
Will the Ebola virus go airborne? - etiam
http://www.nature.com/news/will-the-ebola-virus-go-airborne-1.15943
======
themgt
I really see the strong, immediate pushback against this idea as mainly an
attempt to calm the lay audience. Ebola has been airborne in other species
before, and it's very nearly airborne in humans - this is certainly not a
virus like HIV where even unprotected sexual intercourse has a low infection
rate - we've got a huge number of infected doctors and healthcare workers, and
there are calls for this to be treated like SARS:

"Infection control concerning EVD is not working, especially when more than
240 [now 300] healthcare personnel have been infected, and more than 120
workers have died. Guidelines used to control SARS in 2003 should be used, not
"contact and droplet protection of 1-2 meters," as is still recommended by
WHO.

Personal protective equipment (PPE) for contact and airborne infections should
be used because of a) respiratory symptoms, b) a big distance -- up to 9
meters -- for droplets when coughing and sneezing (Bourouiba et al. J Fluid
Mechanics 2014;745:537-563.), c) re-aerolization from the environment, bed
clothes etc., d) long survival of the virus outside the body, and e) high
lethality.

Healthcare workers (HCW) and helpers should be protected with PPE as they were
during the SARS epidemic."

[http://www.promedmail.org/direct.php?id=20140914.2773490](http://www.promedmail.org/direct.php?id=20140914.2773490)

The real question is more like, will Ebola mutate to be more airborne than it
already is?

~~~
thathonkey
That's all well and good but a slew of actual virologists disagree with this,
citing examples such as no viruses affecting humans ever changing from being
spreadable via bodily fluid/direct contact to becoming aerosol. This includes
all viruses that have ever been known to affect human beings.

So, yes, while it is theoretically possible, it is extremely unlikely and
really not worth discussing because no good can come from it.

~~~
theyrealltaken
In a few months it's flu season. A large part of the population will be
sneezing and coughing. I don't wish to find out what happens when someone with
ebola is introduced in such a system (e.g. infected doctor returning to the
west). But your call for silence on the subject is nothing but short-
sightedness.

~~~
thathonkey
It's not my call to make. It's the call of the numerous individuals who are
infinitely more qualified than anyone reading and posting on HN. People that
work at places like the CDC and have years of training and experience
researching the effects of viruses like Ebola. They're all saying not to worry
about that.

Even if they strongly suspected it will become airborne (based on something
other than theory), do you think they'd just announce it to the public like
"oh, hey, btw..."? Can you imagine the hysteria that would cause? Not "a bit"
like another poster suggested. The effect of the hysteria could very well be
worse than what the virus might cause on its own. It's really impossible to
know, that is why we take measures to prevent getting worked into a highly
irrational hysteria. These measures would include things like listening to
qualified individuals and not ignoring the rational points they are trying to
make to you.

------
TheCapn
Often these types of articles go in one ear and out the other of people with
irrational fear of the unknown or are incapable of understanding the way a
researcher might discuss the topic. I feel this is often the case simply
because those spreading misinformation love to use very charged words that
incite a lot of emotion while those in authority to speak on the subject use
terms with strong meaning in science but have much less impact in regular
speech.

This is a good example. The article's quotes use plenty of words like "remote
chance" or "highly unlikely" which don't seem to drive home the point that its
"so nearly close to impossible its not worth humoring". Meanwhile, New York
Time's publishes an article read my many more viewers with comparisons to the
Plague, using terms like "hyper-evolution" and really ridiculous comparisons
that are just taken out of context for the sake of fear.

Its no wonder you get such "stupid" responses on news article comments, the
entire thing is written to rile up readers and get an emotional response while
hiding the actual science.

Heck, even reading the two articles side by side you get very different
stories of the same event (regarding the Ebola lab tests between Pigs/Monkeys
in 2012). On NYTimes they indicate that Pig -> Monkey transference was
possible then the Monkeys all had to be euthanized to "contain the outbreak".
Meanwhile SA article states that the virus was never capable of going Monkey
-> Monkey.

------
ph0rque
> Will the Ebola virus go airborne?

> Experts say the possibility remains remote.

Seems like the article is acknowledging Betteridge's Law of Headlines in the
subtitle. Very convenient!

~~~
delecti
Betteridge's Law of Headlines should really be referenced more often with
clickbaity titles like this.

~~~
twoodfin
I wish either the title requirements or HN users with sufficient karma could
allow/add a @SavedYouAClick-style tag to these stories that would list on the
front page ("Will the Ebola Virus Go Airborne? [Probably Not]"), rather than
having the Betteridge's Law of Headlines discussion in every such thread.

~~~
delecti
Agreed, that would be even better still.

------
davesque
This article, as well as the nytimes.com op-ed piece, misquote/misinterpret
the 2012 Canadian study that supposedly showed transmission from pigs to
monkeys via air.

From the text of the study:

"Under conditions of the current study, transmission of ZEBOV could have
occurred either by inhalation (of aerosol or larger droplets), and/or droplet
inoculation of eyes and mucosal surfaces and/or by fomites due to droplets
generated during the cleaning of the room."

Also from the study:

"The experimental setting of the present study could not quantify the relative
contribution of aerosol, small and large droplets in the air, and droplets
landing inside the NHP cages (fomites) to EBOV transmission between pigs and
macaques. These parameters will need to be investigated using an experimental
approach specifically designed to address this question."

People need to be careful about how they read these academic articles. The
authors of the two aforementioned news articles misinterpreted the findings of
the study in a way that supports their personal viewpoints.

I do agree that this issue needs attention, but not misinformation.

