10 ms·

Fears of Larger Contagion as Ebola Spreads to Major Congo City

126 points by mcone 8y ago

Bucephalus355 8y ago
So this has happened before. If anyone here has read “The Hot Zone”, which is one of the great ‘techno-thrillers” of the 90’s (but still nonfiction), the virus spreads to Kinshasa. It’s the capital of Zaire and a major city. But then...it disappears. Ebola is a weird virus. Extraordinarily fatal, about 90% during the 1995 outbreak (smallpox is around 20% for comparison), although they have better treatments now for Ebola that bring it closer to 50%. Either way, lots of health workers have been documented working in a hut with an infected person and never getting infected, yet others have just passed an infected person on the subway and died. The real concern here is what this means for the future of warfare. A lot of people have noted that chemical weapons, and perhaps biological weapons, are perfect for distribution by drone due to their light-weightedness. Biological weapons, much like computer viruses, also can be hard to attribute, making them attractive to use. The Japanese cult that put Sarin in the Tokyo subway in 1996 was also working on biological weapons. They never got far enough, but it demonstrated even non-state actors can pull off credible bio-weapons.
- krageon 8y ago
  The real concern here is the people dying right now. The "future of warfare" is no warfare - it's exactly this kind of thinking that drives "well we should research it because someone else most definitely is" type of scenario's, which is what got us into the nuclear mess.
  - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
    I don't think nuclear weapons and biological warfare are comparable. Nuclear weapons give a country that has them a near total advantage over a country that doesn't in conventional warfare. That's the whole reason countries want nuclear programs: to prevent other countries from using nukes on them. Biological warfare seems less likely to be used by a stable country because its consequences are so hard to predict and it isn't very targeted. And the future of warfare isn't no warfare unfortunately. War and violence are human universals. We can definitely do things to make it occur less frequently, but one of those things is having strong deterrents to war in the form of a strong military.
    - Symmetry 8y ago
      They're hard to predict if you're using something contagious like Influenza. For non-contagious agents like Anthrax (lethal) or Tularemia (mostly just incapacitating) they function more as extra-potent versions of chemical weapons. The Soviets had Anthrax warheads on a number of their ICBMs aimed at US cities back in the day[1], they weren't considered good counterforce weapons but they made good countervalue weapons so if a country's doctrine isn't oriented around a first strike like the US's was they make sense. And given the possibility of nuclear winter you could argue that non-contagious biological weapons are a lot less likely to get out of control. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
    - Retric 8y ago
      That's actually why Anthrax was researched as a bio-warfare agent. Goes airborne spores to human so collect the spores and you get an airborne agent, but it's very bad at Human to Human transmission basically requiring direct contact with open spores.
- DanBC 8y ago
  > The Japanese cult that put Sarin in the Tokyo subway in 1996 was also working on biological weapons, they never got far enough, but it demonstrated even non-state actors can pull of credible bio-weapons. They got pretty far. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/1/03-0238_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/1/03-0238_article
- Nokinside 8y ago
  The real trick is to weaponize them in a way that they spread optimally and then disperse them in a way that avoids detection as long as possible. North Korea has had bio-weapon development program for a long time and has conducted human experiments with prisoners. They also might do larger scale testing in remote islands. No need to Biosafety level 4 laboratory if the researches are not allowed leave the lab and go home every night. If things go south, you torch the island including the people and start over after few years. It's almost impossible to know how good they are in bio-weapons until they use them.
- sndean 8y ago
  > The real concern here is what this means for the future of warfare. I don't think Ebola is likely to play a role in the future of warfare. Based conversations with Sergei Popov [0], in his experience making biological weapons, viruses generally make for poor weapons because they're difficult to deploy / release. Their work led to them to favor B. anthracis and other sporulating bacteria. You'd probably have to invent a new kind of platform for deployment if you want viral weapons to be targeted. I can see how viruses could be used in terrorism or something comparable to arson, but their use by a state seems unlikely. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Popov_(bioweaponeer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Popov_(bioweaponeer)
  - mieseratte 8y ago
    > but their use by a state seems unlikely. One would suspect there would be a certain appeal for clandestine purposes, assuming one can make them hard-to-attribute. Plausible deniability is a useful thing for nation-states. Just look at Russia.
    - sndean 8y ago
