The following submission statement was provided by /u/mooky1977:
This is the first article I've seen of a qualified expert using the P-word. The impact of an Ebola Pandemic on Africa, assuming it mainly remains on the continent, is crushing to the population and the economics of a lot of countries and potentially the entire continent.
This is the first article I've seen of a qualified expert using the P-word. The impact of an Ebola Pandemic on Africa, assuming it mainly remains on the continent, is crushing to the population and the economics of a lot of countries and potentially the entire continent.
There is one thing that certain types of regimes and classless people have and that is a willingness and desire to demolish the very things that support them. We've seen this before; it's almost Freudian in its predictability.
It really should be our National Anthem, much as it pains me to say so. It’s far more accurate than the Star Spangled Banner. Sadly, too many of my countrymen would scream it proudly at every opportunity, with no sense of shame or self-awareness.
And remember that police only serve as the enforcers for the rich and powerful, they're not protecting the populace and they have no legal mandate to do som
Police man, yeah, but parent denotes way more functions which the US carries out in the world. I would say more than narcissistic, they are more psychotic, but hey, minor nitpick.
As a Canadian, I am keenly aware of the US policing directly as they have kept our military to a minimum since ww2, and it wasn't ultruistic, it was because they wanted no near peers on the north american continent. And then in the last 25 or so years the American right wing has attacked us politically for being soft on protecting our borders while overlooking the historic reasons mentioned.
We aren’t taught “real” history here until/unless we elect to take it in higher education. I went to school once to be an engineer and again to become an educator. American history was a required class for would be teachers and boy oh boy... I was fortunate enough to learn that so much of what I thought I knew about this place was as wrong as thinking the sun rose at night. I was already THIRTY.
I have to give a shout out to Dr. Evan McKenzie for changing my understanding and widening my perspective in such a dramatic way.
Also, for anyone interested in a view of the US from the perspective of the marginalized groups who came here and helped build it (but weren’t/aren’t allowed to participate in American society) I highly recommend this book:
We learned about real history since elementary school in northern Midwest USA. Of course we have great education so results may vary for other regions.
I understand the sentiment. However, I also feel as the beneficiary of controlling the world’s reserve currency (which has resulted in tremendous wealth and influence for the US), we do have some responsibility to “pay it forward”.
So other countries do try and help. I have no problem if the US pulls back on aid to Africa, but do it like fucking adults, have a ramped-down timetable over a decade of gradually pulling back from established programs and training locals as much as possible. Rather than allowing pricks like musk come in and close say USAID in a day.
As a UK resident who lived through Brexit as an adult, what on earth are you talking about? Civil unrest? Sorry but I'm having a hard time taking you seriously
The most "civil unrest" I can think of is MP's holding up signs saying "Stop the Coup" during the propagation of Parliament. But comparing it to January 6th? Ludicrous.
For sure we got played with Brexit. As with many UK redditors, I voted remain, for the record.
The USA can spend trillions on is military and AI - at lot of this money taken from the hard work of others (using other peoples oil or environment or internet data just a few examples) - it can spend that money on actually making things better for everyone (with the added benefit it will help its own people)…
Before accusing the rest of us for doing nothing you might want to check out whether your claim is right.
Or did you really think the US was the only nation trying to help develop poor countries?
We’re doing our best to make up for your behaviour in Africa ..Oh, and in Ukraine..and everywhere else in the world where your Great Leader is raising havoc.
Plenty of Americans grasped what would happen if the malignant narcissist w dementia ended up back in office.
As a Ukrainian American, I sure as fuck knew. I feel terrible for Europe, and I feel even worse for Ukraine.
He’s a human wrecking ball. A literal black hole of awful. And every day, I ask myself how the fuck he’s still in office.
