Ebola scaremongering?

Boycey0211 said:
Indeed the worry could be unwarranted, but how many are doing Ebola research anyway?

I read a link someone posted last week of an autobiography by a Russian bioweapons rat, most of it seemed made up, as if they were doing almost pointless research with antibiotic treatable bacteria.

I call BS all round!
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I read that too some parts were great but it dragged on so long it didn't seem overly believable.

As far as I know only the so called teir 1 labs are allowed to use/store ebola(couple hundred I think) but that doesn't mean there aren't other people playing with it. I don't know about active research but I doubt they'd ever release that sort of information.
 
Mynight said:
I read that too some parts were great but it dragged on so long it didn't seem overly believable.

As far as I know only the so called teir 1 labs are allowed to use/store ebola(couple hundred I think) but that doesn't mean there aren't other people playing with it. I don't know about active research but I doubt they'd ever release that sort of information.
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Yeah I think that when he kept repeating himself in his own book and basing it all on research from the 1900's I started to doubt how true it all was. After all there was a 40 year + arms race between two superpowers, more than that was developed.

I think theres probably research into it somewhere, like you say its all in high level labs and whatever so it will be restricted
 
Mynight said:
As far as I know only the so called teir 1 labs are allowed to use/store ebola(couple hundred I think)
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You mean the Biosafety Levels? BSL 4 labs are the ones which handle the really nasty things, BSL 1 labs handle organisms which are essentially harmless.


Participant said:
Somebody call Dustin Hoffman!
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Doing a couple of modules in Virology and Immunology ruined that movie for me, the scientist in me winces every time they seem to magic up litres of antibody in a couple of hours.
 
I was involved in the planning for bird flu some years back, when they were showing some of the stats it was quite scary especially when we talked about how many Morgues would be required to hold the dead. You would think that at some stage some disease will appear they will hit a lot of us.
 
Art said:
You mean the Biosafety Levels? BSL 4 labs are the ones which handle the really nasty things, BSL 1 labs handle organisms which are essentially harmless.
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Yes that's the one thank you :)

You mean the movies aren't based on fact? :eek: (how am I supposed to survive the zombie apocalypse now? :().

It sounds like this is your area of study? What do you think?

Goberpiles316 said:
You would think that at some stage some disease will appear they will hit a lot of us.
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Maybe its my paranoia/somewhat sick mind but I do agree on that point. We create our own superbugs(antibiotics abuse), we pack as many people into small areas as possible(housing crisis, immigration), slowly nullify our ability to fight back(nhs budget cuts, over subscribed GPs). Almost perfect conditions for something unexpected to take us by the balls be it natural or terrorism.

Edit: or maybe its my ignorance.
 
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I have interests in Africa. The main thing with Ebola is that it's so virulent it doesn't give itself a chance to get an unmanageable foothold into populations. Although, it can be difficult in the symptomatic stage as there are similarities with malaria. This causes the inflicted not to realise the 'bout' of malaria is in fact far worse. (Many a time my guides would come down with a bout of malaria sickness and not turn up for work)

The recent outbreak in West Africa is a case in point. Across Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia there have been just under 800 reported cases. These countries are dirt poor and those with the resources to travel tend not to mix with the majority of the population. Rural area residents tend to contract the diseases but are unable to travel into larger populations due to inadequate infrastructure.

The harsh reality in those countries is that once your diagnosed with Ebola your pretty much left in an isolated room to die.
 
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The Ebola virus has a fatality rate of 90%. It is hard not to be scared of such a lethal virus.
To put things in perspective the Spanish Flu pandemic had a 10% fatality rate.

In today's connected world some truly unthinkable pandemics could arise. People tend to believe that modern technology and medicine will resolve these issues but the truth is we've made little progress since the Spanish flu. Yeah, we can discover the genetic sequence but that won't immediately allow us to create an anti-virus.
 
Weirdly wiki is reporting a 62% mortality rate currently in west Africa;

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_outbreak

Obviously not real time. I'm not sure if that means this ebola is a less lethal variant(I assume there's variants) or people who are infected have yet to reach mortality. In which case I feel horrible for them and wish there was something I could do.

I hate speaking so blasé about people's lives but its difficult to explain/converse about what's happening otherwise :(
 
I don't worry about these things.

If the UK is hit by a virus it'll kill off the hand sanitizer "can't be too careful" brigade that have no natural immunity to anything, and good riddance.
 
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