Fears of Larger Contagion as Ebola Spreads to Major Congo City
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
/cmrivers former lab mate
Ebola is a weird virus. Extraordinarily fatal, about 90% during the 1995 outbreak (smallpox is around 20% for comparison), although they have better treatments now for Ebola that bring it closer to 50%.
Either way, lots of health workers have been documented working in a hut with an infected person and never getting infected, yet others have just passed an infected person on the subway and died.
The real concern here is what this means for the future of warfare.
A lot of people have noted that chemical weapons, and perhaps biological weapons, are perfect for distribution by drone due to their light-weightedness. Biological weapons, much like computer viruses, also can be hard to attribute, making them attractive to use.
The Japanese cult that put Sarin in the Tokyo subway in 1996 was also working on biological weapons. They never got far enough, but it demonstrated even non-state actors can pull off credible bio-weapons.
Biological warfare seems less likely to be used by a stable country because its consequences are so hard to predict and it isn't very targeted.
And the future of warfare isn't no warfare unfortunately. War and violence are human universals. We can definitely do things to make it occur less frequently, but one of those things is having strong deterrents to war in the form of a strong military.
And given the possibility of nuclear winter you could argue that non-contagious biological weapons are a lot less likely to get out of control.
They got pretty far.
North Korea has had bio-weapon development program for a long time and has conducted human experiments with prisoners. They also might do larger scale testing in remote islands. No need to Biosafety level 4 laboratory if the researches are not allowed leave the lab and go home every night. If things go south, you torch the island including the people and start over after few years.
It's almost impossible to know how good they are in bio-weapons until they use them.
I don't think Ebola is likely to play a role in the future of warfare. Based conversations with Sergei Popov [0], in his experience making biological weapons, viruses generally make for poor weapons because they're difficult to deploy / release. Their work led to them to favor B. anthracis and other sporulating bacteria. You'd probably have to invent a new kind of platform for deployment if you want viral weapons to be targeted. I can see how viruses could be used in terrorism or something comparable to arson, but their use by a state seems unlikely.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Popov_(bioweaponeer)
One would suspect there would be a certain appeal for clandestine purposes, assuming one can make them hard-to-attribute. Plausible deniability is a useful thing for nation-states. Just look at Russia.
I think it'd be difficult to attribute. The release platform and preparation that's used would probably be the most identifying feature, rather than the organism. In the case of the 2001 anthrax attacks that was (some claimed) the silicon content, which the FBI thought suggested some expert weaponization knowledge and material. IIRC, Popov explained away that saying that you could just mix in some Gas-X [1].
So maybe even investigation into the preparation wouldn't really point to the source.
And, yeah, rereading my comment, my concept of both "state" and "warfare" is probably too simple
Luckily bio-weapons come with their own tracking tags.
From DNA we can reconstruct its origin. So it is not ideal for clandestine operations.
This allows us to reconstruct the history, or in cases where there is less data, infer the history of two different organisms. We can roughly tell where, and when one population split from another.
In the case of bio-weapons, we can tell if the organism came from a culture in a current laboratory, or if it was generated in secrete. If the latter, we can tell what part of the world the original sample came from. All of this are clues to discovering the culprits.
A famous example is the 2001 Anthrax attack in DC. They were able to match the DNA from the anthrax to a US military strain located in Maryland. This led them to a former researcher who most law enforcement believe was the culprit in the attacks.
This guy seems like as close as possible to a real life Bond villian. How do you know him?
Who? That's a false, alarmist rumor and the parent reads like a "technothriller", which is probably the wrong way to talk about real diseases that might alarm people. Remember during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, some people coming to the U.S., including a nurse who was effectively imprisoned, were subject of a public panic that had nothing to do with reality. There was no risk. Ebola, like any disease, is contagious only in certain ways. The U.S. CDC says:
https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html
The virus spreads through direct contact (such as through broken skin or mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, or mouth) with:
* Blood or body fluids (urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, breast milk, and semen) of a person who is sick with or has died from EVD
* Objects (such as needles and syringes) contaminated with body fluids from a person sick with EVD or the body of a person who died from EVD
* Infected fruit bats or nonhuman primates (such as apes and monkeys)
* Semen from a man who recovered from EVD (through oral, vaginal, or anal sex)
The Ebola virus CANNOT spread to others when a person shows no signs or symptoms of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). ... There is also no evidence that mosquitoes or other insects can transmit Ebola virus.
