EBOLA FACT EBOLA MUTATES ADMITTED BY HEALTH AUTHORITIES 1-31-2015

[Doomer Doug]

I put this in its own thread because it is the first open admission Ebola is continuing to mutate. WHO apparently still thinks NOBODY HAS DIED FROM EBOLA IN JANUARY AT ALL. The 8,000 dead figure is stuck from mid December. Sheesh!
In this article, from Great Britain of course, we see the first sign of the doom the powers that be have lied about for months. Doomer Doug said Ebola would wipe out Africa, even if it never became a global pandemic. Of course, Ebola could mutate to an airborne vector; of course, it could mutate to become easier to catch. Sheesh, how can they make a statement like" Ebola won't go airborne," with a straight face?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...ious-warn-scientists-identified-outbreak.html



The Ebola virus is MUTATING, and 'could become more contagious', warn scientists who first identified the outbreak

Researchers in France believe the Ebola virus is showing signs of mutating
Team have been tracing the virus' spread throughout Guinea
Experts say it is 'not surprising' the virus is changing - it is like HIV and influenza which tend to mutate quickly
They cautioned it is very unlikely Ebola will mutate to become airborne

By Lizzie Parry for MailOnline

Published: 10:26 EST, 29 January 2015 | Updated: 13:42 EST, 29 January 2015




Scientists tracking the spread of the Ebola in West Africa have warned the virus is showing signs of mutating, and could become more contagious.

It was a team of researchers from the Institut Pasteur in France who first identified the outbreak in Guinea, in March last year.

Patient zero - the first person to be infected - has been identified as two-year-old Emile Ouamouno from the rural village of Meliandou.

He died four days after he fell ill with a sky-high fever and vomiting in December 2013.

Just weeks later his sister succumbed to the disease, followed by their mother and grandmother.

From there the virus spread, before the scientists at Institut Pasteur identified it as Ebola three months later after it was reported to the health authorities.

The team have since been tracing the virus' spread through Guinea, to establish if the disease could become more contagious.

They have started the process of examining hundreds of blood samples from Ebola patients in the West African nation where the first cases struck in December 2013.

Human geneticist Dr Anavaj Sakuntabhai, told the BBC: 'We know the virus is changing quite a lot.

'That's important for diagnosing and for treatment. We need to know how the virus (is changing) to keep up with our enemy.'

He told Radio 4's Today programme viruses have to 'fight a balance' between infecting people and spreading.

'We have seen several cases that don't have any symptoms at all when infected,' he said. 'These people may be the ones who could spread the virus better, we do not know yet.

'A virus can change from more deadly into less deadly but more contagious and that is something we are afraid of.'

Viruses do change over a period of time.


Ebola is an RNA virus, similar to HIV and influenza, and as such it has a high rate of mutation.

But while it is not surprising the virus is mutating, experts said, we cannot predict how it will evolve.

Dr Marta Tufet, science portfolio developer at the Wellcome Trust, which is funding one of the experiment vaccinations in development, said the longer the virus remains infecting the human population, 'the more likely it is to mutate and adapt to its environment'.

But she cautioned: 'There is really no precedent for any known RNA virus to mutate so radically that it would change its mode of transmission.'

People can only catch Ebola by coming into contact with the bodily fluids - urine, vomit, diarrhoea - of an infected individual.

It is not an airborne disease, and as such cannot be transmitted through infected people coughing or breathing in open spaces.

Dr Tufet added: 'HIV is another RNA virus that mutates all the time and has been circulating in far more people than Ebola, yet its route of transmission remains unchanged.'

While acknowledging it is important to study the way Ebola is changing to help better understand how to tackle it, and how it responds to vaccines and drugs, she said a suggestion the virus could become airborne is 'unfounded'.


The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has claimed more than 8,000 lives in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, but the World Health Organisation say the outbreak has now entered its 'second phase' with the focus shifting to ending the crisis


'It risks detracting from the important issues at hand,' she added.

Echoing Dr Tufet's thoughts, Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham said it is a well known fact that viruses mutate.

