In the aftermath of yesterday's Ebola update, the following:
Q. I have a question about the contagiousness of this once it finds a new population group. Do the natives of central Africa have any advantages of having a higher immunity to Ebola?
Q. Does living with the amount of germs the typical African does daily give them an advantage over western populations? I would hope that western populations with better hygiene practices and avoiding the funeral body washing will be an advantage. However is there any studies that suggest western populations may be less immune or more susceptible to contracting contagious diseases from a lack of exposure to the environment that Africa has?Based on morbidity and mortality figures from the African continent, they are worse off than Western populations, mainly because they're debilitated and malnourished from dealing with living with a higher amount of germs daily. "Cleanliness is next to godliness" is the best medicine ever practiced, even by Poor Richard's Almanac.
Hoping for magical immunity based on geography is a forlorn expectation, counter-factual to all available evidence.
Q. My biggest concern is that there is an unknown reservoir species in Africa that keeps Ebola alive and available for reinfection.Mine too. GMTA.
Q. If it gets here, will it establish itself in a similar species, and Ebola becomes endemic in the US?Overwhelmingly likely that's also a "yes".
Q. Or Indonesia, Vietnam, China, India?Also "yes".
Q. The gift that keeps on giving.Precisely.
Q. Would you stick around if you were offered the vaccine?Yes. Long enough to get the vaccine.
Currently, of those who have received the experimental vaccine on an emergency basis, there have been zero Ebola infections, and no serious side effects noted.
Once I had gotten it, I would still GTFO of Dodge, and then hunker down somewhere behind concertina wire with clear fields of fire.
Q. What are the chances that vaccinated people could inadvertently infect a loved one by accidentally bringing the virus home through poor infectious control procedures?
Exactly the same as unvaccinated people doing that. If Ebola comes in, GTFO.
Period. If you can get vaccinated first, do that. Then GTFO.
Q. Is it even possible to ramp up vaccine production to one hundred million or a billion doses? We know Ebola can produce enough virus.No effing idea. That's a question for the bean counters at Merck, Glaxo-Smith-Klein, etc. It's mainly a question of time, resource allocation, and facilities available. Making Ebola vaccine probably means they're not making tetanus, measles, and flu shots, for example, which killed more people in the 20th century than Ebola has in all outbreaks combined. In any event, it's a months-long process, and depending on when you start, you may be too late to succeed, because you won't have enough until six months after everyone in the affected area is dead. Complicating things is that so far, the vaccine is still experimental, and only being used on humans in the affected hot zone(s), because so far, there's been no full clinical trials.
I hope President Trump takes this seriously. We may get past this outbreak, but what about the one in 2021, and 2024, and...
Q. I'm not following this biology math. If ebola was as contagious as you say, then the last time it was in the US with the sick nurse going to her wedding etc. then it should have taken off. That set of events was an experiment from which contagiousness in the US environment can be estimated. How does that estimate turn out?What sick nurse, going to what wedding??
Amber Vinson, not contagious at the time, tried on her wedding dress at a shop in Ohio. Being scrupulous, she noted an increase in her temperature while on that trip, and on her return to Dallas, checked in to hospital, where she was diagnosed with Ebola. (The dress shop, OTOH, a 20-year going business concern, closed permanently and went bankrupt as a direct result of just that one contact. Multiply that times a few hundred to a few thousand businesses, and tell me how you see that contagion experiment going here, anywhere.)
Both infected nurses (who had done everything they were told as far as PPE) were isolated nearly immediately after first showing signs of elevated body temperature, and were not wandering the streets for two weeks while fully contagious and coughing out virus. Unlike just about nearly every infected person in Africa.
In very short order, they were both moved to full BL-IV isolation, because clearly the CDC protocols were fatally flawed (as the infection of two nurses proved rather devastatingly in exactly 21 days), and no one else at THP wanted to play any more.
The entire ER and ICU staff there threatened to quit if the hospital didn't close.
Given that as Ebola Central, THP had a patient census now in the single digits, they shut their doors for several months, and barely avoided bankruptcy.
And at the height of the outbreak, we had exactly one open BL-IV bed left in all of North America.
