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Top Doctors: Ebola May Become Airborne … And May ALREADY Be Transmissible Via Aerosols
Michael T. Osterholm – director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota – wrote in the New York Times last month:
Viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years. Each new infection represents trillions of throws of the genetic dice.
If certain mutations occurred, it would mean that just breathing would put one at risk of contracting Ebola. Infections could spread quickly to every part of the globe, as the H1N1 influenza virus did in 2009, after its birth in Mexico.
Why are public officials afraid to discuss this? They don’t want to be accused of screaming “Fire!” in a crowded theater — as I’m sure some will accuse me of doing. But the risk is real, and until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.
In 2012, a team of Canadian researchers proved that Ebola Zaire, the same virus that is causing the West Africa outbreak, could be transmitted by the respiratory route from pigs to monkeys, both of whose lungs are very similar to those of humans. Richard Preston’s 1994 best seller “The Hot Zone” chronicled a 1989 outbreak of a different strain, Ebola Reston virus, among monkeys at a quarantine station near Washington. The virus was transmitted through breathing, and the outbreak ended only when all the monkeys were euthanized. We must consider that such transmissions could happen between humans, if the virus mutates.
The Guardian reports today:
There is a ‘nightmare’ chance that the Ebola virus could become airborne if the epidemic is not brought under control fast enough, the chief of the UN’s Ebola mission has warned.
Anthony Banbury, the Secretary General’s Special Representative, said that aid workers are racing against time to bring the epidemic under control, in case the Ebola virus mutates and becomes even harder to deal with.
Two Infectious Disease Experts Say Ebola In Its CURRENT Form Is ALREADY Spread By Aerosols
But perhaps most challenging to the mainstream assumption that Ebola can only be spread through physical contact with a person who is showing symptoms of infection is the following explanation by two national experts on infectious disease transmission, both professors in the School of Public Health, Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, at the University of Illinois at Chicago (footnotes omitted):
We believe there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles both near and at a distance from infected patients, which means that healthcare workers should be wearing respirators, not facemasks. [Aerosols are liquids or small particles suspended in air. An example is sea spray: seawater suspended in air bubbles, created by the force of the surf mixing water with air.]
The important points are that virus-laden bodily fluids may be aerosolized and inhaled while a person is in proximity to an infectious person and that a wide range of particle sizes can be inhaled and deposited throughout the respiratory tract.
***
Being at first skeptical that Ebola virus could be an aerosol-transmissible disease, we are now persuaded by a review of experimental and epidemiologic data that this might be an important feature of disease transmission, particularly in healthcare settings.
***
Many body fluids, such as vomit, diarrhea, blood, and saliva, are capable of creating inhalable aerosol particles in the immediate vicinity of an infected person. Cough was identified among some cases in a 1995 outbreak in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and coughs are known to emit viruses in respirable particles. The act of vomiting produces an aerosol and has been implicated in airborne transmission of gastrointestinal viruses. Regarding diarrhea, even when contained by toilets, toilet flushing emits a pathogen-laden aerosol that disperses in the air.
***
There is also some experimental evidence that Ebola and other filoviruses can be transmitted by the aerosol route. Jaax et alreported the unexpected death of two rhesus monkeys housed approximately 3 meters from monkeys infected with Ebola virus, concluding that respiratory or eye exposure to aerosols was the only possible explanation.
Zaire Ebola viruses have also been transmitted in the absence of direct contact among pigsand from pigs to non-human primates, which experienced lung involvement in infection. Persons with no known direct contact with Ebola virus disease patients or their bodily fluids have become infected.
***
Experimental studies have demonstrated that it is possible to infect non-human primates and other mammals with filovirus aerosols. [Ebola is a type of filovirus]
Altogether, these epidemiologic and experimental data offer enough evidence to suggest that Ebola and other filoviruses may be opportunistic with respect to aerosol transmission. That is, other routes of entry may be more important and probable, but, given the right conditions, it is possible that transmission could also occur via aerosols.
In other words, these two infectious disease experts believe that Ebola is already – in its current form – transmissible via aerosols. They therefore urge all doctors and nurses working with Ebola patients to wear respirators.
If they're right, the government's assumptions about and strategies towards Ebola are all wrong. At the very least - as the two experts quoted above urge - all frontline healthcare workers should wear respirators. And it may be necessary to consider travel restrictions until the epidemic is contained.
