Ebola: Official Facts & Fiction thread
- Thread starter QueEx
- Start date
What You Should Know
About the Ebola Virus
Ebola virus disease, also called Ebola hemorrhagic fever or just Ebola, is a serious disease that often causes death.
According to the World Health Organization, the average Ebola case fatality rate is greater than 50 percent. In the past, during other outbreaks, the rate has ranged from 25 percent to as high as 90 percent.
Scientists have identified five Ebola virus strains, four of which cause disease in humans.
Ebola outbreaks started in Africa. Scientists think the virus is transmitted from wild animals to humans. These animals include fruit bats, monkeys, gorillas, chimpanzees and antelope. Humans can become infected by coming into contact with fluids or organs from infected animals.
Here, courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, are facts you need to know about the Ebola virus.
A person infected with Ebola can’t spread the disease until symptoms appear.
The first symptoms of Ebola include a fever (higher than 101.5 degrees F) that comes on quickly.
Ebola is spread through direct contact with the blood, organs and body fluids of a person who is showing symptoms of the virus. Ebola is not spread through the air, water or food.
There is no FDA-approved vaccine available for Ebola. While experimental vaccines and treatments for Ebola are under development, they have not yet been fully tested for safety or effectiveness.
Everyone should practice good hygiene by washing their hands frequently. This is especially true for healthcare providers and laboratory employees who come into contact with fluids or specimens from confirmed or suspected cases of Ebola virus disease.
Here’s how you can protect yourself:
Immediate family and friends who have had close contact with an Ebola virus patient are at the highest risk of getting sick.
Ebola virus disease can only be confirmed through laboratory testing.
There is no specific and proven treatment to cure Ebola.
According to the World Health Organization, the average Ebola case fatality rate is greater than 50 percent. In the past, during other outbreaks, the rate has ranged from 25 percent to as high as 90 percent.
Scientists have identified five Ebola virus strains, four of which cause disease in humans.
Ebola outbreaks started in Africa. Scientists think the virus is transmitted from wild animals to humans. These animals include fruit bats, monkeys, gorillas, chimpanzees and antelope. Humans can become infected by coming into contact with fluids or organs from infected animals.
Here, courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, are facts you need to know about the Ebola virus.
A person infected with Ebola can’t spread the disease until symptoms appear.
Symptoms appear after the incubation period, which can last from two to 21 days. The incubation period is the time between when a person is exposed to the infection and when the person begins to experience symptoms. The average incubation time is eight to 10 days.
The first symptoms of Ebola include a fever (higher than 101.5 degrees F) that comes on quickly.
Other early symptoms include:
Later symptoms include:
- Fatigue
- Muscle pain
- Headache
- Sore throat
Later symptoms include:
- Vomiting
- Diarrhea
- Rash
- Kidney problems
- Liver problems
- Bruising
- Bleeding, both internal and external, including bloody gums and stool
- Lab tests showing low numbers of white blood cells and platelets and high levels of liver enzymes
Ebola is spread through direct contact with the blood, organs and body fluids of a person who is showing symptoms of the virus. Ebola is not spread through the air, water or food.
A person with Ebola who is showing symptoms spreads Ebola through their blood and body fluids, such as urine, feces, saliva, vomit, sweat and semen.
To spread, the body fluids of the sick person must come in direct contact with a second person. This means the virus enters the second person through the second person’s broken skin or mucus membranes. Objects such as needles, that have been contaminated with the blood or body fluids of a person sick with Ebola can spread the virus too.
Transmission also can occur through direct contact with surfaces, items, and materials such as bedding or clothing that have been contaminated with the body fluids of a sick person.
Infected people are still infectious for as long as the virus remains in the body’s fluids. For instance, the semen of men who have had Ebola and recovered can still transmit the virus for up to seven weeks after recovery. Women can transmit the virus through breast milk.