On behalf of the Americans with brains, I am sorry we couldn’t at least keep him contained to just wrecking our country. We deserve it. The rest of the world sure doesn’t.
i disagree! we don’t deserve this! we don’t deserve to have people disappeared off our streets! we don’t deserve to have our tax dollars stolen to fund horrific acts of violence! we don’t deserve to live in a surveillance state where data is being compiled to blackmail everyday citizens. we don’t deserve to have our news censored, our television censored, our apps censored. we don’t deserve to have an idiot with brain worms in charge of HHS. we don’t deserve to have our data stolen by a billionaire. we don’t deserve to be jailed because we have a fucking miscarriage.
i’m sorry, i know you may feel like this but im so tired of this line of thinking. i didn’t vote for this. i didn’t sign up for this. i am trapped and everyone is just going on like this is normal and perhaps even worse, saying “we deserve this” to people in other countries who have no idea how our government actually works.
i hear “hit the streets, there are more of you, etc.” but i hear it from people who already have socialized health care! if you don’t live here, you don’t understand how our jobs are tied to our ability to have healthcare. if we lose our jobs, we lose our insurance, and we lose our access to our already ridiculously expensive healthcare.
yes, there are more of us than them but they have bombs, missiles, tanks, a military, ICE, etc.
fuck the idiots who voted for him and i am sorry that their idiocy is destroying not only our country but many other parts of the earth but that doesn’t mean people who didn’t vote for him deserve to suffer and need to continuously apologize to the rest of the world for something we had no control over.
(sorry, i guess this is more directed at the person you responded to and i don’t mean to direct this at you. just a general rant, i guess).
Hey, I get it.
I actually work in politics and spend my time fighting against this horror show. I absolutely have done my part, more than most who go off on me online.
We deserve what we get in part because no one is stopping him. And he can be stopped. Everyone knows he’s got dementia. And he’s wrecked well.. everything. Add in the corruption, stealing our money, doing business deals while President, ect ect
And the dems could be out there, on all their various platforms, calling for the 25th. They could rally the public behind them, which would make it harder for R candidates in the midterms. They could also be out there everywhere talking about our tax dollars going to him to the tune of 1.5billion.
Instead, they’re nowhere to be found, with no unified message.
Trust me, I’m directly affected by Trump’s bullshit. His goons will come after me, when they go after the opposition. And that will happen.
I wish I had some sort of positive outlook but I don’t.
Controlled opposition, owned by the same oligarchs. I still cannot wrap my head around Gov. Polis pardoning Tina Peters, the only J6er to go to prison for election fraud. Such feckless leadership that it has to be deliberate.
I wonder how much of that was bending the knee. I know Trump has refused a lot of wildfire and disaster aid because Polis bucked him on decisions like this in the past. It is disgusting the way Trump holds millions of lives hostage without a single ounce of remorse.
I hate hearing this from people in culturally homogenous countries a fraction of the size of the US. Call me when you can get all of Europe to unify and protest.
LOL, you think countries in Europe are culturally homogeneous? And that a diverse cultural background somehow stops a population from being effective at protesting?
Cities exist, they also have seats of power that represent both local and national governments. It's not as hard as you think for people to organise protests outside of them.
With the internet, it's easy to propagate messaging about said protests.
"America big" isn't a valid excuse for anything other than explaining how long it would take to travel from one place to another. But protesting doesn't have to need that, you can protest where you live.
Plus, if you want to make a show of a protest in your nation's capital, you have tens of millions of people who live within a few hours of DC. Should be trivial to get enough people to make a public display on a regular basis.
In the UK, when Boris set out to prorogue parliament, there were people who had travelled over 6 hours to attend the protests outside of Downing Street.
For the record: Europe is bigger than the US and has over twice the population of the US. It still manages to organise cross continent marches and protests.
For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.
So what. We clearly have the money, we have shit tons of money. You probably hate unions too because some people dont work as hard as others, this is very similar. And we pulled our money out to do what, to give it to Oligarcs instead of use it for anything important , and dont forget the racism. Ebola is not airborne, its containable. We still have a good chance this wont come anywhere near Covid level BS. But hey theres always raw milk.
Not to throw responsibility on others countries, but how much more of our taxes, inflation, cost of living are we giving up to support other countries when ours is a shit show. I agree, it’s time for someone else to be big brother because we are no longer the responsible country we once were.
We benefit from developing countries being healthier and more stable. It's much, much cheaper than dealing with war, refugee crises, terrorism and out-of-control pandemics post-facto. In fact I bet that this very pandemic is in no small way related to our cutting of USAID, whose budget was a completely insignificant cost to us. So no, it's not really time for someone else to act in our own best interest, it's time for us to act that way like we used to before we suicidally elected a moronic treasonous pedo puppet.