      > assuming one can make them hard-to-attribute I think it'd be difficult to attribute. The release platform and preparation that's used would probably be the most identifying feature, rather than the organism. In the case of the 2001 anthrax attacks that was (some claimed) the silicon content, which the FBI thought suggested some expert weaponization knowledge and material. IIRC, Popov explained away that saying that you could just mix in some Gas-X [1]. So maybe even investigation into the preparation wouldn't really point to the source. And, yeah, rereading my comment, my concept of both "state" and "warfare" is probably too simple [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeticone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeticone
    - searine 8y ago
      > assuming one can make them hard-to-attribute Luckily bio-weapons come with their own tracking tags. From DNA we can reconstruct its origin. So it is not ideal for clandestine operations.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > others have just passed an infected person on the subway and died. Who? That's a false, alarmist rumor and the parent reads like a "technothriller", which is probably the wrong way to talk about real diseases that might alarm people. Remember during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, some people coming to the U.S., including a nurse who was effectively imprisoned, were subject of a public panic that had nothing to do with reality. There was no risk. Ebola, like any disease, is contagious only in certain ways. The U.S. CDC says: https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html The virus spreads through direct contact (such as through broken skin or mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, or mouth) with: * Blood or body fluids (urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, breast milk, and semen) of a person who is sick with or has died from EVD * Objects (such as needles and syringes) contaminated with body fluids from a person sick with EVD or the body of a person who died from EVD * Infected fruit bats or nonhuman primates (such as apes and monkeys) * Semen from a man who recovered from EVD (through oral, vaginal, or anal sex) The Ebola virus CANNOT spread to others when a person shows no signs or symptoms of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). ... There is also no evidence that mosquitoes or other insects can transmit Ebola virus. Please don't spread these rumors. EDIT: It also distracts people from the real risks.
  - 2RTZZSro 8y ago
    Ebola may be made airborne locally as some body fluids may be aerosolized during rapid expulsion of air from the lungs.
    - radicaldreamer 8y ago
      Yep, this is sneezing. Ebola is scary because it is one of the most contagious diseases. But in any complex system, it's very hard to predict who will contract the disease and who won't. You can see similar scenarios play out after Chernobyl, where some people who were very close to the reactor which blew up where seemingly unaffected and lived long lives, while others who were relatively far away passed from radiation exposure or the subsequent cancers.
      - 8y ago
- xkcd-sucks 8y ago
  Biology implements its own blockchain, kind of, so it's pretty easy to track down a common ancestor with enough samples. The oldest one gives you the release location and potentially some information about where it was sourced/created if you have enough information from before the event-- For example, tracking anthrax down to a sample collected from a specific farm during a cattle outbreak and then looking at people who were in the area. In contrast, software viruses don't accumulate changes unless they're under active development. Chemical and nuclear stuff can possibly be attributed by looking at isotopic composition or impurities, to determine manufacturing process. But doesn't really tell you anything unique. Exceptions are e.g. polonium which where only a few state agencies are known to be able to make it. The classic, scary chemical weapons (e.g. cholinesterase inhibitors, Sarin) themselves are kitchen chemistry. Ricin, even nastier to die from, is barn chemistry in that it's essentially castor bean tea. However, I suspect that people who manufacture on the cheap usually kill themselves and anyone with enough knowledge and resources to not kill themselves often don't want to make chemical weapons.
elihu 8y ago
Interesting: > The vaccine will be kept in the capital until shortly before use because of the lack of facilities in the provinces for storing it at the required temperature, between minus 60 degrees and minus 80 degrees Celsius, or between minus 76 degrees and minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Are there any other vaccines that have to be kept at such low temperatures?
- olliej 8y ago
  Many have fairly low temperature storage requirements, a -80C is a fairly standard freezer for dealing with long term storage of anything biological. But the real problem isn’t -60 or -80. It’s -[Anything]. If there isn't a reliable source of electricity refrigeration (to the extent required by many drugs and vaccines) is the largest problem faced when you’re trying to get vaccinated new and drugs to remote locations.
  - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
    Yep, and the DRC has almost no power infrastructure so its hard to get electricity outside of the cities.
  - digikata 8y ago
    One of the more interesting uses of UAVs is for transport of samples and drugs back and forth to remote areas. There is at least one company trying it.
    - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
      Seems tough in this case. The DRC is huge.
  - Fomite 8y ago
    Most vaccines need to be kept cold but actively shouldn't be frozen. -80C is pretty unusual for a vaccine.
- timr 8y ago