'Even if the virus is mutating, we don't know what impact, if any, those genetic changes are having,' he said.

'Asymptomatic infection is not a new thing, it's been seen in past outbreaks.

'Why some people remain well while others die is not clear, but it's most likely down to the host, our own genetic make-up has a massive influence on how viral infections affect us.'

It's feasible, he said, that changes in the virus could change the severity of the infection but said the truth is scientists do not yet have the answers.

'That's why studying virus and host genetics is important,' he added. 'When at last we have those answers, then we can start to determine their possible impact.'

Meanwhile the World Health Organisation (WHO) said there were fewer than 100 cases in a week for the first time since June.

In the week from January 25 there were 30 cases in Guinea, four in Liberia and 65 in Sierra Leone.

The WHO said the epidemic has entered a 'second phase' with the focus shifting to ending the outbreak.
What is ebola and where did it come from?








T
Can they just put an end to this once and for all its all I ever heard about in 2014 .

resis, paradise, United States, 1 day ago

The last time there was all this attention on ebola was to distract frmo what was happening to the rest of the world and in this country, what are "they" trying to distract us from now? Something major is looming I bet..


Joemama, Minnesota, 1 day ago

The ebola virus mutates all the time and has been doing so since it was discovered. That's what ALL viruses do. But that information doesn't get the clicks now, does it? "Everybody panic!!!" That's what gets the clicks, so that's what the headlines say, more or less.

Lisa, Charlotte, 1 day ago

Viruses are always mutating, aren't they?

JCad, Belfast, United Kingdom, 1 day ago

While millions die of malaria.

Tom, London, United Kingdom, 1 day ago

Ebola back in the news? What are they trying to cover up this time?


John, Manchester, 1 day ago

"They cautioned it is very unlikely Ebola will mutate to become airborne" ---- That should be seen as a positive remark and not a caution. Journalists shouldn't drink so much in the office, then they wouldn't type quite so much blatant rubbish...


longhairhippygirl, cali, United States, 1 day ago

Of course it is..

taquito, City of the Big Shoulders, United States, 1 day ago

Yep, viruses mutate. It could mutate to be less contagious too


Cleanup Philly, Philadelphia, 1 day ago

It is becoming less deadly but more contagious it looks. The problem with that is that there now appear to be asymptomatic carriers - people with ebola with no symptoms who spread ebola. OK, so how is that bad you ask? Because then it mutates back into old ebola. It is a way viruses have of just sleeping in their transmission cycle in hosts. You are not a very good infective agent if you kill your host, are you? Some have to live long enough to spread your offspring far and wide.


machine man, hobart, 1 day ago

What's new ? Most viruses mutate.


Cleanup Philly, Philadelphia, 1 day ago

What if it did mutate and become airborne? Only four or five genes had to switch on the genome of the Spanish Flu virus to make it be the kind of deadly airborne virus that lodged in the upper respiratory system and did it's worst. It was hemorrhagic like ebola, the Spanish flu of 1918. Then it rapidly mutated to non-hemorrhagic but still deadly. That may have been when it increased in contagion. People lived longer but still died, but in so doing, lived long enough to spread the disease more widely.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...ntists-identified-outbreak.html#ixzz3QQv5gujS
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[Be Well]

The Ebola virus is MUTATING, and 'could become more contagious', warn scientists who first identified the outbreak

Researchers in France believe the Ebola virus is showing signs of mutating
Team have been tracing the virus' spread throughout Guinea
Experts say it is 'not surprising' the virus is changing - it is like HIV and influenza which tend to mutate quickly
They cautioned it is very unlikely Ebola will mutate to become airborne

Airborne, AFAIK, means the viruses can float around in the air by themselves and still infect, and can stay aloft for hours and hours. Which last I read, Ebola can't do. But flu can. Ebola can be carried in coughs and sneezes for as many feet as coughs and sneezes travel, and sneezes go a long distance and are very fast.

 

[bw]

As long as the virus was in a culture that touches the dead, there is no special adaptive value in becoming more infectious. It was spreading just fine by physical contact, thank you. As soon as a few cases get into cultures that don't touch, it becomes highly adaptive to become more infectious at a distance. In other words, any airborne version is a slam-dunk for success. I made that point maybe half a year ago. All we have to do is wait for it to happen.

