Ebola 'could become airborne': United Nations warns

There is a ‘nightmare’ chance that the Ebola virus could become airborne if the epidemic is not brought under control fast enough, the chief of the UN’s Ebola mission has warned.

Anthony Banbury, the Secretary General’s Special Representative, said that aid workers are racing against time to bring the epidemic under control, in case the Ebola virus mutates and becomes even harder to deal with.

“The longer it moves around in human hosts in the virulent melting pot that is West Africa, the more chances increase that it could mutate,” he told the Telegraph. “It is a nightmare scenario [that it could become airborne], and unlikely, but it can’t be ruled out.”

Ebola 'could become airborne': United Nations warns

It's ridiculous that First Presbyterian dropped the ball in Dallas - and a damn good thing Ebola isn't airborne yet. Experts say such a mutation is "unlikely" - but now the WHO admits the longer it bounces around human hosts in West Africa, the more likely that scenario becomes. The first priority remains - stop it there.

Authorities continue to insist that stopping air travel is NOT the way to go - the priority is to focus on stopping Ebola in West Africq, and preventing it from mutating to an airborne disease. Which cannot be done without allowing international travel.

Why hasn’t the U.S. closed its airports to travelers from Ebola-ravaged countries?

Thomas Eric Duncan, the patient currently being treated in the Dallas area, boarded a flight from Liberia on Sept. 19 and arrived in Texas on Sept. 20. United Airlines said Wednesday that it was told by the CDC that Duncan had used the airline to travel from Brussels to Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., before flying from Dulles to Dallas-Fort Worth.

Authorities have said repeatedly that there is no danger of anyone getting sick from flying with Duncan because was not symptomatic at the time.

....More travel restrictions, though, aren't going to make the world safer when it comes to Ebola, according to several global public health organizations. In fact, they might make the situation worse.

Air travel restrictions ignore the way Ebola is transmitted:

Ebola can only be contracted through direct contact with a sick person's bodily fluids. ....It isn't transmitted through the air, so you are more likely to catch a cold on a flight than Ebola.

“It is not an optimal measure for controlling the import of Ebola virus disease,” said chief United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric. “The measure does not reflect what is known about the way in which the virus passes between people."

....The restrictions are also redundant:

If someone isn't exhibiting symptoms of Ebola, that person is not infectious. ....

....Despite the fact that an infected passenger flew from Liberia to Dallas this month, that passenger, Duncan, was not sick -- and was therefore not contagious -- while he was traveling. And once people become symptomatic, they become very sick, very quickly.

....Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone are already economically isolated because this epidemic has spread far wider and lasted much longer than any other Ebola outbreak in history. What those countries need most now is assistance from the world.

More flight restrictions will only make it more difficult for life-saving aid and medical professionals to reach West Africa. The restrictions already in place have proved so problematic that U.S. military forces are building an "air bridge" to get health workers and medical supplies to affected areas.

"Any discontinuation of transport will affect humanitarian aid, doctors, nurses and human resources entering the country, the transfer of biological sampling and equipment for hospitals," Daniel Menucci, a representative for the World Health Organization Travel and Transport Task Force, said in August. “All of this needs international transporting, international airlines. This will create more problems in helping the countries most affected.”

Dr. Aw: Ebola isn’t SARS, but we still should have been better prepared to fight the virus in West Africa

a reply to: soficrow

I missed your input on the latest Ebola crisis in Texas.

What are your thoughts on the subject?

Nice....we need to just start air dropping the stuff to help them with, not landing and picking anyone up. This is already out of hand....i mean they say nothing to worry about on one hand then it pops up in the US?

Yea it's a shame. The world has not rallied to help W. Africa and get this contained. They need simple and relatively inexpensive supplies to fight this and we've just stood by. It's all probabilities. The greater the number of surviving patients, the longer the virus continues to be spread the greater the chance of a dangerous mutation. Very long odds to be sure (especially from that virus family) but not impossible. It needs to be stopped in Africa at the center of the epidemic. That's where the risk lies.

a reply to: beezzer

Predictable. Probably working in oil or mining - all the focus on health workers ignored the real danger. It's a wait and see thing for me now, and a simple equation for the world - get in fast with everything you've got, or deal with the inevitable consequences.



FYI - Am dealing with health issues, won't be around much for a while. Hope to be more available Dec/Jan when TSHTF - or doesn't because the epidemic was stopped in West Africa.

a reply to: soficrow

There's a chance that the AIDs virus could become airborne too.

If you love doom, you'll be frightened by that fact. If you are rational and balanced emotionally, you will rationalize the fact's and understand that you are more likely to get hit by an asteroid or die from pharmaceutical side effects.

A lot of things COULD happen but if you compare that with what actually DOES happen you'll live better.

I can't tell if the term "Texas ebola crisis" is a psyop kernel or if people just love doom.

Who's to say we can't restrict flights coming to the US from Africa, and still allow aid/supplies to be transported there?

Me thinks they are more worried about the loss of revenue than they are controlling the disease.

a reply to: soficrow
As far as I'm concerned , the ebola virus has always been airborne......it's been flying out of Africa since January.

Although I highly doubt it will mutate into an airborne virus, It really doesnt have too. This virus has the potential to spread extremely quick once a few people with symtoms of Ebola make it into a highly populated area. Then its going to mulitple like a wildfire. People will start to panic, goods and food will disappear rather quickly. I say stalk up now on food, just to buy yourself a month or two in case it gets bad. Isolation will be required to beat this and then let Ebola die out itself.

