Quote:
Originally Posted by flar
While there is no reason to panic, we should be concerned and the world should be putting every possible effort into ending the epidemic in Africa while it is still manageable.
Sure, first-world health care practices can contain the virus as it is, but if this spreads to one the massive slums in an African megacity, things could really get out of hand. The virus will mutate, as all fast replicating organisms do. Whether it will become "airborne" or not, no one can say, but the possibility exists. Every time someone contracts ebola there are billions of opportunities for the virus to mutate into something more contagious.
Even if this possibility is remote--and it is--it's still a possibility. If it happens, there is no turning back. So do everything possible now to make sure it doesn't happen. I think we forget too easily that we're at the mercy of mother nature.
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I do agree that we need to act now in Africa to save lives, but I find this conviction amongst that Ebola somehow has a destiny to mutate into something more deadly strange. I'm reasonably certain it doesn't have many closely related viruses that are more contagious in humans, and it's as much in the virus' interest to grow less deadly as to grow more contagious (it seems easier not to kill the host than to massively change the structure of the virus to allow it to survive outside a host for longer). If we want to fear mutation fear things like the flu, which spread very efficiently and have closely related viruses that are very deadly. Viruses are guided by the same evolutionary pressures as all other life forms, and have similar limitations. They might mutate faster, but unless there's evolutionary pressures they won't evolve any faster. It's like exposing a population to radiation, they'll mutate more, but that will probably just result in birth defects and cancer.
There is a possibility, but I remain fairly certain we're more likely to see the Ukrainian crisis spiral into a nuclear third world war.