Ebola: Facts, Opinions, and Speculations.

Report: Dogs Eating Dead Bodies Of Ebola Victims On Liberian Streets

ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta/AP) — Dogs in one community in Liberia are reportedly eating the remains of dead Ebola victims lying on the streets.

The New Dawn reports that the Liberian government buried bodies of those suspected to have died from Ebola a few weeks ago in Johnsonville Township, outside of Monrovia. A number of dogs were reportedly seen pulling the bodies out of the graves and eating the remains.

Source

It's been reported that Ebola is contagious to canines. This article explains while the dogs will not become ill, they can still spread the disease.

Now the dogs will be spreading it around. Making the situation even worse and the fact now that probably any canines of the area could be carriers they will need to be dealt with, likely it will be of an unfortunate consequence because of lack of facilities.

I'd assume they don't have the means of deeper graves as an option, but other options need to be looked at, these bodies need to be disposed of properly. Apparently there's no plans to take care of it,

Alfred Wiah tells The New Dawn that the government’s Health Ministry was called about the incident but that officials did not do anything about it.

The director of the CDC and prevention, Dr. Tom Frieden has been scheduled to visit Liberia and other affected places. Wonder what he will have to say as a solution.

a reply to: dreamingawake

great now were back too Flea Bites,,,ie Hanta Virus,,and that other flea one, nobody wants too mention.

great, just great,,

Anybody have any thought about this?

Genetic studies of Ebola in Sierra Leone show virus is mutating fast

Genetic studies of some of the earliest Ebola cases in Sierra Leone reveal more than 300 genetic changes in the virus as it leapt from person to person, changes that could blunt the effectiveness of diagnostic tests and experimental treatments now in development, researchers said on Thursday.

"We found the virus is doing what viruses do. It's mutating," said Pardis Sabeti of Harvard University and the Broad Institute, who led the massive study of samples from 78 people in Sierra Leone, all of whose infections could be traced to a faith healer whose claims of a cure attracted Ebola patients from Guinea, where the virus first took hold.

The findings, published in Science, suggest the virus is mutating quickly and in ways that could affect current diagnostics and future vaccines and treatments, such as GlaxoSmithKline's Ebola vaccine, which was just fast-tracked to begin clinical trials, or the antibody drug ZMapp, being developed by California biotech Mapp Biopharmaceutical.

originally posted by: loam
Anybody have any thought about this?

I am naturally alarmed.

originally posted by: loam
Anybody have any thought about this?

What is unnatural in their terms?

Is it unsanitary conditions in local area hospitals? Fomite spreading disease by an unknown person or persons? Or is it just the way WHO is sharing that Ebola is spreading in the Congo by preparation of bush meat?

Interesting to hear what is found as the source says they will be testing natural and unnatural cases.

To me, finding it necessary to use the term 'natural' implies a distinction between intended and unintended exposure.

Why did they specify it in this manner? Are people being intentionally exposed?

Makes no sense.

The World Health Organization says the past week has seen the highest increase of Ebola cases since the outbreak began, more evidence that the crisis is worsening.

Mutating rapidly and now higher than normal reported cases. Let's hope that more people are willingly seeking treatment and that is why the numbers are higher this week.

www.lex18.com...

a reply to: loam

You know, I and a few others, earlier in this thread raised the question of the virus mutating. And now we have the bleeding edge (pardon the pun) of research into the genetics of this specific outbreak validating our concerns.

I'm eager to find what they're able to determine the mutations have added to the virus' pathogenicity. This aspect of what the virus is capable of has always been a great worry to me, and now we see why...

originally posted by: jadedANDcynical
a reply to: loam

I'm eager to find what they're able to determine the mutations have added to the virus' pathogenicity. This aspect of what the virus is capable of has always been a great worry to me, and now we see why...

I'm not at all scientific, what would this mean if the mutations have added to the virus' pathogenicity?

I have Sky News on in the background whilst doing some work.

The newsreader said that Senegal has had it's first confimed case?

Just found this from 6 hours ago: Source

Senegalese Ebola patient evacuated to Germany for treatment

A WHO staffer who has contracted Ebola has arrived in Hamburg for treatment. The Senegalese epidemiologist is just one of many health workers who have contracted the deadly disease in West Africa.

Same person i suspect (?)

They really are shipping these patients far and wide at the moment arn't they.

a reply to: skitzspiricy

No that is not the same guy.

Here you go:

FIRST CASE OF EBOLA IN SENEGAL

originally posted by: loam
a reply to: skitzspiricy

No that is not the same guy.

Here you go:

FIRST CASE OF EBOLA IN SENEGAL

Cheers for confirmation Loam,

I had a good search but only found the link of the WHO worker.

a reply to: quirkygirl

From my second post in this thread:

The trade-off hypothesis suggests that there is a trade off between how long the virus or other pathogen is able to persist in its host and the rate at which the virus or other pathogen can be transmitted. The trade off hypothesis suggests that virulence will evolve to a level at which virulence and transmission is balanced so as to maximize the spread of the virus.

Virulence Evolution

There is evidence that the hypothesis is correct:

Viral lines with the higher enforced rate of infectious transmission evolved higher virulence and higher rates of virus production. These results support the trade-off model for the evolution of virulence.

Virulence evolution in a virus obeys a trade-off.

If this virus behaves like ever other virus in history, the longer the outbreak continues, the more evolved the virus will become. It will seek any way possible to extend its ability to exist, including trading some of it's ability to kill it's host with ease of transmission.

Fact:

Airborne, aerosol, or direct contact are irrelevant when you consider a disease's R0 factor and unless that can be brought to less than 1, the spread will not halt until there are no more hosts left to infect.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Thank you and that is some scary stuff. I just watched the movie Contagion a week ago and they talked about R0 factor. I wonder what the 'new' R0 factor is, if it's changed at all with any of these strains? I wonder if they'd even tell us if it had...