Please don't spread these rumors. EDIT: It also distracts people from the real risks.
But in any complex system, it's very hard to predict who will contract the disease and who won't. You can see similar scenarios play out after Chernobyl, where some people who were very close to the reactor which blew up where seemingly unaffected and lived long lives, while others who were relatively far away passed from radiation exposure or the subsequent cancers.
Ebola isn't particularly contagious. It has a R0 of ~2. Measles for example is 10.
Really? The CDC disagrees:
The virus spreads through direct contact (such as through broken skin or mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, or mouth) with ...
Who are you? What evidence do you have?
Uh-oh. Better keep your Rhesus monkey out of Ebola zones.
Besides, if you live in an area with Rhesus monkeys, your snide comment is not applicable.
> if you live in an area with Rhesus monkeys, your snide comment is not applicable
Ha ha ha ... awesome! I couldn't have written a better parody of this nonsense if I tried.
"Limited airborne transmission of Ebola is ‘very likely,’ new analysis says"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/0...
Quote from the article: "As evidence, the research notes that Ebola virus has been found on the outside of face masks worn by health workers caring for victims of the disease. It also points out that the virus has been passed between animals via respiration. And the authors say that Ebola can infect certain cells of the respiratory tract, including epithelial cells, which line body cavities, and macrophages, a type of white blood cell that consumes pathogens.
The paper notes that breathing, sneezing, coughing and talking can release droplets of fluid from the respiratory tract that travel short distances and most likely cause infection by settling on a mucous membrane. Those actions also release smaller airborne particles capable of suspension in mid-air that can be inhaled by others. Technically, both qualify as aerosols, the paper says."
It's certainly plausible that someone with an early stage infection may take the subway to go to a doctor. I've seen plenty of obviously sick people on the train (and I keep my distance, not because I think they have Ebola, but because I don't want to catch whatever illness they do have)
Many, many times.
> it's plausible that your cat scratched arm could come in contact with some infected person's sweaty arm as you try to make your way through a crowded subway car.
You've got to be kidding me.
Again, who has ever caught Ebola on a subway?
Good question - how many times has there been a significant Ebola outbreak in a city with a subway system?
Mbandaka is not exactly a bustling metropolis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbandaka#/media/File:Stadsaanz...
Chemical and nuclear stuff can possibly be attributed by looking at isotopic composition or impurities, to determine manufacturing process. But doesn't really tell you anything unique. Exceptions are e.g. polonium which where only a few state agencies are known to be able to make it.
The classic, scary chemical weapons (e.g. cholinesterase inhibitors, Sarin) themselves are kitchen chemistry. Ricin, even nastier to die from, is barn chemistry in that it's essentially castor bean tea. However, I suspect that people who manufacture on the cheap usually kill themselves and anyone with enough knowledge and resources to not kill themselves often don't want to make chemical weapons.
* IIRC, the current administration cut NIH or CDC funding for preventing and/or dealing with foreign disease outbreaks. Under the prior administration, IIRC the GOP in Congress told the NIH/CDC to re-purpose those funds toward other uses. Does anyone know the current status?
* Regarding the Ebola outbreak in West Africa recently, I later read that the only organization in the world with the logistical resources to respond quickly at the necessary scale was the U.S. military, and Obama eventually deployed them.
* The article doesn't mention the U.S. at all. That seems like a major omissions; not even a no comment. Is the U.S. just standing back while these people die and an epidemic spreads, potentially to other places too?
* What is the current administration's stance on funding UN/WHO health operations?
> Both Mbandaka and Bikoro now have mobile labs, where researchers can test blood samples locally—a huge difference compared to most previous outbreaks. Provided by USAID, the labs contain generators, freezers, and equipment for doing diagnostic tests. The Mbandaka lab is expected to be operational tomorrow afternoon, once the WHO delivers a generator.
