The Ebola Wars [The New Yorker - Online Article] (with some personal commentary)

Anyone who has been watching/reading/listening to the news knows that Ebola is a huge concern for the entire planet. I feel this article from The New Yorker does an excellent job of detailing the timeline for the most recent outbreak of Ebola, how the disease is transmitted and infects humans and what scientists are doing to find a cure. Sadly many healthcare workers have lost their lives helping infected patients; hopefully the lessons learned from these efforts will contribute to the eventual eradication of this disease.  I hope that you all find this article helpful. CSW, RN

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -- Charles Darwin (The Descent of Man)




I feel that the following two paragraphs are important in helping to allay the current panic about how Ebola is acquired. Paragraph one defines how viruses (any virus, not just Ebola) can travel in the air. It also provides the differentiation between droplet and airborne transmission, with explanation of why the latter is not a valid route. Paragraph two answers the often asked question, "can Ebola evolve and gain the ability to transmit the airborne route."

¶1 There are two distinct ways a virus can travel in the air. In what’s known as droplet infection, the virus can travel inside droplets of fluid released into the air when, for example, a person coughs. The droplets travel only a few feet and soon fall to the ground. The other way a virus can go into the air is through what is called airborne transmission. In this mode, the virus is carried aloft in tiny droplets that dry out, leaving dust motes, which can float long distances, can remain infective for hours or days, and can be inhaled into the lungs. Particles of measles virus can do this, and have been observed to travel half the length of an enclosed football stadium. Ebola may well be able to infect people through droplets, but there’s no evidence that it infects people by drying out or getting into the lungs on dust particles. In 1989, a virus known today as Reston, which is a filovirus related to Ebola, erupted in a building full of monkeys in Reston, Virginia, and travelled from cage to cage. One possible way, never proved, is that the virus particles hitched rides in mist driven into the air by high-pressure spray hoses used to clean the cages, and then circulated in the building’s air system. A rule of thumb among Ebola experts is that, if you are not wearing biohazard gear, you should stand at least six feet away from an Ebola patient, as a precaution against flying droplets.

¶2 The question often asked is whether Ebola could evolve to spread through the air in dried particles, entering the body along a pathway into the lungs. Eric Lander, the head of the Broad Institute, thinks that this is the wrong question to ask. Lander is tall, with a square face and a mustache, and he speaks rapidly and with conviction. “That’s like asking the question ‘Can zebras become airborne,’ ” he said. In order to become fully airborne, Ebola virus particles would need to be able to survive in a dehydrated state on tiny dust motes that remain suspended in the air and then be able to penetrate cells in the lining of the lungs. Lander thinks that Ebola is very unlikely to develop these abilities. “That would be like saying that a virus that has evolved to have a certain life style, spreading through direct contact, can evolve all of a sudden to have a totally different life style, spreading in dried form through the air. A better question would be ‘Can zebras learn to run faster?’ ”

Preston, R. (2014. The New Yorker. The Ebola Wars: How genomics research can help contain the
     outbreak. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/27/ebola-wars