There is no Ebola vaccine, but you can take steps to protect yourself against the virus.To spread, the body fluids of the sick person must come in direct contact with a second person. This means the virus enters the second person through the second person’s broken skin or mucus membranes. Objects such as needles, that have been contaminated with the blood or body fluids of a person sick with Ebola can spread the virus too.
Transmission also can occur through direct contact with surfaces, items, and materials such as bedding or clothing that have been contaminated with the body fluids of a sick person.
Infected people are still infectious for as long as the virus remains in the body’s fluids. For instance, the semen of men who have had Ebola and recovered can still transmit the virus for up to seven weeks after recovery. Women can transmit the virus through breast milk.
There is no FDA-approved vaccine available for Ebola. While experimental vaccines and treatments for Ebola are under development, they have not yet been fully tested for safety or effectiveness.
Everyone should practice good hygiene by washing their hands frequently. This is especially true for healthcare providers and laboratory employees who come into contact with fluids or specimens from confirmed or suspected cases of Ebola virus disease.
Here’s how you can protect yourself:
- Wash your hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
- Don’t touch the blood or body fluids, such as urine, feces, saliva, vomit, sweat and semen, of people who are sick.
- Don’t handle items that may have come in contact with a sick person’s blood or body fluids, such as clothes, bedding, needles or medical equipment.
- Don’t touch the body of someone who has died of Ebola.
Immediate family and friends who have had close contact with an Ebola virus patient are at the highest risk of getting sick.
Healthcare workers who have taken care of a patient with the Ebola virus also are at risk.
Anyone who has been in contact with the blood or body fluids of an Ebola patient is at risk of getting sick. This includes people who may have been involved in burying someone with Ebola.
Contact with infected wildlife also can put you at risk of getting sick.
Anyone who has been in contact with the blood or body fluids of an Ebola patient is at risk of getting sick. This includes people who may have been involved in burying someone with Ebola.
Contact with infected wildlife also can put you at risk of getting sick.
Ebola virus disease can only be confirmed through laboratory testing.
Early symptoms, such as fatigue or fever, look like many other illnesses. So knowing whether the ill person has been exposed to infected blood or fluids is important.
There is no specific and proven treatment to cure Ebola.
Right now, treatment means treating symptoms by giving fluids and oxygen and treating any other infections that occur. These support methods help the patients cope with the illness and helps to improve survival.
If a person has symptoms and has been in an area known to have Ebola virus disease or in contact with a person known or suspected to have Ebola, he or she should seek medical care immediately.
Prompt medical care is essential to improving the rate of survival. It is also important to control spread of the disease.
Sources:
World Health Organization. Ebola virus disease.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/
Accessed 10/02/2014.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ebola (Ebola Virus Disease).
http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/index.html
Accessed 10/02/2014.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What You Need to Know About Ebola.
http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/pdf/what-need-to-know-ebola.pdf
Accessed 10/16/2014.
http://health.clevelandclinic.org/2...paid+syndication -_-link-_- outbrain-_-mobile
I don't know why you are posting this.
After Tuesday night, Ebola will be old news.
After Tuesday night, Ebola will be old news.
This how the republican Ebola fear hysteria started:
Most Americans can be manipulated like puppets!
source: newstalkflorida
No More Ebola: Texas To Be Declared Ebola Free
The last person who was being monitored for Ebola in Texas is to be cleared from twice-daily temperature checks by the end of Friday. In all, 177 people, including family members, health-care workers and acquaintances, were on a “watch list” for 21 days, which is the generally accepted incubation period of the Ebola virus. None of those nearly 200 people ever showed signs of the illness.
Texas also recently cleared the people who were being monitored in Texas because they were passengers on one of the Dallas-Cleveland flights that carried a Dallas health care worker before she was diagnosed with Ebola.
source: newstalkflorida
No More Ebola: Texas To Be Declared Ebola Free
The last person who was being monitored for Ebola in Texas is to be cleared from twice-daily temperature checks by the end of Friday. In all, 177 people, including family members, health-care workers and acquaintances, were on a “watch list” for 21 days, which is the generally accepted incubation period of the Ebola virus. None of those nearly 200 people ever showed signs of the illness.