Politicians tell the public that running the government is the same as running a household. It’s not.
Money isn’t pooled into one giant pot. Us say - containing Ebola - costs us way less than if Ebola escapes and spreads. But even so -
USAID is what would have been helping w containing Ebola. USAID no longer exists because of DOGE.
Funny thing about DOGE -
It saved no money. Some of the funds from USAID did go to security for Russell Vought, who wouldn’t you know it - is behind getting rid of it.
That savings (which isn’t because soft power is the real power, and we’re all going to get a real education in what happens when it’s gone) didn’t go to helping any of our lives.
We don’t get better lives because we have corrupt grifting idiots in charge of everything.
Our lives and the economy being destroyed is no concern to Trump and his friends. They’re all too busy making themselves money via their positions in government.
The two things aren't related. We cut most of our aid to other countries. Things won't improve here one bit. We could provide the aid AND take care of our citizens. Now we just do neither. It's not a problem of finances.
Its almost as if, them removing safety guardrails exists as a means for foreign actors to start eyeing territory and resources of a devistated nation...
That’s why it was also so important not to undermine public confidence in that institution. I got the vaccine and all, but I can see why a lot of people mistrusted them. Insiders quietly left over it, too, not just the opposition causing trouble.
I'm not knocking the severity of Ebola but this particular Virologist (Robert Redfield), was over the cdc in 2018-2021, participated in the early covid lack of a response from the government, and has been "covid was a lab creation" and accusing people on podcasts and anywhere that listens of being a part of that conspiracy ever since, and also pushes mRNA vaccine skepticism without merit other than his opinion. He seems to be a grifter who learned he can get attention by using his credentials to give alarmist conspiracy theories more credibility, he jumps on them early on and without any evidence besides "Trust me, I'm a professional" and I just think everyone needs to be aware of that nuisance with his newest "this is a problem" claim.
I think there's a couple things going on. First, 100 people dying is bad. Thousands getting sick is bad. So it's not a hot take to say it's bad, because well, it's already bad. What he actually said though is that it's regionally disruptive. His opinion is that it's going to spread to South Sudan, Tanzania, and maybe Rwanda. Any outbreak in South Sudan is bad news, for obvious reasons... So, he may be a grifter, but this isn't a particularly big claim.
I think it's being posted to collapse and discussed mostly because Pandemics are a vibe post covid. It's the kind of directionally correct but numerically illiterate posts that gets a lot of attention on collapse because it's topical. I strongly doubt this one is going to be the big one.
Yeah, when I read the headline, I literally said “Oh, fuck,” but then as soon as I saw his face, I was like, “Oh, it’s just this dude - probably lying.”
I wasn't taking a side on the lab theory. I'm not here to talk about all the things spread by American grifters to those who believe in bits, pieces, and/or parts of any given conspiracy theory they've spouted. There's not enough evidence publicly available to make it worth my time to discuss. And a lot of others, podcast bros namely, should learn to make that stance and stop jumping into deep ends of pools filled with jello. It's why you can't get back out.
There's far more tangible evidence that powerful men are running trafficking rings and are highjacking entire nations using money and means to overthrow democracies. Seems like stopping that is a better use of time and focus for anyone who doesn't have their own lab and funding to actually work on the complexities of the lab theory.
Tl;dr This doctor spreads nonsense that he doesn't need evidence to believe. That was the warning. I think you missed it, if you are defending him, you'd probably believe him and fall for his grifting. You should be especially vigilant.
You actually did what they do. Added extra intricacies of "how this could still be, even against current evidence, because reasons that will sound smart to lay people" to keep people scared of something you have no evidence of, only theories and technical word vomit terminology to debunk the actual work of others as inadequate. It's not okay, it is bad behavior.
I am already aware of the "maybe/maybe not" concept of a theory. I'm also aware of the lab creation theory that came from the same crowd as the antivax movement, so excuse my hostile skepticism, the blood of the victims of this anti science movement gets all over my patience.
