Air Algerie plane shot down to curb Ebola outbreak?

a reply to: wildapache

Because Africa is the perfect place for it to incubate. Once it spreads beyond there, the conditions for it suck to survive for long. Once you get to the so called First World, even though there's more population, people tend to stay farther apart, it's colder, so the virus doesn't survive outside of the body (if it's even airborne), etc. That's why you always see these outbreaks happen in Africa, and that part of the world.

a reply to: wildapache

I am no expert so take what I say at your own peril. I think it has more to do with sanitary condition and funeral practices and the heat in African countries. So it would not spread the same in other areas.

Are there a lot of bodily fluids at these crash sights?,, and is it easy too cut yourself at one of these crash sites??

down a plane for CONTAINMENT?


lol

a reply to: karmicecstasy

and the consumption of Bats and Monkeys,,to prevent starving in most cases.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Being from Burkina I will concur that the conditions make it easier for the spread of it...but also living in the USA I know many African immigrants do not go to doctors until whatever they are suffering from become critical...and all it takes is one case and it could become hell(with the east coast subway systems,the over population of cities....)And I don't mean it in a doom and gloom way just that isolation in such big cities like NYC Chicago Atlanta and the likes can prove to be difficult

a reply to: wildapache

It will be bad if it gets loose, but its not going to be even close to the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 as far as the death toll goes.

a reply to: Zaphod58

and as a side note,, was indirectly responsible in large part for ending ww1.

they were all sick,,

batallion after, batallion,,got too the point were,
putting an army in the field was getting impossible.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Zaphod58 , like I said I am no expert. You seem knowledgeable on this subject. If there was an outbreak in a major city like Chicago. Unless it for sure mutates and goes airborne, wouldnt you just have to stay at home and avoid others to be relatively safe.

Although most large aircrafts can handle most storms, I understand sand storms can be extremely hazardous for planes with undetected engine issues.

I don't recall the details exactly, but I recall fine sand carried up into cruising altitudes can become almost like liquid concrete within moving parts under certain circumstances - or something similar to that anyhow.

a reply to: karmicecstasy

One of the options in the book is to shut everything down, roads, travel, whole nine yards. That will keep people from congregating, and limit the spread of it. Even if Ebola is airborne, it can only live and spread for so long in the air, and the conditions in the US will help limit that.

a reply to: KingIcarus

It also depends on the cycles the airframe has on it. The more cycles, the less strength is left in the airframe. This one had 33,000 on it.

now throw in a couple bags of sand here,,,




and here,,,




now lets see if it will still work.

a reply to: miles1993

The cloud tops were reported to be as high as 50,000 feet, and apparently the crew first re-routed, and by some reports, asked to turn back, before resuming their original course, which apparently took them into the eye of the storm.

Commercial a/c will generally fly around large thunderstorms - you can safely fly over a hurricane if you avoid the most turbulent parts.

I'm going to guess "icing" was the cause, here, perhaps on the flight surfaces, causing a high-speed stall, or a sudden up- or down-draft, which caused the pilots to react incorrectly, and lose control of the plane (the AF 447 was kind of a combination of the two - ice in the pitot tubes and pilot error.)

It's unlikely the plane simply broke up, like the wing fell off or something - but it's possible, if they encountered, say, some major updraft followed by a sudden downdraft - at-speed, that could possibly overstress something, and cause a structural failure - I don't want to say "I doubt that" - it can happen, but it's extremely rare. If structural failure occurred, I'd guess perhaps an engine mount broke, and the engine tore up the empennage - depending on the crash scene, might be able to tell if a major component is "missing" like an engine or far away from the impact.

And of course, can't rule out things like bombs on-board - but the events surrounding the flight are more suggestive of icing and/or pilot error more than anything else.

Whatever the cause, I'm fairly confident there'll be no PTB conspiracy ...

You can't compare a B-52 to an MD-82. One was engineered in an era back when we didn't know much about turbulence/structural capacities.