 

[Be Well]

As long as the virus was in a culture that touches the dead, there is no special adaptive value in becoming more infectious. It was spreading just fine by physical contact, thank you. As soon as a few cases get into cultures that don't touch, it becomes highly adaptive to become more infectious at a distance. In other words, any airborne version is a slam-dunk for success. I made that point maybe half a year ago. All we have to do is wait for it to happen.

I'm wondering since Ebola is not a respiratory illness from what I can remember, and respiratory illnesses are the ones that are easily airborne and therefore ultra contagious. Of course norovirus is ultra contagious and it's not a respirator illness...but I think noro is primarily spread in "confined" groups - family, nursing homes, cruise ships, etc.

 

[Countrymouse]

I'm shaking my head.

After all the (many and huge) ebola threads we've had here, some still apparently haven't read one word of them and are still getting all their ebola info from the MSM and the CDC, as comments "in" the OP (first post) show, along with some later.


First. "Airborne." Yes, "TECHNICALLY", it means the virus ITSELF can float INDEPENDENTLY in the air to infect, and (SO FAR) ebola can't do that. YET. YET.

BUT, that doesn't mean that it can't--and doesn't ALREADY AS WE SPEAK----spread via "aerosolized droplets'---iow, a sneeze, a cough---where it "piggy-backs" on water droplets spewed into the air under the FORCE of said sneeze or cough, for distances up to "200 times" farther than previously thought, per the MIT article below:


In the cloud: How coughs and sneezes float farther than you think
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/coughs-and-sneezes-float-farther-you-think

Novel study uncovers the way coughs and sneezes stay airborne for long distances.

Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office
April 8, 2014
Press Inquiries

The next time you feel a sneeze coming on, raise your elbow to cover up that multiphase turbulent buoyant cloud you’re about to expel.

That’s right: A novel study by MIT researchers shows that coughs and sneezes have associated gas clouds that keep their potentially infectious droplets aloft over much greater distances than previously realized.

“When you cough or sneeze, you see the droplets, or feel them if someone sneezes on you,” says John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics at MIT, and co-author of a new paper on the subject. “But you don’t see the cloud, the invisible gas phase. The influence of this gas cloud is to extend the range of the individual droplets, particularly the small ones.”

Indeed, the study finds, the smaller droplets that emerge in a cough or sneeze may travel five to 200 times further than they would if those droplets simply moved as groups of unconnected particles — which is what previous estimates had assumed. The tendency of these droplets to stay airborne, resuspended by gas clouds, means that ventilation systems may be more prone to transmitting potentially infectious particles than had been suspected.

With this in mind, architects and engineers may want to re-examine the design of workplaces and hospitals, or air circulation on airplanes, to reduce the chances of airborne pathogens being transmitted among people.

“You can have ventilation contamination in a much more direct way than we would have expected originally,” says Lydia Bourouiba, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and another co-author of the study.

The paper, “Violent expiratory events: on coughing and sneezing,” was published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. It is co-written by Bourouiba, Bush, and Eline Dehandschoewercker, a graduate student at ESPCI ParisTech, a French technical university, who previously was a visiting summer student at MIT, supported by the MIT-France program.

Smaller drops, longer distances

The researchers used high-speed imaging of coughs and sneezes, as well as laboratory simulations and mathematical modeling, to produce a new analysis of coughs and sneezes from a fluid-mechanics perspective. Their conclusions upend some prior thinking on the subject. For instance: Researchers had previously assumed that larger mucus droplets fly farther than smaller ones, because they have more momentum, classically defined as mass times velocity.

That would be true if the trajectory of each droplet were unconnected to those around it. But close observations show this is not the case; the interactions of the droplets with the gas cloud make all the difference in their trajectories. Indeed, the cough or sneeze resembles, say, a puff emerging from a smokestack.

