Ebola reemerges

[Anti.Hero]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93df0f52-c7c0-11dd-b611-000077b07658.html


Manila reports Ebola virus in pigs

By Roel Landingin in Manila

Published: December 11 2008 20:24 | Last updated: December 11 2008 20:24

Philippine officials tucked into servings of lechon, the popular dish of roasted whole pig, in front of television cameras on Thursday to reassure the public of the safety of the national staple meat after the discovery among hogs near Manila of a strain of the Ebola virus.

Arthur Yap, agriculture secretary, and Francisco Duque, health secretary, said the Ebola Reston virus, which had never been found in pigs before, presented a low health risk for humans and was different from the deadly African variety.

The World Health Organisation was reported to be looking into whether there was any chance humans could have become infected.

The outbreak could deal a blow to Philippine plans to build a pork export industry. The government halted an inaugural shipment of frozen pork to Singapore and quarantined three swine farms.

Pork vendors in public markets in Manila sought to assure buyers that their products had passed government inspection and met safety standards.

“December is the month when we sell the most pork at relatively higher price,” said Evelyn Reyes, who operates a small pork stall in Quezon City. “I really hope the government does a good work of calming people’s fears about the Ebola virus.”

Pork accounts for more than half of the average 61g of meat consumed daily by each Filipino.

The virus was first discovered in 1989 in macaque monkeys imported from the Philippines by a laboratory in Reston, Virginia. Scientists are trying to determine how the virus spread to pigs.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

[BruceBowenFan]

kill em all i say

[byrontx]

Sorta spooky that it shows up here and in pigs, at that. Pigs can be vectors for several diseases that can jump straight to humans. All we need is a aerosol spreading type of ebola to really get a wild pandemic going.

[JMarkJohns]

The Hot Zone is scary as hell. This article says this strain isn't nearly as serious a threat to humans (so they believe) and that it's different than the deadly African strain, but still...

I actually talked with Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone this past year, and he was a great interview. I'd love to get a hold of him now on this.

[byrontx]

Very cool. The Hot Zone was excellent. I have had an interest in diseases with pandemic potential for while (actually it was reading about the Spanish flu of 1918 that caught my original interest). We are way overdue for something.

It is a bit like a pandemic acts as earth's immune system and puts the whammy on pests like humans.

[JMarkJohns]

Very cool. The Hot Zone was excellent. I have had an interest in diseases with pandemic potential for while (actually it was reading about the Spanish flu of 1918 that caught my original interest). We are way overdue for something.
It is a bit like a pandemic acts as earth's immune system and puts the whammy on pests like humans.

That's almost exactly what Preston said. He was unsure what or where, but didn't feel that Evian Flu or Sars qualified within our recent past and told the audience, then expounded in my interview to be prepared. he said he expected something by the end of this decade.

[Anti.Hero]

Yes, even a mere blip of the word Ebola should raise red flags everywhere.

One of the shittiest ways a person can die.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

This one grandmaster professor of evolutionary ecology at UT would actively say in his classes that he was hoping every day for an air strain of ebola to merge with some other ebola and wipe out 99% of the human race. He would basically tell his students every semester that he wanted them all to die.

[MiamiHeat]

We aren't overdue for anything. Pandemic's are just random and they have no timetable.

[byrontx]

it is true that the notion of flu-based pandemics occurring every few years has lost credence there are still some theories that, if true, cause concern.

Drawing on the earlier theories proposed
by Thomas Francis, Jr. [93], and
others, Maurice Hilleman attempted to
reconcile these complications by proposing
a form of “macrocyclicity” in which
reappearances of H1, H2, and H3 (approximately
every 68 years) are driven by
cycles of waning population immunity
that have approximately the same duraPERSPECTIVE
• JID 2007:195 (1 April) • 1025
Figure 4. Influenza pandemic occurrence, 1600–2000. Information was compiled from historical references [67, 68, 72–79, 94–97] and from scientific
publications from 1889 to the present (not cited). Interpandemic intervals are noted at the top of the graph. Pandemics are associated with (1) abrupt
and widespread epidemicity in multiple locales in 2 or more geographic regions, (2) rapid progression through large open populations, (3) high clinicalillness
rates affecting a broad range of ages, and (4) no other pandemic activity within 5 years (to adjust for the possibility of slow and interrupted
pandemic spread before the mid 19th century). Especially before 1697, pandemics may be difficult to verify and track, because of slower spread [87]
as a result of slower and less frequent human travel. Some cited sources suggest different interpretations than those presented here (see text and
references [67, 68, 72–79, 89–92]). The black bars () denote pandemics; the white bars () denote major widespread epidemics that do not meet
pandemic criteria. The 1977 reemergence and global spread of an “extinct” descendant of the 1918 pandemic virus, denoted by the asterisk (*), is
included here as a pandemic emergence, although it might also be considered as reflecting the continuing spread of the original pandemic virus.
tion as does the mean human life span
[87].

http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/about/directors/pdf/morens_fauci.pdf

Sorry, I do not know how to get the image of the timeline in the posting.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

We aren't overdue for anything. Pandemic's are just random and they have no timetable.

Actually alot of data suggests that historically, American superbugs always arise after long periods of drought that have a single year of above average rainfall. There is evidence that suggests a superbug like this is what wiped out several indigenous american tribes, like the maya.