Timothy Birdnow

Ebola, that most dreadful family of filoviruses, has broken out in Uganda with one death and no doubt more to come.

There are several strains of Ebola, including Sudan,Taï Forest aka Cote D'Ivoire, Bundibugyo, and the dreaded Zaire. There is also a benign form of Ebola - Reston - which popped up in a monkey house in Virginia but didn't make anyone sick with actual Ebola symptoms.

These diseases are closely related to Marburg, another filovirus which is less lethal but just as terrible in symptoms.

Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever disease; you get fever, rash, chills, and bleed out of every orifice. Your eyes turn bright red from blood. You vomit and defecate black flecks in blood. You become disoriented. It has a special liking for the testicles and you will not be able to have sexual relations for along time after recovering (assuming you do; Ebola Zaire's death rate was in the high ninetieth percentile.) Many of the Ebolas cause seizures and spasms, leading to flying spittle and blood, thus transmitting the disease to anyone nearby.

There are other  hemorrhagic fevers, notably Crimean Congo, Dengue, and Yellow Fever,  which are not caused by filoviruses.

Filoviruses are ancient viruses, RNA based (not DNA) and appear as threads or strings - or worms. Under an electron microscope it appears like a bunch of worms or a snake pit slithering around. And they breed incredibly fast, taking over the cell nuclei and converting cells into ebola factories.

Horrible disease. Fortunately it has never broken out into the general population, largely because it kils too fast to spread . But now we have some treatments (that come from tobacco plants, by the way) and the virus may well mutate into one with a slower incubation, thus allowing it to spread through the general population.

If it were to become airborn it would be catastrophic - an ebola flu season!

So any major outbreak anywhere in the world is a terrible thing and cause for alarm.

BTTW Obama was bringing Ebola patients into the U.S. for treatment during a major outbreak, and we were fortunate indeed not to suffer our own outbreak; one infected woman escaped and wandered around Texas for a while. Not sure why the idiot Obama didn't send these folks to, say, Gitmo where it would be Cuba's problem if it escaped is beyond me (well it isn't; Obama hoped it would break out here to "teach America a lesson".)

It's good Trump pulled us out of the WHO; we'd be up to our eyeballs in it there, and would bring a bunch of infected people here if he hadn't done that.

Anyway, prayers are in order for Uganda. Any Ebola outbreak is a horrible thing.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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