Now that the first group of people to be exposed to Thomas Eric Duncan -- including his fiancée and other members of his family in Dallas -- have made it through their 21-day quarantine period without developing the disease themselves, you might think that maybe people might be calming down just a little bit, maybe. But then, maybe you are not a panic-mongering moron, so you may not be typical, you un-American weirdo. Maybe you're not rushing out to buy flimsy "protective" gear or Vitamin C (or "colloidal silver" to turn your skin blue), but plenty of people are -- or at the very least,
The number of casualties from this raging Ebola epidemic here in the US of A really makes statistics like the number of Americans who die each year from automobile accidents or from accidental discharges of firearms seem so insignificant by comparison.
True, except for the fact that it isn't. The strain of Ebola that has flared up in West Africa in 2014 is exactly the same one that was first encountered and studied in 1976. It hasn't undergone any mutation.
I can assure you that there were plenty of people who were taking HIV quite seriously in the mid-1980s. The statistics were just too hard to ignore. HIV had killed thousands of people by then and everyone knew it. Epidemiologists saw what was going on and were issuing dire warnings as early as 1983 if not earlier.
Prior to the discovery of the virus and the beginning of understanding of the cause, researchers observed that it was sweeping through the gay community. They didn't know why yet but they suspected that something contagious was being passed around, and there were no models of human physiology that would justify a prediction that it would remain limited to that portion of the population. Policymakers, all high on Reaganism at the time, were not interested in what the public health people were saying and didn't want to hear it. Much of the regular medical establishment (other than epidemiologists and public health specialists) was slow to respond as well, but even they were on board by the middle of the decade. Reaganist and conservative ideologues were really militant and bullish back then though (incredibly so; in comparison they were much more tame in GWB's administration) and they simply dismissed any concerns about it.
Reaganauts controlled the debate for many years and the MSM by and large bought into it. There were warnings that were getting through, however. By 1984 or 1985 the public at large knew about AIDS.
All viruses undergo rapid mutation due to their very high replication rate. RNA viruses like the main Ebola virus (Zaire ebola) typically aren&#039;t even represented by a unique individual version at a given point in time but more commonly exist as a close family of several slight variations of the same basic entity. Almost all of this ongoing mutation (called antigenic drift) is &quot;silent&quot; meaning that it has no effect on the overall way that the virus operates. You are correct in that the Ebola virus (and the other members of its group) undergoes this level of mutation constantly. Only rarely do the changes in a virus become so extensive that they create a whole new version or variety or strain, basically a brand-new entity or &quot;species&quot; that is able to survive and replicate. This is the level of mutation (antigenic <i>shift</i>) that I was referring to.
You are also correct about there being several strains. Ebola, the disease (Ebola virus disease or EVD) is caused in humans by four closely-related but distinct viruses, one of which is the <i>Zaire ebola</i> virus aka &quot;the&quot; Ebola virus. A fifth member of this group only causes the disease in animals. Collectively they are known as the Ebolavirus group and they are closely related to the viruses that cause Marburg disease. The makeup of this group or constellation of EVD-causing viruses has not changed since the original members were identified. No new EVD-causing pathogens have appeared in that time.
I&#039;d like to liquefy the internal organs of both SMOTI and SMOTI&#039;, but not with The Ebola. No I prefer the old fashioned way - using a blender, after being removed by a long wire hook via the nasal cavity - with votes.
Except that AIDS was a new disease, not one that&#039;s been known for 40 years and fairly well studied. We KNOW how Ebola is transmitted and what its symptoms are.
<i>DEAR EDITOR: I am 58 years old. Some of my intelligent commenters say there is no Ebola epidemic. Obama says, &lsquo;If you see it in THE SUN it&rsquo;s so.&rsquo; Please tell me the truth; is there an Ebola epidemic?
SMOTI 115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.
P.S. Just joking. I don&rsquo;t have any intelligent commenters.
SMOTI, your intelligent commenters are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see &lsquo;facts&rsquo;. They think that nothing can be which is not demonstrably &lsquo;true&rsquo; and comprehensible by their intelligent minds. All minds, SMOTI, whether they be Fux viewer&rsquo;s or SMOTI reader&rsquo;s, are fearful and irrational. In this scary universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundlessly terrifying world about him, as measured by the enlightenment capable of grasping the whole of derp and douchiness.