Texas also recently cleared the people who were being monitored in Texas because they were passengers on one of the Dallas-Cleveland flights that carried a Dallas health care worker before she was diagnosed with Ebola.
LOL
Stupid asses!!!
most muthafuckas just blow with the wind..
Stupid asses!!!
most muthafuckas just blow with the wind..
Since the OP ignored my post, Texas Declared Ebola Free Right After The Election. How Convenient! Maybe this post will make it clearer.
source: Crooks and Liars
Now That Election 2014 Is Done, Wingnuts Declare Ebola Crisis Over
Betsy McCaughey completely reversed her hysteria from just over a week ago, because the time for fear is now past.
<iframe src="http://embed.crooksandliars.com/embed/8DipXR04" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="336" width="600"></iframe>
Like magic, Ebola is no longer a crisis Fox talkers have to go on about anymore, because the election is over and the fear factor can rest for awhile.
But we knew that, right?
Fear was what they used to drive their base to the polls. Ebola served that purpose. And so now, it's no big deal and there should be no appropriations to assist with the fight in Africa.
Media Matters:
But I digress.
Fox News is now rewriting the script for the new Republican Congress. They are perfectly fine with the possibility of Ebola spreading wherever it spreads and withholding funds to stop it in its tracks if it means making life just a little bit harder for the guy in the White House.
If you thought the two-year old tantrums were bad before, batten the hatches. Because we've got a budget and a debt ceiling coming up, and the hardliner Republicans (by which I mean all of them) aren't going to bend one whit for disease, or war, or anything else.
Because 2016 is far enough away that they can simply sit on everything. No need to rush, no crisis. That was then, this is now.
The rewrite isn't due for another 11 months or so, when 2016 starts ramping up.
source: Crooks and Liars
Now That Election 2014 Is Done, Wingnuts Declare Ebola Crisis Over
Betsy McCaughey completely reversed her hysteria from just over a week ago, because the time for fear is now past.
<iframe src="http://embed.crooksandliars.com/embed/8DipXR04" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="336" width="600"></iframe>
Like magic, Ebola is no longer a crisis Fox talkers have to go on about anymore, because the election is over and the fear factor can rest for awhile.
But we knew that, right?
Fear was what they used to drive their base to the polls. Ebola served that purpose. And so now, it's no big deal and there should be no appropriations to assist with the fight in Africa.
Media Matters:
Betsy McCaughey: "The President May Be Exploiting" The "Man-Made" Sense Of Danger. During the same segment, Betsy McCaughey argued that President Obama is exploiting the so-called "sense of danger" in the U.S. caused by Ebola, which she called "a man-made problem." She went on to blame the World Health Organization and the White House for the spread of Ebola and reiterated calls for "travel restrictions" to and from West Africa:
If only it were simply Fox News. Alas, this came from Peter Coll at The New Yorker:MCCAUGHEY: The president may be exploiting the sense of danger right here in the United States. But the fact is, here in the U.S., the sense of Ebola as a danger is a man-made crisis. All previous Ebola outbreaks were confined to one continent, Africa. This virus does not have wings. But the World Health Organization and the White House are giving it wings, airplane wings, allowing it to spread to North America, Europe, Australia, other continents of the world. [Fox News Channel, Fox & Friends, 11/7/14]
Before the midterms, amid public scares over Ebola and ISIS, approval of the President’s performance sank. He was late to lead in these crises and he failed to inspire swing voters with his successes: for one, his Administration is presiding over the fastest-growing economy in the industrialized world.
Wait. Slow to respond? Before there were any cases here, the President ordered 3,000 military personnel over there to fight the disease on its home turf. As for the successes, well...we've been through that. Until the economy actually starts having an impact on real people, it's just theory. Who cares if the stock market is high if jobs are still tight, after all.
But I digress.
