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Isn't it obvious that it spreads through air, if it causes coughing and sneezing? How could the virus have evolved to cause coughing and sneezing? Although, usi
by Geee 12y ago
Isn't it obvious that it spreads through air, if it causes coughing and sneezing? How could the virus have evolved to cause coughing and sneezing? Although, using this mechanism, the virus could just spread to other surfaces and liquids through air, but not directly (for some odd reason). Of course, it's possible that having another virus at the same time might enable this mechanism too.
- icelancer 12y agoWhat? Irritation of the sinus cavities purely as a side effect is a possibility.
- GotAnyMegadeth 12y agoThe reason this virus is dangerous if because it didn't co-evolve with humans (it is a bat disease I think). Coughing and sneezing are mechanisms that humans have evolved in order to deal with various problems, not something that viruses have managed to program us to do.
- Geee 12y agoNo, they're mechanisms for completely different purposes than fighting viruses. Coughing, sneezing, running nose, diarrhea, etc. are vulnerabilities that infectious viruses exploit to be able to spread.
- hga 12y agoThe critical distinction here is that Ebola doesn't seem to infect the outer part of the respiratory system like colds or influenza. There's not a huge mass of cells there to be shedding viri and getting into the air, and it would take more than a few mutations for that to change. Ebola viri have been found in saliva, tears, can come from bleeding in the respiratory system, so it obviously can get airborne that way. Exactly what that means (how big are the droplets, how long do they stay in the air etc.), how significant that is as a mode of transmission (which includes iffy estimates of how many viri (virus particles) are required to make an infective dose) ... we just don't know. But with our current Ebola importation policy, it's very likely we will start to get answers to these questions....
- 001sky 12y agoEbola is in the various fluids discharged by coughing and sneezing (its in the article). The problem for the urban areas is that ebola seems to persist (as long as its in a fluid) and its so infectious (small threshold exposure). The two may conspire to create an issue that 99.99% clean isn't clean enough. Thus, discharged fluids even in small amounts may very well transmit the virus in trace amounts (again, in the linked piece). From there its purely semantic about whther or not 'water vapour' or 'aerosolized liquids' are equal to "airborne". As you allude, eath pathogen may be airborne in various ways (the air has many pollutants and impurities).
- hga 12y agoA statement from the WHO, which I don't have a lot of respect for, but unlike the US CDC, I haven't yet caught them lying about Ebola (as opposed to arguably necessary optimism, they're not about to state they've written West Africa off, at least at this stage). Most of it is correct from my knowledge of things, and the statements about saliva, tears and sweat sound plausible: http://who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/06-october-2014/en/ http://who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/06-october-2014/en/
- dropit_sphere 12y agoUm. A better question would be, "How did humans evolve to cough and sneeze?"
- gambiting 12y agoThe answer to that question is legitimately "because humans that coughed and sneezed survived longer than those who didn't". That's literally all there is to it.
- dropit_sphere 12y agoYes. My point is that coughing and sneezing is something that humans do for their own benefit, not for ebola's.