So you were exactly two patients from Dallas becoming Monrovia, Liberia, at the height of the outbreak.
Followed by the entire country rapidly becoming West Africa.
Ebola, with no precautions, in the wild, doubles every 21 days, on average.
Ebola in the US, with full infectious disease precautions and hazmat gear, doubled in 21 days.
Then we stopped f**king around, and put all infectees into Level IV hazmat isolation.
That, and the fact that Duncan was the only contagious person to slip out of W. Africa and into the US, is the only reason the disease didn't take hold here and go all Black Death on us.
Pure, dumb luck.
Getting a grasp on how contagious it is now?
Q. So how many cases in the US before you would go into Lockdown mode?One.
Next question.
And by "Lockdown" *I* mean:
No flights into or out of the affected country(ies) for the duration of the outbreak plus 40 days, except military mercy flights. No entry of individuals from those countries directly nor indirectly, except after entering full 40-day absolute quarantine seclusion prior to being permitted to proceed. That incudes all healthcare and medical staff, without exception, even if totally asymptomatic on arrival.
No "home seclusion" bullshit, no "wandering outside the house at will", but rather being behind armed guards and barbed wire, sitting in a tent or locked room for 40 days, and showing not one single sign of illness for the duration.
On Day 41, they can walk out.
And the traveler pays the full cost of the personnel to monitor them, and 6 weeks' worth of MREs or equivalent.
If they don't like it, they can stay in the Hot Zone country and wait a few months until the outbreak is resolved.
Their choice.
And don't try any civil rights bullshit. Quarantine law is well-established, going back 600 years.
If anybody in the Do-Gooder Brigade doesn't like it, they should stay their ass in Ebola City over there, or stay their ass home here without going to Ebolaville in the first place.
Any country or air carrier not scrupulously implementing the exact same protocol will be barred from entering US airspace, and any persons arriving from them subject to the same quarantine and rules.
Or take a Sidewinder missile up their tailpipe, and uncontrolled descent at the coastal ADIZ. Flaming Jet A/Jet-A1 is a great sterilizer. So is 2000' of seawater over the wreckage.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleterd
Another thing to consider about inoculations is "no serious side effects noted." The test case numbers are way to low to really have a prediction on the future of that.
ReplyDeleteThe numbers brought up were up to a billion doses. Without any real testing because of everyone screaming for "their" dose.
Remember Thalidomide?
Just food for thought.
"Q. My biggest concern is that there is an unknown reservoir species in Africa that keeps Ebola alive and available for reinfection.
ReplyDeleteMine too. GMTA.
Q. If it gets here, will it establish itself in a similar species, and Ebola becomes endemic in the US?
Overwhelmingly likely that's also a "yes"."
Once upon a time infection control by extermination was readily practiced, but given the UKs piss poor efforts at controlling, never mind eradicating TB, it's difficult to see it occuring in the weeks between outbreak and zombie apocalypse.
*Zoonotic TB
DeleteReadily jumping from Wild Badgers, Farmed livestock, and farm workers
Knowing what I know about hospital infection rates and why, and compliance to quarantine protocols and human nature, we're fucked...
ReplyDelete"Ebola, with no precautions, in the wild, doubles every 21 days, on average.
ReplyDeleteEbola in the US, with full infectious disease precautions and hazmat gear, doubled in 21 days."
I'm just a dumb guy with a bachelor's here, but uh.. doesn't that say the precautions taken were completely ineffective? Ie, just as good as going in wearing PT shorts and shower shoes? That doesn't seem right. Chalk it up to small sample size not showing the (marginal) benefit of whatever precautions were taken by those nurses?
Of course they were completely ineffective, and that was the exact "best and brightest" directions from the CDC and NIAID.
ReplyDeleteBoth nurses treating Duncan were infected, and showed full symptoms in less than 21 days, just as when it's put on a petri dish in a lab incubator by design.
Such a small sample size makes things worse, not better. This wasn't 2 failures out of 2000, or 200, it was 2 out of 2. Or 4. Or half a dozen. Certainly not more than that.