Link to actual study:
[http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00811/full/srep00...](http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00811/full/srep00811.html)

------
chestnut-tree
I mentioned this in a previous discussion on Ebola, but thought it might be
worth repeating. Last week, the BBC broadcast a generally informative
documentary about Ebola. The programme talks to survivors of the virus, to the
staff of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) treating victims, to Peter Piot, the
Belgian doctor who discovered the virus (and established that the disease was
not airborne) and the medical staff seeking a cure. There are some harrowing
scenes.

For UK viewers, it's available on iPlayer until Friday 19 Sept. 2014
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04hcthj/](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04hcthj/)

For everyone else, someone's uploaded it to YouTube, although the last 10
minutes are missing
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjuQofIleOg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjuQofIleOg)

------
imacomputer2
Great article. Isn't it obviously that Ebola or any other deadly virus is
unlikely to become highly contagious via air simply because we don't see mass
airbourn infections very often. (Do we ever see them?) If such mutations were
likely, then we would see them. Massive plagues, wiping out something like %50
of the population would be common. There have been mass plagues in history of
course, however, they are somewhat rare and often the result of poor
sanitation. That's not as much of a problem in the modern world, although the
third world still struggles with it. Worse yet, if airborn mutations were
likely, then we would probably not see them at all, because evolution would
not have brought about highly complex creatures. We would always get killed
off by disease before making that far.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
There are selection pressures against infections that kill the host. That may
explain why highly quickly-lethal viruses are rare.

~~~
rectangletangle
This is generally true, though occasionally parasitoid relationships are
selected for (where there's a fitness advantage to killing off the host).
Though these relationships typically only occur with an r selected host (many
offspring, low probability of survival). Thankfully however humans are very
heavily K selected (few offspring, high probability of survival).

------
timr
The question of "will Ebola become airborne" is academically interesting, but
not particularly relevant. The virus spreads just fine with its current
mechanism: when you're excreting loads of virus via blood, saliva, sweat,
feces and vomit, "body fluids" becomes a very effective means of transmission.

I live in San Francisco, and I can't tell you the number of times I encounter
"body fluids" out in public. Last night, I nearly stepped in a pile of vomit
on Market Street. Imagine that the vomit was from a man who recently returned
from Nigeria. He'd been coming down with flu-like symptoms, and was on his way
to his minimum-wage job as a prep cook, when he felt nauseous and threw up on
the sidewalk. But it's a big city, and vomit on the sidewalk isn't uncommon.
Nobody notices.

Over the course of several hours, dozens of people accidentally step in the
vomit, getting it on their shoes. Some of those people go home, take off their
shoes, and touch their face without washing their hands. The virus has now
spread to unsuspecting people all over the city. Meanwhile, the prep cook is
sweating over a pile of lettuce in a hot, cramped kitchen. His fever isn't
helping matters, and it won't be long until he feels ill again, and visits the
bathroom. He's supposed to wash his hands before returning to work, but he's
not feeling well, so he doesn't do the greatest job. Back to work -- there are
salads to prep!

It's the start of cold and flu season, so the dozens of people infected in the
last day won't think twice when they come down with a fever. They'll go to
work for a few days with what they think is a cold (because most people do,
these days), and spread body fluids in all the normal ways that people do:
touching their faces, then shaking hands. Touching the office lunch without
washing their hands. Coughing. Sweating. Throwing up in the bathroom -- how
many people get sick during a workday? How many people disinfect the aftermath
with bleach?

It will be a week or more before anyone realizes that there are people dying
across the city from what looks like a bad fever -- why would anyone suspect
Ebola in the US? By the time epidemiologists become aware that there's even a
problem, the virus will have spread to hundreds of random individuals in one
of the most densely populated cities in the world....

~~~
Havoc
>but not particularly relevant. The virus spreads just fine with its current
mechanism

This strikes me as a rather weak argument. Just because something "works"
doesn't mean evolution/gene mutation won't find a way to make it work more
"efficiently".

I'm also wary of drawing parallels to anything we see in a "modern"
country...sure flu etc is contagious too - beyond that they are barely
comparable though.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I don't think the issue is whether mutation might make it work more
efficiently, but the _probability_ that this might happen.

To estimate that you need to understand the precise mechanisms of variability,
and the likelihood that the genetic elements that create Ebola symptoms could
combine with the genetic elements that make influenza and rhinoviruses so
infectious.

Obviously there's no teleology in mutation. But as infected populations
increase, so does the possibility of dangerous recombination.

 _How much_ it increases, and whether we're talking about lottery odds, poker
odds, or coin toss odds, is something only virologists know.

But apparently there's a second order health problem. You don't just want to
minimise the spread for obvious practical reasons - you also want to minimise
it because the bigger the infected population, the bigger the risk of
dangerous mutation.

------
lukasm
> In fact, there’s almost no historical precedent for any virus to change its
> basic mode of transmission so radically.

almost no meaning "just" smallpox?

~~~
rectangletangle
I suspect that this conclusion has more to do with lack of data, than what's
actually occurring in nature. Although we've made a lot of progress over the
last two hundred or so years in biology, there're still plenty of things that
remain unknown.

------
trhway
as it is already infectious on the infected fluid contact, it just need to
learn to hitch a ride in a micro-drops of fluid people breath out (like the
flu virus, though in case of flu the virus learned to make people cough - it
helps to shoot the micro-drops out)

------
Havoc
At the present rate its going to be a disaster with or without airborne
anyway.

------
nilved
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

------
lotsofmangos
Are risks ever downplayed due to question marks in headlines?

Have we reached Peak-Betteridge?

Will we be following on after this with the weather?

