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The Ebola Wars

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Re: The Ebola Wars

#71

Post by maxerickson »

monsterix wrote: post #55
throwaway5752 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am profoundly moved by the heroism Dr Khan and his nurses showed and the example they've set for future generations of medical professionals. I hope it's publicized when Dr. Khan's family finishes setting up the foundation in his name http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...

I wonder who were the people that took the decision to not give ZMapp to Dr. Khan. What were their reasons to take the drug away for what seems like treating white patients first while we can come back to Khan later (sorry but there is no better way to put this). A full enquiry and reportage on that side of story will be helpful I think.

They were doctors at MSF:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/world/africa/ebola.html?_r...

Re: The Ebola Wars

#72

Post by smeyer »

hga wrote: post #58
throwaway5752 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malaria kills 500K-1M people EVERY DAMN YEAR in subsaharan Africa ( http://www.who.int/malaria/media/world_malaria_report_2013/e... ).

The CDC's worst case, last I heard, was 1.4 total million infected with Ebola in January . At the current estimate of 70% lethality, there's your 1M million people 10-16 days after infection. Then it all doubles in 3 weeks. And another 3 weeks. Do the math. If you want to be conservative, dial the starting point back, it won't matter for long. But when I did my own calculations, I found 20,000 cases as of a week or t…

Your assumption for those numbers is that it will keep doubling everywhere it goes, correct? For example, Nigeria seems to have stamped it out in Lagos, refuting the idea that it automatically breaks out exponentially in "3rd World urban environments".

Re: The Ebola Wars

#73

Post by hga »

smeyer wrote: post #72
hga wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC's worst case, last I heard, was 1.4 total million infected with Ebola in January . At the current estimate of 70% lethality, there's your 1M million people 10-16 days after infection. Then it all doubles in 3 weeks. And another 3 weeks. Do the math. If you want to be conservative, dial the starting point back, it won't matter for long. But when I did my own calculations, I found 20,000 cases as of a week or t…

Your assumption for those numbers is that it will keep doubling everywhere it goes, correct? For example, Nigeria seems to have stamped it out in Lagos, refuting the idea that it automatically breaks out exponentially in "3rd World urban environments".

Here's what I said, emphasis added:

"what a disease like Ebola can do in a 3rd World urban environment"

Nowhere did I say or ever imply that it "automatically breaks out exponentially" in such environments, just that in this outbreak, it has, and I would hope you would not deny it could in others.

Re: The Ebola Wars

#74

Post by kazinator »

psychometry wrote: post #63
kazinator wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi psychometry; I did read read the text which deals with the airborne question. All it says is that there is "no evidence". Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. "There is no evidence" doesn't mean that there doesn't exist evidence, only that evidence hasn't been found so far. You cannot reassure people by insinuating that they lack reading comprehension. That droplets containing the ebola virus could go lo…

There's no evidence that Ebola can't evolve into a sharknado, destroying flying 747s with a whirlwind of teeth. Should we also be concerned with this possible evolution? Ebola has been researched extensively for 40 years. We know pretty much exactly how it spreads. It's not airborne. We also know why certain viruses are airborne and that Ebola is not such a virus nor could its structure evolve so that it becomes one.…

> It's not airborne

The article informs us that there is no evidence that it is airborne which is a slightly different statement.

> There's no evidence that Ebola can't evolve into a sharknado

I hope you aren't invoking these nonsensical examples to try to attack the firm principle that nonexistence of evidence isn't evidence of nonexistence.

How this examples is different is that is no reason to suspect that ebola can evolve into a sharknado. This is because in addition to there being no evidence, there is also no plausible hypothesis on how that could happen which could be grounds for a rational suspicion.

There is a plausible mechanism for how a particles of ebola can become airborne. In fact, it is almost certain that they can become airborne. Any such small particle will turn into a floating dust when the droplet which contains it dries out. The only question is, can they survive in that form (and over what distances), such that they can land on a host and infect.

If this question were settled with iron-clad certainty, would we be hearing it in the indirect language of "no evidence"?

Re: The Ebola Wars

#75

Post by maxerickson »

hga wrote: post #58
throwaway5752 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malaria kills 500K-1M people EVERY DAMN YEAR in subsaharan Africa ( http://www.who.int/malaria/media/world_malaria_report_2013/e... ).

The CDC's worst case, last I heard, was 1.4 total million infected with Ebola in January . At the current estimate of 70% lethality, there's your 1M million people 10-16 days after infection. Then it all doubles in 3 weeks. And another 3 weeks. Do the math. If you want to be conservative, dial the starting point back, it won't matter for long. But when I did my own calculations, I found 20,000 cases as of a week or t…

At some point, the danger of handling the bodies of those who die of Ebola will sink into the public consciousness there. The worst case scenario assumes no modification of burial practices.