“If you ignored the presence of the gas cloud, your first guess would be that larger drops go farther than the smaller ones, and travel at most a couple of meters,” Bush says. “But by elucidating the dynamics of the gas cloud, we have shown that there’s a circulation within the cloud — the smaller drops can be swept around and resuspended by the eddies within a cloud, and so settle more slowly. Basically, small drops can be carried a great distance by this gas cloud while the larger drops fall out. So you have a reversal in the dependence of range on size.”

Specifically, the study finds that droplets 100 micrometers — or millionths of a meter — in diameter travel five times farther than previously estimated, while droplets 10 micrometers in diameter travel 200 times farther. Droplets less than 50 micrometers in size can frequently remain airborne long enough to reach ceiling ventilation units.

A cough or sneeze is a “multiphase turbulent buoyant cloud,” as the researchers term it in the paper, because the cloud mixes with surrounding air before its payload of liquid droplets falls out, evaporates into solid residues, or both.

“The cloud entrains ambient air into it and continues to grow and mix,” Bourouiba says. “But as the cloud grows, it slows down, and so is less able to suspend the droplets within it. You thus cannot model this as isolated droplets moving ballistically.”


Secondly, ebola is not primarily respiratory, though it "used" the lungs as the best method of ENTRY into the body. It primarily attacks the IMMUNE system, utterly disabling it before it then turns to its main business of taking hostage ALL body cells (usually in the DIGESTIVE system, FIRST) for use in replicating itself as madly and as quickly as possible---with the result that it literally "blows apart" its host's cells by forcing them, without rest, to reproduce-reproduce-reproduce-reproduce the virus until they are bloated with copies of it and then, literally, EXPLODE---freeing these new copies of the virus to go elsewhere in the body and re-insert themserlves into new cells to start the process all over. The repeated action of the above results in a body---LITERALLY---LIQUEFYING, as the masses of "exploded" cells turn into mush inside our systems.

 

[Night Owl]

81 dead this week from. Bird flu in Hong Kong, better start getting ready for that coming to a country near you.

 

[Uhhmmm...]

http://www.virology.ws/2014/09/18/what-we-are-not-afraid-to-say-about-ebola-virus/

When it comes to viruses, it is always difficult to predict what they can or cannot do. It is instructive, however, to see what viruses have done in the past, and use that information to guide our thinking. Therefore we can ask: has any human virus ever changed its mode of transmission?

The answer is no. We have been studying viruses for over 100 years, and we’ve never seen a human virus change the way it is transmitted.

HIV-1 has infected millions of humans since the early 1900s. It is still transmitted among humans by introduction of the virus into the body by sex, contaminated needles, or during childbirth.

Hepatitis C virus has infected millions of humans since its discovery in the 1980s. It is still transmitted among humans by introduction of the virus into the body by contaminated needles, blood, and during birth.

There is no reason to believe that Ebola virus is any different from any of the viruses that infect humans and have not changed the way that they are spread.

I am fully aware that we can never rule out what a virus might or might not do. But the likelihood that Ebola virus will go airborne is so remote that we should not use it to frighten people. We need to focus on stopping the epidemic, which in itself is a huge job.

.

 

[Kook]

Whether or not anyone 'admits' it, all bacteria and viruses can and will mutate over time. I can't see why this would be considered 'news' at all.

 

[Be Well]

81 dead this week from. Bird flu in Hong Kong, better start getting ready for that coming to a country near you.

Oh really, I have not been checking the PFI site for weeks n weeks. Here's the link, I am sure they have the latest news:

http://www.singtomeohmuse.com/viewforum.php?f=1

ETA: I checked news from several days, and I don't see anything about 81 dead this week or even lately, from bird flu in Hong Kong. Could you post the source?

 

[meandk0610]

'We have seen several cases that don't have any symptoms at all when infected,' he said. 'These people may be the ones who could spread the virus better, we do not know yet.

I think this needs to be highlighted!

 

[FarmerJohn]

Fact: everything mutates.

Like Golden Delicious apples? I do. Somebody noticed the mutation and cloned it.

Unnatural selection? You bet!

Viruses mutate too.

