Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
I could probably formulate this question better, but the basic question is, "could virus's symptoms be getting worse in general?"
A small group of scientists started to speak up in various forums arguing that the original scientific experiments (1960s?) which calculated things like droplet sizes, distances traveled, times to evaporation, etc--the numbers used to determine how far particular kinds of virii can travel and how long they can persist in the environment--was irredeemably wrong. These bad metrics were and still are used to build transmissibility models.
According to more modern metrics and models, while not airborne as its strictly defined, Ebola virus can transmit much more readily and further than what is currently taught. TL;DR: aerosolized droplets can carry the Ebola virus much further and longer than believed. Bifurcating virus types into "airborne" and "not airborne" is dangerously simplistic as infected aerosols can have risk profiles closer to that of traditional airborne virus types, particularly for a virus like Ebola.
I can't find the original article I read--an article by the researcher who, IIRC, was the first or one of the first to empirically show the critical flaws in the original experimental results that current models rely upon. But this paper seems to have a good discussion of the issues: "Transmission of Ebola Viruses: What We Know and What We Do Not Know", https://mbio.asm.org/content/6/2/e00137-15
EDIT: The original article I read: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/09/commentar...
Though maybe the differences are by-products of the poor models mentioned in another comment.
The rapid mutation is why annual vaccinations are necessary.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-vaccines-can-drive-pathog...
NB: I thought I stumbled upon the above article--or one like it--through HN within the past few days, but I can't find the post. Maybe I found it following some other article link. shrug
But not necessarily more virulent.
A lot of the terminology used in this article is confusing. My understanding is that you get viruses (dead and tiny), bacteria (alive but small) and parasites (alive and usually bigger than bacteria). The author also talks about particles a lot as if the Ebola virus was only the rna and the particle was its trogan horse. I thought that a virus was the whole thing.
The summary was as follows: Once the Ebola virus jumps from bats to humans it mutates differently to what it would in bats. This can’t be studied because we can’t experiment on humans so the scary thing is that we have to just wait and see when there is an outbreak and every outbreak is different.
Parasite: an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other's expense.
Sounds like a virus to me.
Ebola is so lethal it would practically have to cause the deceased to autocremate and destroy the remains to be any worse at spreading.
Killing your host quickly is a bad for a parasite - parasiteoids are the closest to being viable in that model where their purpose is "use the host to have your offspring instead of yourself".
Exactly. If the virus mutates such that the time before symptoms appear gets longer that's bad for the rest of us. But if it's the opposite (i.e., it kills faster), then that's good news and it will - in theory - eventually burn itself out.
The whole "Ebola victims are bags of blood ready to explode!" thing is...not really true.
Viruses that primarily infect humans have competition between strains. What I've read is how that plays out depends on the mode of transmission vs host immunity. Things can be driven either way. Whichever strain infects hosts with no immunity first tends to win the game[2]. It's infection blocks the other strains. Because immunity means reinfection by another strain is delayed, difficult, or impossible due to immunity[1]. Sometimes less virulent is how you win (common cold) and sometimes more (cholera).
On the other hand I think Ebola has never been an endemic virus, it's a zoonotic virus. So it's accidental how virulent and deadly it is.
[1] Which is how vaccines work. I think the live polio vaccine was used because it's transmissible. Not only do vaccinated people develop immunity, but unvaccinated people catch it and also develop immunity.
[2] Read an article on Cholera. It mentioned in Northern Mexico there are some strains that have evolved to be really really weak. Weak enough to evade detection by public health authorities.
As I remember it, the author's novel "The Hot Zone" (1994) was better writing and far better science around Ebola and other filoviruses.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-the-hot-zone-created-the-worst-m...
But what Tara C. Smith presents in that Gizmodo post is hardly devastating criticism. As she notes, Preston recognized that it was a a dramatized description of the symptoms, and I don't see that it's "utterly wrong" for a bad case, though I'm sure it's frustrating as an epidemiology professor to repeatedly have people believe it's the only case.
As I recall it the Reston strain is never described as definitely airborne, and an airborne Zaire strain is never mentioned except as a horrifying possibility if one should acquire the ability (not entirely out of character in a fictional thriller one might think).
The criticism for some sort of feminism-deficiency I don't give much for even today, but it seems particularly unfair against a novel which was written decades before today's charged ideological climate on that matter, and I disagree that poor work-life balance and dysfunctional relationships is particularly unrealistic when it comes to career scientists.
Remains then relatively low infectivity, but I think Preston might be forgiven for not emphasizing that in work of fiction built around the fear of Ebola infection.
Thanks for the remark anyway, because it bears noting that the novel should still not be taken to be a biology textbook.
Mutations that delay death, make the virus lighter (more easily aerosolized), or kill a smaller percent of the infected (letting some people be infectious or even asymptomatic), might make the virus less deadly for individuals, but more deadly overall.
All the mutations are happening simultaneously in a population. Ones that cause the virus to spread better will be conserved precisely because those viruses spread better.
In all of science as we know it, there is no such thing as proof. Proof is the domain of mathematics and logic.
Note this ends in 2015 because that one and the current one are different outbreaks.
I'm getting tired of these clickbait questions: has ebola's virulence and efficacy increased, or not? Because if it has, that title should be "Ebola is evolving into a deadlier virus", and that's entirely worth clicking through for.
But if it hasn't, this is just clickbait and there are many, many more articles getting published on the web that also require time to read, without wasting time on this one.
(IMHO, all of the useful information in the article is in the first sentence of the tl;dr.)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/illegal
> a person who enters or lives in a country without the documentation required for legal entry or residence
Combine those things and the primary method of controlling a disease like Ebola is pretty straightforward, you have teams of people find and isolate every single person that had potential exposure to a known infectee.