Note that the article dragonwriter linked says safe burials would have the outbreak ending soon after January:

If, by late December 2014, approximately 70% of patients were placed either in ETUs or home or in a community setting such that there is a reduced risk for disease transmission (including safe burial when needed), then the epidemic in both countries would almost be ended by January 20, 2015

Re: The Ebola Wars

#76

Post by mbreese »

tedks wrote: post #69
rwallace wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, as things now stand, any nutcase who wanted to obtain Ebola with evil intent could do it more easily by hopping on a plane to West Africa than by reconstituting it from its genome. The threat is from the natural epidemic currently running wild, and making all relevant information freely available might help the search for cures and vaccines.

It takes a serious amount of resources to search for a cure or vaccine; they could just have easily made it available on request without limiting the amount of people who could work on it. The real threat is in 10/20/100 years in the future, where someone with a desktop bioprinter decides to fuck up a subway station.

Requests require committees. Committees require meetings. Meetings take time.

The more red tape you put up, the harder it is for people to get to work on this.

If someone has the ability to print out a working copy of ebola in 10/20/100 years, someone else will have the ability to print out working antibodies. I'd be less concerned about some potential future risk and more concerned with getting out of the way of people who are working on Ebola research right now.

Plus, if some nut job wanted to print out some Ebola with a hypothetical bioprinter, they'd probably end up infecting themselves as well.

Re: The Ebola Wars

#77

Post by snowwrestler »

jerf wrote: post #18
FD3SA wrote: post #10

Good thing we've been cutting science funding across the board! Doubt the NIH and NSF grants were helping science much anyway. As a matter of fact, science should be privately funded and privately run. What idiot thought it was a good idea to make scientific research a government mandate? To thy weary, I say: The market shall provide. P.S. Yes, I am bitter about the current state of science. I've written about it in…

The CDC was and is plenty funded to deal with this threat. If you think they didn't spend it well, well, join the club. No amount of money is ever "enough" if it not managed responsibly. I'd really appreciate it if those who think the answer is always more government money would start putting more pressure on their goverment to spend it responsibly . I mean that quite straight, not as a snark. It would go a long way…

You're changing the subject. The parent was discussing budget cuts to NIH and NSF, which fund basic research into diseases and cures, including ebola.

CDC is largely a health policy organization. To the extent it does research, it is research to inform and guide government policy. Not fundamental scientific understanding of disease.

Re: The Ebola Wars

#78

Post by mblevin »

suprgeek wrote: post #43

The description of the conditions in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone and the over-whelming odds that the doctors there are facing was heartbreaking to read. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is as much a function of poverty as it is of the Ebola Virus. One of these all of us can fight.

As someone who has spent extensive time in West and Central Africa, poverty is as much a second order (or third or fourth) effect as the Ebola outbreak, and much harder to fight. System fragility (whether it's relative to disease, famine, or other natural disasters), is a function of poor leadership more than anything. What is scary is that there is plenty of evidence that government to government aid does more harm than good, and Western attempts at fixing the problems only make things worse.[1]

[1]See any of Bill Easterly's writing - http://williameasterly.org/

Re: The Ebola Wars

#79

Post by tedks »

mbreese wrote: post #76
tedks wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a serious amount of resources to search for a cure or vaccine; they could just have easily made it available on request without limiting the amount of people who could work on it. The real threat is in 10/20/100 years in the future, where someone with a desktop bioprinter decides to fuck up a subway station.

Requests require committees. Committees require meetings. Meetings take time. The more red tape you put up, the harder it is for people to get to work on this. If someone has the ability to print out a working copy of ebola in 10/20/100 years, someone else will have the ability to print out working antibodies. I'd be less concerned about some potential future risk and more concerned with getting out of the way of peo…

> Requests require committees. Committees require meetings. Meetings take time.

This is totally false. Plenty of research material is "distributed on request" where the request is just an email and the validation is just checking that the email comes from an academic domain.

It doesn't really matter if someone can print out antibodies (hypothetically). That won't help the people already killed by the ebola.

Re: The Ebola Wars

#80

Post by sopooneo »

pdeuchler wrote: post #68
trhway wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the notes to decoded pieces itself fascinating : /note="immunosuppressive region; other site" ... /note="transmembrane anchor; transmembrane region"

What if the noncoding dna sequences are comments and the genome is just extremely well documented FOSS?

I bet they're more like commented out sections of old code, now so far out of date as to be incomprehensible, but perhaps a key to past approaches.
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