Innersting Article About the Ebola

[LJ3]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/04/ebola-zaire-peter-piot-outbreak

[Chicken Dinner]

I'm getting pretty frustrated with the local public health folks imitating the Keystone Kops and the CDC in Washington telling us not to worry and remain calm. Rome is burning people.

[quercus alba]

The Marburg virus is a filovirus, as is Ebola. It was discovered in Marburg Germany in the 1960's and was identified in 1967 so this guy Piot did not "discover Ebola". He did work with it in Zaire but ebola has several strains Ebola Zaire, Ebola Marburg, Ebola Sudan and ebola Reston. Reston is the only airborne strain and it's limited to primates. Probably have a better chance of getting eaten by a shark.

Viruses are kind of a hobby of mine, didn't mean to be preachy

[BarryBobPosthole]

It is an interesting article. At least its done with some sanity.

I've always found it interesting how viruses mutate. If you look at the late 1800's and early 1900's there were virus pandemics that killed literally millions, 675,000 in the US alone in 1918-19. The fact that people don't die more often these days isn't entirely because we have more sophisticated medicine to fight it. A big part of it is because viruses have mutated so that they don't kill their host as often or as quickly. From what it appears, this is a result of natural selection as much as anything. If a virus kills its host it has a very less likelihood of surviving itself. It survives to live another day by being less deadly, mutating to be more easily transferred and increase the chances of spreading more by allowing the host to interact with more people during the phase of when they're contagious. Viruses are much more prevalent today, but are much less deadly. So it makes sense from that standpoint. Not to say that viruses are sentient, because they're not. But natural selection does favor the ones that don't kill off their hosts like ebola does. The next iteration of ebola might be worse simply because it won't be as virulent.

BKB

[LJ3]

Viruses are kind of a hobby of mine, didn't mean to be preachy

That's pretty funny coming from a Grand High Exalted Taser Master :)

[quercus alba]

Yeah I'm somewhat of a conundrum Len, kinda geeky kind of a hick. my wife doesn't know whether to take a walk or wind her watch sometimes. And I still think I could end a lot of the foolishness that goes on if I were Grand High Exalted Taser Master with transporter power.


yeah PH, viruses are very adaptable, natures way of keeping the species going, unlike the human race. Us curmudgeons hate change.

interesting fact , the smallpox virus is estimated to have killed over 300 million people approximately the same amount killed by man eating tigers.

Yeah I know that seems like a lot but there have been at least 373K killed since 1800. The world has been spinning a lot longer than that, plus before 1800 very few weapons were around for protection. If you ever get the chance, read some about Jim Corbett who hunted man eaters.

[Bwana]

300 million killed by tigers?!?

I've read and love Corbett's stories but 300 million is a LOT.