Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major city

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/18/18188199/drc-ebola-outbreak

by pseudolus • 8 years ago

86 41 8 years ago

lettergram• 8 years ago

I’m curious if the more people who catch Ebola increase the risk it becomes spreadable by an airborn vector. I assume that’s the case, but does anyone know?

FrozenVoid2• 8 years ago

(I'm not an expert,i have limited knowledge on the subject) Much more likely is resistance to UV without changes in transmission route, so it survives longer in droplets. However there is a (tiny) chance of "recombination" with another airborne RNA virus that is "compatible", where two viruses share genetic material while infecting the same cell and the resulting hybrid is viable "airborne Ebola", however it would be sharing traits of both viruses. Some links: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/... http://www.recombinomics.com/News/11150702/Ebola_Recombinati... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3787895/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3324781/

pariahHN2• 8 years ago

It does, the more a virus replicates the more opportunities there are for a mutation to occur. The probability of specifically developing an airborne vector is pretty low though - there are significant differences between the physical properties required for fluid vs airborne transmission. A lot of specific mutations would have to accumulate, and there is no guarantee an airborne variety would see the same level of success and persistence as the original.

api3• 8 years ago

The good news here is that virus genomes are usually so small and parsimonious that they find it hard to cross significant fitness valleys between different local maxima. But they also have monstrous cohort sizes, so it's not impossible for them to get "lucky." (Lucky for the virus in a Darwinian sense, unlucky for its host.)

learc83• 8 years ago

Ebola would have to change a good bit to become airborne. If that were to happen, it would be a very different disease and there is no reason to assume it continue to be nearly as deadly.

vecter• 8 years ago

Why would becoming airborne make it less deadly?

pasta• 8 years ago

What I read is that most outbreaks spread a kind of linear while Ebola spreads exponetial.

That's what is scary about Ebola. And ofcourse the fact there is still no cure.

Retric• 8 years ago

no cure

Sort of, their are treatments that increase survival rates significantly. Supportive hospital care might not seem as useful as a wonder pill, but an IV drip can make a huge difference.

pariahHN2• 8 years ago

There are vaccines being deployed but stocks are extremely limited. If I remember correctly, they are focusing on inoculating the social circles of known infected. But you can only inoculate someone's social circle if you know they have it...

It also doesn't help that medical teams sometimes get attacked by locals.

api3• 8 years ago

Luckily it looks like having it once confers immunity.

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/ask-well-immune-to...

Also bodes well for our ability to make a vaccine.

dhh2106• 8 years ago

I thought all diseases spread exponentially, with the rate being determined by how contagious on one side and how deadly on the other?

lb1lf• 8 years ago

...plus the -hm- incubation period?

That is - for how long you can transmit the disease without showing symptoms.

The nightmare, of course, being a highly contagious, very deadly disease which let its victims infect others for weeks or months before falling ill themselves.

I recall having read somewhere that a 'good' thing about ebola is that it mostly gets its victims before they've had a chance to travel very far, thus limiting its spread.

marcosdumay• 8 years ago

The simplified model is a sigmoid function, if it looks like exponential growth, exponentially dampened, or linear depends on where you are on the curve.

sethammons• 8 years ago

A fun read on Ebola and the outbreak in Virginia: the Hot Zone

DanBC• 8 years ago

Here's another more detailed article that gives some history and context: https://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2019/01/16/ebola-cri...

docbrown• 8 years ago

NPR has an article on the Central African Republic's scouts who promote vaccination, relay messages about the Ebola outbreak, and domestic chores — https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/01/19/6808273...

Twitter thread from a MSW/JD with some more info regarding the Ebola outbreak and interactions between DRC, CAR, and South Sudan — https://twitter.com/geopoliticaljd/status/108699357731649945...

gdubs• 8 years ago

I’m not looking to incite a political flame war, but genuinely interested in how the current US government shutdown affects the response to this. The CDC is funded through 2019, but are there “non-essential” services whose absence will be detrimental towards combating a potential crisis like Ebola? Airport screeners? FDA? Research programs?

FrozenVoid2• 8 years ago

WHO accepted donations in previous outbreak. https://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/funding/en/ If the emergency funding won't be available somehow or blocked, the business/private/government entities interested in stopping the outbreak will donate to the cause.

pseudolus2• 8 years ago

I'm inclined to believe that a significant urban ebola outbreak in Africa would be sufficiently frightening that politicians, regardless of their political stripe, would authorize the appropriate funding. In any case I'm sure it would fall under the rubric of being a national emergency and funding would be authorized by the executive branch with little controversy.

You do bring up an interesting point about airport screening because presumably that would require significant manpower. In passing, however, it appears that screening at airports hasn't advanced to the stage where it's particularly effective. [0].

[0] https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g6202

drdeadringer• 8 years ago

I'm inclined to believe that a significant urban ebola outbreak in Africa would be sufficiently frightening that politicians, regardless of their political stripe, would authorize the appropriate funding. In any case I'm sure it would fall under the rubric of being a national emergency and funding would be authorized by the executive branch with little controversy.

I'm not so optimistic. I'll believe any of this when I see it.

abledon• 8 years ago

Wouldn't China step in before the US if things got bad to the point of threatening the African Economy? I thought China had an economic foothold in Africa, thats why they have a military presence there.

xbmcuser• 8 years ago

I think op is talking about if or when Ebola reaches US.

jMyles• 8 years ago

It's also worth considering whether the absence of these officials is a net positive or negative in terms of the overall response. Their response last time was abysmal. Be reminded, for example, that 19 days after Thomas Eric Duncan was treated without proper gear, the CDC still had a cheesy "under construction"-esque web page on the topic that said, "PPE Recommendations are forthcoming".

Hospitals were waiting instead of making their own preparations.

And they told Amber Vinson it was OK to fly with a slight fever, only later to vilify her in the press for "breaking protocol."

What an absolute shitshow.

sdenton4• 8 years ago

On the other hand, Nigeria had an amazing response.

"In both cities, all the ingredients for an explosion of new cases were in place. That explosion never happened, thanks to the country’s strong leadership and effective coordination of an immediate and aggressive response. As in Senegal, an emergency operations centre was established, supported by the WHO country office. Also like Senegal, Nigeria had a first-rate virology laboratory, affiliated with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, that was staffed and equipped to promptly diagnose a case of Ebola virus disease.

"The government generously allocated funds and dispersed them quickly. Isolation facilities were built in both cities, as were designated Ebola treatment facilities. House-to-house information campaigns and messages on local radio stations, in local dialects, were used to ease public fears. Infrastructures and cutting-edge technologies in place for polio eradication, were repurposed to support the Ebola response, putting GPS systems to work for real-time contact tracing and daily mapping of transmission chains. Contact tracing reached 100% in Lagos and 99.8% in Port Harcourt.

"In what WHO described as a “spectacular success story”, the country held the number of cases to 19, with 7 deaths. World-class epidemiological detective work eventually linked all cases back to either direct or indirect contact with the air traveller from Liberia. WHO declared Nigeria free of Ebola virus transmission on 20 October."

https://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/one-year-report/nigeri...

agumonkey• 8 years ago

at what point institutions lose sight of common sense ..

forkLding• 8 years ago

Vice had made several videos of the Ebola outbreak, they showed that there is a lack of trust in govts among the population as govts tend to be corrupt or ineffective so there is even groups of people who believe Ebola was a govt hoax, not sure if they still hold the same views but it shows the complexity of the situation.

Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major city

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