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Why Ebola Probably Won’t Go Airborne
The idea that Ebola could go airborne is terrifying.
Once you are infected, few diseases are more likely to kill you — and death by hemorrhagic fever, diarrhea and vomiting often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure, sounds particularly awful. At present it’s hard to get infected — healthcare workers and family members caring for victims are at highest risk — but that would change if the virus were to mutate so that it could be transmitted through the air while keeping its present lethality.
That’s a nightmare scenario.
But it’s more the stuff of bad dreams than of reality. There’s no known precedent for a virus to change in that way.
It is theoretically possible — everything in nature changes and evolves. Some health officials highlight this as a reason to act now to contain the disease. Anthony Branbury, the UN’s Ebola chief (who is not a doctor or an Ebola researcher), recently said the possibility of an airborne mutation shouldn’t be ruled out.
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, floated the possibility of airborne Ebola in a New York Times op-ed titled “What We’re Afraid to Say About Ebola.” He made the argument that since there are so many more Ebola cases now, more than there have ever been, the virus has more opportunities to mutate than it ever has, which makes an airborne mutation more possible.
Osterholm wrote “that virologists are loath to discuss [this possible mutation] openly but are definitely considering [it] in private.”
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2014/10/why-ebola-probably-wont-go-airborne/