(My understanding was the two nurses who got it were the exact two primary ICU nurses caring for Duncan on day shift and night shift during the week or so while he was dying by the numbers, but I defer to anyone with better information from within the THP ICU in the fall of 2014. They did that to avoid putting even more ICU nurses there at risk, and the relatively new, young, and dumb - in a worldy-wise sense, not in terms of clinical expertise - ICU nurses "took one for the whole team". Literally.)
Assuming the two PPE protocol failures would have been diluted, rather than simply multiplying infection, by a wider pool of potential victims, begs all statistical credulity.
The protocol failed because it was ineffective, and effectiveness with Ebola is a binary result: pass, or fail. You can't catch "a little" Ebola, just like you don't get "a little bit" pregnant.
This was the US government bureaucracy at work, doing what it does best, since forever. Which is nothing.
And the same bunches of government @$$clowns will be running the show again, the next time it happens.
Sleep tight, America.
@Anonymous 4:36A
The sample size is some 40,000 vaccinated persons, to date.
IOW, about 20-26X more test cases than any vaccine ever tested in clinical trials. The problem is, it's not under controlled clinical conditions.
That's because it's not ethical (unless you're Josef Mengele) to do double-blind studies, with a control group receiving ineffective placebo dosing, when they're in a hot zone, and getting simple saline injections instead of vaccine amidst an active Ebola outbreak is a virtual death sentence for a non-zero number of persons.
Thanks once again, brother.
ReplyDeleteAs I noted your blog is great regardless but THIS is public service.
BG
Y'know, a LOT of people need to find the 1st 6 weeks of a basic Epidemiology course online. At which time, going through your numbers and graphs there would be a LOT MORE folks who understood the REALITY of---how do we spell it??---Oh yeah--"FOOKED!!"
ReplyDeleteThere would also be a lot more shit in computer chairs...
Thanks for the reality check.
When I said lockdown mode I meant you personally...Or would it still be one for you also...
ReplyDeleteThis is biblical kind of stuff
ReplyDeleteFor me personally, when the odds get to the point that Ebola is likelier than not going to come through the ER door on this side of the pond, it's time to take a leave of absence.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, the outbreak in W. Africa in 2014 was 14X as big as this one before anyone came here. But from now to that point only took about 4 months in 2014.
It isn't time to panic, by any stretch of imagination.
But this is officially an item of interest at this point:
It's spreading essentially unchecked, despite some earlier slowing down, and they'll likely lose control completely and scream "Rape!" there shortly. A month, maybe two, and perhaps sooner.
It's apparently now about halfway between the point where there's one case, and the point where it starts showing up on other continents.
With four international airports and four major theme park destinations hereabouts, it won't stay far away for long at present trajectory and speed.
Always enjoy your no nonsense, here's your chances, reporting. When oh when, did this country slip into complete stupidity? I know we have been living with horse manure as cultural statues for awhile, but I'd say that even in the '90s, there seemed to be some sort of intelligence. Obamanation seemed to usher in the entire Dumb for a Purpose thinking. If we cannot control our borders and immigrants, then we cannot control Ebola and other diseases. Disease is not political, religious, or a demon. It was, and is, an opportunistic set of germs and viruses. Now, we are seeing a comeback of diseases that we eradicated 100 years ago. The scary part? I'd say living in a crowded city certainly increases your chances of being exposed to something. But I don't see living in a small town as much safer. What with dumping of "new" citizens into areas that have not been cleared of infections, and not having a major urban hospital at your disposal. Small town hospitals handle mostly broken/torn limbs, passive complaints such as colds, headaches, or some such, and car wrecks. What if Patient Ebola had gone to someplace like Kaufman, Texas? Small town but still serviced by DFW airport. How does that affect the chances of exposure, since the mythical patient might be getting gas at the 7-11, buying snacks, and getting a cold Coke. It just seems to up everyone's chances of exposure.
ReplyDeleteThe old story: here is where we are, imagine where we will be.
"Small town hospitals handle mostly broken/torn limbs, passive complaints such as colds, headaches, or some such, and car wrecks. What if Patient Ebola had gone to someplace like Kaufman, Texas?"