  Most have to be refrigerated. Vaccines tend to be proteins and sugars which will denature (i.e. unfold or fall apart) if not stored properly. Though -80 is a little extreme for a vaccine. That's the temperature most commonly used for long-term lab storage of samples. It's not a common storage capacity in first-world countries, let alone the third world.
KasianFranks 8y ago
When you do the research you'll find that it spreads to fast. Look out for those that control the speed of the virus. Source: my research in extending human lifespan.
- tzahola 8y ago
  Sorry, what?
- simias 8y ago
  I couldn't tell if you were serious or not so I went to your profile page and I saw "Smart Contracts for On-Demand Datasets in Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence". I still can't tell if it's an elaborate joke or not.
olliej 8y ago
It’s a good thing that CDC employees are taking vacation time to go there and monitor the situation with no support from, well, the CDC.
- Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
  Are the disease control agencies of every other nation expected to physically monitor every such outbreak?
  - olliej 8y ago
    Most do actually because it’s useful to know what the risk to your own country is. Specifically if we don’t think the effected country actually has the resources to do so. The alternative is wide spread contagion - take swine flu and bird flu, both started in China, and yet the lack of any monitoring allowed them to spread around the world before being contained. In that case the outbreak was deliberately not disclosed, but choosing not to disclose and not having resources to disclose have the same effect for /other/ countries, including your own. Things like where a disease has spread is important to work out the risk of it reaching your own country. You do know that most of what the cdc does is monitor right? It’s not actively going out to spend Your Tax Dollars treating patients - that’s something that the US doesn’t even do in America. Alternatively we could choose to not track outbreaks and just hope that Ebola knows we’ll deport it if it comes here. (That works right?)
    - Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
      What is the benefit of physical presence in an area where there is an outbreak of a highly contagious disease? How will CDC employees "monitor" citizens of other countries? Please explain the mechanism by which this is supposed to work. I do not see any evidence that Swine Flu started in China nor that ineffective monitoring is what led to its spread.[0][1] How would a problem like China fudging their numbers have been ameliorated by the presence of CDC employees? Why would China have allowed them in? Even if they did, would they have allowed them to work? If we can't trust foreign partners, we simply can't trust them and I fail to see any case where the problem of unreliable foreign partners can be fixed by the physical presence of CDC employees. >spend Your Tax Dollars treating patients - that’s something that the US doesn’t even do in America. Medicare and Medicaid alone accounted for $1.237 trillion of My Tax Dollar spending in 2016, which accounted for 37% of National Healthcare Expenditures.[2] That same year, ACA tax credits accounted for another $100 billion[3], the VA $166.9 billion[4], and TriCare (healthcare for milfare recipients) is usually another $50 billion. This notion that spending on healthcare is something the government "doesn't even do in America" is one of biggest and strangest (because of the ease with which it is refuted) whoppers regularly promulgated by leftist propagandists. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_timeline [2]: https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta... [3]: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/53094 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/53094 [4]: https://www.va.gov/budget/docs/summary/fy2019VAsBudgetFastFacts.pdf https://www.va.gov/budget/docs/summary/fy2019VAsBudgetFastFa...
forapurpose 8y ago
A few points/questions about U.S. policy and response: * IIRC, the current administration cut NIH or CDC funding for preventing and/or dealing with foreign disease outbreaks. Under the prior administration, IIRC the GOP in Congress told the NIH/CDC to re-purpose those funds toward other uses. Does anyone know the current status? * Regarding the Ebola outbreak in West Africa recently, I later read that the only organization in the world with the logistical resources to respond quickly at the necessary scale was the U.S. military, and Obama eventually deployed them. * The article doesn't mention the U.S. at all. That seems like a major omissions; not even a no comment. Is the U.S. just standing back while these people die and an epidemic spreads, potentially to other places too? * What is the current administration's stance on funding UN/WHO health operations?
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  This article, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/05/game-changer-in-the-congo-as-first-urban-case-of-ebola-is-confirmed/560651/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/05/game-chan... mentions that USAID and the WHO are proving resources: > Both Mbandaka and Bikoro now have mobile labs, where researchers can test blood samples locally—a huge difference compared to most previous outbreaks. Provided by USAID, the labs contain generators, freezers, and equipment for doing diagnostic tests. The Mbandaka lab is expected to be operational tomorrow afternoon, once the WHO delivers a generator.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  The West African outbreak needed a huge response because it had spun out of control. The numbers for this outbreak are still pretty small.
- Fomite 8y ago
