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Aylee -> RE: Ebola transmission (10/18/2014 10:57:05 AM)
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ORIGINAL: joether
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ORIGINAL: Aylee
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ORIGINAL: Marini
Good post jeff.
The thing is, I have yet to hear it"officially confirmed" that the Ebola virus can be transmitted through the air.
That is one of the big questions.
We all have a right to be concerned.
Well a group of researchers believe otherwise.
In August, Science magazine published a survey conducted by 58 medical professionals working in African epidemiology. They traced the origin and spread of the virus with remarkable precision—for instance, they discovered that it crossed the border from Guinea into Sierra Leone at the funeral of a “traditional healer” who had treated Ebola victims. In just the first six months of tracking the virus, the team identified more than 100 mutated forms of it.
Your really not answering his question.....
Here is where Marini might have gotten the idea:
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"If you bring two doctors who happen to have that specialty (Ebola) into a room, one will say, 'No, it will never become airborne, but it could mutate so it would be harder to discover.' Another doctor will say, 'If it continues to mutate at the rate it's mutating, and we go from 20,000 infected to 100,000, the population might allow it to mutate and become airborne, and then it will be a serious problem.' I don't know who is right." -- Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN.
And the Answer:
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Ebola isn't transmitted through the air. It is transmitted through direct contact by bodily fluids with an Ebola-infected person showing symptoms of the disease.
A mutation such as the kind Dempsey describes "would be exceedingly rare" in one epidemic, said Edward C. Holmes of Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity at the University of Sydney.
"It happens over evolutionary time, millions of years," Holmes said. "This idea that it takes one or two of those mutations and 'Wham!' you pick up airborne transmission, that is way too simplistic."
The link in 'Answer' above should help understand some of the other misconceptions being leveled to the public.
It depends on if it is the Zaire strain or the Reston strain.
Last month, the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy published an article arguing that the current Ebola has “unclear modes of transmission” and that “there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles both near and at a distance from infected patients, which means that healthcare workers should be wearing respirators, not facemasks.”
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