January 04, 2019
Ebola in Sweden?
Timothy Birdnow
A possible case of \Ebola showed up at a Swedish hospital. According to Breitbart:
Ebola is a filovirus (string shaped rather than round), one of only a few ancient RNA-based viruses (most viruses are DNA based) and is terribly lethal. There are several strains, including Ebola Sudan, Ebola Tai Forest, Ebola Bundibugyo, and the benign-in-humans Ebola Reston and Ebola Bombali. There is also the closely related disease Marburg. Ebola Zaire is by far the most lethal. All of these viruses (save Reston) cause hemorrhagic, which leads to high fevers and severe bleeding. Eyes turn bright red from blood, noses drip blood, and the patient often vomits blood. Eventually the patient crashes and bleeds out, often pouring blood from the mouth and rectum. It's a horrible way to die.
Only recently has a vaccine been developed. It is still largely unproven, and does not cure the disease - just keeps people from catching it. There is no cure for Ebola, and death rates make Smallpox look positively benevolent.
For decades epidemiologists have worried about a pandemic of Ebola. Ebola mutates easily and could mutate into a flu-like form, perhaps. With modern jet travel it could spread across the entire world. Imagine an Ebola outbreak similar to the Spanish Flu outbreak during the First World War; that took the lives of twenty million people and infected half a billion. Imagine a half billion people infected with Ebola!
Also, we must remember that there were efforts to use recombinant DNA technology back int he sixties and seventies to produce bioweapons (frightening Richard Nixon enough that he canceled the bio-weapons program) and with modern CRISPR technology it may well be possible for terrorists to unleash such an evil thing.
At any rate, Ebola showing up in Sweden could be a very, very bad thing.
A possible case of \Ebola showed up at a Swedish hospital. According to Breitbart:
The Emergency Room of a Swedish hospital was closed down Friday morning after a patient recently returned from Africa arrived vomiting blood, a possible symptom of the deadly and contagious Ebola virus.
The unidentified patient was transferred by ambulance from Enköping hospital to the University teaching hospital at Uppsala which has a specialist infection clinic capable of treating them in isolation. The infection has not yet been confirmed.
The Ebola virus is so contagious the ER room in the Enköping hospital was closed for decontamination Friday morning with patients redirected to Västerås hospital instead, reports Sweden’s Afton Bladet. Staff who came into contact with the patient are also being treated.
[...]
The paper states the patient started showing symptoms over the past 24 hours, having travelled from Burundi, East Africa within the past three weeks. Burundi itself is not a known Ebola area but is adjacent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda which have both seen Ebola outbreaks in recent years.
Local newspaper the Upsala Nya Tidning reports their attempts to get comment from the hospital have been unanswered as the leadership team remain in a "crisis meetingâ€.
The unidentified patient was transferred by ambulance from Enköping hospital to the University teaching hospital at Uppsala which has a specialist infection clinic capable of treating them in isolation. The infection has not yet been confirmed.
The Ebola virus is so contagious the ER room in the Enköping hospital was closed for decontamination Friday morning with patients redirected to Västerås hospital instead, reports Sweden’s Afton Bladet. Staff who came into contact with the patient are also being treated.
[...]
The paper states the patient started showing symptoms over the past 24 hours, having travelled from Burundi, East Africa within the past three weeks. Burundi itself is not a known Ebola area but is adjacent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda which have both seen Ebola outbreaks in recent years.
Local newspaper the Upsala Nya Tidning reports their attempts to get comment from the hospital have been unanswered as the leadership team remain in a "crisis meetingâ€.
Ebola is a filovirus (string shaped rather than round), one of only a few ancient RNA-based viruses (most viruses are DNA based) and is terribly lethal. There are several strains, including Ebola Sudan, Ebola Tai Forest, Ebola Bundibugyo, and the benign-in-humans Ebola Reston and Ebola Bombali. There is also the closely related disease Marburg. Ebola Zaire is by far the most lethal. All of these viruses (save Reston) cause hemorrhagic, which leads to high fevers and severe bleeding. Eyes turn bright red from blood, noses drip blood, and the patient often vomits blood. Eventually the patient crashes and bleeds out, often pouring blood from the mouth and rectum. It's a horrible way to die.
Only recently has a vaccine been developed. It is still largely unproven, and does not cure the disease - just keeps people from catching it. There is no cure for Ebola, and death rates make Smallpox look positively benevolent.
For decades epidemiologists have worried about a pandemic of Ebola. Ebola mutates easily and could mutate into a flu-like form, perhaps. With modern jet travel it could spread across the entire world. Imagine an Ebola outbreak similar to the Spanish Flu outbreak during the First World War; that took the lives of twenty million people and infected half a billion. Imagine a half billion people infected with Ebola!
Also, we must remember that there were efforts to use recombinant DNA technology back int he sixties and seventies to produce bioweapons (frightening Richard Nixon enough that he canceled the bio-weapons program) and with modern CRISPR technology it may well be possible for terrorists to unleash such an evil thing.
At any rate, Ebola showing up in Sweden could be a very, very bad thing.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
10:36 AM
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