Ebola scaremongering?

Hikari Kisugi said:
To quote from your article


Wut? I am somewhat confused, a zoologist used computer modelling to show that 10% Europeans are resistant to HIV due to the black death which he thinks was an Ebola virus rather than the black death...
Might be a lot of background reading required to ascertain what I think regarding that. Either way, probably not that important in current events.
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Black death was caused by a bacteria... not a virus, specially the bacterium Yersinia pestis

However it is possible that survivors possess a heightened (general) immune system for coping with other diseases.
 
Is it just me or does it seem like not enough is being done to prevent this from going global? I realise people need to go to Africa and help but surely there's further steps to be taken? Why are we still accepting planes from these countries? Why aren't we even screening the people arriving on planes from these areas? It seems like the basics aren't being done.
 
Because as usual the media are hugely exaggerating the risk/threat and are scaremongering!!
Give it a few months and it'll have all died down and it will be old news, just like the swine flu!

John Oxford, a virologist at the University of London, has explained that the hysteria surrounding ebola is disproportionate to the threat.
He points out that ebola ‘doesn’t spread very easily’, and that the virus’s reproductive number - how many people are infected by each carrier - is very low. Where measles has a reproductive number of 12, ebola’s number is 1.
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I think I respect the opinion of a virologist than that of the media that has a proven track record of hugely exaggerating such situations.

Is it an issue that needs dealing with? Of course, but lets keep some perspective here, it's not something anyone should be losing sleep over and certainly not as serious of an issue that the media is ignorantly portraying !!
 
Sorry I think I misread you. You meant that the media whoring of the subject would die down rather than the ebola outbreak itself?

If so you're probably right, they have other huge issues to deal with in the media like the false widow apocalypse in the UK :D.
 
C.R.A.Z.Y said:
I think I respect the opinion of a virologist than that of the media that has a proven track record of hugely exaggerating such situations.

Is it an issue that needs dealing with? Of course, but lets keep some perspective here, it's not something anyone should be losing sleep over and certainly not as serious of an issue that the media is ignorantly portraying !!
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The respected virologist who discovered Ebola in 1976 seems quite worried. It could be the case that your fella is towing the establishment "don't panic" line.
 
Mynight said:
To be fair people were saying it would die out in a few months back in July it's still seems to be going strong.
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Because, put simply, the country's with major outbreaks are **** holes with the majority of the population being uneducated to the point of killing aid workers because they believe they are causing people to be sick.

I watched a vice thing on YouTube, I think it was "caninbal generals of Libereia" I know it has no real relevance to this thread but it does show what towns and city's are like in thee country's, I.e open sewers in streets or just having a **** on your local bit of beach along with the rest of the population.

Sure ebola is bad and deadly but we live in a country where you can by antibacterial coat hangers and everyone is using alcohol scrub on their hands every 2 seconds, imagine the **** storm if the 6pm news bulletin said don't go near anyone in case you get sick...
 
OldCoals said:
From that article, 5% of the people who have died were health workers. :eek:
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It is difficult now as the exact figures have now been lost in the magnitude that this has become, however they have been banding that figure around for a good 6 weeks now. So I would say that a lot of the health care workers died at the start/mid summer and it was due to poor training, lack of facilities.

I think that once the supplies start getting through as well as the training, then this percentage will go down.
 
sbi5ar said:
Black death was caused by a bacteria... not a virus, specially the bacterium Yersinia pestis

However it is possible that survivors possess a heightened (general) immune system for coping with other diseases.
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Its a specific resistance to AIDS: yesinia pestis invades the immune systems T-cells in exactly the same way as AIDS, ergo those with a specific mutation which made their cells resistant to the black death also conveys the same resistance to AIDS

It confers no other resistance and certainly none against Ebola as I understand.

RaMDOM said:
I read that and thought that was weird. I wonder what angle he was thinking this from.
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One assumes in the sense that its another disease to emerge from the jungles of tropical africa and move into the general population. This is far worse than AIDs though as its much easier to catch. I remember watching a documentary years ago about Ebola saying it was one of several diseases that is on the verge of breaking out of tropical rain forests. The pictures of ebola victims with the blood oozing out of eyes, ears, noses every orifice was wasn't easy to forget. There are (I think it was ebola) strains that are airborne but luckily they only affect monkeys... so far.
 
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Blackjack Davy said:
One assumes in the sense that its another disease to emerge from the jungles of tropical africa and move into the general population. This is far worse than AIDs though as its much easier to catch. I remember watching a documentary years ago about Ebola saying it was one of several diseases that is on the verge of breaking out of tropical rain forests. The pictures of ebola victims with the blood oozing out of eyes, ears, noses every orifice was wasn't easy to forget. There are (I think it was ebola) strains that are airborne but luckily they only affect monkeys... so far.
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The Reston strain. The airborne bit was only inferred based on observation wasn't it? It was transferred between monkeys in separate cages in the same room. They do have a habit of throwing crap at each other. A bit like other Ebola strains, I don't think experts know as much about its airborne transmission when compared to flu.
 
RaMDOM said:
It is difficult now as the exact figures have now been lost in the magnitude that this has become, however they have been banding that figure around for a good 6 weeks now. So I would say that a lot of the health care workers died at the start/mid summer and it was due to poor training, lack of facilities.

I think that once the supplies start getting through as well as the training, then this percentage will go down.
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Aye a lot of the healthworkers who died did so basically because there was no training, no real facilities, not enough proper equipment and they were massively overworked and exhausted.

Basically a lot got infected before they knew the risks, a lot due to lack of proper protection, and a lot due to simple mistakes made either due to being too tired, or normal human error :(

It's one of the reasons sending in largish groups of armed forces medics is likely to make a difference, as if you can have a well trained group of medics (and support staff/equipment) working in facilities the chances of cross infection are much lower, and the survival rates will almost certainly go up (at the moment I believe many cases are dying in part because of things like dehydration).
 
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