DeleteNo hospital can deal with ebola
There are a dozen wards, across the entire western world, each with a single bed, that can, probably, deal with ebola, a single case of ebola.
So in 4-6 months we're looking at serious fecal material impacting rotating aerfoils? And in 4-6 months, as this is going on, we're going to be watching the beginnings of genocide in South African regarding the Boers?
ReplyDeleteAnd another 4-6 months after that we're going to see more crop failures as the new "Maunder" minimum continues to ramp up in the declining solar cycle. All the while we have nationalism escalating to riots in Europe and anti-immigrant sentiment at an all-time high.
Africa will be screaming for help as we watch them destroy the remnants of European peoples amongst them, while Europe slams the door in their face and starts to drive out the Africans from Europe, while food prices rise and the availability of food aid drops. This is starting to look like a perfect storm for Africa to get completely wrecked and depopulated.
I think the only way to contain this thing is to nuke the DRC!
ReplyDeletedealing with the cold, grizzley bears in the back country looks very pleasant. We know it will get here maybe later than sooner but with all the aloha snackbars in that region, they will get the bright idea of sending a positive to an airport and with international departures or connections. day late, dollar short. we know it is bad stuff, how do you dispose of the bodies? what is the Ebola survival time inside a body (dead or alive) and outside the body (droplets, fluids). does cold/heat effect it out side the body. do I understand correct, 10m barrier from any unknown persons droplets and fluid transfers? Do N95 masks even help? since elevated body temp is a symptom/sign. whos gonna take that temp reading, certain nogo here. Do we even have thermal reader that work at 10m and have less than 1 degree error.
ReplyDeleteWell, ladies and germs;
ReplyDeleteLets spit-ball a scenario.
Why would not some ISIS-like organization allow a dozen or so Martyrs to self-infect, and then with a few bucks in their pocket, insert them into the US using rat-lines through Canada? Spend their remaining days in the Roiling Ghetto's and other urban centers...using public transportation to good effect? Arrested and thrown into jail? No problem, just another vector in a new population.
Almost cheaper than flight lessons and box cutters.
God is Great!
Worse, have them roll around in a big pile of money, then send them out to spend it all before they die.
Delete@elysianfield - this was the concept behind a DOD simulation called Dark Winter in 2001 (I think they used smallpox?). It was one of those situations where they lock a bunch of DOD staff and politicians in a room and play the scenario.
ReplyDeleteAlmost destroyed the entire US.
Search "operation Dark Winter" with your fave search engine for all sorts of summaries.
I suspected they would try that last time around.
ReplyDeleteAs Tom Clancy observed in one of his novels, "They won't stay stupid forever."
What is the probability that ebola will be brought here intentionally by terrorists and distributed around the country in an effective way?
ReplyDeleteOn somewhat related note... here in Houston the EMgt folks have been running exercises.
ReplyDeleteThey had a large MASSEX at the port, scenario was a spill, possibly intentional, possibly with IEDs. Lots of partner agencies including city and county EOD and a "military" EOD unit, boats, hazmat bunny suits, etc. They were also trying out new hardware and software. They were using a tool called CommandBridge to combine and synthesize info for situational awareness, and were monitoring participant apple watches for abnormal heartrate and respiration. (Port of Houston is essentially in the heart of the city)
Today our city PD was running active shooter response at the decommissioned school down the street from me. Took me by surprise, but I'm glad they are embracing new concepts like RTF (rescue task force) and getting victims out before the scene is "secured".
I don't know of any pandemic specific exercises around here lately, but I'm heartened by the drilling I do know about. SOMEONE is planning and exercising for at least some of the threats.
nick
(a couple of years ago, Houston used CERT members to test something, by having them simulate both sides of 'vaccine distribution' at PODs, all set up with a phone call in the middle of the night. I never saw an AAR for that though.)
"how do you dispose of the bodies?"
ReplyDeleteCarefully, but after death, is significantly less dangerous, no coughing, sneezing, vomiting to spread the virus.
"What is the Ebola survival time inside a body (dead or alive) and outside the body (droplets, fluids). does cold/heat effect it out side the body."
