For all the armchair experts downplaying Ebola

[boomer55]

because we know so much about it and it's so hard to be infected.

Here are some real experts saying hold on a minute it might be more easy to spread than what is being reported

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ebola-questions-20141007-story.html#page=1

[Blue_Tires]

1. And I can quote real experts saying the opposite?

Your point??

[boomer55]

4. You prove my point. Thanks. Btw did you read the article?

[MH1]

45. Well ... think risk management.

Kind of like climate change. Acknowledge that the worst might not happen, but isn't it better to understand the possibilities and get out in front of it? The worst thing about this Ebola epidemic is that if we had started throwing resources at it a long time ago like it appears we are going to now, we might have been able to shut it down early on and saved a lot of lives.

It's not good to be always playing catch-up to an epidemic. Not good at all.

(But panicking and fear-mongering isn't a good approach either. Assess the risk and get in front of it with resources. That's all.)

[WinkyDink]

59. Ya pays yer money, and ya takes yer chances.

[AverageJoe90]

2. Loads of skepticism is warranted here. Know why?

There is NO evidence that Ebola spreads by any method other than direct contact with contaminants, at this point. NONE. And any mutations are highly unlikely to occur, either. Now, if the latter happens, then we can re-examine that, but until then, I'm holding my breath and waiting for ACTUAL proof.

[Warpy]

7. Having an enteric virus mutate into an airborne virus spread by sneezing and coughing

has simply never occurred. Ever.

However, if people would like to be terrified, move to NM. We have both bubonic plague and hantavirus around here.

You have to be in tight quarters with a sick person, smothering a corpse with kisses once the person has died, or having unprotected sex with a male survivor for up to 3 months after his infection.

[ZombieHorde]

10. Besides DU, that's all I do.

You have to be in tight quarters with a sick person, smothering a corpse with kisses once the person has died, or having unprotected sex with a male survivor for up to 3 months after his infection.

My four hobbies are:
1. Hanging out in tight quarters with sick people
2. Smothering corpses with kisses
3. Unprotected sex with male survivors
4. DU

Fuck it. Gotta die of something.

[pinboy3niner]

11. Anybody call dibs on your stuff yet?

[ZombieHorde]

12. No.

You should come over and go through it before someone else does. You better not touch my corpses though.

[pinboy3niner]

13. Um...on second thought...um...I respect you too much to paw thru your stuff now

You know I would never stoop that low! Yeah, that's the ticket.

[ZombieHorde]

14. OK. Let me know if you change your mind.

[FrodosPet]

62. By any chance do you have

...a gently-worn clothing shop? I could really use a good suit cheap.

Just a thought. One should always look for efficiencies and opportunities to monetize your interests.

[ZombieHorde]

64. Ha! nt

[Turborama]

23. LOL!

[pinboy3niner]

25. Sorry...

I got here first. You snooze, you lose.

[Warpy]

30. No shit, and sepsis wasn't bad

I imagine ebola feels much the same.

[Quayblue]

42. lol!

[Recursion]

15. The Reston Simian outbreak included airborne transmission

The monkeys in Room F infected the monkeys in Room H.

[jeff47]

27. Humans aren't monkeys.

Ebola can infect the lungs of that species of monkey.

Ebola can't infect the lungs of humans.

[woolldog]

37. We are all basically primates.

We are descended from them after all. And we share 98+% of their DNA. If Reston can go airborne and infect monkeys, that can certainly happen with humans.

[jeff47]

39. No, actually it can't. We've studied it in vitro.

Put monkey lung tissue in petri dish. Add ebola. Tissue gets infected.
Put human lung tissue in petri dish. Add ebola. Tissue does not get infected.

Now, it's theoretically possible that something different would happen in vivo. After all, this is biology so literally nothing is 100%. But we can discount your "we're the same creature" argument since we get different results in vitro.

[woolldog]

55. For now Jeff,

for now.

The more people who are exposed to Ebola the more it has a chance to mutate. There are so many more people being exposed to Ebola than when it was limited to isolated villages, exponentially more, that it will likely mutate and will not stay the same.

[jeff47]

65. We've infected things in labs with lots of viruses from that family

And new infection forms have evolved exactly zero times. Billions of infections, zero mutations you fear.

New infection methods are actually difficult to evolve, because it's not something you can slowly ease into - kinda sorta being able to infect means "not able to infect".

[woolldog]

66. Cold comfort

to the nurse in Dallas who was following all the CDC protocols.

When are people like you going to realize that there is a lot you don't know about this virus.