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Osterholm rang some bells. He's a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. The article he wrote in the NYT reminds me of Powell's testimony to Congress. Just WTF is going on here?
Powell? The five-star General that lied to the world, to get the US involved in a multi-trillion dollar war that has lasted for over a decade, and killing hundreds of thousands of innocents in the process? Along with that liar Condie Rice?
Oh, OK.
No cause for panic, the virus has been safely contained to the continents of Africa and America.
Well, if the Dallas health care workers aren't wearing respirators, then we already have our volunteer test subjects to see if it's airborne.
duplicate
How is it the main stream media freaked out over H1N1, SARS, bird flu, swine flu, Legionnaire's Disease and a hundred other diseases that turned out to be bullshit over nothing?
But they all downplay the danger of Ebola?
Could it be because no drug company has a vaccine to sell?
it started in africa so raising alarm would be racist and defame the birth continent of our community leader in chief
dupe
There is a cure - monoclonal antibodies, from the whole blood of Ebola survivors, preferably children too young to have STD's.
You can figure out the rest.
'Schools under fire for offering STD tests during lessons'http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/11111813/Schools-under-fire...
And all those 'immigrants' coming into the US? Those kids came here to be harvested.
Wasn't it David Rockefeller and Bill Gates senior running around the world having meetings to eliminate 80% of the world's population? And wasn't pandemic the preferred method?
I have had suspicions about this Ebola story from the beginning.
"Some of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.
The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.
Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America’s wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey."
http://globalresearch.ca/billionaire-club-in-bid-to-curb-overpopulation/...
Make your monthly payments and (depending on your zip code) we will send you your monthly anti-ebola medicine.
Don't be late.
YOU LIE!!! Reuters, Associated Press and all of my local news presstitutes have repeatedly told me (with the same exact wording) that bodily fluids have to be exchanged to catch ebola. Now behave like adult lemmings and get out there and sign up for a new 2 year cell phone contract. And buy something from Brookstone.
terminology is critical!
"bodily fluids" does not translate to the Kardashian obsessed folks as vomit, blood, sneezing or coughing droplets.
You know what I mean--it's residue left from doing the nasty
Yup. If I sneeze at your eyes, deliberately, from 11 feet away, over 2% of those droplets are going to hit you in the eyes, with a further 0.8% hitting you in the nose and mouth.
Ebola scare-mongering aside, you mean Radio Shack, right?
LOL!
Absolutely TalktoLind, and the government warned all those workers at Ground Zero, the destroyed Twin Towers at the WTC in NYC, that hazmat suits were unnecessary and now they are dead and can't sue them! (Actually, that was Dr. Cate Jenkins of the EPA, who warned them and was fired, although reinstated by a federal judge, but they are still trying to fire her a second time -- I believe she was the first government official to sound the warning on Monsanto back in the 1990s.)
And didn't the government warn the US Navy personnel aboard that aircraft carrier that went to help the Japanese when Fukushima blew up?
(Sorry, they weren't warned and many of the sailors came down with bizarre forms of life-threatening cancers.)
Guess we cannot trust the Bush and Obama Administrations or the US government!
Re: The USS Ronald Reagan off Fukushima.
The ship's officers were given potassium iodine, but not the enlisted. They had plenty, no shortage, they just didn't want to give it to them.
Now they're all dying. Plus, the ship is still radioactive, including the RO water system, and will kill the crew for a billion years.
One infectious individual travelling to and from work by subway in New York or London for one or two days, could result in an out of control situation in about a week. How does one identify all the possible contacts when public transportation is used. If the contacts are not informed and monitored the problem will require cordon sanitaire for the entire city.
Anyone who wants to get their head in the appropriate space for ebola should watch the old short-lived TV series titled "Jeremiah", which friends tell me is still available at hulu dot com if you're not into torrentland.
Once of the most enjoyable two hours of TV ever are the first two episodes of season two, where the predators-that-be get their just desserts... for once. But make sure you watch the first season first so you understand the background, context and story.
Hey Ann,
My wife and I loved that show!
For a quick and dirty exploration into the possible effects of a pandemic - check out "After Armageddon": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eym4PwHmUvI
Lots of food for thought in there. . .
Humans, pigs and monkeys.
N95s don't work. Go to N100s.
At the moment, physicians are being led by an unknowing CDC. I wonder if the CDC is being told what to say by those who do not have our best interests at heart. That seems to be a pattern.