That's like saying the Wright Brothers plane got damaged by a little gust of wind, and comparing the Wright plane to an A380.

The icing theory is a good one, as the MD-82 has rear mounted engines and has to rely on anti-ice spray rather than engine bleed air.

a reply to: miles1993

I wasn't comparing a B-52 to anything, I was replying to someone about bent airplanes. If I had compared the B-52 to this plane I would have said so.

It was an MD-83, not an MD-82. And no, it doesn't rely on anti-ice spray rather than bleed air. It relies on various systems for wing deicing in flight, including electrical. The drawback to this design is that they have to run both wing and engine anti-ice systems because ice can come off the wings and go down the engine, where a wing mounted engine is already forward of any ice.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I'm not sure that the reservoir for Ebola is fully understood - fruit bats are suspected as the primary reservoir, but other animals can be infected and then transmitted to humans, probably by consuming them. Most humans probably get infected by exposure to infected human bodily fluids. But I seem to recall that in one case, one outbreak was thought to be traced to a contaminated well in Africa (iirc, Marburg was traced to a bat cave.)

The symptoms and mortality rates of Ebola are terrifying, to be sure, but the next pandemic will be something that's transmitted via the air, like the influenza virus. Of course, as bacteria become increasingly antibiotic-resistant, it's possible that a bacterium like the pneumonic plague will re-emerge.

But virii are rather terrifying little engines of destruction - not really alive, just strands of DNA or RNA that seem completely unlikely to exist. I think it's almost inevitable that someone, somewhere, some time, will deliberately or accidentally engineer a future pandemic, if not, a natural mutation in an existing strain will occur. As the world population increases in density, can count on it - not end-of-the-world stuff, humans have survived those previous pandemics, so too we'll survive the next.

Whenever I travel on airplanes these days, I almost compulsively wash my hands, avoid touching things like handrails, wipe down my tray tables with an antiseptic wipe before using them, etc - I don't want history to remember me as "Patient Zero" for anything ...

a reply to: squittles

That's one reason that I read so much about them when I was younger. They're scary little suckers, and we have absolutely no medical defense against them, except to treat the symptoms. So it's pretty much treat your fever and internal bleeding, and hope to hell your body is strong enough to fight it off. Which is another reason the mortality rate in Africa is so high. So many people just don't get the food intake they require to have a good strong immune system, so when they get something like Ebola, they can't fight it off.

a reply to: squittles

ahh yes "Howard Hughes",, Dis ease

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: bjarneorn

Ebola kills too fast for it to be a real threat of an epidemic, like Spanish Flu was. It will burn itself out fairly quickly.

Uh huh. That's what they've been saying since January, through March and right up til July 19 when the WHO admitted there was a real problem and confessed they couldn't handle it. Now Liberia has closed all its schools and quarantined whole communities, while Nigeria is looking for 30,000 contacts linked to Sawyer (who died in Nigeria after flying from Liberia and stopping in Ghana and Togo).

Problem? What problem? Yeah, right.

FYI - This epidemic started with multiple epicenters in Guinea - and it's now reported in 4 countries (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria). That's reported. Chances are more than good it's also spread to Senegal, Mali and the Ivory Coast. Not to mention those pesky international flights that have been whisking corporate mining poohbahs and investors away to safety, so gawdknows where else it might have landed. Note that depopulation will make it a LOT easier to harvest all West Africa's iron ore, bauxite, diamonds, gold and uranium just sitting there waiting for someone to grab it.

ETA:

Let's just hope this new Ebola strain (clade) read the same playbook you did and doesn't hop any oceans.

a reply to: soficrow

And what part of "Africa is the perfect environment for Ebola" is not registering? It has a serious lack of healthcare, it's hot and dry so if the virus is airborne it can live longer, the people are generally malnourished in a lot of areas, so they don't have good immune systems to help fight it off, etc.

Ebola will never race around the planet like the Spanish Flu did, or like Smallpox could. But in Africa it has found the perfect environment.