The survival of filoviruses in liquids and solid substrates (2010) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The survival of filoviruses in liquids and solid substrates (2010) [pdf]

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

25 pointscsdrane8 comments

Quoting from the discussion section of this paper:

"Such data, obtained from experimental animal models, combined with the aerosol decay rates determined in this study, would suggest that filovirus, at infectious levels, may remain a potential aerosol threat for at least one and a half hours. Epidemiological evidence, however, would suggest that during outbreaks, filoviruses are rarely transmitted by the airborne route."

A bit disconcerting.

Let's hope that the "epidemiological" evidence is again borne out.

HTML version: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2010....

In case it's not clear why this is on HN's front page, there are simultaneous outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg in Africa right now; this paper discusses their ability to live on surfaces, something not widely understood in the current Ebola outbreak but with huge implications.

Has the original link been censored? Or did the submitter have special access and not realize it?

Even the abstract is probably something TLAs don't want widely disseminated given the easy access to these viruses that is possible right now. They're poor choices for weapons (you can't stop em), but there are crazy people out there.

I don't think it was censored, I think the link must have expired. You can get the PDF that I initially linked by clicking Get PDF in the above URL.

Mods please replace the broken original link with cryptoz's.

When the paper talks about dissemination via aerosol, that means small droplets of saliva or other bodily fluid ejected into the air. This isn't a howto for insane terrorists to put Ebola into hairspray canisters :)

Ignorance is not what protects humanity from those crazy people. Overwhelmingly, we are kept safe by the moral sense of people. No amount of laws or control has ever proven effective at preventing crazy people from wreaking havoc on large numbers of people. There simply is no one out there who is waiting to find a virus that can be easily spread and have fatal effects who is both capable of enacting such a plan or able to persuade those who are capable to do so. The closest we have is in our militaries, who plan these things and convince themselves of bogeymen hiding around every corner, but even they often find themselves stopped by the moral sense of individuals. We should have been annihilated in a large nuclear war in the 1980s a couple times if not for the individual soldiers simply being unwilling to follow protocol and be responsible for the deaths of millions.

Am I reading this correctly in that higher temperatures reduced survivability? Anyone in a position to ease my mind about dust inside computer equipment from isolation wards?

I haven't checked this paper, but what I've read independently, perhaps based on it, is that's true.

In general just knowing it's an enveloped virus tells you a lot about its ability to survive in the environment. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_envelope which points out that the lipid bilayer stolen from the host cell "is relatively sensitive to desiccation, heat, and detergents, therefore these viruses are easier to sterilize than non-enveloped viruses, have limited survival outside host environments, and typically must transfer directly from host to host." And this isn't something that's going to change with mutations.

This is why we aren't freaking out more by the no protection pressure washing of the index patient's vomit outside his apartment. It was sufficiently delayed that the heat and UV from the sun almost certainly killed all the Ebola viri in it. Of course that delay wasn't so good....

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