Inside a live body, it reproduces until it kills the host, or the immune system licks it, current thinking is it keeps on coming back until it eventually breaks through the immune system and kill the host.
Cold slows it down, heat kills it (which is why our first immune response is a fever), UV kills it too. Exposed, about a month seems a reasonable life span, somewhere dark and moderately hospitable, flu virii live for years in the wild.
"do I understand correct, 10m barrier from any unknown persons droplets and fluid transfers?"
As a minimum thats probably not sufficient, but its better than 5m. How far do sneezes go? wall, a ten metre deadzone and another wall is better, 100m is better than that.
"Do N95 masks even help?"
For some definitions of help, sure,
"since elevated body temp is a symptom/sign. whos gonna take that temp reading, certain nogo here. Do we even have thermal reader that work at 10m and have less than 1 degree error."
Hence the level 4 biohazard facility.
@DOMO got it. the cold and lonely wilderness area near me is looking better and better.
ReplyDeleteWould it be of any value to build the immune system with natural virus killers, such as Elderberry and Olive Leaf Extract?
ReplyDeleteWould it be of any value to build the immune system with natural virus killers, such as Elderberry and Olive Leaf Extract?
ReplyDeleteIn what way are they natural virus killers? Plant viruses are different than animal viruses.
Aesop,
ReplyDeleteA couple of points:
-Last go-around, the Congolese version was indeed a separate outbreak, via a separate strain from the possibly mutated to airborne transmission West African shit-show. Given that, it is likely that this outbreak is another hot-flash from the same endemic reservoir from DRCongo. This is unfortunately is little consolation, since it is apparent that the large groups of Stupids with Guns™ are doing an even better job than that mutation did, in terms of augmenting R-nought.
-You started giving some of us a heads-up at the end of July '14. Mid September was when we found out 3k poor bastards from the 101st were being mobilized. it took until the end of SEP to get anybody on the ground there, which coincided with the wonderfulness making it here to Dallas. It was the beginning of November when I finally started getting releasable INTSUMS from the ops there, at which point they were at ~13.5k cases. Given the advanced R-nought for this outbreak, and the fact that it's ~200 miles from the capitols of Uganda (not much larger than Butembo, but better international air travel options), it appears we're well behind the curve.
-Given the degradation in the believably of MSM sources since '14 (who'd have thought THAT was possible?!?), our early-warning is essentially nil. At this point, we can only pray that the armed rebels preventing medical response are also limiting travel in the region enough that they and the infected areas all die off before spreading, because instead of sparse bush, this landscape contains such areas as "Bwindi Impenetrable National Park", so named due to the nature of the jungle there... meaning control is impossible.
By the grace of God, the last one burned itself out. We can only hope.
This is Ebola, boys and girls. you aren't going to "boost your immune response" with voodoo and elderberry leaves.
ReplyDeleteYou'll either stay the hell away from it, or you won't.
And if you contract it, 3 chances out of 4 you're going to die the most grisly death imaginable short of being torn apart by tigers.
Period.
Wrap your heads around that, and put the homeopathic witch doctor kit down.
Aesop,
ReplyDeleteWhat do you estimate the current R(0) value to be?
I just can't imagine anything even one thousandth as interesting as that actually happening. It seems like the news has basically stopped the past year or so.
ReplyDeleteYou know, given this scenario and other distasteful ones becoming more of a possibility every day the rehabbing of the landscaping around my home place has taken on a new dimension. It looks like a run of the mill farmstead but various ground contours, trees, flower beds and other hardscape features are dual purpose. They look nice of course but provide cover for defense and obstacles to vehicular and foot traffic should the need arise. It shouldn't take more than a day to emplace more obvious obstacles. Some can be emplaced right into the landscaping with no one the wiser. That heinous but typical fence line of honey locusts, multiflora rosebushes and blackberry canes not only has standard barbed wire fence in the middle of it but it's also packing a couple pallets of razor wire and some really deeply buried heavy fenceposts. Hogs goats and large livestock don't even attempt to punch through it.
ReplyDelete"how do you dispose of the bodies?"
ReplyDeleteYou would be amazed at what the government researches and the corresponding coincidences that occur.