 

[Doomer Doug]

I worked in commercial orchards forty years ago, Farmer John. It is a fact that many of our fruit trees come from grafting one branch from one tree that has a fruit with a good quality.

Early Red Haven peach for instance came from one Red Haven tree that had one branch that produced fruit one week or so earlier. Ebola is going to continue to mutate. The lies will continue, like Fukushima, until the reality is too obvious to hide. Of course, we may all be dead by then.

 

[FarmerJohn]

I worked in commercial orchards forty years ago, Farmer John. It is a fact that many of our fruit trees come from grafting one branch from one tree that has a fruit with a good quality.

Early Red Haven peach for instance came from one Red Haven tree that had one branch that produced fruit one week or so earlier. Ebola is going to continue to mutate. The lies will continue, like Fukushima, until the reality is too obvious to hide. Of course, we may all be dead by then.

Thanks for the backup, DD.

 

[BREWER]

Oh really, I have not been checking the PFI site for weeks n weeks. Here's the link, I am sure they have the latest news:

http://www.singtomeohmuse.com/viewforum.php?f=1

ETA: I checked news from several days, and I don't see anything about 81 dead this week or even lately, from bird flu in Hong Kong. Could you post the source?

Greetings, Be Well: I know you are able to navigate the site like the back of your hand. I get lost.

For those interested here is the 'direct' link to the thread and to the last page of that thread.
http://www.singtomeohmuse.com/viewtopic.php?t=5725&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=4545

Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://m.bbc.com/news/health-31019097

Ebola outbreak: Virus mutating, scientists warn


Hundreds of blood samples are being analysed to keep track of the virus
Scientists tracking the Ebola outbreak in Guinea say the virus has mutated.

Researchers at the Institut Pasteur in France, which first identified the outbreak last March, are investigating whether it could have become more contagious.

More than 22,000 people have been infected with Ebola and 8,795 have died in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Scientists are starting to analyse hundreds of blood samples from Ebola patients in Guinea.

They are tracking how the virus is changing and trying to establish whether it's able to jump more easily from person to person

"We know the virus is changing quite a lot," said human geneticist Dr Anavaj

"That's important for diagnosing (new cases) and for treatment. We need to know how the virus (is changing) to keep up with our enemy."

It's not unusual for viruses to change over a period time. Ebola is an RNA virus - like HIV and influenza - which have a high rate of mutation. That makes the virus more able to adapt and raises the potential for it to become more contagious.

"We've now seen several cases that don't have any symptoms at all, asymptomatic cases," said Anavaj Sakuntabhai.

"These people may be the people who can spread the virus better, but we still don't know that yet. A virus can change itself to less deadly, but more contagious and that's something we are afraid of."


Latest figures

There were fewer than 100 new cases in a week for the first time since June 2014.

In the week to 25 January there were 30 cases in Guinea, four in Liberia and 65 in Sierra Leone.

The World Health Organization says the epidemic has entered a "second phase" with the focus shifting to ending the epidemic.


But Prof Jonathan Ball, a virologist at the University of Nottingham, says it's still unclear whether more people are actually not showing symptoms in this outbreak compared with previous ones.

"We know asymptomatic infections occur… but whether we are seeing more of it in the current outbreak is difficult to ascertain," he said.

"It could simply be a numbers game, that the more infection there is out in the wider population, then obviously the more asymptomatic infections we are going to see."


The current outbreak began in south-eastern Guinea and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone
Another common concern is that while the virus has more time and more "hosts" to develop in, Ebola could mutate and eventually become airborne.

There is no evidence to suggest that is happening. The virus is still only passed through direct contact with infected people's body fluids.

Infectious disease expert Professor David Heyman said

"No blood borne virus, for example HIV or Hepatitis B, has ever shown any indication of becoming airborne. The mutation would need to be major"

Virologist Noel Tordo is in the process of setting up a new from the Institut Pasteur in the Guinea capital Conakry. He said,

"At the moment, not enough has been done in terms of the evolution of the virus both geographically and in the human body, so we have to learn more. But something has shown that there are mutations,"

"For the moment the way of transmission is still the same. You just have to avoid contact (with a sick person)"

"But as a scientist you can't predict it won't change. Maybe it will."

