Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever. World Map Update, Transmission by Sweat, and Dogs Getting at Urban Corpses

First, here is the link to Google's summary map system: Ebola World Map 1976 through present.

Text of the associated references brings us to a point where there are 1,552 known EHF/EVD deaths and at least 3,069 known cases. WHO is cited as saying that the numbers could be four times as high overall.

Without saying how they plan to get control, WHO also projects 20,000 cases from this outbreak. The medical systems are overwhelmed in three countries while two more countries are now in mix with no plan on deck to move in additional financial resources.

Worst two days came ten days ago when 142 new cases came in from fresh field reports. World Health Organization then had surveys run and concluded that the real counts could be 4 times the reported counts.

Frankly, news reports from CNN and the main corporate networks remain unreliable. What they call facts are tied to experience with Ebola from earlier outbreaks. For example, a good half of that body of knowledge stems from different strains/species of the virus. Not the Zaire Ebola virus that is driving the current outbreak.

MSM do very little reporting on the crisis at hand. They like talking about outbreaks of Ebola virus during the 1970s and 1990/2000s. Those outbreaks happened in rural communities, all of them. The three worst of those outbreaks killed fewer than 300 hundred people before they were contained and stamped out.

Plain fact is that corporate MSM have not come to terms with what is happening today in African cities.

Of course city slums there are getting the worst of it.

People are being locked in slum neighborhoods as many as 50,000 at a time. This is not the way to do medical containment, obviously. The poor people in such neighborhoods reportedly receive minimal food and water, as well as next to no medical care -- the cases and deaths are not included in the 3069/1552 numbers cited above.

CNN provides these statements as facts:

-- Ebola is extremely infectious but not extremely contagious. It is infectious, because an infinitesimally small amount can cause illness. Laboratory experiments on nonhuman primates suggest that even a single virus may be enough to trigger a fatal infection.

-- Instead, Ebola could be considered moderately contagious, because the virus is not transmitted through the air. The most contagious diseases, such as measles or influenza, virus particles are airborne.

-- Humans can be infected by other humans if they come in contact with body fluids from an infected person or contaminated objects from infected persons. Humans can also be exposed to the virus, for example, by butchering infected animals.

-- Unprotected health care workers are susceptible to infection because of their close contact with patients during treatment.

In fact, meaning real facts, fully protected health workers are dropping like flies. That includes doctors and nurses wearing the "bunny suit" protective gear.

The former outbreak estimates presented "R-zero" transmission rates running 1.34 to 1.83 for the numbers of people who become infected from one unquarantined victim. This outbreak has one case at 8.0. No one has a database with event reports to tell us the overall R-zero experience. Anything with an R-zero over 2 is highly contagious by definition.

This strain of Ebola is both highly infectious and highly contagious.

A tiny amount of the virus can infect a target and the R-zero looks to be well over 2.

Urban disease transfer follows different patterns from rural transfer. We do know that as a practical certainty.

Transfer count = A function of [ single event risk TIMES # of interactions per day TIMES time in days ]

This is a different ball game from rural sites. The current outbreak features a much higher number of interactions among target individuals,  where the number of interactions is driven by the population density in cities.

Bodily Fluids

Also as a terrible fact, the phrase "bodily fluids" is being used in press releases and stories in a way that can be misleading. The term is correct. Tests back up the technical definition.

But for lay people, how many know that human sweat is a bodily fluid ???

The current adaptation of the Zaire ebolavirus passes human-to-human with sweat. It is one of seventeen identified bodily fluids in medical terminology. Many non-specialists would think of bodily fluids as secretions coming from organs under the skin -- which is incorrect.

Here's the transmission list for today's Ebola virus which is coextensive with the medical definition for "bodily fluids." Here you go:

List of Bodily Fluids for Humans

--   Amniotic fluid
--   Aqueous humour and vitreous humour
--   Bile
--   Blood serum
--   Breast milk
--   Cerebrospinal fluid
--   Cerumen (earwax)
--   Chyle
--   Chyme
--   Endolymph and perilymph
--   Exudates
--   Feces - see diarrhea
--   Female ejaculate
--   Gastric acid
--   Gastric juice
--   Lymph
--   Mucus (including nasal drainage and phlegm)
--   Pericardial fluid
--   Peritoneal fluid
--   Pleural fluid
--   Pus
--   Rheum
--   Saliva
--   Sebum (skin oil)
--   Semen
--   Sputum
--   Synovial fluid
--   Tears
--   Sweat
--   Vaginal secretion
--   Vomit
--   Urine

Any and all of this will take you out from the current strain of Ebola virus.

Sweat is not all that easy to control. And surely not in Equatorial Africa. Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV) is deadly in the smallest amounts possible. One virus body can kill you. And now, contrary to CNN, it is Big Time contagious.

Societal breakdown.

At what point is a society unable to bury its dead ???

Images are online of partially eaten Ebola corpses in Liberia. I am not going to post links. No pics here. Determined readers know how to use Bing and Google.

EBOV also thrives in dogs. The corpse eaters become carriers within days. Then they get to pee and defecate and spread saliva over their neighborhoods.

...The discovery of Ebola virus antibodies in several species of non-human primate suggests the existence within this fauna of different degrees of susceptibility to Ebola and, possibly, of strains of various levels of virulence. However, most large primates, once infected, soon die of the disease. Their bodies then become a potential source of contamination for humans, but also for certain domestic animals. Ebola virus antibodies were detected in dogs exposed to the virus during the latest epidemics, which suggests that these animals may well have been infected and can therefore be a new source of transmission to humans.

-- ScienceDaily: Ebola Virus: From Wildlife To Dogs, June 2005, Institut De Recherche Pour Le Développement

I have no idea whether or not an eradication program is underway. To eradicate stray dogs.

Send money.

Anybody think this is not a $5,000,000,000 problem?

The United Nations Security Counsel could get in there with Peacekeepers and whatever else can be mustered.

What else?
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Earlier diary:

Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever Information. World Map, HealthMap and Urban R-zero at "8" ???

The comments are also helpful.

Plainly, betting on "it's not airborne" is a weak strategy. Same for fantasizing that this disease is not communicable prior to the appearance of symptoms. As above, EBOV getting to cities is a different ball game.

The Black Death, bubonic plague, was not airborne and it killed significant fractions of Europe over centuries, returning again and again. This outbreak of Ebola could prove worse -- the plague had death rates that ran as high as 30% to 60% for overall population for the whole of Western Europe in the 14th Century.

That kill rate was generated for a 2-year period. This outbreak of EBOV has unknown long-run kill rates; EBOV in cities is in the very first stages of endemic replication.

Are we better off today than in the 14th Century? Why?

And how is this strain of Ebola virus less lethal, if a society goes toward collapse, than plague?