  The U.S. military was deployed, but the West African outbreak was much larger in scope. The people first on the ground with expertise are probably MSF. As for the CDC, it looks like they're working with the DRC Ministry of Health: https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/drc/2018-may.html https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/drc/2018-may.html
- 8y ago
cmrivers 8y ago
For what it's worth, I maintain a data repository for this outbreak (https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola_drc https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola_drc) and the 2014-2015 outbreak in West Africa (https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola).
- Fomite 8y ago
  A spectacular contribution that doesn't get enough credit, and which I'm eternally grateful I don't have to do. /cmrivers former lab mate
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
sandworm101 8y ago
Has anyone else read about the cultural factors behind this epidemic? I've been reading about some of the funeral practices. Tradition or not, I couldn't think of a more dangerous thing to do. An understanding of these practices does much to explain the spread in some countries and not others. Religious issues aside, we need to educate people about how idiotic these practices are from a medical perspective. They need to stop. This religion/culture practice is killing people. From the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26835233 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26835233 "Hugging is a normal part of religious worship in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and across the region the ritual preparation of bodies for burial involves washing, touching and kissing. Those with the highest status in society are often charged with washing and preparing the body. For a woman this can include braiding the hair, and for a man shaving the head." On the other hand, I am much less afraid given that I live in a country where such practices do not exist. Cultural barriers can sometimes be a very good thing.
- walrus01 8y ago
  It's unfortunate you are being downvoted, but using emotional language like "idiotic" is not helpful. You are, however, factually correct. It is a plain fact that yes, traditional funeral practices in sierra leone and liberia did contribute greatly to the outbreak. One of the things that stopped the outbreak in sierra leone, more than anything, was the massive public education campaign embarked upon by the response agencies, which after several months finally got cooperation from the civilian population to: a) if you see a sick person, don't touch them, call the special response phone number and a PPE-equipped response team will be dispatched b) if a person dies, do not touch the corpse, do not wash the corpse, do not handle the corpse c) know how to identify the early signs of sickness and where the ETUs were (ebola treatment units). It is actually kind of difficult to contract ebola because you need skin-to-skin contact with sweat, blood or vomit from a very sick person with a high viral load. It's not highly aerosolized and doesn't last very long in the air from coughing or sneezing.
- sctb 8y ago
  Please don't post shallow, inflammatory dismissals on Hacker News. We're here for substantive discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
joejerryronnie 8y ago
One aspect of Ebola which makes it so terrifying and also less likely to spread widely is its rapid progression and mortality rate. The detailed accounts of a person succumbing to fatal Ebola infection are horrific. But the virus' effectiveness at rapidly multiplying results in its host dying so quickly that transmission is limited. It would be interesting to see if the reduction in mortality rates (from 90% to 50% according to another poster) correlates with a greater length/breadth of the outbreak. On another note, if human strains of Ebola ever mutate for airborne transmission, we're all screwed.
- ocschwar 8y ago
  The thing is Ebola is evolved to have a stable impact on its host population, which is the common fruit bat. We're just collateral damage. So mutating for airborne transmission among humans is just not on the evolutionary agenda here.
  - ridgeguy 8y ago
    >So mutating for airborne transmission among humans is just not on the evolutionary agenda here. Airborne transmission isn't an evolutionary agenda item. It's an evolutionary event with a non-zero probability of occurring, so far as we know. Evolution is a great mechanism based in part on the aphorism, "If it can happen, it will".
forkLding 8y ago
Relevant Vice youtube video of the 2015 Ebola outbreak in Liberia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANUI4uT3xJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANUI4uT3xJI for those who want more context on why its so hard to stop it in underdeveloped and insufficiently prepared African cities (not the developed ones, those tend to be able to contain epidemics)
SpikeDad 8y ago
And you realize that the US is even less prepared for any major epidemics that might occur in the world and here in the US due to the Trump administration's relentless dismantling and defunding of both research and global disease research.
lurquer 8y ago
I see hysteria about Ebola. As if it has the potential to wipe out millions. If Ebola was prone to causing large-scale epidemics, Ebola would have caused large-scale epidemics. Want to worry? Worry about flu. Worry about smallpox. Those viruses have killed millions and, most likely, will continue to do so now and again in the centuries to come. But Ebola? Not a chance. How do I know? Because, there is every reason to believe the virus has been around forever, and it's never caused the type of pandemic described by doomsayers.

