A person from Birmingham seems to have contracted the virus. Of all the news currency, this is the most sobering of the lot. If you get it, forget it.
It reminds me of the film Contagion. Right now, there will be teams of investigators searching multi-directionally (and fairly desperately) for anyone who may have come into contact with that person.
Yes, extremely deadly if not caught early. But I heard it's hard to spread. It's not airborne thank gods so it won't spread on international flights for example. Has to be from physical contact/bodily fluids.
Look again, Solium. The outbreak has originated in West Africa at quite some distance to the traditional source. There will be people from the UK who travelled to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone who contracted it unknowingly and brought it back. What characterizes this particular outbreak is the fact that knowledge of it months ago should have initiated an effective response to contain the virus. Clearly, it didn't happen. Things were serious at the start and they're extremely serious now. 6 out of 10 die. That's more than 50%.
A man from Birmingham was tested - and found to be negative. This may change (as Ebola shows symptoms suddenly after ten days of exposure) but for right now, nothing has happened.
Please don't be reactionary about something so serious.
The good news, if you could call it that Lehah is that, yes, we are aware there is a problem. And I don't think I'm being any more reactionary than the COBRA meeting that's taking place to discuss the matter.
The shape of the virus appears to be asymmetric over most of it's conformal domain. Most viruses appear to be basically spherical and symmetric. It certainly does give one pause for thought. Here is a recent article of interest:
Yes, extremely deadly if not caught early. But I heard it's hard to spread. It's not airborne thank gods so it won't spread on international flights for example. Has to be from physical contact/bodily fluids.
Yes, pretty hard to spread, BUT if you do contract it, it doesn't matter if it's caught early. There is no treatment. Catching it early merely means you can be quarantined quickly to reduce the chances of spreading it.
For an outstanding book on Ebola, read "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston. Once you start reading, it is hard to put down before you finish. It is non-fiction, and documents the first appearance of Ebola in humans and goes forward from there. It came close to spreading out of laboratories.
The season 2 (two part) finale of Millennium has a mutant strain of the Marburg Virus (the only other disease listed next to Ebola by the CDC) released on the world. Despite the fact its "played up" a bit for television, the "dramatic weight" they give the scenario and the severity of this kind of disease has haunted me ever since. It truly is the stuff of nightmares.
Yes, extremely deadly if not caught early. But I heard it's hard to spread. It's not airborne thank gods so it won't spread on international flights for example. Has to be from physical contact/bodily fluids.
Yes, pretty hard to spread, BUT if you do contract it, it doesn't matter if it's caught early. There is no treatment. Catching it early merely means you can be quarantined quickly to reduce the chances of spreading it.
For an outstanding book on Ebola, read "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston. Once you start reading, it is hard to put down before you finish. It is non-fiction, and documents the first appearance of Ebola in humans and goes forward from there. It came close to spreading out of laboratories.
There's no man made cue, but the body can fight the virus and defeat it. But I believe we have medications that does something that can help the antibodies? I'm vague on this. It's just something I heard from a doctor on one of the news channels. Not trying to put rose colored glasses on. It is a terrible outbreak. The book sounds like a good read.
The red things covering the exterior of the capsid (outer structure) of the ebola virus are these triangular glycoproteins, which appear to be the 'velcro' the virus uses to latch onto cells for the purpose of invasion and subversion of the invaded cell's store of raw materials (amino acids) used to reproduce a geometrical progression of the virus.
It appears that the ZMapp drug is designed to block the sites on the glycoprotein that grapple onto the nearest available host cell. In effect, if it works it would effectively "gag" the virus, leaving it neutralised. The idea is to turn the velcro into smooth silk, or something along those lines, so that it can't entangle itself onto the outer wall of a cell that it would otherwise invade. It would bounce off anything importart to the host with which it could come into contact.
The latest scare story, newspapers love this stuff. It's hard to catch, difficult to spread as it debilitates the victim too fast, & easily controlled by any country with a halfway decent health system.
A nightmare scenario would be a virus where the infected person feels fine for a couple of weeks, maybe a slight head cold with lots of sneezing, & then gets really ill very fast. That would spread around the world before anyone knows there's a problem.
It is called ebola and it is an efficient little nano-machine built by mother nature because she can. Matt Hooper sums it up nicely in Jaws, when describing the Great White. All it does is eat, swim and make little baby sharks. So is the case with ebola.
What is really important is knowing how Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol actually became infected. How much of the sample fluid was there on their persons that contained the active virus that entered their bodies and what was the point of entry in each case? Their precautions in protecting themselves broke down at some point. Was it carelessness due to tiredness, heat exhaustion or something else? Either way, viral particles survived atmospheric exposure long enough to get into them despite a barrier method. The second law of thermodynamics can never be foiled. This is what people need to wake up to right now!
The lecture with a duration of 55:40 (The Structural Basis Of Ebola Virus Pathogenesis) is particularly riveting. You have to remember that the chemical structures being discussed are the smallest size nature needs to make them to perform the functions that are assumed to be associated with them. It still amazes me structures so small can be conceived of and elucidated. She's also very interesting to hear and follow, even if the chemistry is as mysterious as musical form.
There's an interesting tidbit of info at around 42:52. Personally, I think the work is incredible. The breakthroughs that will come from this will enhance understanding of protein synthesis. For the first time, the mechanisms that drive structures through the spaces they occupy and how they causally describe how one viral particle becomes two and so on can only unravel apace from now on.
Ebola has only 7 or 8 genes in it's genomic library. How those few genes have overlapping function to increase the total number of functions that can be assimilated within their overall form is totally mind blowing.
