Ebola scaremongering?

Art

Art

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It sounds like this is your area of study? What do you think?

Only kinda: I'm a microbiologist, but I work with environmental bacteria rather than deadly viruses.

To be honest the whole "alerting border agents to keep an eye out" is probably just a general precaution, I doubt it's something to massively worry about. I'm more interested in the random vials of smallpox found in an FDA freezer the other day.
 
Caporegime
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Isn't there something like this every few months?:rolleyes:

This has been going on for several months already and unlike the other Ebola outbreaks is multi country and has hit the capitals, including Freetown in Sierra Leone. It's also killed far more than other outbreaks. It's not infeasable that after reaching the capital city of a commonwealth country that it could jump to the UK, especially as there is a population of Sierra Leoneans living here.

It's just a precaution, anything else will be caused by the media...
 
Caporegime
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Urgh I'm suffering from the exact initial symptoms right now :S

Initial symptoms are also almost identical to Malaria... Have you had yourself checked out?:p

It's actually one of the reasons this is such a problem, many don't realise they have Ebola and spread it around, assuming the have Malaria (reasonable considering it's a malarial area).
 
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This has been going on for several months already and unlike the other Ebola outbreaks is multi country and has hit the capitals, including Freetown in Sierra Leone. It's also killed far more than other outbreaks. It's not infeasable that after reaching the capital city of a commonwealth country that it could jump to the UK, especially as there is a population of Sierra Leoneans living here.

Ebola (or its species) has made its way out of Africa a few times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks


It's appeared in the USA, Philippines, Italy and Switzerland.

Given that Africa has given the world Aids and Ebola, it's only a matter of time before zombies appear.
 
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Girlfriend is returning from Liberia, she's been in Monrovia for the last few weeks after being in the jungle with work. Apparently she's still clean
 
Soldato
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If Ebola made it to a MEDC and came into contact with MDM-1, we'd be completely ****ed. Considering MDM-1's ability to just jump, it wouldn't take much for that to happen.
 
Caporegime
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Ah what can you do

Only 'good' thing about it is the speed it works
At least it doesn't have a long symptom less incubation period
 
Caporegime
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If Ebola made it to a MEDC and came into contact with MDM-1, we'd be completely ****ed. Considering MDM-1's ability to just jump, it wouldn't take much for that to happen.

I have no idea what you possible interaction you think the Ebola virus could possibly have with bacteria containing the MDM-1 antibiotic resistance gene, antibiotics have no effect on viruses...
 
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Soldato
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Whilst this is one of the worse outbreaks I would not be worried. It is important to remember that a diseases lethality is only measured if one is identified as having it. To explain further:

It is not: You catch the disease -> 90% die (or 60%)
It is: People catch the disease -> some become symptomatic -> some of those present to medical staff -> x% of those die.
 
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