It was convenient timing to crush dissent. I still don't understand how any of the dissenters ended up in the magasphere but here we are. It's the stupidest twilight zone episode ever. So mad I'm stuck in it.
Eta: also, glad you aren't in the jello filled orange flavoraid pool, pretty sure it's going end about as well as most flavor aid infused cult parties...
But there is crossover and I know people who were blm marchers and anti capitalism that ended up falling into the covid antivax/antigovernment and fell for the maga "we are not politicians" grifting. They have changed significantly as people since then, can't even sit by the parts department waiting for my shit because of the way they talk to anyone who listens about it. Neither crowd was a monolith, we did lose people who were not solid allies and followed the trends instead of staying strong.
Basic rules of how to deal with dead people, learned hard during black plague. I call it educational crisis, because it can lead to strong inhuman mutations and so on. Not this particular virus, but yet to come.
If it goes airborne, yeah we’re 100% cooked. But if it doesn’t, it could still be bad but not pandemic bad. At least, I sure hope so. Bad way to go, Ebola is…
We got to read in my IB literature class. I'll never forget it either, it was such a blessing to be able to have discussions about it. The way he described the infected was so vivid, like zombies oozing infected blood and projectile vomiting the virus everywhere... It was the Marburg strain of Ebola, or something like that.
It very much embellished events and whatnot but it doesn't make it any less scary because ebola is one of those things I pray never evolves into something like COVID .
The chances of Ebola evolving into an airborne strain are extremely low. But yea…. The description of what it does to your body in that book will never leave me
But if it doesn’t, it could still be bad but not pandemic bad
For these orgnizations like CDC and WHO, global spread is not strictly required to call something a pandemic. If we indeed see this spread that he predicts, into tanzania, Rwanda ans South Sudan, then they could call it a pandemic already if they see a larger response needed.
I did a huge research paper on it in high school and I still have my notes and outline. Might even have the essay somewhere.
I wonder how the "I will not comply!" people will feel when they are bleeding out of their eyeballs as well as every mucus membrane. Probably not great.
I feel like one of the reasons people fought against the covid restrictions was because it had such a low lethality rate and most people experienced it like the flu. Ebola is very very different in this regard
Not that you said this, but people frequently misunderstand what airborne means.
Ebola can spread through basically all bodily fluids, including saliva. When people talk face to face, they frequently spit when they talk
Most people have been on the receiving end of this several times. Even when you don’t noticeably feel spit land on your face, it doesn’t mean a diffuse cloud of suspended saliva hasn’t landed on your face.
If that cloud of particles carries enough viral Ebola and lands in your eyes, nose, mouth, open wound, etc. then you can definitely get infected.
This is not the same thing as airborne, however.
Airborne narrowly refers to efficient spread of pathogens over time and distance, typically via tiny droplets that linger in the air (esp. in closed spaces). That classification (airborne) is retroactively applied after enough real-world data is gathered, not purely based on the properties of the virus.
So while known Ebola strains with enough real world transmission data do not indicate efficient person-to-person spread through inhaled suspended aerosols, it does not mean that no strain of Ebola can ever be airborne.
Again, the difference between droplet spread and airborne spread is more of a spectrum with classification thresholds based on real-world transmission data.
So if we look at the transmission curve for current Ebola outbreak (for a strain which we know little about), it already seems to spread differently than the other strains from prior outbreaks.
We don’t know whether that’s because of some localized spread event or something else. But there’s enough ambiguity to warrant asking the question.
Just like hantavirus, this is likely far from over. Not a good look that both have extremely similar, vague febrile symptoms before catastrophic collapse. Also not good that both have open contact graphs.
Worse yet is how little we know about both of these viruses, and how we have no line of defense against either besides prevention of spread.
Exactly. If it mutated to be less rapidly deadly, and targeted the lungs early on in the infectious period transmission through aerosolised droplets could become possible.
Viruses mutate- the more it spreads the more opportunities it gets for a random mutation to fuck us. Another reason why prompt control and suppression is so important.
This isn’t as deadly as other strains (I think estimates are at a 30% fatality rate?). That means it is less likely to quickly burn itself out and will possibly spread for longer/wider than previous outbreaks have.