As for the CDC, it looks like they're working with the DRC Ministry of Health: https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/drc/2018-may.html
Specifically if we don’t think the effected country actually has the resources to do so. The alternative is wide spread contagion - take swine flu and bird flu, both started in China, and yet the lack of any monitoring allowed them to spread around the world before being contained. In that case the outbreak was deliberately not disclosed, but choosing not to disclose and not having resources to disclose have the same effect for /other/ countries, including your own.
Things like where a disease has spread is important to work out the risk of it reaching your own country.
You do know that most of what the cdc does is monitor right? It’s not actively going out to spend Your Tax Dollars treating patients - that’s something that the US doesn’t even do in America.
Alternatively we could choose to not track outbreaks and just hope that Ebola knows we’ll deport it if it comes here. (That works right?)
I do not see any evidence that Swine Flu started in China nor that ineffective monitoring is what led to its spread.[0][1] How would a problem like China fudging their numbers have been ameliorated by the presence of CDC employees? Why would China have allowed them in? Even if they did, would they have allowed them to work? If we can't trust foreign partners, we simply can't trust them and I fail to see any case where the problem of unreliable foreign partners can be fixed by the physical presence of CDC employees.
>spend Your Tax Dollars treating patients - that’s something that the US doesn’t even do in America.
Medicare and Medicaid alone accounted for $1.237 trillion of My Tax Dollar spending in 2016, which accounted for 37% of National Healthcare Expenditures.[2] That same year, ACA tax credits accounted for another $100 billion[3], the VA $166.9 billion[4], and TriCare (healthcare for milfare recipients) is usually another $50 billion. This notion that spending on healthcare is something the government "doesn't even do in America" is one of biggest and strangest (because of the ease with which it is refuted) whoppers regularly promulgated by leftist propagandists.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_timeline
[2]: https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta...
[3]: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/53094
[4]: https://www.va.gov/budget/docs/summary/fy2019VAsBudgetFastFa...
Edit: ...gathering samples, studying samples (shipping is not always trivial)...basically anything where you don’t really trust the local response for whatever combination of reasons, and you want to prevent or at least be ready in case there’s a global outbreak
On another note, if human strains of Ebola ever mutate for airborne transmission, we're all screwed.
We're just collateral damage.
So mutating for airborne transmission among humans is just not on the evolutionary agenda here.
Airborne transmission isn't an evolutionary agenda item. It's an evolutionary event with a non-zero probability of occurring, so far as we know.
Evolution is a great mechanism based in part on the aphorism, "If it can happen, it will".
If Ebola was prone to causing large-scale epidemics, Ebola would have caused large-scale epidemics.
Want to worry? Worry about flu. Worry about smallpox. Those viruses have killed millions and, most likely, will continue to do so now and again in the centuries to come.
But Ebola? Not a chance. How do I know? Because, there is every reason to believe the virus has been around forever, and it's never caused the type of pandemic described by doomsayers.
> The vaccine will be kept in the capital until shortly before use because of the lack of facilities in the provinces for storing it at the required temperature, between minus 60 degrees and minus 80 degrees Celsius, or between minus 76 degrees and minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit.
Are there any other vaccines that have to be kept at such low temperatures?
But the real problem isn’t -60 or -80. It’s -[Anything]. If there isn't a reliable source of electricity refrigeration (to the extent required by many drugs and vaccines) is the largest problem faced when you’re trying to get vaccinated new and drugs to remote locations.
Though -80 is a little extreme for a vaccine. That's the temperature most commonly used for long-term lab storage of samples. It's not a common storage capacity in first-world countries, let alone the third world.
Would a small, rural hospital have even one? If they do and it breaks, could they rent a replacement (even off-site) while awaiting repairs? For that matter, could even a small research lab do so in a large city?
I'd expect those answers to be "yes" for equipment we consider to be common in industries like restaurants and construction.
A small research lab in a large city could likely replace theirs quickly, or beg/borrow replacement space from another lab.
Though precise cryogenic refrigeration is a tech domain of its own.