126 points by mcone 8y ago

So this has happened before. If anyone here has read “The Hot Zone”, which is one of the great ‘techno-thrillers” of the 90’s (but still nonfiction), the virus spreads to Kinshasa. It’s the capital of Zaire and a major city. But then...it disappears. Ebola is a weird virus. Extraordinarily fatal, about 90% during the 1995 outbreak (smallpox is around 20% for comparison), although they have better treatments now for Ebola that bring it closer to 50%. Either way, lots of health workers have been documented working in a hut with an infected person and never getting infected, yet others have just passed an infected person on the subway and died. The real concern here is what this means for the future of warfare. A lot of people have noted that chemical weapons, and perhaps biological weapons, are perfect for distribution by drone due to their light-weightedness. Biological weapons, much like computer viruses, also can be hard to attribute, making them attractive to use. The Japanese cult that put Sarin in the Tokyo subway in 1996 was also working on biological weapons. They never got far enough, but it demonstrated even non-state actors can pull off credible bio-weapons.

krageon 8y ago
The real concern here is the people dying right now. The "future of warfare" is no warfare - it's exactly this kind of thinking that drives "well we should research it because someone else most definitely is" type of scenario's, which is what got us into the nuclear mess.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  I don't think nuclear weapons and biological warfare are comparable. Nuclear weapons give a country that has them a near total advantage over a country that doesn't in conventional warfare. That's the whole reason countries want nuclear programs: to prevent other countries from using nukes on them. Biological warfare seems less likely to be used by a stable country because its consequences are so hard to predict and it isn't very targeted. And the future of warfare isn't no warfare unfortunately. War and violence are human universals. We can definitely do things to make it occur less frequently, but one of those things is having strong deterrents to war in the form of a strong military.
  - Symmetry 8y ago
    They're hard to predict if you're using something contagious like Influenza. For non-contagious agents like Anthrax (lethal) or Tularemia (mostly just incapacitating) they function more as extra-potent versions of chemical weapons. The Soviets had Anthrax warheads on a number of their ICBMs aimed at US cities back in the day[1], they weren't considered good counterforce weapons but they made good countervalue weapons so if a country's doctrine isn't oriented around a first strike like the US's was they make sense. And given the possibility of nuclear winter you could argue that non-contagious biological weapons are a lot less likely to get out of control. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
  - Retric 8y ago
    That's actually why Anthrax was researched as a bio-warfare agent. Goes airborne spores to human so collect the spores and you get an airborne agent, but it's very bad at Human to Human transmission basically requiring direct contact with open spores.
DanBC 8y ago
> The Japanese cult that put Sarin in the Tokyo subway in 1996 was also working on biological weapons, they never got far enough, but it demonstrated even non-state actors can pull of credible bio-weapons. They got pretty far. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/1/03-0238_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/1/03-0238_article
Nokinside 8y ago
The real trick is to weaponize them in a way that they spread optimally and then disperse them in a way that avoids detection as long as possible. North Korea has had bio-weapon development program for a long time and has conducted human experiments with prisoners. They also might do larger scale testing in remote islands. No need to Biosafety level 4 laboratory if the researches are not allowed leave the lab and go home every night. If things go south, you torch the island including the people and start over after few years. It's almost impossible to know how good they are in bio-weapons until they use them.
sndean 8y ago
> The real concern here is what this means for the future of warfare. I don't think Ebola is likely to play a role in the future of warfare. Based conversations with Sergei Popov [0], in his experience making biological weapons, viruses generally make for poor weapons because they're difficult to deploy / release. Their work led to them to favor B. anthracis and other sporulating bacteria. You'd probably have to invent a new kind of platform for deployment if you want viral weapons to be targeted. I can see how viruses could be used in terrorism or something comparable to arson, but their use by a state seems unlikely. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Popov_(bioweaponeer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Popov_(bioweaponeer)
- mieseratte 8y ago
  > but their use by a state seems unlikely. One would suspect there would be a certain appeal for clandestine purposes, assuming one can make them hard-to-attribute. Plausible deniability is a useful thing for nation-states. Just look at Russia.
  - sndean 8y ago
    > assuming one can make them hard-to-attribute I think it'd be difficult to attribute. The release platform and preparation that's used would probably be the most identifying feature, rather than the organism. In the case of the 2001 anthrax attacks that was (some claimed) the silicon content, which the FBI thought suggested some expert weaponization knowledge and material. IIRC, Popov explained away that saying that you could just mix in some Gas-X [1]. So maybe even investigation into the preparation wouldn't really point to the source. And, yeah, rereading my comment, my concept of both "state" and "warfare" is probably too simple [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeticone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeticone
  - searine 8y ago
    > assuming one can make them hard-to-attribute Luckily bio-weapons come with their own tracking tags. From DNA we can reconstruct its origin. So it is not ideal for clandestine operations.
forapurpose 8y ago
> others have just passed an infected person on the subway and died. Who? That's a false, alarmist rumor and the parent reads like a "technothriller", which is probably the wrong way to talk about real diseases that might alarm people. Remember during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, some people coming to the U.S., including a nurse who was effectively imprisoned, were subject of a public panic that had nothing to do with reality. There was no risk. Ebola, like any disease, is contagious only in certain ways. The U.S. CDC says: https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html The virus spreads through direct contact (such as through broken skin or mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, or mouth) with: * Blood or body fluids (urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, breast milk, and semen) of a person who is sick with or has died from EVD * Objects (such as needles and syringes) contaminated with body fluids from a person sick with EVD or the body of a person who died from EVD * Infected fruit bats or nonhuman primates (such as apes and monkeys) * Semen from a man who recovered from EVD (through oral, vaginal, or anal sex) The Ebola virus CANNOT spread to others when a person shows no signs or symptoms of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). ... There is also no evidence that mosquitoes or other insects can transmit Ebola virus. Please don't spread these rumors. EDIT: It also distracts people from the real risks.
- 2RTZZSro 8y ago
  Ebola may be made airborne locally as some body fluids may be aerosolized during rapid expulsion of air from the lungs.
  - radicaldreamer 8y ago
    Yep, this is sneezing. Ebola is scary because it is one of the most contagious diseases. But in any complex system, it's very hard to predict who will contract the disease and who won't. You can see similar scenarios play out after Chernobyl, where some people who were very close to the reactor which blew up where seemingly unaffected and lived long lives, while others who were relatively far away passed from radiation exposure or the subsequent cancers.
    - 8y ago
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
Biology implements its own blockchain, kind of, so it's pretty easy to track down a common ancestor with enough samples. The oldest one gives you the release location and potentially some information about where it was sourced/created if you have enough information from before the event-- For example, tracking anthrax down to a sample collected from a specific farm during a cattle outbreak and then looking at people who were in the area. In contrast, software viruses don't accumulate changes unless they're under active development. Chemical and nuclear stuff can possibly be attributed by looking at isotopic composition or impurities, to determine manufacturing process. But doesn't really tell you anything unique. Exceptions are e.g. polonium which where only a few state agencies are known to be able to make it. The classic, scary chemical weapons (e.g. cholinesterase inhibitors, Sarin) themselves are kitchen chemistry. Ricin, even nastier to die from, is barn chemistry in that it's essentially castor bean tea. However, I suspect that people who manufacture on the cheap usually kill themselves and anyone with enough knowledge and resources to not kill themselves often don't want to make chemical weapons.