Yes, SMOTI, there is an Ebola outbreak. It exists as certainly as Benghazi and IRSGate and Fast and Furious exist, and you know that they abound and give to your website its highest click and linking rates. Alas! how clickless would be our websites be if there were no Ebola outbreak. They would be as dreary as if there were no SMOTIs. There would be no childlike tantrums then, no rage, no pant-shitting terror to make saleable this prime advertising time/space. We should have no income, except by reporting actual news or engaging in logical reasoning. The eternal derp with which wingnuttiness fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Ebola! You might as well not believe in fairies getting ghey married to alpacas! Obama might get his CDC to hire &lsquo;doctors&rsquo; and &lsquo;virologists&rsquo; and &lsquo;epidemiologists&rsquo; to watch in all the emergency rooms 24/7/265 to discover Ebola cases, but even if they did not see hundreds or thousands coming down,, what would that prove? Nobody can see Ebola because it&rsquo;s really, really tiny, but that is no sign that there is no Ebola, because it is really, really tiny. The most real things in the world are those that only SMOTIs or Fux can see. Did you ever see fairies with their ghey alpaca spouses dancing and butt-sechsing on the lawn? Of course not, but that&rsquo;s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the sick things there are unseen and unseeable in your twisted little head.
You may tear apart the NIH and CDC, because why the fuck not? but there is a liberal lamestream media covering the real world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only Fux, SMOTI, Hannity, Dead Breitbart, &lsquo;award-winning journamalist&rsquo; Chuckles C. Johnson, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the irrational derp and fantasy beyond. Is it all real? Ah, SMOTI, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Ebola! Thank God! Ebola spreads, and Ebola spreads forever. A thousand pageviews from now, SMOTI, nay, ten times ten thousand pageviews from now, Ebola will continue to loosen the bowels not just of the infected but also the fearful.</i>
Generic Blond Fox Anchor: &quot;We are honored to have Dr. Smith here to help us better understand Ebola. He is uniquely qualified to talk about this. He got his degree in epidemiology from the University Of Running Around Screaming Like Your Hair Is On Fire&quot;
Meanwhile, the nurse that <i>survived</i> Ebola (after being *gasp* brought back to the US OMG we&#039;re all gonna die), has returned to Sierra Leone. Or is on the way, I&#039;ve lost track.
Many times more Americans die each year when their flat screen TVs tip over on them than the number that have died from Ebola.
The number of casualties from this raging Ebola epidemic here in the US of A really makes statistics like the number of Americans who die each year from automobile accidents or from accidental discharges of firearms seem so insignificant by comparison.
<i>Ebola Strudel, jah!</i>
True, except for the fact that it isn&#039;t. The strain of Ebola that has flared up in West Africa in 2014 is exactly the same one that was first encountered and studied in 1976. It hasn&#039;t undergone any mutation.
I can assure you that there were plenty of people who were taking HIV quite seriously in the mid-1980s. The statistics were just too hard to ignore. HIV had killed thousands of people by then and everyone knew it. Epidemiologists saw what was going on and were issuing dire warnings as early as 1983 if not earlier.
Prior to the discovery of the virus and the beginning of understanding of the cause, researchers observed that it was sweeping through the gay community. They didn&#039;t know why yet but they suspected that something contagious was being passed around, and there were no models of human physiology that would justify a prediction that it would remain limited to that portion of the population. Policymakers, all high on Reaganism at the time, were not interested in what the public health people were saying and didn&#039;t want to hear it. Much of the regular medical establishment (other than epidemiologists and public health specialists) was slow to respond as well, but even they were on board by the middle of the decade. Reaganist and conservative ideologues were really militant and bullish back then though (incredibly so; in comparison they were much more tame in GWB&#039;s administration) and they simply dismissed any concerns about it.
Reaganauts controlled the debate for many years and the MSM by and large bought into it. There were warnings that were getting through, however. By 1984 or 1985 the public at large knew about AIDS.
All viruses undergo rapid mutation due to their very high replication rate. RNA viruses like the main Ebola virus (Zaire ebola) typically aren&#039;t even represented by a unique individual version at a given point in time but more commonly exist as a close family of several slight variations of the same basic entity. Almost all of this ongoing mutation (called antigenic drift) is &quot;silent&quot; meaning that it has no effect on the overall way that the virus operates. You are correct in that the Ebola virus (and the other members of its group) undergoes this level of mutation constantly. Only rarely do the changes in a virus become so extensive that they create a whole new version or variety or strain, basically a brand-new entity or &quot;species&quot; that is able to survive and replicate. This is the level of mutation (antigenic <i>shift</i>) that I was referring to.
