Five scientists sacrifice themselves to better understand Ebola.

www.sciencemag.org...

Above is a link to an article about their findings. Out of a team of 50, five of them contracted the disease and perished.

This is as heroic and romantic as the discovery of the polio vaccine. If they actually set up in a proper BSL4 environment, I'd love to be on a team studying this. This disease might not kill many people in the grand scheme of things, but it is an ugly death and even sparing a few thousand a year from that fate is an effort worth taking.

a reply to: Nechash

Heroic, yes.
Romantic? Really? Maybe the definition varies between languages but I doubt.
This disease might not kill many? Did you see the estimations, even those that did not consider accelerated spreading.

I think you are far to disconnected from reality (edit: on this issue). You would love to be on a team studying this? Are you that much qualified to take the job before others? Sorry for being that harsh but...really?

Wake up!

a reply to: verschickter

Romance once meant, after the Roman quality, and it wasn't as Bohemian as it is today, generally existing as a vitality which inspired passion in other observers. So, that is my etymology. I don't care much for the mushy headed employment of Romantic as we see today. It should be Aristolean.

Have you been around graduate students? Almost none of them have any real world concerns whatsoever other than how to secure more grant funding and to play the political game they need to play in order to get all of the children in their department to approve their research.

They are so hyperfixated on some small piece of trivia that they miss the opportunity they have to engineer real solutions to humanity's problems.

My sole concern would be to look at anti-body binding and the replication processes and to try to find some way to either elicit a competent immune response from naive people or to disrupt its replication process at some stage along the line. Not to mention, this new strain seems to be worse than previous strains. What is different about it? Is it capable of recombination like influenza is? If we devised a vaccine to the older, less lethal strains, would they provide protection against both strains of virus? Could you create a third variant, a consensus clade made by combining the most frequent genotypes of the other two to elicit an immune response to both of them? These are the questions that need to be asked when dealing with a viral infection, and I'm sure they have many immunologists working on this, but how many technicians do they have who actually understand these issues?

The medical approach of mitigating symptoms is obviously failing. It is time to start thinking like a microbiologist/immunologist.

a reply to: verschickter

I am qualified to be on a research team I still wouldn't take the job.

I like my Ebola 2000 miles + away

a reply to: verschickter

The death rate associated with influenza is 500,000 people per year, so have some perspective. I've worked with Spanish Flu, 1918 which killed millions of people. Ebola is ugly, but it is a child compared to other viruses which don't concern us at all. Influenza alone should keep people awake at nights. Some variants of H7 with novel neuraminidase enzyme cleavage sites have a 95%+ mortality rate. If one of those ever sweeps the globe, say bye bye to human civilization as we know it.

a reply to: Nechash

Interesting take. I just came on to post the following in my H2H thread:


Five of the scientists involved in the research caught Ebola and died. It's one of the most interesting -and alarming- factoids in the source report.

FIVE researchers. DIED. Got that? FIVE. …Exactly HOW did five fully protected, fully suited, well-trained professionals working in a state-of-the-art laboratory catch Ebola? And if five died, how many researchers caught it and lived? (Ten, at a 50% fatality rate.)

So what mistaken assumptions did they make about the Ebola they were working with? One might have been an accident. But FIVE? And you sure can't blame lack of training or inadequate tools.

Did they prep an experimental vaccine and think they were working with a dead virus?

Or what?

ETA: ….Did they make the same mistake about the safety of their patients' exposures as they did about their own? Is that how this epidemic started?

a reply to: Nechash

Then make it clear and not use some centuries old definition for that and nobody remembers if they have not studied latin speech and roman speech styles.

The medical approach of mitigating symptoms is obviously failing. It is time to start thinking like a microbiologist/immunologist.

It´s the only approach we can do yet because nothing has been found yet to defend the strain. You are babbeling in circles, using words 2/3 here probably may have to google, not including the second tongue english speakers here.

I also hope, with "naive" you really mean "native".

a reply to: verschickter

Naive means uninfected.

Edit: Ok, that is inaccurate. Naive means having no antibodies. You can have been infected, but if your whole blood cells clot together in the presence of the virus, thus showing zero immune response, you are still considered naive. Also, you can have been vaccinated, thus producing antibodies, although never infected and are no longer considered naive. That is how it works in influenza anyways. For patients suffering for something without an HA surface protein, I wouldn't necessarily know how to test for it.

a reply to: Nechash

Good to know as the translators I used for this only turned things like this out:

light minded, blue-eyed and so on. Of course I had to retranslate this from what it gave me in german.