Researchers are using a method called genetic sequencing to track changes in the genetic make-up of the virus. So far they have analysed around 20 blood samples from Guinea. Another 600 samples are being sent to the labs in the coming months.

A previous similar study in Sierra Leone showed the Ebola virus mutated considerably in the first 24 days of the outbreak, according to the World Health Organization.

It said: "This certainly does raise a lot of scientific questions about transmissibility, response to vaccines and drugs, use of convalescent plasma.

"However, many gene mutations may not have any impact on how the virus responds to drugs or behaves in human populations."

'Global problem'

The research in Paris will also help give scientists a clearer insight into why some people survive Ebola, and others don't. The survival rate of the current outbreak is around 40%.

It's hoped this will help scientists developing vaccines to protect people against the virus.

Researchers at the Institut Pasteur are currently developing two vaccines which they hope will be in human trials by the end of the year.

One is a modification of the widely used measles vaccine, where people are given a weakened and harmless form of the virus which in turn triggers an immune response. That response fights and defeats the disease if someone comes into contact with it.


The research may explain why some people survive Ebola and others do not
The idea, if it proves successful, would be that the vaccine would protect against both measles and Ebola.

"We've seen now this is a threat that can be quite large and can extend on a global scale," said Professor James Di Santo, and immunologist at the Institut.

"We've learned this virus is not a problem of Africa, it's a problem for everyone."

He added: "This particular outbreak may wane and go away, but we're going to have another infectious outbreak at some point, because the places where the virus hides in nature, for example in small animals, is still a threat for humans in the future.

"The best type of response we can think of… is to have vaccination of global populations."

 

[BREWER]

http://www.virology.ws/2014/09/18/what-we-are-not-afraid-to-say-about-ebola-virus/

Greetings, Uhhmmm: No offense, but that article is out of sink with the link. I've posted the entire article below.

IIRC, in the first couple of weeks the West African strain of this weaponized Ebola mutated some 300+ times... All virii mutate. Sometimes they mutate into something less virulent;however, sometimes they become killers like H1N1 which we know as the Spanish Flu.
H1N1 became more deadly over time and killed more people than any other pathogen known to man. It also came in waves.


Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://www.virology.ws/2014/09/18/what-we-are-not-afraid-to-say-about-ebola-virus/

What we are not afraid to say about Ebola virus
18 September 2014

In a recent New York Times OpEd entitled What We’re Afraid to Say About Ebola, Michael Osterholm wonders whether Ebola virus could go airborne:

You can now get Ebola only through direct contact with bodily fluids. If certain mutations occurred, it would mean that just breathing would put one at risk of contracting Ebola. Infections could spread quickly to every part of the globe, as the H1N1 influenza virus did in 2009, after its birth in Mexico.

Is there any truth to what Osterholm is saying?

Let’s start with his discussion of Ebola virus mutation:

But viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years.

When viruses enter a cell, they make copies of their genetic information to assemble new virus particles. Viruses such as Ebola virus, which have genetic information in the form of RNA (not DNA as in other organisms), are notoriously bad at copying their genome. The viral enzyme that copies the RNA makes many errors, perhaps as many as one or two each time the viral genome is reproduced. There is no question that RNA viruses are the masters of mutation. This fact is in part why we need a new influenza virus vaccine every few years.

The more hosts infected by a virus, the more mutations will arise. Not all of these mutations will find their way into infectious virus particles because they cause lethal defects. But Osterholm’s statement that the evolution of Ebola virus is ‘unprecedented’ is simply not correct. It is only what we know. The virus was only discovered to infect humans in 1976, but it surely infected humans long before that. Furthermore, the virus has been replicating, probably for millions of years, in an animal reservoir, possibly bats. There has been ample opportunity for the virus to undergo mutation.

More problematic is Osterholm’s assumption that mutation of Ebola virus will give rise to viruses that can transmit via the airborne route:

If certain mutations occurred, it would mean that just breathing would put one at risk of contracting Ebola. Infections could spread quickly to every part of the globe, as the H1N1 influenza virus did in 2009, after its birth in Mexico.