[AverageJoe90]

19. I do agree with you, btw.

I mean, I guess it's not impossible, theoretically, but don't we think we would have found out by now if this was indeed the case, if it had indeed happened?

[Cali_Democrat]

3. Who are the armchair experts?

The experts are saying there's no need to panic about Ebola.

Seems to me the real armchair experts are the ones demanding everyone run around with their hair on fire.

[davidpdx]

8. Never fear, Mittens is here

[DontTreadOnMe]

26. Romney is going to buy up all the Ebola

massive bank loans will be used to acquire existing Ebola stockpile, then taxpayers will be on the hook to pay for it all, after Rmoney and his pals bail before the price crashes.

[yellowcanine]

32. I thought Mittens was more of a pants on fire kind of guy.

[davidpdx]

36. Touche

[SheilaT]

5. To me it's evident that if Ebola were spread

as easily as some (can I call them fear-mongers?) say, then there'd be a lot more cases of Ebola out there.

In other words, it would be obvious to the casual observer that the "hard to get" model is wrong. But it's not.

[Turborama]

6. Why do some people seem so eager for it to be more contageous than it already is?

Personally speaking, I would rather be right than wrong about agreeing with the scientists who say it is very unlikely to become airborne.

[davidpdx]

9. Erroring on the side of caution is good

erroring on the side of paranoia is going to lead to a nice padded room.

[jen63]

46. Or a nice well stocked bunker. n/t

[Live and Learn]

16. Good grief, we have known about Ebola since the 1970's

and did nothing to help or prepare for it.

This whining about what horrors may happen here really gets to me when people in Africa have been going through the very real horrors for decades and we have done little to help them (except for a few brave health aid workers and doctors) or to prepare for the fact that it would eventually make it to other countries.

If we would have made it a priority then and put funding towards it, we could have already had a cure and/or a vaccine. Our stupid system of privatizing drug research which results in only doing research for profit led us to this point.

Jheeze, just gather the best medical scientists and put them to work on this with tax dollars and they will solve the problem. After all, it worked when we needed the atomic bomb, why can't we use the same prioritization for the good of humanity?

[Warren DeMontague]

20. This outbreak is historically unprecedented. All previous ones have burned themselves out fairly

quickly.

That said, yes, we've known about it, and had there been any profit incentive at all we probably could have had a working vaccine years ago.

Now we're frantically playing catch-up.

[Live and Learn]

21. They burned themselves out only because the villages infected were isolated.

The only explanation I can think of for us not realizing it would eventually travel is hubris.

And it isn't even a new story. The same thing happened with AIDS.

I am beginning to think, we really are stupid.

[Warren DeMontague]

24. Certainly, the people who discovered it were aware of the potential.

It's definitely not a new idea.

I don't know if it's stupid- stupid primates wouldn't be able to develop a vaccine at all- but short sighted ones would ignore potential ones for a decade or more because there was "no money in them".

[FlatStanley]

17. Just name the next fake terrorist group Ebola

And people will be shitting all over themselves in fear.

I'm not worried in the least, although Faux News viewers are.

[gordianot]

18. Between Government and Media I distrust Media (including media Doctors) slightly more.

Remember the cold virus which is spread by air does not have a cure. That is an excellent article you cited.

[cali]

22. I posted this when it came out. It's a good piece.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025631668

[jeff47]

28. And here's why this guy is wrong

The thrust of his article is we can not absolutely, positively prove that Ebola could never, ever be transmitted through the air. Like we have proved E=mc^2.

There's two problems with this.
1) There is no such thing as 100% proof in any part of biology. Thanks to evolution, you can not prove that something is impossible. And thanks to the variability of individual organisms, you can't prove that one thing always leads to another. So 100% proof is the wrong threshold.

We can't even 100% prove HIV causes AIDS - there are some people with the HIV virus who never develop AIDS, and there could also be some new virus that causes the same disease.

2) If ebola could spread through the air, why hasn't it?

We've got a history of a few hundred thousand cases going back to the 70s. There are zero cases shown to have been transmitted through the air.

Influenza is an airborne virus. This is what an outbreak by an airborne virus looks like.

In this outbreak, we have a massively dense city in Liberia with bad sanitation, lousy medical care and no public health system. The absolutely perfect environment for an airborne virus to spread. And there's only 7000 cases.

An airborne version of ebola would hit 7000 cases in a month, and only take that long due to the long incubation period before becoming contagious.

But you got to see all the ads on this article's page, right?