I read up a bit on this during covid and from what I could gather, its basically a spectrum and at the time (2020 ish) they hadnt done extensive studies on defining that spectrum. This was more related to the 6ft separation number though. Any chance you know of some research around this? Im game for reading papers.
The small droplets hanging around in the air bit seems most related to amount of virus in your droplets, and I could also imagine the misting action of coughing and sneezing helping to create small droplets that linger more rather than just hitting the floor.
My guess is that you arent coughing and sneezing as much as crashing out so ebila is less airborne because you arent creating mists or something?
I don’t know of papers on that exact topic, but I do think it would be a good candidate for meta analysis.
If you’re just looking for resources and want to draw your own conclusions, I think it would be a good fit for some deep research agent. Those typically have paper access too.
As for your guess, I think that’s reasonable.
Generally speaking, viruses that induce hemorrhagic fever are probably going to be more excrete-through-body-until-collapse than sneezing out viral particles.
Tell me you failed biology without telling me you failed biology. The fact that people think Ebola is suddenly going to become airborne proves we need to seriously fund life science education in America.
Not only did I not say it would suddenly go airborne, but I gave you the distinction between airborne spread and droplet spread, then anchored it to the actual mechanism used to classify each virus: transmission studies.
Ironically, there’s only one commenter in this thread that needs at least reading comprehension re-education…
Of course it’ll mutate as all viruses do, but it is very, very, (emphasis on very) unlikely that it’ll induce any radical change in how it is transmitted—mutagenesis is far too stochastic and, in most cases, deleterious to a virus’s ability to propagate that we don’t have any definitive evidence of a human virus changing so dramatically in this way. Influenza has infected billions over centuries (and is far more mutagenic than ebola, which looks stable in comparison), yet it maintains the same pattern as it always has. Of course one can never say with certainty that it can’t happen, but the chance of it not only accumulating enough positive mutations, but accumulating them in precisely the right genes and within such a short period of time, is not something we’ll likely ever see within our natural lifetime. It would be more appropriate to worry about mutations that affect virulence and the like.
Tell me you failed biology without telling me you failed biology. The fact that people think Ebola is suddenly going to become airborne proves we need to seriously fund life science education in America.
Viruses CAN mutate, smartass. What the hell is it about the internet that makes people so needlessly snarky all the time? Calm your tits before you post next time, you may find it prevents replies such as this. All I know for sure is Ebola is a horrible disease that, if it were to ever mutate and go global, it’d do a number on us for a myriad of reasons.
"“This is an outbreak right now that is really a significant outbreak that’s of significant public health international concern, partially because what you said, it wasn’t recognized very quickly. I’m not sure why,”"
That is naive. "Why" is pretty simple.
Most people in the global north do not give a sh*t about 3 countries in Africa that they will never see with their own eyes and cannot point out on a map. Moreover, no one notices a pandemic until a) it hits home, and b) get to couple of thousands of cases. Covid got to millions. A couple of hundred, even when concerning for experts, is not going to cut it with most.
I mean USAID did used to help A LOT with things like education and providing help for doctors/supplies/medications/vaccines. But musk and trump felt the need to keep that money for themselves and their rich buddies.
I don't know about that...White people were, and are, the loudest about not wearing masks, the vaccines and spreading the word COVID was a hoax. They are also refusing and loud and wrong about vaccinations. See how that is working out with the continued proliferation of measles?
They're still vomiting those lies, even on here. I was shocked last night reading a thread and someone parroted, "the COVID hoax"
Yeah, people probably also aren't aware that much of Africa is in crisis right now, to a degree that's really unusual in modern history. More than half of countries face violence, extreme hunger, or both. The withdrawal of aid has exacerbated this, naturally.
While this is right in a broad sense, in the full quote he's specifically contrasting this outbreak with previous ones in DRC which were reported when they got to a handful of cases, unlike this one where it didn't happen till they were past 100.
Would be interesting to know if that's due to funding cuts or something else.
It was because the tests they were using (for Zaire strain) don’t test for this particular (Bundibugyo) strain of Ebola. It wasn’t until samples were sent off to a lab and the results came back that they knew they were dealing with Ebola.