You are also correct about there being several strains. Ebola, the disease (Ebola virus disease or EVD) is caused in humans by four closely-related but distinct viruses, one of which is the <i>Zaire ebola</i> virus aka &quot;the&quot; Ebola virus. A fifth member of this group only causes the disease in animals. Collectively they are known as the Ebolavirus group and they are closely related to the viruses that cause Marburg disease. The makeup of this group or constellation of EVD-causing viruses has not changed since the original members were identified. No new EVD-causing pathogens have appeared in that time.
I&#039;d like to liquefy the internal organs of both SMOTI and SMOTI&#039;, but not with The Ebola. No I prefer the old fashioned way - using a blender, after being removed by a long wire hook via the nasal cavity - with votes.
Except that AIDS was a new disease, not one that&#039;s been known for 40 years and fairly well studied. We KNOW how Ebola is transmitted and what its symptoms are.
Hopefully those two nurses that came down with Ebola will survive.
That way they can say &quot;OBAMA GAVE ME EBOLA!!&quot;
and then when everyone looks at them, they can say &quot;...I got better.&quot;
<i>DEAR EDITOR: I am 58 years old. Some of my intelligent commenters say there is no Ebola epidemic. Obama says, &lsquo;If you see it in THE SUN it&rsquo;s so.&rsquo; Please tell me the truth; is there an Ebola epidemic?
SMOTI 115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.
P.S. Just joking. I don&rsquo;t have any intelligent commenters.
SMOTI, your intelligent commenters are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see &lsquo;facts&rsquo;. They think that nothing can be which is not demonstrably &lsquo;true&rsquo; and comprehensible by their intelligent minds. All minds, SMOTI, whether they be Fux viewer&rsquo;s or SMOTI reader&rsquo;s, are fearful and irrational. In this scary universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundlessly terrifying world about him, as measured by the enlightenment capable of grasping the whole of derp and douchiness.
Yes, SMOTI, there is an Ebola outbreak. It exists as certainly as Benghazi and IRSGate and Fast and Furious exist, and you know that they abound and give to your website its highest click and linking rates. Alas! how clickless would be our websites be if there were no Ebola outbreak. They would be as dreary as if there were no SMOTIs. There would be no childlike tantrums then, no rage, no pant-shitting terror to make saleable this prime advertising time/space. We should have no income, except by reporting actual news or engaging in logical reasoning. The eternal derp with which wingnuttiness fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Ebola! You might as well not believe in fairies getting ghey married to alpacas! Obama might get his CDC to hire &lsquo;doctors&rsquo; and &lsquo;virologists&rsquo; and &lsquo;epidemiologists&rsquo; to watch in all the emergency rooms 24/7/265 to discover Ebola cases, but even if they did not see hundreds or thousands coming down,, what would that prove? Nobody can see Ebola because it&rsquo;s really, really tiny, but that is no sign that there is no Ebola, because it is really, really tiny. The most real things in the world are those that only SMOTIs or Fux can see. Did you ever see fairies with their ghey alpaca spouses dancing and butt-sechsing on the lawn? Of course not, but that&rsquo;s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the sick things there are unseen and unseeable in your twisted little head.
You may tear apart the NIH and CDC, because why the fuck not? but there is a liberal lamestream media covering the real world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only Fux, SMOTI, Hannity, Dead Breitbart, &lsquo;award-winning journamalist&rsquo; Chuckles C. Johnson, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the irrational derp and fantasy beyond. Is it all real? Ah, SMOTI, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Ebola! Thank God! Ebola spreads, and Ebola spreads forever. A thousand pageviews from now, SMOTI, nay, ten times ten thousand pageviews from now, Ebola will continue to loosen the bowels not just of the infected but also the fearful.</i>
Yes, this is the perfect opportunity for our Brave Open Carriers to march. . . On Dallas. Don&#039;t fire till you see their bloodshot eyes, boys!
This is news? The zombies took over the GOP back in &#039;08.
20,000 dead before Reagan uttered the word &quot;AIDS.&quot;
Generic Blond Fox Anchor: &quot;We are honored to have Dr. Smith here to help us better understand Ebola. He is uniquely qualified to talk about this. He got his degree in epidemiology from the University Of Running Around Screaming Like Your Hair Is On Fire&quot;
Meanwhile, the nurse that <i>survived</i> Ebola (after being *gasp* brought back to the US OMG we&#039;re all gonna die), has returned to Sierra Leone. Or is on the way, I&#039;ve lost track.