In the 90's I had a client that was a chemist for some .gov agency (I forget which).
He developed allergies to organic solvents. He could no longer work in the lab.
He moved to a nice house overlooking the ocean far from any labs.
.gov set him up with an internet connection and access to data bases so that he could do theoretical research.
When I knew him he was immersed in the theoretical problem of how to dispose of huge amounts of dead chickens.
The next year the bird flu hit.
Yeah.
I know.
Instructions for folding tin foil hats to follow.
They're not exactly natural virus killers.
ReplyDeleteMaybe elderberry (Sambucus spp.) could be described that way, sort of. There are compounds in elderberry that tie up the hemagglutinins on the envelopes of viruses such as influenza and have been shown in vitro to impair the ability of the virus to fuse with and invade its prospective host's cells; it doesn't work for all viruses. There are some human clinical trials that support the claim that elderberry produces more rapid recovery from flu symptoms than placebo. It's probably not a bad idea to take in flu season on top of whatever else you do.
Filoviruses such as Ebola use a different group of host cell membrane compounds as their attachment and fusion sites, so... probably not.
"Ebola is a class A bio-terrorism agent known to cause highly lethal hemorrhagic fever."
ReplyDeleteYou wouldn't think that this has anything to do with the population reduction plans, promoted, among others by Billy, the goat, Gates and his vaccination efforts in Africa?
One word, just spread it around and wait for the results. Big Pharma is useless in this scenario by not having come up with a cure in the last 5 years or so. With their technology they should have been able to do that in a cinch.
But curing a disease would put them out of business.
Quod erad demonstrandum
Any reason to suspect the virus mutates as it is exposed to vaccines?
ReplyDeleteBeing it is such a nasty critter does it have defense mechanisms.
Bill Gates is funding, out of his own pocket, the worldwide eradication of polio.
ReplyDeleteThe upside of no more polio, just like with smallpox, is that if it isn't there, it isn't brought here.
Any other scenario is tinfoil millinery with black helicopter sauce.
The number of viruses Big Pharma can cure, worldwide, from 0 A.D. to present, is exactly zero.
There has been no observed mutation of Ebola to vaccines.
Yet.
Bill Gates is funding, out of his own pocket, the worldwide eradication of polio.
ReplyDeleteThe upside of no more polio, just like with smallpox, is that if it isn't there, it isn't brought here.
And yet polio causes paralysis in less than 1% of people who contract it.
However, the problem with this approach is that it allows more people who are susceptible to polio to exist and when another virus in the Picornaviridae mutates and can take advantage of the same receptor polio does, the death toll will be large.
Gates would be better off to spend his money on something more useful, like developing cheap vaccines against all strains of Ebola.
"Last go-around, the Congolese version was indeed a separate outbreak, via a separate strain from the possibly mutated to airborne transmission West African shit-show."
ReplyDelete"Airborne" doesnt mean what you think it means.
The common cold is airborne, that means you sneeze, it travels hundreds of metres, lands in a crack in the pavement, and stays there. 5 years later, a strong gust of wind blows it loose, and it lands in some guys moth and infects him.
"Fluid borne"
Ebola is fluid born, you sneeze, it travel 10 metres, lands on a door knob, an hour, day, week later, environment dependent, someone opens that door, wipes his eye, and boom, infected.
If it makes it here I hope it starts in D.C. first.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the great info came here from WRSA good ideas for fence lines at the family farm something I will look into
ReplyDeleteEveryone should read the book spillover by David Quammen. It covers Aids, Eola and other infections
ReplyDelete@Crew, & co.,
ReplyDeletePolio only actually cause paralysis in 0.5% of cases, not 1%.
Problem being that was >350,000 people worldwide in 1980, and 1600 in America as recently as 1959. Overwhelmingly it was kids.
It only resides in humans, and it's fecal-oral, so it thrives in poor sanitation, but if there's no virus in humans because of vaccination, it's a disease that can be completely eradicated.
Proof of the point was that the US became polio-free (until recent re-importation by unvaccinated illegals) in 1979, the Americas in 1990, and worldwide, the number of paralytic cases was down to 42 in 2016, a decrease of some 99.99%.