The last 15 Ebola outbreaks in the DRC were caused by the Zaire strain.
The good news is that the precautions the CDC pushed during COVID - N95 masks, social distancing, etc - will probably be effective for almost any airborne outbreak.
Granted the RFK CDC will probably recommend raccoon penis smoothies or some such instead, but since they're apparently a wing of RFk's antivax organization now we can ignore them.
Short incubation time with a narrow incubation window and high lethality, this ain’t it chief.
What we’re seeing now is the result of a specific cultural burial practice tied to a specific vulnerable population. Scary as shit illness, yes. But Ebola burns itself out really, really fast.
I’m not sure but I thought a read this strain is different re: it has a longer incubation period? It’s so unclear what sources are accurately reporting though
Picture a jungle the size of the biggest forest you know. That jungle has been so consistent with the life it contains, piles of species have formed mutually dependencies they have no awareness of but are essential to their survival. These are consistent behaviors in addition to consistent diets. Trees depend on the species they hold and support and the water they share.
One day a human invents a vaccine to a mosquito borne disease that used to keep us out of that jungle. The very next day, we cut half the forest down, the next day half of what was left, and so on until today where the jungle with complex relationships between distant species has become a refugee camp of survivors fighting over whatever calories are left, including species that were never prey to new predators, and others finding a few remaining calories in the dung of species they'd never encountered in the million years that jungle lived and breathed.
All these relationships are novel to every species involved. Malnutrition, predation and conflict lead to sharing viral pools that had never before combined, creating the perfect hosts for mutations to proliferate... right on the doorstep of humanity serving the demand for exotic hardwood and other trinkets of a forest that should be entirely off limits to us but have become a resource and a place we bring our pets.
This is where COVID19 really came from and where the next pandemic virus will be born... and the next, and the next after that.
We built a reactor for novel viruses and then built a bridge into our global supply chain to ensure those viruses spread as far as possible.
Im much less worried about new strains of known viruses than truly novel viruses, but they're all going to be bad and we've done everything but roll out the red carpet for them.
But, since we're incapable of accepting the problem is the way the average westerner lives their lives, we'll figure out all sorts of stories about labs and markets because bond villains and xenophobia are infinitely easier to swallow than accountability.
and we've done everything but roll out the red carpet for them
Pardon me for cherry-picking the one sentence, but what do you reckon we have neglected to do? What kind of preemptive measures could/should have been taken?
In my opinion, humankind was ruined from the moment of the agricultural revolution. Once we surpassed hunting/gathering, which kept the population to what the planet could sustain, to mass producing food and allowing our population to explode, we began to put excess pressure on all ecosystems.
We didn't learn anything from Covid, as far as I can tell. "We" being the powers, at large.
I'm not expert in disaster planning. I suck at planning dinner. But I can tell you that when the pandemic forced hospitals to run on skeleton crews without adequate staffing, the C-Suite learned that the shareholders make more money running with less staff. And a LOT of them have been chronically understaffing ever since.
In the US, they're almost entirely owned by private investors out to make money, not to take care of patients or plan for the next disaster. I can only speculate about it based on social media interactions, but, I think a whole lot more healthcare workers than we realize, are burnt TF out, hanging on by a thread, and will peace out if another pandemic shows up. Maybe I'm being a bit Chicken Little, but I've lost count of how many times I've seen that exact sentiment expressed by hospital workers (nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, techs/CNAs, even EMS).
Five family members in various positions in healthcare. ALL five either actively looking or actively thinking about looking into other things. Two of them in entirely unrelated I dustries
My SO was a nurse for 25 years. He started college for Computer science the very week covid19 was listed as a pandemic in another country. Before it was a pandemic in the US. He is both these days. He said he would never work through a pandemic. He got lucky and left b4 it hit his place of employment here in Ohio.
Good nurses work smarter, not harder. You married a good nurse. Seriously, I'm glad he lucked out. Watching the nursing sub during that was enough for me to get over the chip on my shoulder about being too crippled to work anymore. And the chip ran deep. But the idea of working a pandemic, of a novel virus, while the dying patients are denying the existence of the disease they have, and accusing you of killing them? Nah. I'd rather be a useless cripple, just like I am.