However, estimation I saw on a thread here said something about 12mi in one year. Maybe I was naive on that. But why make it so hard to second tongue speakers, why not simply use "uninfected"? And all the other words that have more easy synonyms. That´s why I get the feeling you´re a little bit uppish.

beware hundreds of edits to not doublepost

a reply to: verschickter

Sorry. I have only ever discussed this issue with biology students, immunologists and other technicians. I'm not using technical terms to make it harder for you to understand. Firstly, I didn't know you weren't a native English speaker, although I guess I should have assumed that by your reference to other languages. Secondly, I'm not trying to be uppish whatsoever. The purpose of communication is to convey ideas and the purpose of discussion is to enlighten in a friendly manner. I have obviously failed at both of those levels and for that I am regretful. If there is anything I can do to make this more digestible for you, please let me know. Also, if I've said something offensively, I apologize (in the modern sense, not the Greek sense, I have no defense), and if I've said anything inaccurately, someone else feel free to put in their two cents.

a reply to: soficrow

My assumption is that many of the collaborators were volunteering in the clinics to collect the samples. My intuition tells me that this new strain is airborn. Considering that Ebola is known not to be airborn, they weren't in containment suits like you might imagine. This suggests a major mutation in the virus which is bad news. I doubt any of them were doing anything to expose themselves to the way Ebola is classically transmitted.

a reply to: Nechash

....I doubt any of them were doing anything to expose themselves to the way Ebola is classically transmitted.

My point exactly.

....It's a new subclade and a whole new ballgame.

a reply to: Nechash

No apologize needed, all good. Speaking of technicians, surprise I am an electrical engineer/software engineer. This does not mean I ingested a vocabulary for english on everything technical. You know, this would be impossible in several ways.

I seems you are really not aware that ATS, while hosted in USA, has plenty of members from other countries. I don´t want to bitch about language issues anymore now you know. Back to topic, I´m also aware of the fact that more people die from influenza every year than from lets say the hyper-hyped bird-/swineflu strains. That´s pretty wide knowledge here also.

Apollogizing me seems impossible for modern science at least. The estimated figure I read was 12 million infections, maybe this is uneducated overrating of the situation but I read it here on a thread where it was quoted from a study.
Let´s see if I can find it.

EDIT: Found it. Soficrow, it´s your post, I knew I thought it was from you but was not sure:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

1. Based on 3,069 reported cases (at August 26, 2014), the case total will reach 196,416 within about 6 months, and up to 12,570,624 cases after a year.
2. The WHO estimates unreported cases bring the total to 12,000 cases, which means cases would rise to 384,000 cases with in 6 months and 24,576,000 cases after a year.
3. Most likely the real case rate is much higher. There are no accessible hospitals or clinics for most West Africans - no one to test and diagnose, and no one to report new cases. Realistically, the actual case total is probably closer to 20,000 already. If that's true, then by 6 months the case total will be 640,000 and by one year - 40,960,000 cases.
If the transmission rate does not speed up.

So, I think my perspective is just right and happens to be on the lowest scale they could come up with. Time to adjust yours Nechash, unless the above is totally overrated

a reply to: verschickter

so... nothing about the figures I posted? No explaining them away? Seems my perspective is just right then and I will leave it with that. 12.000.000 cases in year at least. That´s 24 times more then your influenza example using the lowest estimation.

We already know how the virus works. It's the standard approach of bind to a site and inject RNA. Then the scientists know what each gene does.

I do wonder whether there isn't some kind of "fly-paper" that we could inject, that would trap the virus before it reproduced. Imagine capsules made from the receptor protein that the virus binds to. It would attach itself to them, inject the RNA, but nothing would happen because it's empty inside.

a reply to: verschickter

sorry to have abandoned this, I didn't get any notifications about it. The problem with extrapolating new data is that it is a feature of statistics which is not entirely accurate. If you map the growth rates of computer storage capacity, it would suggest an exponential growth curve for memory, but at some point that has got to level off when we reach the boundaries of our physical limitations. Right now, we are dealing with a very localized population among people who already have compromised immune systems. There is no way to say how it will behave in a more temperate climate zone or how it will respond among healthy people. I will agree that the growth curve is terrifying. If it continues at its present trajectory, this could easily become the most terrifying public health crisis since the dawn of the 20th century. If it spreads this rapidly in every climate zone, this might well end up making the history books. We can't know for sure.

Influenza bolts through the elderly and youth populations and so its growth curve is very steep initially and then of the remaining population it peters off. We can't say for sure until the data unfolds. I would keep an eye on it though. If it gets bad, don't wait around. Those who quarantine themselves survive these kinds of events. I already have a bug out spot picked out in the Allegheny national forest. I could live out there for years if necessary, and I will do if it comes down to a civilization ending plague. I'd rather go back to the stone age than face an early oblivion.

a reply to: verschickter

Nah, I think OP is on and you are a little disconnected. The common (non swine, non letter/number media perpetuated fear strain) flu will kill more this year than Ebola.

a reply to: soficrow

Five of the scientists involved in the research caught Ebola and died. It's one of the most interesting -and alarming- factoids in the source report.

that is alarming indeed...

ETA: ….Did they make the same mistake about the safety of their patients' exposures as they did about their own? Is that how this epidemic started?

i will raise that alarming ...to plain scary

a reply to: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

It's 50 doctors in the field in areas where there are outbreaks. They were spread out all over I believe. It wasn't a group working together, but all over. I would say they just came into contact with sick people or made a mistake in the field.

originally posted by: GogoVicMorrow
a reply to: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

It's 50 doctors in the field in areas where there are outbreaks. They were spread out all over I believe. It wasn't a group working together, but all over. I would say they just came into contact with sick people or made a mistake in the field.

can you verify this fact ?..i realize there is a lot of speculation going on but these details are quite important ?