. This is an interesting find. A lot of those liberal voting, air headed students are also property squatting in single family houses while packed on top of each other like sardines and are too damn stupid to even carry out the trash. And those students are also destroying Austin's traditional conservative family demographics in the process, too. Color me completely surprised. Or not.

https://www.texastribune.org/2013/08/20/families-move-out-stealth-dorms-move/

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/opi...th-dorm-vote-will-help-austin-in-the-long-run
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I hate this phrase, but you seem to be triggered.
 
Noah Abrams said:
Its back! And as always, there is chance for the worst case scenario! We are all going to die! The world is coming to an end, once again....what to do now...

Ebola is back – and WHO is preparing for worst-case scenario

https://www.wraltechwire.com/2018/05/13/ebola-is-back-and-who-is-preparing-for-worst-case-scenario/
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Perfect timing.
CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...utbreak/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.31117e83fc6a
 
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dawp said:
why the hell resurrect a 4 year old thread
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If anything I'd lean against the use of a topic where the title is specific to an event 4 years ago, one that does not reflect recent events. Otherwise it can be useful to find and purpose an older thread to use as a "meta" for various updates to the same / similar story.
 
interchange said:
I seriously doubt Ebola will ever become a threat in the Western world or become endemic beyond a primate reservoir.
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I have no doubt it's going to be a threat to the Western world sometime in the future because of the way it mutates and jumps from animal to man. If that thing becomes airborne we are screwed.
 
DooKey said:
I have no doubt it's going to be a threat to the Western world sometime in the future because of the way it mutates and jumps from animal to man. If that thing becomes airborne we are screwed.
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Ebola is only such a scare because of its deadliness which is actually protective of it becoming a large-scale endemic illness. Why be certain it will become airborne? There are many other viral hemorrhagic fever pathogens that are similar but less deadly with animal reservoir, some mosquito spread (e.g. dengue, yellow fever). Why would this not be an illness capable of protecting through vaccination?
 
DooKey said:
I have no doubt it's going to be a threat to the Western world sometime in the future because of the way it mutates and jumps from animal to man. If that thing becomes airborne we are screwed.
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There’s no reason for it ever to become airborne. It’s quite effective as it is and we’ve never seen a human virus ever change how it’s transmitted.
 
MomentsofSanity said:
There’s no reason for it ever to become airborne. It’s quite effective as it is and we’ve never seen a human virus ever change how it’s transmitted.
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Thank you. The voice of reason.

This is a good article, once you get past the fear mongering of the first paragraph, reason and logic takes over.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-the-ebola-virus-will-go-airborne/

Could Ebola go airborne? That’s the fear set off last week by a New York Times op-ed entitled “What We’re Afraid to Say about Ebola” from Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Although clinicians readily agree that the Ebola virus leaps from one person to the next via close contact with blood and other bodily fluids, Osterholm warned that the risk of airborne transmission is “real” and “until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.”

But interviews with several infectious diseases experts reveal that whereas such a mutation—or more likely series of mutations—might physically be possible, it’s highly unlikely. In fact, there’s almost no historical precedent for any virus to change its basic mode of transmission so radically. “We have so many problems with Ebola, let’s not make another one that, of course, is theoretically possible but is pretty way down on the list of likely issues," says infectious diseases expert William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University. "Everything that is happening now can easily be comprehensively explained by person-to-person spread via body contact. We don’t have to invoke anything else.”

Here is what it would take for it to become a real airborne risk: First off, a substantial amount of Ebola virus would need to start replicating in cells that reside in the throat, the bronchial tubes and possibly in the lungs. Second, the airborne method would have to be so much more efficient than the current extremely efficient means of transmission that it would overcome any genetic costs to the virus stemming from the mutation itself. Substantial natural hurdles make it unlikely that either event will occur.

Currently, Ebola typically gains entry into the body through breaks in the skin, the watery fluid around the eye or the moist tissues of the nose or mouth. Then it infects various cells of the immune system, which it tricks into making more copies of itself. The end result: a massive attack on the blood vessels, not the respiratory system.

Even viruses that are well adapted to attacking the respiratory system often have a hard time getting transmitted through the airways. Consider the experience so far with avian flu, which is easily transmitted through the air in birds but hasn’t yet mutated to become easily spreadable in that fashion among people.

What's the hold-up? “The difficulty is that those [flu] viruses don’t have the protein attachments that can actually attach to cells in the upper airway. They have to develop attachments to do that,” Schaffner says. So even if a virus were exhaled, it would need to lodge onto something in another person’s cells that are already prepared for it in the upper airway. “Since the virus doesn’t have attachment factors that can work in the upper airway, it’s very rare for it to go human to human, and then it almost always stops and doesn’t get to a third person,” Schaffner notes. Similarly for Ebola, the virus would have to develop attachments that would allow it to easily attach receptors in the upper respiratory pathway—something that neither it (nor any of its viral cousins) has been known to do in the wild.​
 
Of course they are going to sensationalize the headline but if you actually read the article:

“The number of suspected, probable and confirmed cases is significant, so we are very concerned, and we are planning for all scenarios, including the worst-case scenario,” Salama said
 
MomentsofSanity said:
There’s no reason for it ever to become airborne. It’s quite effective as it is and we’ve never seen a human virus ever change how it’s transmitted.
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Amused said:
Thank you. The voice of reason.