And Bill Gates should spend his money on whatever the fuck he wants, since it's his money.
The fact that pictures from 1952, with dozens of paralyzed patients in iron lungs, occurs now in NO U.S. hospitals, is why vaccinations matter.
https://ourworldindata.org/polio
And the polio vaccine has provided greater relief in the past 70 years than the Ebola vaccine could have, even if it had been invented in 1975.
Long-term, I'm happy both exist, but in 1950, Ebola wasn't a thing. Polio was.
And we don't get to reconstruct history according to our wishes.
FYI
Ebola is "airborne" in no sense whatsoever.
It is droplet precautions, meaning it can travel in coughs/sneezes up to 8m/26', and linger in the air for 10 minutes after sneezing/coughing.
Canadian tests put survival of the virus on solid surfaces in cold/dry conditions at 40 days.
In warm/moist conditions, I haven't seen a vitality study, but I expect it would be similar, if not worse.
Polio only actually cause paralysis in 0.5% of cases, not 1%.
ReplyDeleteI did say less that 1%.
Even at 0.5% that should drive selection to the point where 1 in 10,000 are dying because that is the rate at which genetic copy mutations occur.
Also, I have known two individuals who had polio, one, an uncle, is now gone, and as a kid I constantly ran around and played in the dirt ... most of us actually got the polio virus well before the oral vaccine became available (when I was about 8 or so where I was) and became naturally immune. (https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/194/11/1619/916374) I lived in the tropics at that time and played in the dirt quite a lot. I even stepped on a rusty nail which resulted in a trip to the hospital to get a Tetanus shot.
However, my overriding point is that we will never eradicate polio-like diseases because other members of Picornaviridae can and will mutate to exploit CD155.
Those things (viruses) mutate at a much faster rate than Eukaryotes do ...
Polio wasn't vanquished, it was redefined.
ReplyDeletehttps://thevaccinationreaction.org/2015/07/polio-wasnt-vanquished-it-was-redefined/
Now tell me again, why Mr. Billygoat should be allowed, even if it is his own money, to use it for nefarious purposes like killing instead of advancing better health for more people. His agenda is very well known.
https://newspunch.com/bill-gates-depopulate-planet/
Why are the vaccinators so afraid of the un-vaccinated. They should be safe, shouldn't they?
Oh, by the way, I love black helicopter sauce. Goes good with my freedom fries.
One more thing: www.learntherisk.org/diseases
When Ebola gets here we won't even know about it for several days at least.
ReplyDeleteI believe that CDC owns patent on the virus , all reaserch, all materials (incl. all infected). The doc I saw was from the early 80's if I remember.
ReplyDeleteAs for those evil pharma companies. I work for one in the labs.
ReplyDeleteYeah.. 5yrs ain't squat in pharma development timelines. For things we understand better (not well but better) than Ebola you are looking at about 10yrs on average to develop a drug that works and does not damage the host. About 99.9% of candidates wash out within 5 yrs. If virus curing were so easy AIDS would have been cured long ago given the time and effort spent. Even being able to control and live with AIDS is a freakin' miracle.
For those who think big pharma doesn't want to cure diseases you are dead wrong. First, just business.. how much bread is to be made by the first company to find a cure for AIDS or even one kind of cancer? Likely after the first cure is found others will follow more quickly - knowledge gained. Second, most people who work in pharma are people. Many chose this work because they lost someone close to them to some sort of nasty thing like AIDS or cancer. If there was a cure there would be no hiding it - too many mouths to keep shut.
The big problems are these: bureaucrats (private sector and .gov), ROI - a pharma company is a business not a charity, our relative lack of knowledge about how the human body and viruses/bacteria work and interact, people talking about eeeeviiill pharma who have no clue how the science and business work and the legal and ethical restraints involved as well.
The absolute best part of pharma bashing is that if those who hate the industry succeed you can get ready for Dark Ages II. You don't really think .gov (you know, the brain trust that brought you the Ebola procedures that FAILED COMPLETELY) can take over R&D and come up with anything useful do you? Heck, I doubt they could even efficiently produce what are now considered 'easy' drugs/vaccines.