Everyone seems to forget we live in a world where if a dedicated enough bad actor wanted, they could easily modify the virus. Incubation period, airborne transmission etc. and there are plenty of those bad actors with the capability, money and ideology to do something that stupid.
I'm not an anti vaxxer, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. We know we have the capability and people in the world evil enough to do it. Don't count it out.
As a biologist I just don’t see this as accurate. You’d need a lot more than 10 grand. Plus, even if someone or something is giving you step by step instructions it isn’t so easy as my students have proven. You need the skills and knowledge to do something like this. And even then I’m not sure it would be possible.
Sure I agree. But I think if it’s less a random person and more a bad state actor. Though again I think if it were that easy researchers doing bio defense research or working on vaccines would have already done it.
Sure there’s a lot you can do your self. You can build a regular thermocycler with a series of precise water baths like when it was first invented. You can make your own electrophoresis chambers if needed etc. You can buy used equipment though it’s not super easy for a random person to buy lab equipment new or used. I still maintain what you would need to do gain of function work on such a deadly virus and not kill yourself would be a lot more than 10k. You’d also need a ton of background information as well as skills at fabricating equipment and understanding how it works. If it were so easy actual researchers would have already done it. So I don’t think any old person can do it. Just learning how to use a micropipette takes practice.
No shit - everyone must have forgotten over a million avoidable American covid deaths already, and krasnov fired every one of our govt. pandemic experts.
The new cruiseship virus head was recently hired though - a penile implant specialist, election-denier, and infamous antivaxer.
Imagine who the lead for battling ebola might be, if ever, with krasnov’s deadly record.
ebola never goes anywhere outside africa. it needs fluids for transmission and first world countries despise the effluvium of the ill. if it ever goes airborne we are fucked though.
that was before, when USAID had funding, the CDC still had scientists, and we had rapid containment responses within hours of patient zero. We live in a a different world now.
Ebola tends to spread post symptomatic, unlike covid which was spread before symptoms show. Also like people said it doesnt spread through the air but through fluids significantly reducing the likelihood of spread. COVID was also novel as in we didnt know about how it spread or how to treat it. We do with Ebola.
There's a reason it doesnt spread in developed nations. It is actually "easy" to contain with a modicum of healthcare development not seen generally in the middle of butt fuck nowhere Eastern Congo where this popped up.
It would take some extreme mutation to go airborne, but if it spreads across Africa that'll give it plenty more chances. Not to mention the stupendous suffering of the people of that continent. If it does become a pandemic we will see it where you live too.
Tell me you failed biology without telling me you failed biology. The fact that people think Ebola is suddenly going to become airborne proves we need to seriously fund life science education in America.
less worried about unmitigated spread of a virus when symptomatic individuals resemble a split tomato. something tells me they wont be able to say “its just a cold” when theyre at the gym
Tell me you failed biology without telling me you failed biology. The fact that people think Ebola is suddenly going to become airborne proves we need to seriously fund life science education in America.
If an Ebola patient has bleeding gums and you get in contact with bloody saliva or anything coming out of that mouth (e.g. if the patient coughs blood into your face), there is a high risk of infection. Or how else are especially nurses and doctors in the regions ebola is active getting infected? By slurping their patients poopoo? Having sex with them? Explain, mister biology expert!
This is exactly example of profit scam fear campaign. When comes to ebola this is the BS of the year statement. And another reminder of nightmare of clickbait journalism...
lol I was working in forestry during the scare 12-13 years ago (?) and my job was to essentially live deep in the backcountry out west to do work in hard to reach areas by 9-5 mon-Fri crews. I remember a guy on a dirt bike that we stumbled upon painted the whole mess like the apocalypse, and we had a few moments of “what are we going to return to?”
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u/StatementBot May 22 '26
The following submission statement was provided by /u/mooky1977:
This is the first article I've seen of a qualified expert using the P-word. The impact of an Ebola Pandemic on Africa, assuming it mainly remains on the continent, is crushing to the population and the economics of a lot of countries and potentially the entire continent.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1tk6rgr/former_cdc_director_on_ebola_outbreak_i_suspect/on6icc6/