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subrosaDom -> RE: Are we dead? (8/6/2014 3:57:22 AM)
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ORIGINAL: DomKen
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ORIGINAL: Arturas
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ORIGINAL: DomKen
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ORIGINAL: Arturas
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ORIGINAL: DomKen
Ebola isn't easy to catch. It's only spread by bodily fluid exchange. you guys can relax.
and avoid any fruit bats if you see any.
So, the ticks and mosquitoes now know to stop exchanging bodily fluids with us?
So far the only known animal that it is known to survive in besides primates is fruit bats. If it could survive in mosquitoes or ticks it would spread much more easily in Africa.
So...it is now spreading fast in African urban areas and I suppose this is because people there are kissing strangers and handling dead primates or both maybe at the same time. Yes, it must be that rather than the way malaria and rocky mountain spotted fever spreads through bug bites. Silly me.
The WHO's best guess is that foragers are picking up fruit dropped by the fruit bats and selling it at markets. The fruit bat saliva contains the virus.
but it isn't spreading "fast" except in paranoid stories. there have only been several hundred deaths in a very densely populated region of the planet over the course of several moths.
One reason Ebola doesn't spread very fast, but not the only one, of course, is that it kills most people and while they're sick, they're isolated. Contrast that with flu sufferers still going to work, going to the store, flying, etc. -- and add in the airborne vector for the flu and the fact that almost no one dies from the flu, but they rather die from its sequelae such as pneumonia -- and you have something that spreads fast. The irony is that if we were able to reduce the virulence of Ebola and allow people to survive it with drugs, the virulence would increase, but unless it could be transmitted by an airborne vector rather than by bodily fluids, it's still unlikely to become an epidemic, let alone a pandemic.
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