This is a good article, once you get past the fear mongering of the first paragraph, reason and logic takes over.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-the-ebola-virus-will-go-airborne/

Could Ebola go airborne? That’s the fear set off last week by a New York Times op-ed entitled “What We’re Afraid to Say about Ebola” from Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Although clinicians readily agree that the Ebola virus leaps from one person to the next via close contact with blood and other bodily fluids, Osterholm warned that the risk of airborne transmission is “real” and “until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.”

But interviews with several infectious diseases experts reveal that whereas such a mutation—or more likely series of mutations—might physically be possible, it’s highly unlikely. In fact, there’s almost no historical precedent for any virus to change its basic mode of transmission so radically. “We have so many problems with Ebola, let’s not make another one that, of course, is theoretically possible but is pretty way down on the list of likely issues," says infectious diseases expert William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University. "Everything that is happening now can easily be comprehensively explained by person-to-person spread via body contact. We don’t have to invoke anything else.”

Here is what it would take for it to become a real airborne risk: First off, a substantial amount of Ebola virus would need to start replicating in cells that reside in the throat, the bronchial tubes and possibly in the lungs. Second, the airborne method would have to be so much more efficient than the current extremely efficient means of transmission that it would overcome any genetic costs to the virus stemming from the mutation itself. Substantial natural hurdles make it unlikely that either event will occur.

Currently, Ebola typically gains entry into the body through breaks in the skin, the watery fluid around the eye or the moist tissues of the nose or mouth. Then it infects various cells of the immune system, which it tricks into making more copies of itself. The end result: a massive attack on the blood vessels, not the respiratory system.

Even viruses that are well adapted to attacking the respiratory system often have a hard time getting transmitted through the airways. Consider the experience so far with avian flu, which is easily transmitted through the air in birds but hasn’t yet mutated to become easily spreadable in that fashion among people.

What's the hold-up? “The difficulty is that those [flu] viruses don’t have the protein attachments that can actually attach to cells in the upper airway. They have to develop attachments to do that,” Schaffner says. So even if a virus were exhaled, it would need to lodge onto something in another person’s cells that are already prepared for it in the upper airway. “Since the virus doesn’t have attachment factors that can work in the upper airway, it’s very rare for it to go human to human, and then it almost always stops and doesn’t get to a third person,” Schaffner notes. Similarly for Ebola, the virus would have to develop attachments that would allow it to easily attach receptors in the upper respiratory pathway—something that neither it (nor any of its viral cousins) has been known to do in the wild.​
Click to expand...

Technically a variant did go airborne. A version infected an import holding area containing imported monkeys in Reston Virginia. While it tested as Ebola at the time, it was non symptomatic in humans. In the monkeys it was lethal and airborne.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus
 
I went into the "monkey house" in No VA where they had housed a bunch of wild monkeys that came with the ebola virus a while back. It was a year after the outbreak at the center but I was till scared as shit. If you ever get a chance read the book, The Hot Zone. Its true and very scary.

Wiki
"The Monkey House" chronicles the discovery of Reston virus among imported monkeys in Reston, Virginia, and the following actions taken by the U.S. Army and Centers for Disease Control. It starts with the monkey house receiving a shipment of 100 wild monkeys. After four weeks, 29 of these monkeys have died. This is followed by the veterinarian for the facility, Dan Dalgard, examining the dead monkeys and sending the samples to Peter Jahrling, a virologist at United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. After seeing a rope-like virus under the microscope, it is suspected that the monkeys were infected with a hot agent similar to the Marburg virus. Jahrling then conducts a blood test to find out that the hot agent is the Ebola Zaire virus. This conclusion leads to the Army Medical Research Institute deciding to euthanize all the monkeys in the same room as the infected monkeys"
 
Paratus said:
Technically it did go airborne. A version infected an import holding area containing monkeys in Reston Virginia. While it tested as Ebola at the time, it was non infectious in humans.


Well technically it infects humans, as blood test will confirm antibodies it’s just asymptomatic. 😉
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Alright I’ll give to that. Reston virus has caused asymptomatic infections but no disease. But I don’t recall it being determined it was a mutation that made it airborne. (Referring to truly airborne, not aerosol transmission).

Honestly what concerns me more is the studies done after the 2014 outbreak that indicate the virus may have undergone a mutation making human cells more preferential to it.
 
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