[Avalux]

29. This LA Times article has been posted on DU several times.

Why are people here using it to knock those of us downplaying Ebola?

I don't think anyone is saying it's not possible that Ebola could mutate into an airborne version of itself. But right now, in this present moment, there is no evidence showing that Ebola has changed into a form that is more easily spread than we what we know from previous outbreaks. If Ebola suddenly becomes airborne, it won't be quiet about it. We'll know.

It's GOOD to wonder what might happen and be aware of the possibility (a lot of people are poring over surveillance data relentlessly), but when an opinion such as this one is presented as a means to get people worked up, that's not cool.

[NuclearDem]

31. And ISIS might set off a nuclear weapon in NYC.

Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's likely.

[randome]

33. I'm more afraid of a Zanti invasion than I am of contracting Ebola.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]You have to play the game to find out why you're playing the game. -Existenz[/center][/font][hr]

[NuclearDem]

34. Thanks, there goes my ability to sleep for a week.

[cali]

38. I am not personally afraid of contracting ebola. I am afraid of the ravages of the epidemic

and the potential ramifications should it not be contained.

[randome]

41. First there needs to BE an epidemic. And there isn't.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you don't give yourself the same benefit of a doubt you'd give anyone else, you're cheating someone.[/center][/font][hr]

[librechik]

35. oh it's the pulitzer prize winning goofs at the LA Times!

never mind. Stick you heads back in the sand or wherever they were before.

[econoclast]

40. Consider this

Ebola and HIV both are transmitted via bodily fluids. According to recently released DNA analysis, HIV first emerged in Kinshasa in the 1920s. For some time it was confined to Africa. Until it wasn't. The WHO now estimates that that HIV has infected 75 million people, killing 36 million.

So, agreed, Ebola is not that easy to catch. Neither is HIV. But HIV has still managed to kill millions.

[boomer55]

44. hmm I hadnt even thought of it that way. thanks.

[econoclast]

50. Only bright spot

If you can call it that because it is grisly thought ... Is that Ebola kills relatively quickly. By the time someone is very contagious, they are also probably very sick...so they're not likely to be out and about much ... thus limiting the opportunities for contact and spreading the infection.

[uppityperson]

48. However, a person can be infected with HIV, contagious, without symptoms, for a long time. Ebola?

Symptoms show much faster and it becomes obvious much quicker when a person is contagious.

[Orsino]

43. For those playing up the chances of infection...

...consider that it is not apparently spreading in the US.

I don't think any "playing" is necessary either way.

[seabeyond]

47. ok. and still. one person came in with it. died. it appears it has been contained at this point.

not downplaying, but reality.

there is no need to over inflate, nor ignore.

[uppityperson]

49. Oh seabeyond, you are just no fun

[seabeyond]

51. truly uppity, i did lots of reading the last week

i learned a lot. it was an interesting week of information and learning, as we go.

[uppityperson]

53. Why do you say that?

[uppityperson]

56. Most of that is people are more mobile, more transportation and moving around so rather than staying

isolated in 1 or 2 villages, people are able to get other places to be sick, infectious. From what I've read, it is no more contagious, just people are moving around more.

[uppityperson]

58. That is what WHO has said and not sure why it would be too early to determine how fast it has spread

[uppityperson]

61. That is true of every outbreak there has been. Compared to previous times, comparable #s of people

exposed in comparable ways are getting sick.

There have not been indications that this strain is more virulent. "It seems to be spreading much further and more rapidly", that is because people are moving to other places more, more transportation. That does make it spread much further.

But there are no indications it is spreading more rapidly or more virulent. So far all the agencies involved have made that point.

If you have a link to reputable source saying otherwise, please share it as I would be glad to read it. Thank you.

[fredamae]

63. Don't Viruses Constantly

change and evolve? Do we know it hasn't/Has?
Since there are many seemingly opposing statement, claims by "experts"...who can we trust? Which "expert" has the most credibility? Do they even know? This virus has been around for a couple decades now-why has no one "thought" about this becoming pandemic and developed a vaccine in All this time?

I'm concerned-not yet panicked....but MSM needs to get a freeking Grip.
The GOP needs to STOP Obstructing and Allow the fkg appointment of a Surgeon General! As it is they've CUT $600,000, 000.00 from the CDC budget and threaten More Plus a Government Shutdown which will shut down Everything, I'm guessing as far as control and containment and research and supplies and training etc

Since, to them, it's "no big deal" yet "their GOP News Bosses" amp up the Panic-WTF is going on?