Fox News is now rewriting the script for the new Republican Congress. They are perfectly fine with the possibility of Ebola spreading wherever it spreads and withholding funds to stop it in its tracks if it means making life just a little bit harder for the guy in the White House.
If you thought the two-year old tantrums were bad before, batten the hatches. Because we've got a budget and a debt ceiling coming up, and the hardliner Republicans (by which I mean all of them) aren't going to bend one whit for disease, or war, or anything else.
Because 2016 is far enough away that they can simply sit on everything. No need to rush, no crisis. That was then, this is now.
The rewrite isn't due for another 11 months or so, when 2016 starts ramping up.
Insect-Eating Bat May Be Origin
of Ebola Outbreak, New Study Suggests
The first Ebola victim may have contracted the
disease from small bats dwelling in a hollow tree.
An insect-eating bat, like this one dissected in a makeshift laboratory in western Africa,
may have been the source of this year's Ebola outbreak. Photograph by Pete Muller, National Geographic
of Ebola Outbreak, New Study Suggests
The first Ebola victim may have contracted the
disease from small bats dwelling in a hollow tree.
An insect-eating bat, like this one dissected in a makeshift laboratory in western Africa,
may have been the source of this year's Ebola outbreak. Photograph by Pete Muller, National Geographic
By David Quammen
for National Geographic
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 30, 2014
While people in West Africa continue to die from Ebola, scientists are pondering a mystery that has eluded them since the first known outbreak of the virus among humans, in 1976: Where does this fearful bug hide when it’s not killing people?
A new hypothesis described Tuesday in EMBO Molecular Medicine presents an unexpected scenario of how Ebola 2014 may have gotten started. The study suggests that the virus may have passed into its first human victim, a child, from a small insect-eating bat, an animal so diminutive that it is hunted by children but not by adults.
Ebola virus is a zoonosis, meaning an infectious agent that lives inconspicuously and innocuously within some nonhuman animal (its reservoir host) and spills over occasionally into humans, causing disease.
Fruit bats, which are relatively large and meaty, have often been touted as suspects, but the virus’s reservoir host has never been positively identified. The gold standard of proof—culturing live virus from the tissues or blood of a candidate animal—hasn’t ever been achieved from fruit bats, nor from any other creature. So the virus is still at large, its reservoir indeterminate, its whereabouts unknown, somewhere within the landscape of tropical Africa.
The first known victim of the 2014 Ebola epidemic was two-year-old Emile Ouamouno,
shown in a family photo in Méliandou, Guinea. Photograph by Suzanne Beukes, UNICEF
Tracking a Killer
The Ebola epidemic of 2014, which has now totaled almost 20,000 cases and at least 7,708 deaths, began quietly in southeastern Guinea slightly more than a year ago. News of the outbreak reached the wider world last March, and within weeks Fabian Leendertz of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin assembled a multidisciplinary team that included ecologists and veterinarians, plus an anthropologist to interview local people, and traveled to the affected area, near the borders of Liberia and Ivory Coast.
Surveying wildlife in forests there, the scientists found no evidence of a die-off among larger animals, such as duikers, monkeys, and chimpanzees, that are also susceptible to Ebola. This suggested that perhaps the virus had spilled over directly from its reservoir host into humans, without passing through other animals hunted or scavenged for food.
The team then focused on a village called Méliandou, in Guinea—the index village, where the human outbreak began. A young boy, Emile Ouamouno, was the earliest known victim. He died with Ebola-like symptoms in Méliandou back in December 2013, followed soon by his mother, sister, and grandmother. No adult males died in the first wave of the outbreak, another clue that seemed to point away from hunted wildlife as the origin of the virus.
During eight days in Méliandou, Leendertz’s team gathered testimony from survivors and collected samples, including blood and tissues from captured bats. From these data emerged the new hypothesis: Maybe the reservoir host was a bat, yes—but a very different sort of bat, in a different ecological relationship with humans.
