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Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?

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Re: Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a person who illegally crossed the border with a goal to live in a country where they can't live legally

And are now intimidated to hide from every authority.

Because they broke the laws, and are subject to penalty. This is a fundamental basis of our society.

If you don’t like that, change the law, but don’t forgive that some people just willingly break it (even if they have good reason). Selective enforcement of the law is tyranny.

Re: Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?

#42

Tangential, but if a virus's contagion is regulated by its virulence (that is, very deadly viruses are less contagious because they kill their hosts) does that mean widespread access to modern medicine could remove the upper bound on virulence by keeping the hosts alive? I could probably formulate this question better, but the basic question is, "could virus's symptoms be getting worse in general?"

It's not just virulence-it's a bit more complicated. Example HIV is (without current chronically given drugs) very deadly. One of the things that makes it so successful is the lag between transmission to and death of a patient. The virus being transmissible for subsequent spread during that time, which could often be a decade even back before modern treatments (80's or 90's).

Re: Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?

#43

Really if Ebola is to be more deadly in absolute terms it ironically should be far less lethal and disturbing in symptoms. If it was weakened to be say about as bad as the flu in terms of lethality its kill count would be way higher. 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…

Flu is basically the apex predator of viruses. We're having a helluva season in Australia right now. :(

Re: Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?

#44

> Ebola virus is a microscopic parasite that replicates inside the cells of a host 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…

To be honest we probably can't do quality experiments on bats either. That explains why the article describes transplanting portions of the viral coat proteins on to other viruses-- to enable growth, albeit in an artificial system. that's how things are done. The problem of limited model systems is only relevant to ebola, but many other viruses (bacteria, diseases, ....)

Re: Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?

#45
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asked for, and I supplied, a citation about trust in healthcare. What is bad faith about that? 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.

Why don't you tell us what your positions on those topics are? I'm trying to look below the surface here. 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 what effect the fear of incarceration and deportation have in regards to lowering faith in medical institutions.

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.

Re: Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?

#46
post #9

Tangential, but if a virus's contagion is regulated by its virulence (that is, very deadly viruses are less contagious because they kill their hosts) does that mean widespread access to modern medicine could remove the upper bound on virulence by keeping the hosts alive? I could probably formulate this question better, but the basic question is, "could virus's symptoms be getting worse in general?"

Not an epidemiologist, but I understand it mostly has to do with the means by which the virus is transmitted. Ebola is very lethal but requires physical contact of bodily fluids for transmission, which contains a lot its spreading. You can probably sit on a plane next to a contaminated person and you will be fine. That contains a lot the contagion vs a virus like the flu.

During the 2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa there were numerous people who appeared to have been infected while keeping their distance. Everybody was perplexed and assumed the victims--some of whom were medical professionals--unwittingly came into close contact with infected fluids while caretaking.

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...

Re: Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an illegal person...?

It's a person who illegally crossed the border with a goal to live in a country where they can't live legally

That doesn't make the _person_ illegal though. People do illegal things all the time. An hour ago I was driving above the speed limit. Am I now an "illegal person"?

Re: Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?

#48
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh goodness. Citation needed. 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.

> "I suppose we'd better open the borders and prisons just to prevent disease, right?" 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, an…

I tried to find the actual poll to find out what questions were being asked, but link 1 says the 39% figure is from a 2016 study, while link 2 is a 2015 study and doesn't mention 39% anywhere relating to the medical system.

"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.

Re: Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a person who illegally crossed the border with a goal to live in a country where they can't live legally

That doesn't make the _person_ illegal though. People do illegal things all the time. An hour ago I was driving above the speed limit. Am I now an "illegal person"?

Simply refer to the definition:

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

Re: Is Ebola Evolving into a Deadlier Virus?

#50
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you tell us what your positions on those topics are? I'm trying to look below the surface here. 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 what effect the fear of incarceration and deportation have in regards to lowering faith in medical institutions. 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 st…

You and others (top-level comment spawning this subthread) seem to be implying (correctly, I think) that immigrants are afraid to engage with the medical establishment (or police... they're all lumped together under "authorities") because they're worried about getting caught up in the immigration enforcement dragnet.

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.

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