elihu 8y ago

Interesting: > The vaccine will be kept in the capital until shortly before use because of the lack of facilities in the provinces for storing it at the required temperature, between minus 60 degrees and minus 80 degrees Celsius, or between minus 76 degrees and minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Are there any other vaccines that have to be kept at such low temperatures?

olliej 8y ago
Many have fairly low temperature storage requirements, a -80C is a fairly standard freezer for dealing with long term storage of anything biological. But the real problem isn’t -60 or -80. It’s -[Anything]. If there isn't a reliable source of electricity refrigeration (to the extent required by many drugs and vaccines) is the largest problem faced when you’re trying to get vaccinated new and drugs to remote locations.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  Yep, and the DRC has almost no power infrastructure so its hard to get electricity outside of the cities.
- digikata 8y ago
  One of the more interesting uses of UAVs is for transport of samples and drugs back and forth to remote areas. There is at least one company trying it.
  - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
    Seems tough in this case. The DRC is huge.
- Fomite 8y ago
  Most vaccines need to be kept cold but actively shouldn't be frozen. -80C is pretty unusual for a vaccine.
timr 8y ago
Most have to be refrigerated. Vaccines tend to be proteins and sugars which will denature (i.e. unfold or fall apart) if not stored properly. Though -80 is a little extreme for a vaccine. That's the temperature most commonly used for long-term lab storage of samples. It's not a common storage capacity in first-world countries, let alone the third world.

