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Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Ebola isn't like most people think. It isn't airborne, isn't respiratory and requires direct contact with blood/semen/feces/etc to spread. It's also only known to be contagious once symptoms are present. The risk of a global outbreak is very low.

Africa has a large array of unique circumstances that make it much more 'viral' there, including various cultural funerary rituals that involve contact with corpses that can have extremely high viral loads, bushmeat consumption/processing (ebola can spread from animals to humans), as well as all the more stereotypical (and accurate nonetheless) reasons as well that make it particularly dangerous for healthcare workers there.

It's not entirely clear how it could spread uncontrollably outside of Africa.

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But surely once somebody explains that kissing (yes, literally) the deceased corpse of an ebola patient is a bad idea they'll stop doing that

We can’t get our rich, educated populations to wear masks or vaccinate, on what planet are we getting this?

Viruses are viruses though. Becoming airborne and less deadly (like this current strain) would be a death knell for the world. The longer you let it hang around the longer it has time to adapt. This is why HIV medication is prescribed so overwhelmingly. One of the main goals is to stop all replication immediately or it rather quickly “figures out” how to get past the drug.

There has been a lot of HIV going around, I have yet to hear reports that it's gone airborne.

But, yes, I would rather not have an outbreak of ebola.

HIV is a very weak virus. Ebola is significantly more robust.

Ebola thrives in African animal populations, so it has basically forever to do whatever you think it might do - though I'd add that in basically all scenarios viruses become more mild over time. It's not just good luck but because it maximizes transmissibility - killing your host usually means you die too. And that may well be why ebola remains so nasty to humans - we're not its primary reservoir, it's fruit bats which maintain persistent asymptomatic ebola infections, and are often the source of the first human infection in outbreaks.

Yeah, I didn’t know that about Ebola. That being said animal populations are not going to do anything to counter the virus. It’s only going to face resistance when it makes it into humans and that’s what is going to end up pushing mutations and evolution.

> Ebola isn't like most people think

Bunga bunga or whatever isn’t classic ebola. And it’s being given an expanding substrate on which to evolve.

Bundibugyo (as you are probably actually aware, but others might not be).

It does sound like such a caricature I can see the temptation to be flippant about it though.

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