An Ebola outbreak in a southwestern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is escalating quickly, as some health responders say they have less than a tenth of the funding needed to contain the deadly disease.
As of this week, there have been at least 57 cases and 35 deaths—a 61 percent fatality rate, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
When Ebola mutates to become able to infect via aerosolised droplets - like coughs and sneezes - we have a very serious problem. And apparently it’s not a difficult mutation.
Simply speaking puts those droplets into the air, lingering for 8 minutes, which is massive. Sneezing and coughing spread it farther, but aren’t necessary for spreading that way.
This has been a fun fact, please like and subscribe or whatever.
Yeah, Ebola is currently spread by body fluids, pretty similar to HIV. When a person dies of ebola there is a lot of vomiting blood, convulsing, spraying blood from all orifices - it’s not a peaceful death, and leaves the room they died in looking like a slaughterhouse.
Anyone tending them who has even a tiny scratch and gets that infected blood in their body, even if a bit gets in their eye, they are well fucked. A lot of people are also infected cleaning and preparing the body for funeral rites.
Now imagine that shit mutating to aerosol transmission so it could be spread by coughs etc. That shit would make covid look like a pathetic amateur.
And from what I understand (I’m no expert, this is just from stuff I’ve read) viruses like this mutate quickly. IIRC a few years ago a team in Sweden or somewhere tried it in a lab, to see how easy it was to create an aerosolised version of ebola and found it was very easy. IIRC their paper was blocked from publication so as not to give terrorists any jazzy ideas.
Anyone wanting to read a scary book about ebola, I highly recommend the hot zone by Richard Preston.