THE EBOLA-DOME

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zaratustra
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby zaratustra » Tue Oct 07, 2014 5:39 am

Mongrel wrote:On the plus side, viruses are still just a lifeform.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus#Life_properties

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nosimpleway
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby nosimpleway » Tue Oct 07, 2014 8:24 am

Mongrel wrote:So what you see is that over a long period of time, pretty much every ultra-lethal disease we've ever faced eventually fades or becomes a toned-down nerf-version of itself (did you know syphilis basically melted people when it first arose?).


Syphilis and plague just haven't been the same since the invention of penicillin. These things don't nerf themselves, humans develop medicine to nerf them.

And now we have MRSA, which isn't plague but shows we're not even very good at that.

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Mothra
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Mothra » Tue Oct 07, 2014 8:58 am

And when you think about it, the development of penicillin was kind if an insane accidental miracle.

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Smiler
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Smiler » Tue Oct 07, 2014 9:55 am

Viruses mutate so slow that it's really silly whenever people say "OH NO EBOLA'S GONNA BE AIRBORNE!" For Ebola to become airborne, it would have to be able to grow inside cells of the respiratory tract. It would most likely have to gain the ability to infect epithelial cells inside the lungs, or other lung cells. The mutations required to gain this ability would basically turn Ebola into an entirely different virus anyway.


On the other hand, ebola can travel on droplets, and the amount of it you need to get it is super small.

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The nice thing about this though is that droplets evaporate very quickly, and like most viruses ebola can't survive without being on something. It's still very dangerous if you're right on top of someone with ebola, but someone walking down the street with it isn't going to infect 500 people right away. We also have the problem that Ebola has a long incubation period. We're still at the point where we are waiting to see if anyone involved in the Dallas case has got it.

Oh by the by, there's a nurse in Madrid who's got ebola. She noticed that she had a fever and admitted herself right away, so that's nice. Pictures of the hospital's quarantine isn't as nice.

http://i.imgur.com/RA1bCdc.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/qSCUzhE.jpg

I mean, it'll still work, but it's really scary thinking about how Spain's gonna handle ebola if more cases show up with their austerity policies gutting their public health system.

patito
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby patito » Tue Oct 07, 2014 10:28 am

Mongrel wrote:On the plus side, viruses are still just a lifeform. They want to live too. If they're so lethal that they reduce their hosts to a wasteland of un-dug graves, they'll die too.


Puttting aside the first obvious problem that Zara pointed out already, you seem to misunderstand how evolution works.

The genes in a bear or a lion don't care if its prey live or die, or whether they're abundant or not. They only really care about making efficient killing machines with yes, the ability to reproduce. The genes on the prey are the one that make sure there's plenty of it, whether its gazelle or salmon, they are even more efficient at reproducing than predators. If for some reason bear and lions become way more efficient and they're out of prey, then guess what, then the predators die too and that's the end of that. Evolution doesn't give a shit yo.

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Mongrel
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Mongrel » Tue Oct 07, 2014 11:42 am

Yes, I know that. I may have coloured my post with a little light anthropomorphism, but I understand that the actual operating principle is that the lethal virus dies off for lack of hosts while a less-lethal mutated version may prosper. No strategy or desire is involved in any way and whether or not viruses count as a life form is immaterial.

As Smiler pointed out, even were the virus to go airborne, that still wouldn't necessarily result in a Black Plague scenario, as the mutations required to get there often involve tradeoffs. That said, the virus having so many trillions more opportunities to mutate isn't a neutral thing to blow off, as relatively small changes will make it at least a little harder to develop an effective working treatment.
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Grath
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Grath » Wed Oct 08, 2014 1:13 pm

Joxam wrote:
Mongrel wrote:It can be treated to improve your chances, but we're still talking about a disease with 25% - 50% lethality (lethality skyrockets without treatment though, because you can die from dehydration or infection).


Eh. It's telling that Zero cases of Ebola that have reached USA have resulted in casualties. You have to realize that in countries that this is effecting harshly there are frequent pictures of Ebola patients lying in their own bodily fluids while their at the 'hospital' that these countries can support. Any developed country with a competent quarantine procedure can contain this disease easily.

Why did you have to jinx it?

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Joxam
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Joxam » Thu Oct 09, 2014 6:05 am

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EDIT: Also, I said they could contain it easily meaning I didn't think there would be a US Epidemic, not that the man wouldn't die.
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Büge
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Büge » Thu Oct 09, 2014 12:07 pm

oh god

A customer just came in who said he'd been taking a vacation in Nigeria and eaten bat meat while there. I think he coughed. I'm honestly worried.
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Mongrel
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Mongrel » Thu Oct 09, 2014 12:25 pm

brb, barricading door.
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Mongrel
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Mongrel » Thu Oct 09, 2014 12:30 pm

TBH I suspect IRL trolling with a setup like that.
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Büge
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Büge » Thu Oct 09, 2014 1:41 pm

Well, after frantically researching the vectors for Ebola transmission, it looks like I couldn't be infected unless the guy hocked a loogie into my eye or something. And he would need to be in the advanced stages to be infectious. Since he was able to walk and talk without hemorrhaging blood, I think I'm safe.
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Blossom
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Blossom » Thu Oct 09, 2014 2:22 pm

Yeah, that's really the thing about Ebola. When you subtract nonsense superstition and flat-out disbelief in the existence of Ebola from the equation, it's actually pretty hard to transmit.
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Mongrel
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Mongrel » Thu Oct 09, 2014 3:05 pm

Like really, who goes around telling people they ate bats during an ebola epidemic? That's chilled monkey brains levels of silly.
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Mothra
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Mothra » Thu Oct 09, 2014 3:11 pm

Who goes around telling people they ate bats?

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Mongrel
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Mongrel » Thu Oct 09, 2014 3:23 pm

One small caveat: People in west Africa DO eat bats (Google "Bush Meat"), but that's really a function of poorer folks away from the coasts. Eating bush meat is super dumb during an Ebola outbreak, but food is scarce enough that people still do it all the time. Even eating it is fairly (but not completely) safe, and it's the hunters and preparers who face the real risks.

I don't know if the guy Buge talked was a tourist, it'd be reeeeaaallly unlikley for him to wind up in a bush meat market unless he was an aid worker, in which case he should know better! On the other hand, immigrants are usually from wealthier coastal areas, so they probably wouldn't be partaking in the local version of hominy bat grits very often.

So is it impossible? No, not really. But it's unlikely. And yeah! Who goes around saying that even if it IS true?! "Ebola is carried by bats" is pretty well known now.
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Blossom
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Blossom » Thu Oct 09, 2014 3:37 pm

If I had some assurances as to its cleanliness, I'd try bat meat. Meat's meat. I wouldn't want to pick around tiny bat bones though.
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IGNORE ME
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby IGNORE ME » Thu Oct 09, 2014 3:44 pm

Mothra wrote:Who goes around telling people they ate bats?


Silver St. Cloud.

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Thad
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Thad » Thu Oct 09, 2014 11:34 pm

Ba-dum SH.

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Grath
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Re: THE EBOLA-DOME

Postby Grath » Thu Oct 16, 2014 3:58 pm

This year so far, more Americans have been killed by lightning (24) than by Ebola (<10).

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