Yesterday’s post https://luysii.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/ebola/ concerned the fact that 2 nurses taking care of a patient in Texas had been infected (presumably even after taking all the recommended precautions). Given that, I was concerned about the possibility of airborne spread.
Bryan wrote in to say the following:
“It seems doubtful airborne spread was involved. Remember, the Texas patient was initially sent home after showing symptoms, yet none of his family members were infected. Only those health workers directly involved in his care (and thus exposed to infected bodily fluids) have been infected, consistent with the idea that the disease can be transmitted only though contact with infected bodily fluids.”
I certainly hope he is right.
In something right out a novel, the possibility of airborne spread is now going to be empirically tested, as one of the two infected nurses flew to Cleveland, and then back to Texas in the 24 hours prior to her diagnosis. She apparently had a slight fever on boarding. So 100+ people were in a confined space with her for a few hours.
It’s why I don’t read fiction — reality is far more fantastic than anything writers can produce.
One more bizarre development. Here in Massachusetts, legislators today are scheduled to hear about the readiness of the state’s hospitals to handle Ebola. Amazingly, they will only get input from hospital CEOs. No nurses, thank you. Naturally the nurses are pissed as they should be (and so should you if you live in the state). If there were ever a time to hear from boots on the ground about Ebola readiness, it is now.
Addendum 17 Oct ’14
The Obama administration has just appointed a former chief of staff for former vice-president Gore and present vice-president Biden as the “Ebola czar”. Presumably, not for his medical expertise but for his ability to coordinate various governmental agencies, which was hardly the problem in the CDC’s response to the Texas cases. Hopefully, this will not be another case of “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” but I’m not optimistic — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Brown
Now for some molecular biology. The genome of Ebola is RNA which mutates much more rapidly than DNA genomes. It does this so quickly that at death from AIDS (another RNA virus), there are so many viral variants present that the infecting ensemble is called a quasiSpecies. With a large population infected in Africa there is more Ebola virus extant than at any time in the past. There is some reason to hope that natural selection for a more transmissible form of Ebola in the large infected human population will not occur (the AIDS virus hasn’t become more infectious over the years). This is only a hope.
Chemiotics II 
Comments
The experiment has already occurred in Lagos, Nigeria (the most populous city in Africa). There, an individual flew into the Lagos airport from Liberia and passed out from illness in the airport. He was taken to a hospital where he was initially treated for malaria until some of the doctors suspected ebola. Once the diagnosis of ebola was confirmed, Nigerian health officials took steps to track all individuals with whom he had contact. Because of their efforts that one patient caused only 19 new infections, and it did not spread to the wider community. See: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nigeria-stopped-ebola-2014-10
If Nigeria can effectively deal with ebola, but America cannot, that does not speak well for the quality of our health care system.
This experiment has already been done in Dallas. None of the people in the apartment with Mr. Duncan for two days have shown symptoms, and he was in a much farther advanced stage of the disease.