The CDC? Having our 'best interests' at heart?
'CDC Ebola Patent could earn Billions from a Pandemic'http://www.whiteoutpress.com/articles/2014/q3/cdc-ebola-patent-could-ear...
at least the virus is not transmitted by rats..
Just rat bastards.
Humans, pigs and monkeys. Why not rats?
If rats transmitted the virus it would be game over quickly
Rats carried the plague from Asia across Europe. Silk road and merchant ships.
The plague killed nearly 50% of all Europeans in the 14th century. Once in Europe it spread exponential very very fast.
Ebola is not transmitted by rats and that is our saving grace.
Well, a bacterium in the bloodstream of ticks that lived on the rats - but yes, if the vector were non-human and just waited around for a human to get it and die, the death rate would be catastrophic.
Like if it infected dogs. Not a problem in many nations, but Americans love their doggies.
Odds of disease changing transmission method and retaining virulence are extremely, extremely low. As in, so low, it's never happened with a human disease, ever. The fearmongering about mutations in larger populations is unscientific.
However, it can be spread in droplets, so coughing can be deadly and should be taken seriously.
blood borne. remember sars? just went poof ! off the media in a day. gone.
Maybe Ebola will go the same way, and maybe it won't.
the FBI can recover DNA from any letter breathed on, this indicates humans shed DNA constantly just by breathing, what makes diseases airborne is the size* of the particle necessary for infection, and the length of time the virus can live outside a host.
Ebola can live 23 days outside the host, http://www.msdsonline.com/resources/msds-resources/free-safety-data-shee... so potentially an infected individual could sneeze in Texas, blow particles across the nation, and 23 days later somebody else* gets infected from that sneeze, and they develop symptoms somewhere between 2- and 21 days later.
*wild and domestic animals as well as insects are also subject to infection and the creation of a permanent US Ebola reservoir.
*Ebola 800-100 nano meters
for reference pinworm eggs (also airborne) are 50-60 micrometers, 1 micrometer is 1000 nanometers, so Ebola is more than 50X smaller than pinworm eggs (which are airborne).
Odds are pretty good we'll find out if this strain is airborne within the next 2 weeks, if so most of the other plane passengers get sick.
I think you're reading that text wrong, SmittyinLA.
Ebola can NOT live 23 days outside the host.
It can live 'a number of days' - the (23) is a reference to a footnote 23 citing some source for that assertion. It doesn't mean number of days = 23.
DUNCAN KNEW HE WAS INFECTED
We will soon see how many he infected
C_D_C claims 80 persons in contact with Duncan
if air borne
all hell to break out in Dallas
why do you suppose he got on that airplane. Obamacare this way..
Just for the record..H1N1 did not originate in Mexico as per the latinophobe MSM.
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/information_h1n1_virus_qa.htm
"The virus was transmitted through breathing, and the outbreak ended only when all the monkeys were euthanized."
There's your answer...euthanize averyone who has Ebola and your problems are all solved...easy peesy lemon squeezy.
OK, you are fist in line to be euthanized.
You are welcome.
George Patton would go in there with two flamethrowers strapped to his back and a nozzle in each hand.
"Because I'm a God-Damnned American, that's why."
Chemtrail trials are over, moving on to Ebolatrails. It's more efficient.
Ironicaly, just reading about this might make you want to barf up a lung and fill your pants with shit!
This is one of the few times I pray something actually is a false flag/psyop.
Just reading this makes me feel a little achy and feverish.
Memo to myself:
"Make sure I'm prayed up at all times!!!"
I respectfully disagree.
What you need is not prayer, whose efficacy has always been in doubt in the medical profession, it's keeping a cool head (something quite rare on ZH I might add) and practicing basic hygiene.
Worst comes to worst, you may also need some basic equipment such as latex gloves, surgical masks and throwaway surgical protection.
Common sense always prevails. but a leg full of stainless steel that has mysteriously been converted to bone says to me to also seek the prayer route.
God or not, I'm sure it will get sorted out on the other side.
I just hope the stories of Hell for the Evil are true.
Shit I need a drink.
Yes, but the take home message is we can STOP Ebola in the West if the CDC, UN and WHO get their heads out of their backsides and insist that all frontline healthcare workers wear respirators, and if we enact travel bans from hotzone countries until this is contained.