Thanks for the latest update Soficrow.

It "Could" become airborne, however this is a small snippet of what Dr Scott Gottlieb had to say in Forbes :

To be spread through the air, it also generally helps if the virus is concentrated in the lungs of affected patients.

For humans, this is not the case. Ebola generally isn’t an infection of the lungs.

The main organ that the virus targets is the liver. That is why patients stricken with Ebola develop very high amounts of the virus in the blood and in the feces, and not in their respiratory secretions.

Full report and links to other articles and peer reviewed papers can be found here : www.forbes.com...

Also in order for this particular virus to become airborn they would have to be suspended in the air for a long period of time so to speak in the form of micro droplets.

Very rare cases of person to person contact by respiratory secretions have ever occured (sneezing or coughing on each other)

Kindest respects

Rodinus

originally posted by: sheepslayer247
Who's to say we can't restrict flights coming to the US from Africa, and still allow aid/supplies to be transported there?

Me thinks they are more worried about the loss of revenue than they are controlling the disease.

Problem is, commercial flights are needed for said transport - and besides the panic, many have been cancelled for lack of passengers. So no available public transport. Which means no aid/resources. But true about loss of revenue. At least in part. West Africa is being ravaged economically, which is obstructing its ability to fight Ebola. The mining and oil industries want their profits, and don't care about anything else. But they can -and do- use private planes, so travel restrictions do NOT apply. Seems the real danger lies in unrestricted private, corporate air travel.

Listen to this interesting choice of phrase from the CDC Director @5:15.



A very suspicious choice.

I just wish they'd drop the load of BS and tell us all the truth. I live here in Dallas and people are angry about what happened with the hospital releasing the man with antibiotics. They tried to say the man did not mention he came from Liberia. Oops, yes he DID say that, but the information got lost. They said there were only up to 18 people he was in contact with, now it's 80. Then they said the EMTs were not at risk because he was only complaining of headache and abdominal pain. Now we learn he was vomiting in the ambulance.

Now parents are rightly concerned about their kids coming in contact with the affected children who were allowed to attend school but they won't tell them who the affected kids are.

If there's concern about it becoming airborne, instead of reassuring the public it's not and that everything is under control, they need to let us know NOW.

a reply to: soficrow

If we are serious about stopping the spread of Ebola, we would do everything necessary to squash it. That would include stopping all air traffic to affected areas, commercial or private, except for aid and medical staff.

Anyone wanting to come back to the US would be placed in quarantine for the required amount of time before they are allowed to board a plane.

There are some pretty simple things we could do to stop it from spreading, but I fear that political and corporate interests may get in the way.

Here we go with the oddities already :

Ebola in the US: “Disaster Teams Were Notified Months Ago They Would Be Activated in October”

Source

...hmm ?

Canadian Health Agency Deletes Info on “Airborne Spread” of Ebola

Source

...hmm ?

Mexican Flue Redux...?

a reply to: Rodinus

Thanks Rodinus. As stated in the OP, experts say it's "unlikely" Ebola will mutate to be airborne in humans - even though the virus already is airborne in pigs. However, the more human hosts infected, the greater the risk a mutation allowing efficient airborne transmission will emerge. So the argument is this: it is NOT worth the risk, however small, to allow the Ebola epidemic to continue unabated in West Africa because the risk of efficient airborne mutation increases with every new human host.

Could become airborne, or already is airborne and they are keeping a lid on it in an attempt to prevent mass panic? I mean why warn that it could become airborne in a given timeline, unless they already know it is?

This isn't comforting at all either:

The number of people infected with Ebola is doubling every 20 to 30 days, and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention has forecast that there could be as many as 1.4m cases of Ebola by January, in the worst case scenario.

Once it hits one million and continues on that path it would reach one billion inside of a year using those same projections.

a reply to: soficrow
Just yesterday the talking heads were telling us not to fret, the big E isn't airborn. They did add that it wasn't likely to do so. Dr. Tom Frieden congratulated himself yesterday, all the while reminding us that Ebola is "scary."


It's good to see you, Sofi. You were missed. Hope you feel better soon.

42 deaths in the Congo

Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of Congo raised its death toll from the dealy Ebola virus to 42 today as it struggled to contain the second outbreak of the deadly disease in Africa this year.
The latest figure includes eight health workers, Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said in a message sent to AFP.

Some 70 cases of the deadly virus have been confirmed in a remote region near the town of Boende some 800 kilometres northwest of Kinshasa, with a mortality rate of around 60 per cent.

According to the World Health Organization and the authorities in Kinshasa, the outbreak is not related to the worst ever epidemic of the virus which has killed more than 3,000 people in west Africa this year.

A month ago, the government said 32 people had been killed in the outbreak, the seventh Ebola outbreak since the disease was first identified in the country in 1976.

mobile.nation.co.ke...< br />
Meanwhile...
160,000 Hazmat Suits Ordered

www.zerohedge.com...

a reply to: SpaDe_

I think they have suspected an airborne characteristic to this outbreak for months- particularly given the number of western and veteran healthcare workers contracting the disease despite precautions.

I see too many indicators something is not quite right about what we are being told and what is happening.

I know this is Alex Jones, but I though I'd put it out there:

www.infowars.com...


The CDC warning funeral homes in the U.S. to prepare for Ebola victims.