KasianFranks 8y ago

When you do the research you'll find that it spreads to fast. Look out for those that control the speed of the virus. Source: my research in extending human lifespan.

tzahola 8y ago
Sorry, what?
simias 8y ago
I couldn't tell if you were serious or not so I went to your profile page and I saw "Smart Contracts for On-Demand Datasets in Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence". I still can't tell if it's an elaborate joke or not.

olliej 8y ago

It’s a good thing that CDC employees are taking vacation time to go there and monitor the situation with no support from, well, the CDC.

Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
Are the disease control agencies of every other nation expected to physically monitor every such outbreak?
- olliej 8y ago
  Most do actually because it’s useful to know what the risk to your own country is. Specifically if we don’t think the effected country actually has the resources to do so. The alternative is wide spread contagion - take swine flu and bird flu, both started in China, and yet the lack of any monitoring allowed them to spread around the world before being contained. In that case the outbreak was deliberately not disclosed, but choosing not to disclose and not having resources to disclose have the same effect for /other/ countries, including your own. Things like where a disease has spread is important to work out the risk of it reaching your own country. You do know that most of what the cdc does is monitor right? It’s not actively going out to spend Your Tax Dollars treating patients - that’s something that the US doesn’t even do in America. Alternatively we could choose to not track outbreaks and just hope that Ebola knows we’ll deport it if it comes here. (That works right?)
  - Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
    What is the benefit of physical presence in an area where there is an outbreak of a highly contagious disease? How will CDC employees "monitor" citizens of other countries? Please explain the mechanism by which this is supposed to work. I do not see any evidence that Swine Flu started in China nor that ineffective monitoring is what led to its spread.[0][1] How would a problem like China fudging their numbers have been ameliorated by the presence of CDC employees? Why would China have allowed them in? Even if they did, would they have allowed them to work? If we can't trust foreign partners, we simply can't trust them and I fail to see any case where the problem of unreliable foreign partners can be fixed by the physical presence of CDC employees. >spend Your Tax Dollars treating patients - that’s something that the US doesn’t even do in America. Medicare and Medicaid alone accounted for $1.237 trillion of My Tax Dollar spending in 2016, which accounted for 37% of National Healthcare Expenditures.[2] That same year, ACA tax credits accounted for another $100 billion[3], the VA $166.9 billion[4], and TriCare (healthcare for milfare recipients) is usually another $50 billion. This notion that spending on healthcare is something the government "doesn't even do in America" is one of biggest and strangest (because of the ease with which it is refuted) whoppers regularly promulgated by leftist propagandists. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_timeline [2]: https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta... [3]: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/53094 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/53094 [4]: https://www.va.gov/budget/docs/summary/fy2019VAsBudgetFastFacts.pdf https://www.va.gov/budget/docs/summary/fy2019VAsBudgetFastFa...

forapurpose 8y ago

A few points/questions about U.S. policy and response: * IIRC, the current administration cut NIH or CDC funding for preventing and/or dealing with foreign disease outbreaks. Under the prior administration, IIRC the GOP in Congress told the NIH/CDC to re-purpose those funds toward other uses. Does anyone know the current status? * Regarding the Ebola outbreak in West Africa recently, I later read that the only organization in the world with the logistical resources to respond quickly at the necessary scale was the U.S. military, and Obama eventually deployed them. * The article doesn't mention the U.S. at all. That seems like a major omissions; not even a no comment. Is the U.S. just standing back while these people die and an epidemic spreads, potentially to other places too? * What is the current administration's stance on funding UN/WHO health operations?

ForHackernews 8y ago
This article, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/05/game-changer-in-the-congo-as-first-urban-case-of-ebola-is-confirmed/560651/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/05/game-chan... mentions that USAID and the WHO are proving resources: > Both Mbandaka and Bikoro now have mobile labs, where researchers can test blood samples locally—a huge difference compared to most previous outbreaks. Provided by USAID, the labs contain generators, freezers, and equipment for doing diagnostic tests. The Mbandaka lab is expected to be operational tomorrow afternoon, once the WHO delivers a generator.
maxerickson 8y ago
The West African outbreak needed a huge response because it had spun out of control. The numbers for this outbreak are still pretty small.
Fomite 8y ago
The U.S. military was deployed, but the West African outbreak was much larger in scope. The people first on the ground with expertise are probably MSF. As for the CDC, it looks like they're working with the DRC Ministry of Health: https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/drc/2018-may.html https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/drc/2018-may.html
8y ago

cmrivers 8y ago

For what it's worth, I maintain a data repository for this outbreak (https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola_drc https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola_drc) and the 2014-2015 outbreak in West Africa (https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola).

