Doug B
Footballguy
Check this out. From CNN.com, October 6th:I've read a similar article and am surprised Osterholm would say "it would not surprise many virologists if Ebola were eventually to mutate and become airborne -- an alarming possibility that would put millions of lives at risk."
From what I've been reading virologists would be very surprised if this went airborne.
Ebola in the air? A nightmare that could happenToday, the Ebola virus spreads only through direct contact with bodily fluids, such as blood and vomit. But some of the nation's top infectious disease experts worry that this deadly virus could mutate and be transmitted just by a cough or a sneeze.
"It's the single greatest concern I've ever had in my 40-year public health career," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "I can't imagine anything in my career -- and this includes HIV -- that would be more devastating to the world than a respiratory transmissible Ebola virus."
The World Health Organization says its scientists are unaware of any virus that has dramatically changed its mode of transmission.
"For example, the H5N1 avian influenza virus... has probably circulated through many billions of birds for at least two decades. Its mode of transmission remains basically unchanged. Speculation that Ebola virus disease might mutate into a form that could easily spread among humans through the air is just that: speculation, unsubstantiated by any evidence."
Osterholm and other experts couldn't think of another virus that has made the transition from non-airborne to airborne in humans. They say the chances are relatively small that Ebola will make that jump. But as the virus spreads, they warned, the likelihood increases.
Every time a new person gets Ebola, the virus gets another chance to mutate and develop new capabilities. Osterholm calls it "genetic roulette."
Now this from yesterday's NYT:
And this from October 17th, on NPR.org:As Ebola Spreads, So Have Several Fallacies
... Yet misconceptions about how they travel continue to circulate, including the persistent notion that Ebola, like influenza, is airborne. The uncertainty only grows when possible new cases are identified, as happened on Thursday in New York.
Recently on “Fox News Sunday,” the political commentator George F. Will said, “There are now doctors who are saying, ‘We’re not so sure that it can’t be in some instances transmitted by airborne.’ ”
When another guest on the show started to explain that experts have said this is not true, Mr. Will interrupted to say, “Every expert that you’ve seen. Here we go again.”
When scientists refer to an airborne virus, they mean one that gets into droplets called aerosols that are so tiny they can float on air currents instead of falling to the ground. Influenza can spread this way as people cough and sneeze. All the evidence scientists have gathered about Ebola, on the other hand, indicates that it spreads through contact with fluids from infected people. During an infection, the virus makes huge numbers of copies that contaminate the victim’s vomit, blood, diarrhea, urine and saliva.
The sheer numbers of viruses in those fluids raise the odds that anyone who makes contact with them will be infected. “This virus only needs a little opportunity,” said Vincent J. Munster, a virologist at the National Institutes of Health.
Ebola victims can release large, virus-laden droplets — if, for example, their vomit hits the floor. These droplets may strike people in close range or land on a wall or some other surface, where they can stay infective for hours or days.
Unlike the flu, Ebola does not lead to the kinds of coughs and sneezes that create a cloud of aerosols around a patient. Scientists who track the spread of Ebola have found that close contact with an infected person is necessary to become infected.
“The people who pass by the door and knock and say hello, we don’t find they get infected,” said Dr. Daniel G. Bausch, an associate professor of tropical medicine at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
That’s not the pattern that airborne viruses produce. Dr. Bausch, for example, has treated hundreds of patients with Ebola and related viruses without protection from aerosols.
“If it happened frequently, I would be dead,” he said.
The outbreak of Ebola in Dallas has followed the pattern Dr. Bausch has seen in Africa. Thomas Eric Duncan, the infected man from Liberia, stayed in an apartment for eight days without passing the virus on to others there.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story The only two people to become infected were hospital nurses who took care of Mr. Duncan when he was most infective.
“If it were really highly contagious like the flu, there would be a whole lot more people infected with it,” said Thomas W. Geisbert, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
Why Won't The Fear Of Airborne Ebola Go Away?How many times do top officials have to say that the Ebola virus is not airborne?
A lot, apparently.
Here is President Obama Thursday: "This is not an airborne disease. It is not easy to catch."
And the day before: "It is not like the flu. It is not airborne."
And Friday, a reporter asked the inevitable question about airborne Ebola when Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, held a press briefing about nurse Nina Pham's transfer to the National Institute of Health.
"There is no evidence whatsoever that this virus is airborne-transmitted," said Fauci emphatically. "Everything we know about this virus is that it is direct contact with bodily fluids."
This gets said over and over. It's backed up by epidemiological studies of past outbreaks. Yet the possibility of Ebola spreading through the air keeps being raised.
...
Still, what if the Ebola virus mutates? That's another fear that keeps surfacing. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, spoke about that on CNN this week.
"I'm worried about it because we know so little about it," he said. "You'll hear different people describe whether it could become airborne." He said that scientists did not agree. "I don't know who's right. I don't want to take that chance. So I'm taking it very seriously."
It's true that researchers can't absolutely rule out the idea that mutations might change how the virus spreads, but this seems unlikely, says Alan Schmaljohn, a virologist the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He said the chance of that is "very low, probably in the range of winning the multi-state lottery."
On Capitol Hill, the CDC's director said his team has been on the lookout for any significant genetic mutations. "What we've seen is very little change in the virus," Frieden told lawmakers. "We don't think it is spreading by any different way."
Chances are that's not the last time he'll have to say that.