That you can trace from each known infectee is an important part of it, you don't have to discover the exact chain of infection to achieve a decent level of containment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diseases_eliminated_fr...
And I'm curious whether you happen to be independently against deportation and incarceration. I suppose we'd better open the borders and prisons just to prevent disease, right? Or maybe there's a broader ideology at play here.
That's one way to take something that no one is arguing for and turn it up to 11. At least try to argue in good faith.
Edit: Found a source for you regarding trust in healthcare, for what it's worth.
>A 2015 Pew study [...] We as a country have less faith in the medical system than we once did — trust was at 80 percent in 1973, and in 2016 it is 39 percent."[1]
[1]https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-dont-trust-th...
Maybe you two should try arguing in good faith.
I don't know what any of the other border stuff or law enforcement theories your talking about has to do with trust in the healthcare system, but feel free to continue making noise about it.
No one has said that open borders and no prisons prevents diseases.
I didn't see the citation when you first posted. I don't doubt it's valid, but the issue I had up the comment thread was with the theory that lowered faith in medical institutions is because of anti-vaxxers and fear of incarceration and deportation. Your source says nothing of the sort.
I don't know if the folk who are against vaccination are the sole cause of eroding trust in healthcare, but given that healthcare trust is eroding and anti-vaccination believers are rising, it's not much of a stretch to think the two might be related.
What I do know is that according to the study I linked, trust in healthcare has fallen quite a bit and that is likely to hinder our ability to slow an outbreak.
I called you out for bad faith, not because of your position on the topic, but because I have re-read this thread over and over and still cannot find anyone making the argument that opening borders and opening prisons is going to prevent diseases.
The obvious solution to distrust and lack of engagement between immigrant communities and the authorities — unless you have another non-obvious one — is to stop enforcing immigration laws at all. In other words, the government should never check someone's citizenship/immigration status, except maybe when someone's caught committing a crime (maybe... at least if it's a serious crime... then we'll check immigration status and send them back if they're not a permanent resident). That's what set Al on tilt, because it is essentially an open borders policy.
"Less faith in the medical system" could mean just about anything, from people not believing they have the right coverage, to people being afraid that doctors in lab coats are doing voodoo rituals behind closed doors and giving people diseases.
I don't think it means what you're insinuating: that people with serious flu (or initial ebola symptoms) would avoid going to a doctor in the US when they would have a few decades ago.
I wasn't trying to insinuate anything, honestly. I was just trying to provide a source that trust in healthcare is falling to the person who said "Goodness. Citations needed" to the person who said trust in healthcare is falling.
The possible variations are:
1. Stop enforcing immigration laws and checking immigration status except in very narrow cases.
2. Stop trying to apprehend people with open warrants.
3. Decriminalize some stuff that's criminal so that fewer people have warrants.
Maybe I've got blinders on, but I think hardly anyone agrees with option 2 in general. And I think almost everyone, other than "Get off my lawn" suburbanites, agrees with option 3. Too much minor shit is illegal. But I also think those are minor compared to the first issue.
That leaves the issue of illegal immigrants and their reluctance to have any contact with authorities, including medical services, which is why Al went on tilt. Unless you either refuse to enforce immigration laws, or make them officially legal immigrants, both of which are equivalent to an open borders policy, they are going to remain fearful of seeking medical treatment and the problem remains.
Perhaps I am reading it wrong, but the quote is:
>[...] people didn’t distrust medical authorities like they do now [...], and didn’t fear [...]coming into contact with government agencies [...].
Which says "AND didn't fear" not "because of fear".
I can't definitively say what the parent meant to post, but the way I read it (which could be wrong, too) is that they are saying there are two reasons we are not as equipped to deal with an outbreak like we did with polio/smallpox:
One reason is because of erosion of trust in healthcare. The other (separate) reason is because of the fear of police/immigration officials.
61% might not trust the healthcare system in some sense; maybe they don't trust medical research studies, maybe they don't trust doctors to prescribe the lowest-cost effective treatment, maybe they don't trust that they can afford medical care, maybe they think the whole medical industry is conspiring to rip them off (approximately true). But I guarantee you if 100 people break their arms you'll see more than 39 of them in the ER. Same if they have the flu and the symptoms turn severe. Almost all of them will trust primary and ER care just fine, unless there are other considerations, and immigration status and fear of discovery is the most common consideration by far. One hears it constantly in immigration pieces on media like NPR.
I recommend taking a look at 'The State as an Immoral Factor' by Maria Louise Ramé--pseudonymously written in the late 1800's. Distrusting medical authorities is not a new phenomenon. Here's a small excerpt:
A few years ago nobody thought it a matter of the slightest consequence to be bitten by a healthy dog; as a veterinary surgeon has justly said, a scratch from a rusty nail or the jagged tin of a sardine-box is much more truly dangerous than a dog's tooth. Yet in the last five years the physiologists and the state, which in all countries protects them, have succeeded in so inoculating the public mind with senseless terrors that even the accidental touch of a puppy's lips or the kindly lick of his tongue throws thousands of people into an insanity of fear. Dr Bell has justly said: 'Pasteur does not cure rabies; he creates it' In like manner the state does not cure either folly or fear: it creates both.
>A 2015 Pew study [...] We as a country have less faith in the medical system than we once did — trust was at 80 percent in 1973, and in 2016 it is 39 percent."[1]
[1]https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-dont-trust-th...
And they affected millions before they were stamped out (by universal vaccinations). So there's that...