While fruit bats are abundant in southeastern Guinea, they don’t roost in large aggregations near Méliandou. But the village did harbor a sizable number of small, insectivorous bats, which roosted under the roofs of houses and in natural recesses, such as hollow trees. The locals call them lolibelo.
“These bats are reportedly targeted by children,” the new paper recounts, “who regularly hunt and grill them over small fires.” Imagine a marshmallow roast, except the marshmallows are mouse-size bats devoured by protein-hungry children.
Emile Ouamouno, the first to die in the current Ebola outbreak, may have been infected by
bats while playing in this hollow tree near his village of Méliandou, Guinea
The researchers then uncovered another clue: a large hollow tree, which had recently been set afire, producing as it burned what someone recalled as “a rain of bats.” Leendertz’s team collected soil samples at the base of that tree, which eventually yielded traces of DNA assignable to Mops condylurus, commonly called the Angolan free-tailed bat.
That species matched the villagers’ descriptions of lolibelo. What’s more, the big hollow tree had reportedly been a favorite play spot for small children of the village, including the deceased little boy, despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that it was full of little bats.
Too Close for Comfort?
All this is circumstantial evidence, pointing to a possibility that Ebola 2014 began when the boy in Méliandou came in contact with an Angolan free-tailed bat.
Bats of that species have previously been found to contain antibodies against Ebola virus, but the sample numbers were very small, and antibodies are weak evidence. The species has therefore not been included among the prime suspects as a reservoir for Ebola. That could change, if further sampling of Angolan free-tailed bats reveals any stronger data connecting the bat and the virus.
Scientists identified a bat species that may host Ebola virus by analyzing DNA in soil and ash. The material was collected from around a tree that had held bats near the site of the first known human case in Guinea. Shown above is Fabian Leendertz, who led the science team, dissecting a bat.
The new paper is intriguing and suggestive—but is it important?
“Could be,” says Charles Calisher, emeritus professor at Colorado State University and an authority on zoonotic viruses, “if they would follow up with more studies.”
Leendertz and colleagues have already followed up, with extensive bat sampling in villages in Ivory Coast, Guinea’s neighbor to the southeast. Laboratory results from those samples, available soon, may suggest whether Mops condylurus is a hot lead in the long search for Ebola’s hiding place—or just another enticing dead end.
The small village of Méliandou, shown, was the first area hit in the current Ebola virus outbreak.
If the lab data do implicate this bat species, then a disquieting question arises: Why aren’t there more spillovers of Ebola virus into humans—outbreaks beginning every month, every week?
The Angolan free-tailed bat is a forest creature that has become a village creature; as the great trees (including the hollow trees, like that one in Méliandou) have been felled, replaced by clearings and gardens and settlements, the bat has been forced to adapt. It has become synanthropic, closely associated with humans. Now it roosts in the hundreds beneath the thatch and metal roofs of village houses, just overhead as people eat and sleep.
Is Ebola that close too? If so, we’ve got still more to learn about this lethal, mysterious virus: not just where it hides and how it gets into humans, but why sometimes it lurks without leaping.
Etienne Ouamouno sits in a communal room in Méliandou, Guinea. His son Emile is thought to have been the first to die in the current Ebola outbreak in December 2013.
David Quammen’s most recent book is Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus. You can follow him on Twitter at @DavidQuammen.
The Ebola epidemic of 2014, which has now totaled almost 20,000 cases and at least 7,708 deaths, began quietly in southeastern Guinea slightly more than a year ago. News of the outbreak reached the wider world last March, and within weeks Fabian Leendertz of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin assembled a multidisciplinary team that included ecologists and veterinarians, plus an anthropologist to interview local people, and traveled to the affected area, near the borders of Liberia and Ivory Coast.
Surveying wildlife in forests there, the scientists found no evidence of a die-off among larger animals, such as duikers, monkeys, and chimpanzees, that are also susceptible to Ebola. This suggested that perhaps the virus had spilled over directly from its reservoir host into humans, without passing through other animals hunted or scavenged for food.
