Actually Ebola is a very unsuccessful virus once it leaves it's natural host which appears to be fruit bats. It sickens primates and kills them eventually. It sickens human beings and kills them very quickly. The Ebola virus that kills it's host without spreading is an evolutionary failure. It leaves no progeny to continue on after it. The fruit bats were identified as the likely host by a process in which many species were infected with Ebola. All died eventually of the disease except for the fruit bats who lived on blissfully unaware of a virus that obviously shares a long evolutionary relationship with them. The Ebola that becomes a real threat to us is the Ebola that mutates to allow us to live much longer and in the process allows for much wider transmission of it's progeny.
Yeah man, the Reston, VA strain in 1990 is classified as level 4 but is non-pathogenic to humans but lethal to monkeys. Six workers tested positive back then. It's not a big evolutionary leap for the virus to turn into something a lot scarier to people.
It's possible that happens but fairly unlikely. This is a natural case of fruit - fruit bats - monkeys. The three things are connected in some way that leads to monkeys contracting a fatal virus that will kill them eventually. In the case of chimps and baboons, well they also eat bats if they can find them. Most monkeys are fruit eaters but chimps and baboons will eat damn near anything that grows or moves. The next step in the natural chain is people hunting monkeys for bush meat. That's how Ebola gets into the human food chain and where it dies off. It's not adapted to living in humans at all and we have no natural defenses against it and it just goes to town on us. It goes to town on anybody who feels they have to tend to us without strong precautions to avoid infection. Then it dies as the outbreak burns out.
Yeah I know how it works, I've been keeping track of Ebola related news sense I read The Hot Zone in the mid '90s. As unlikely as it is, it's also possible we are seeing the virus adapt to a more successful strain for infecting humans.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/...h-program-helped-identify-experimental-ebola/ Interesting article about the experimental drug they are using for treatment.
I think Ebola is going to have to find a natural reservoir in the northern hemisphere to become any kind of real threat to us. If it made the jump to bats or something similar here then we'd have a recurring problem, assuming that the carrier interacted with human beings on a semi-regular basis. The odds on that are probably even lower than the odds that it mutates into a virus that easily infects human beings. It's a scary thing when looked at in isolation in central and west Africa but it really doesn't have much applicability to North Americans at all. If Ebola had the capabilities that we worry about it would have destroyed South Africa already. The problem is that it's carriers don't inhabit the cooler and more temperate environs that far south. They're creatures of the tropics and the rain forests. That's where Ebola lives and likely where it will stay as a recurring problem.
Pretty good fictionalized account of a terrorist ebola attack by the fictional United Islamic Republic (Iran and Iraq) in Tom Clancy's Executive Orders: Following a series of Iranian-backed terrorist attacks, including the release of a Ebola strain, the UIR declares war on both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Meanwhile, China "accidentally" shoots down a Taiwanese airliner. As a result of the Ebola attack, Ryan declares martial law and enforces travel restrictions in an effort to contain the virus. However, the attack becomes only a limited success for the UIR, since the virus is so deadly that it cannot spread effectively. _
Hehe, same book that begins with the President, Congress and Supreme Court being obliterated when a crazed pilot crashes a 747 into the Capitol Building...
Awesome. Love him or hate him, he researched the crap out of all of his stuff (the nuclear explosion at the Super Bowl in Sum of All Fears took 5 pages to describe what happened in less than a nonsecond; the description of the laser guided missile into the drug kingpin's house in Clear and Present Danger was outstanding). I mean, who else foresaw someone flying a jetliner into a building? _
My father-in-law can't find any good books to read so he's rereading Without Remorse. I've read it twice but not in over 10 years. May have to give it another read through. _
The real question here is: If a woman infects you with Ebola, do you have the right to infect her back?
Anything that involves me potentially bleeding out of every orifice of my body does give me a bit of pause for concern, yes. _
