2014 Ebola Virus Outbreak

Given the latest outbreak of the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia and the surrounding nations of west Africa, I figured it's high time for the topic to receive it's own thread. Especially since the death toll has reach over 670 so far, with more likely to occur.

For the un-initiated, the Ebola virus is a disease with an unusually high mortality rate. It has appeared in Africa in several occasions in the past and spreads through bodily fluids, typically blood, sweat, semen, wastes, etc. The vector of infection outside of human contact is assumed to be other mammals such as fruit bats or cattle.

It starts out with the typical fever symptoms, such as headaches, sore throat, weakness, high body temp, etc. but becomes progressively worse as nausea, diahrrea and vomiting occur... only, the bodily wastes released may contain blood. Eventually the victim will start bleeding excessively through any wounds or orifices they have and their digestive system's organs will become overworked and damaged - this is what leads to their deaths.

Because of the gruesome effects the virus has and how quickly it kills, the virus has gained notoriety for being a doomsday virus or even a biological weapon. Now, while the virus does have a very high lethality rate and kills the infected within 10-30 days, it's not 100% lethal; it's probably more around 50%-90% (according to Wikipedia). It's not airborne either, since it's main vector of infection is body fluids or the consumption of infected animals. The actual factors of what determines of whether you will survive or not or effective means of treatment are still unknown, but immediate medical treatment, nutrition and control of the bleeding do help combat the disease, as well as having a healthy medical history. Basically, a healthy man with no notable medical conditions is far more likely to survive than would a man already impoverished or ill with a previous condition. Then again, a Ruskie who was once accidentally exposed to it in a lab accident did end up dying back in 2004, so it's still not to be taken lightly.

One of our fellow Tropers also brought to light this particular article, which mentions the death of one of the doctors due to exposure and the increased security or even closure of certain airport flights to infected cities in the area.

TL:DR? This video also summarizes the issue quite briefly and nicely.

The Wikipedia article regarding the latest outbreak.

edited 29th Jul '14 8:35:05 PM by SgtRicko

The main thing that keeps it from being a Doomsday Virus is that it is too lethal. Or more to the point, too quickly lethal. Victims have barely enough time to infect anybody else before keeling over, and it's not notably infectious before the onset of symptoms.

If it had an pre-symptomatic contagious phase...yeah, it'd be a lot higher on the doomsday scale. Smallpox, for example, is highly contagious before obvious symptoms appear (mucous membranes are attacked before epidermal cells are, filling the saliva with the virus).

Yet another doctor tests positive for Ebola.

As a reminder, Ebola has a 60% mortality rate. Remember how Contagion was praised for how hard its science was (despite some Hollywood issues)? The death and illness of experts helping patients truly is one of the greatest hindrances to halting an epidemic. If anyone interested in this situation has not seen the film, I highly encourage you do.

The reason why no cure has been created yet for the Ebola Virus? No interest from the big pharma companies.

It's not that surprising of an answer, really. While the virus is dangerous, it's never had an outbreak large enough or within a developed enough country to warrant such funding and attention. The good news however is that there's already a couple of possible cures in progress of being tested, including one that has successfully stopped the virus after the initial symptoms appear (no word yet on a late-stage cure though).

That might have changed.

Some more news and advice on how the medical teams in west Africa are treating the Ebola virus.

The advice is essentially the same as I posted in the OP - treat the symptoms as they appear, keep the patient hydrated and prioritize whichever organ is failing. The method is effective, since one of the WHO teams managed to reduce the fatality rate in an affected town from 90% to 10%. However it points out that even young, healthy patients are succumbing to the disease because of the bleeding and large amount of organs the virus attacks simultaneously. This is worrisome because it means that the virus can take down anyone, regardless of what's done to treat it.

Also, the article talks a bit about the two infected American doctors who were working with the patients. They're now back in the states in intensive care, but one of them has had their health "take a turn for the worse" - no explanation for what exactly that means though.

edited 2nd Aug '14 1:15:05 AM by SgtRicko

I assume that it means "more leukopenia/lymphopenia" - in diseases like Ebola, SARS and the like a frequent indicator of a bad disease progression.

That young, healthy patients don't fare better is a pattern well-known from epidemic flus, and it's because in such diseases an overshooting immune response is responsible for a lot of the damage (in the case of the flu, preexisting immunity is more likely in elderly people for chronological reasons).

Speaking of possible cures, there's a petition going around urging the FDA to accelerate development of possibly effective anti-Ebola vaccines.

I don't think the FDA's actually in charge of development though?

edited 2nd Aug '14 1:35:52 PM by joesolo

The infected patient is in hospital in Atlanta under heavy security with the hospital sealed off via lockdown.

Sept: just to clarify, when they talk about conditions getting worse, it's more based on a combination of clinical parameters and lab investigations rather than any single marker.

edited 2nd Aug '14 7:53:11 PM by Pyrite

And looks like you might be right. According to some of the staff at the hospital the doctor was taken to in Emory, Georgia, he was walking around on his own, was breathing without assistance and didn't seem to have any difficulties communicating with anyone either. I don't wanna be jumping to conclusions yet but it looks like he's gonna be fine.

Christ, you'd think people would be a heck of a lot more informed than 15-20 years ago, especially given the ease of access of the internet these days, but the responses being given in an Open Q&A with a medical professional on Facebook are downright worrisome. A LOT of folks are calling for the outright banning of all air traffic from the infected countries and prevention of any infected persons from leaving the affected areas, even to the point where they've made a petition about it. Some are even bringing up those old movies about the ebola (I think they're talking about Outbreak in particular) becoming airborne and thinking it might turn out the same way.

That being said... the guy doing the Q&A, Dr. Besser, is giving out some decent answers, and it's not all head-banger questions. The link in particular seems to be singling out the responses the staff is giving and the smarter questions asked.

Never underestimate people's ignorance about disease and medicine. People still think vaccines cause autism.

Given that the last time I heard from authorities that "this is not going to spread" was SARS in Hong Kong, I really hope that they are right this time and Ebola doesn't spread beyond West Africa.

That said though, our knowledge with Ebola is much better than SARS back then we have a much bigger advantage.

edited 3rd Aug '14 5:29:17 PM by IraTheSquire

Ebola doesn't like to spread. It can only spread via body fluids and kills the infected too fast for it's own good.

Besides, they got the hospitals where they're treating the patient evacuated and totally locked down, we're good.

I know. Hence I said "we have a much bigger advantage in dealing with this beast" because we know so much about it, eg how it spreads, how to treat it, how to deal with it, etc.

I'm more just hoping that something unexpected doesn't happen, that's all.

edited 3rd Aug '14 5:49:06 PM by IraTheSquire

Anyone have an updated map of the spread in Guinea-SL-Liberia? Wikipedia only has til July 20th.

The US CDC has it up to Jul 24, I think. WHO hasn't updated their website map recently as far as I can tell.

edited 3rd Aug '14 7:46:01 PM by Pyrite

Atlanta hospital treating American Ebola victims suffers rash of hate mail. Thanks, 'murica. Stay classy.

But on a lighter note, Patient Zero kicks back in seat 38C.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/04/health/experimental-ebola-serum/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

So this is encouraging; there might be an experimental drug out there that can counter Ebola, though it's still in the early stages of development and isn't ready for mass production yet.

Donald Trump Says American Ebola Victims 'Must Suffer The Consequences' And Be Kept From Returning To America

Holy crap, that sounds almost too good to be true.

Catch it yourself, arsehole.