The team then focused on a village called Méliandou, in Guinea—the index village, where the human outbreak began. A young boy, Emile Ouamouno, was the earliest known victim. He died with Ebola-like symptoms in Méliandou back in December 2013, followed soon by his mother, sister, and grandmother. No adult males died in the first wave of the outbreak, another clue that seemed to point away from hunted wildlife as the origin of the virus.
During eight days in Méliandou, Leendertz’s team gathered testimony from survivors and collected samples, including blood and tissues from captured bats. From these data emerged the new hypothesis: Maybe the reservoir host was a bat, yes—but a very different sort of bat, in a different ecological relationship with humans.
While fruit bats are abundant in southeastern Guinea, they don’t roost in large aggregations near Méliandou. But the village did harbor a sizable number of small, insectivorous bats, which roosted under the roofs of houses and in natural recesses, such as hollow trees. The locals call them lolibelo.
“These bats are reportedly targeted by children,” the new paper recounts, “who regularly hunt and grill them over small fires.” Imagine a marshmallow roast, except the marshmallows are mouse-size bats devoured by protein-hungry children.
Emile Ouamouno, the first to die in the current Ebola outbreak, may have been infected by
bats while playing in this hollow tree near his village of Méliandou, Guinea
The researchers then uncovered another clue: a large hollow tree, which had recently been set afire, producing as it burned what someone recalled as “a rain of bats.” Leendertz’s team collected soil samples at the base of that tree, which eventually yielded traces of DNA assignable to Mops condylurus, commonly called the Angolan free-tailed bat.
That species matched the villagers’ descriptions of lolibelo. What’s more, the big hollow tree had reportedly been a favorite play spot for small children of the village, including the deceased little boy, despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that it was full of little bats.
Too Close for Comfort?
All this is circumstantial evidence, pointing to a possibility that Ebola 2014 began when the boy in Méliandou came in contact with an Angolan free-tailed bat.
Bats of that species have previously been found to contain antibodies against Ebola virus, but the sample numbers were very small, and antibodies are weak evidence. The species has therefore not been included among the prime suspects as a reservoir for Ebola. That could change, if further sampling of Angolan free-tailed bats reveals any stronger data connecting the bat and the virus.
Scientists identified a bat species that may host Ebola virus by analyzing DNA in soil and ash. The material was collected from around a tree that had held bats near the site of the first known human case in Guinea. Shown above is Fabian Leendertz, who led the science team, dissecting a bat.
The new paper is intriguing and suggestive—but is it important?
“Could be,” says Charles Calisher, emeritus professor at Colorado State University and an authority on zoonotic viruses, “if they would follow up with more studies.”
Leendertz and colleagues have already followed up, with extensive bat sampling in villages in Ivory Coast, Guinea’s neighbor to the southeast. Laboratory results from those samples, available soon, may suggest whether Mops condylurus is a hot lead in the long search for Ebola’s hiding place—or just another enticing dead end.
The small village of Méliandou, shown, was the first area hit in the current Ebola virus outbreak.
If the lab data do implicate this bat species, then a disquieting question arises: Why aren’t there more spillovers of Ebola virus into humans—outbreaks beginning every month, every week?
The Angolan free-tailed bat is a forest creature that has become a village creature; as the great trees (including the hollow trees, like that one in Méliandou) have been felled, replaced by clearings and gardens and settlements, the bat has been forced to adapt. It has become synanthropic, closely associated with humans. Now it roosts in the hundreds beneath the thatch and metal roofs of village houses, just overhead as people eat and sleep.
Is Ebola that close too? If so, we’ve got still more to learn about this lethal, mysterious virus: not just where it hides and how it gets into humans, but why sometimes it lurks without leaping.
Etienne Ouamouno sits in a communal room in Méliandou, Guinea. His son Emile is thought to have been the first to die in the current Ebola outbreak in December 2013.
David Quammen’s most recent book is Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus. You can follow him on Twitter at @DavidQuammen.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...dou-reservoir-host/?google_editors_picks=true