The key phrase here is ‘certain mutations’. We simply don’t know how many mutations, in which viral genes, would be necessary to enable airborne transmission of Ebola virus, or if such mutations would even be compatible with the ability of the virus to propagate. What allows a virus to be transmitted through the air has until recently been unknown. We can’t simply compare viruses that do transmit via aerosols (e.g. influenza virus) with viruses that do not (e.g. HIV-1) because they are too different to allow meaningful conclusions.

One approach to this conundrum would be to take a virus that does not transmit among mammals by aerosols – such as avian influenza H5N1 virus – and endow it with that property. This experiment was done by Fouchier and Kawaoka several years ago, and revealed that multiple amino acid changes are required to allow airborne transmission of H5N1 virus among ferrets. These experiments were met with a storm of protest from individuals – among them Michael Osterholm – who thought they were too dangerous. Do you want us to think about airborne transmission, and do experiments to understand it – or not?

The other important message from the Fouchier-Kawaoka ferret experiments is that the H5N1 virus that could transmit through the air had lost its ability to kill. The message is clear: gain of function (airborne transmission) is accompanied by loss of function (virulence).

When it comes to viruses, it is always difficult to predict what they can or cannot do. It is instructive, however, to see what viruses have done in the past, and use that information to guide our thinking. Therefore we can ask: has any human virus ever changed its mode of transmission?

The answer is no. We have been studying viruses for over 100 years, and we’ve never seen a human virus change the way it is transmitted.

HIV-1 has infected millions of humans since the early 1900s. It is still transmitted among humans by introduction of the virus into the body by sex, contaminated needles, or during childbirth.

Hepatitis C virus has infected millions of humans since its discovery in the 1980s. It is still transmitted among humans by introduction of the virus into the body by contaminated needles, blood, and during birth.

There is no reason to believe that Ebola virus is any different from any of the viruses that infect humans and have not changed the way that they are spread.

I am fully aware that we can never rule out what a virus might or might not do. But the likelihood that Ebola virus will go airborne is so remote that we should not use it to frighten people. We need to focus on stopping the epidemic, which in itself is a huge job.Take care. BREWER

 

[BREWER]

Posted for fair use and discussion. H/t Monotreme
http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...risk-weaponised-ebola-bioterrorism-mod-report

UK government feared terrorists would weaponise Ebola

Ben Quinn. 2 February 2015

British military experts were asked to draw up guidance at the height of the Ebola outbreak in west Africa late last year on the feasibility and potential impact of terrorists “weaponising” the virus.

The Ministry of Defence has released a heavily redacted report, prepared in October, that identified three scenarios involving the exploitation of Ebola for bioterrorism.

Details of the first scenario are entirely blacked out, as are most of those of the second, which is described as “logistically and technically challenging for a non-state group to undertake”.

It adds: “Clearly there are practical issues involved with such a scenario that of themselves are often not insurmountable but taken together add to the complexity of successfully undertaking this attack.”

The third scenario – details of which were also heavily redacted – was described as the “most technically challenging”.

The advice was drawn up by the MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at a time when concern was increasing about the spread of Ebola in west Africa and plans were being put in place to carry out testing of travellers at UK airports.

It’s not clear who sought the guidance – and whether it was senior civil servant or a minister – but the report states that it was sought after a phone conversation on “the feasibility of a non-state actor exploiting the Ebola outbreak in west Africa for bioterrorism”.

The document was released by the MoD on Friday after a Freedom of Information request. The MoD cited a number of exemptions that allowed the information to be redacted, including on the grounds that disclosure would prejudice the capability and effectiveness of the armed forces and public safety.

Jennifer Cole, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, said she wasn’t surprised the report had been drawn up. “The US and UK military have been carrying out research for some time into infectious diseases,” she said. “The fact that vaccines are so far along in development is because of concerns that the US has had about the virus being weaponised.”

Monotreme's Comment

Nation-States have nuclear weapons. But they wouldn't weaponise Ebola because...?