Disease Transmission R0
Measles Airborne 12–18
Pertussis Airborne droplet 12–17
Diphtheria Saliva 6–7
Smallpox Airborne droplet 5–7
Polio Fecal-oral route 5–7
Rubella Airborne droplet 5–7
Mumps Airborne droplet 4–7
HIV/AIDS Sexual contact 2–5
SARS Airborne droplet 2–5[2]
Influenza
(1918 pandemic strain) Airborne droplet 2–3[3]
Ebola Bodily Fluids 1–4

This doesn't make Ebola look so bad, so it has to make you wonder why and how it's spreading so rampantly.

Belgium

The employee of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) quarantined in a Brussels hospital after suspected contamination Ebola, is the first real suspect case in Belgium, said Friday Sven Heyndrickx, spokesman for the Federal Public Health.

Thursday noon, the man fell ill while giving training to the association on the Tour & Taxis in Brussels. As he was returning from a risk area, it was immediately transferred to St. Peter's Hospital. "This man meets the three conditions of the high-risk category: it returns a hit by the disease, he was in personal contact with it and he has a fever," said Sven Heyndrickx.
If the man still has fever Friday a blood test will be performed. A definitive answer will be given at the earliest within two days, about a possible infection. Last week already, a Guinean 13 years had been quarantined in a hospital Ostend, but the youngster had actually contracted malaria.

Link

Spain Barcelona

Secretary of Health, Antoni Mateu, said the patient is a 38 year old Guinea suffered a head injury in Guinea Conakry, and could have been in contact with the virus.
Trauma care began in the Vall d'Hebron Hospital, but was transferred to the Hospital Clínic, where he was admitted to an isolation room for infectious diseases. Responsible area of ​​Clinic Epidemiology noted that this patient has more symptoms than a previous case, but it is "unlikely" to give positive results.

For now, patient blood samples were sent to the National Microbiology Center Majadahonda (Madrid), according to the Coordination Center Health Alerts and Emergencies of the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality. The result of the analysis, which will be announced in the next 24 or 48 hours, determine the patient's diagnosis.

This is the second possible case of Ebola detected in Barcelona , after the Department reported last Friday of another potential patient, a Senegalese diplomat of 36 years finally gave negative. This August were activated similar protocols in Alicante and Bilbao, although both patients were negative to the Ebola virus . Moreover, religious Bohi Juliana who had come to Spain to be admitted to the Hospital Carlos III for possible case of Ebola was given high today, after 21 days of treatment, disease free.

Link

From Russian news

Scientists have made ​​a catalog of 345 mutations, which were placed in the public domain for all researchers, quoted by "Times" Science.

Current epidemic caused Zaire subtype of Ebola virus, the most dangerous. The specialists of the World Health Organization said that as long as the epidemic will be able to locate, the number of cases with Ebola can reach 20 thousand. persons . This is more than six times the number identified to date (3062) cases of infection. According to WHO, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has claimed the lives of 1,552 people. In the recent epidemic is increasingly gaining momentum: more than 40% of cases have been recorded in the last three weeks.

Link

a reply to: quirkygirl

From my post on Aug 12 in this thread:

Epidemiological modelling based on the data from previous EBOV outbreaks has produced a basic reproduction number (R0) of 2.7 with a 95% confidence range of 1.9 to 4.1 (Legrand et al., 2007). This R0 is comparable to influenza (Mills et al., 2004) and would seem to be comfortably within the range required to generate an EVD pandemic. In answer to the question of why this has not already occurred in human history, perhaps the most persuasive response is that EVD very fortunately only emerged into human populations around the time of its discovery in the mid-1970s (Walsh et al., 2005), by which time we were fairly equipped to deal with it in remote low population density settings. Whether we can contain it within a large city, should the necessity to do so arise, remains to be seen.

The 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak in west Africa

But more recent data suggests:

The best-fit estimates of the basic reproduction number are 1.52 for Guinea, 2.42 for Sierra Leone and 1.65 for Liberia. The model shows that control efforts in Guinea and Sierra Leone were successful in reducing the effective reproduction number below unity by the end of May and July 2014, respectively. In Liberia, however, the model estimates an effective reproduction number of around 1.5 in mid-August 2014. This suggests that control efforts in Liberia need to be improved substantially in order to stop the current outbreak.

Estimating the reproduction number of Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV) during the 2014 outbreak in West Africa

Still well above 1 and so that means that the R0 is "comfortably within the range required to generate an EVD pandemic."

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Thanks for all the info. Scary to think this could be a pandemic, frightening at least that it has the capability to become one. I really hope this gets under control fast but it seems daily the news indicates otherwise.

Switching gears, I found this recently published paper interesting for the following statements:

Major pharmaceutical companies have shown little interest in developing effective treatments for diseases such as this. There’s no incentive for the commercial risks of research and companies naturally prefer to focus on diseases that can sustain large markets of wealthy regular users.

...

Let’s consider the most advanced drug: ZMapp, which is produced by Mapp Biopharmaceuticals and is the experimental treatment the fuss has been about. The incentive for developing ZMapp was clearly not its broad commercial potential. Instead, it is for developing capacity for biodefence.

How Western national interest drives Ebola drug development

So the "miracle cure" the press has been touting is the result of biodefense R&D.

If we see a glut of research begin in thia field, we can only assume they plan on having "large markets of wealthy regular users."

A young girl in Quebec, Canada is being tested for Ebola after returning from Sierra Leone. I started a thread on it here, just in case, but hopefully the test will be negative:

Ebola test underway for child in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada

They expect test results tomorrow.