[sunnyatlast]

Originally Posted by BarryRX

I thought it obvious. We have almost 90 posts about something that is of no danger to any of us. A lot of,folks are spouting worst case scenarios, but so far ebola is statistically not dangerous to anyone here. You are about a million times more likely to die from heart disease or a car accident than Ebola, yet we appear to be more frightened of Ebola. Heck, the upcoming flu season is more dangerous to you. In the last three months that we have been worried about Ebola, 150,000 people have died of heart disease in this country. In the same time period, I think 2 people have died from Ebola in this country.

"It's of no danger to anyone here." Try telling that to the passengers on the flight from Cleveland to Dallas Monday night, the night before the 2nd nurse was diagnosed with Ebola. Try telling that to the virologists and infectious disease researchers/directors at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, the director of which wrote this (excerpt):

"The second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air. You can now get Ebola only through direct contact with bodily fluids. But 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…."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/op...out-ebola.html