Fomite 8y ago
A spectacular contribution that doesn't get enough credit, and which I'm eternally grateful I don't have to do. /cmrivers former lab mate
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

sandworm101 8y ago

Has anyone else read about the cultural factors behind this epidemic? I've been reading about some of the funeral practices. Tradition or not, I couldn't think of a more dangerous thing to do. An understanding of these practices does much to explain the spread in some countries and not others. Religious issues aside, we need to educate people about how idiotic these practices are from a medical perspective. They need to stop. This religion/culture practice is killing people. From the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26835233 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26835233 "Hugging is a normal part of religious worship in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and across the region the ritual preparation of bodies for burial involves washing, touching and kissing. Those with the highest status in society are often charged with washing and preparing the body. For a woman this can include braiding the hair, and for a man shaving the head." On the other hand, I am much less afraid given that I live in a country where such practices do not exist. Cultural barriers can sometimes be a very good thing.

walrus01 8y ago
It's unfortunate you are being downvoted, but using emotional language like "idiotic" is not helpful. You are, however, factually correct. It is a plain fact that yes, traditional funeral practices in sierra leone and liberia did contribute greatly to the outbreak. One of the things that stopped the outbreak in sierra leone, more than anything, was the massive public education campaign embarked upon by the response agencies, which after several months finally got cooperation from the civilian population to: a) if you see a sick person, don't touch them, call the special response phone number and a PPE-equipped response team will be dispatched b) if a person dies, do not touch the corpse, do not wash the corpse, do not handle the corpse c) know how to identify the early signs of sickness and where the ETUs were (ebola treatment units). It is actually kind of difficult to contract ebola because you need skin-to-skin contact with sweat, blood or vomit from a very sick person with a high viral load. It's not highly aerosolized and doesn't last very long in the air from coughing or sneezing.
sctb 8y ago
Please don't post shallow, inflammatory dismissals on Hacker News. We're here for substantive discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

joejerryronnie 8y ago

One aspect of Ebola which makes it so terrifying and also less likely to spread widely is its rapid progression and mortality rate. The detailed accounts of a person succumbing to fatal Ebola infection are horrific. But the virus' effectiveness at rapidly multiplying results in its host dying so quickly that transmission is limited. It would be interesting to see if the reduction in mortality rates (from 90% to 50% according to another poster) correlates with a greater length/breadth of the outbreak. On another note, if human strains of Ebola ever mutate for airborne transmission, we're all screwed.

ocschwar 8y ago
The thing is Ebola is evolved to have a stable impact on its host population, which is the common fruit bat. We're just collateral damage. So mutating for airborne transmission among humans is just not on the evolutionary agenda here.
- ridgeguy 8y ago
  >So mutating for airborne transmission among humans is just not on the evolutionary agenda here. Airborne transmission isn't an evolutionary agenda item. It's an evolutionary event with a non-zero probability of occurring, so far as we know. Evolution is a great mechanism based in part on the aphorism, "If it can happen, it will".

forkLding 8y ago

Relevant Vice youtube video of the 2015 Ebola outbreak in Liberia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANUI4uT3xJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANUI4uT3xJI for those who want more context on why its so hard to stop it in underdeveloped and insufficiently prepared African cities (not the developed ones, those tend to be able to contain epidemics)

SpikeDad 8y ago

And you realize that the US is even less prepared for any major epidemics that might occur in the world and here in the US due to the Trump administration's relentless dismantling and defunding of both research and global disease research.

lurquer 8y ago

I see hysteria about Ebola. As if it has the potential to wipe out millions. If Ebola was prone to causing large-scale epidemics, Ebola would have caused large-scale epidemics. Want to worry? Worry about flu. Worry about smallpox. Those viruses have killed millions and, most likely, will continue to do so now and again in the centuries to come. But Ebola? Not a chance. How do I know? Because, there is every reason to believe the virus has been around forever, and it's never caused the type of pandemic described by doomsayers.