Guinea confirms fever is Ebola, has killed up to 59

[FarCenter]

(Reuters) - Guinea has received confirmation that a mysterious disease that has killed up to 59 people in the West African country, and may have spread to neighboring Sierra Leone, is the hemorrhagic fever Ebola, the government said on Saturday.

Cases of the disease - among the most virulent pathogens known to infect humans, with a fatality rate of up to 90 percent - have been registered in three southeastern towns and in the capital Conakry since February 9. It has never before been recorded in Guinea.

"It is indeed Ebola fever. A laboratory in Lyon (France) confirmed the information," Damantang Albert Camara told Reuters.

Six of the 12 samples sent for analysis tested positive for Ebola, Dr. Sakoba Keita, who heads the epidemics prevention division at Guinea's health ministry, told Reuters.

He added that health officials had registered 80 suspected cases of the disease, including 59 deaths.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/23/us-guinea-ebola-idUSBREA2L0MI20140323

[Electric Monk]

1. Not good. Can we quarantine both countries?

(rhetorical question)

[Marrah_G]

27. There really is no need

Ebola has to high of a kill rate and kills to quickly to become a widespread outbreak.

[alittlelark]

2. At least it is sooo bad that infected individuals

go down fast.... It tends to burn itself out w/o spreading much.

[Aerows]

3. Horrible

That outbreak can kill hundreds if not contained.

[Gravitycollapse]

4. Fortunately, Ebola is generally considered to be an easy disease to quarantine.

It is generally not airborne and kills so effectively that it does not usually spread beyond isolated groups. What needs to be done now is an effective quarantine and the outbreak will fizzle quickly.

[Bonobo]

5. It is the fear of it becoming airborne...

That is so scary.

[djean111]

6. Just one person on an airplane, too.

[Bonobo]

8. You must have read that same book...

The Hot Zone

[djean111]

9. Yeah. Plus that movie where Gwyneth Paltrow spread swine flu or something.

[Laffy Kat]

19. One of the scariest books I've ever read.

If you want more, read The Cobra Event, a work of fiction by Preston. That novel gave me PTSD.

[MFM008]

23. also

'Ebola' about the outbreak in the 70s and 'Hot Zone', when ebola(Reston) reached America. Equally disturbing, "FLU" about the 1918 outbreak , the FLU will get us before ebola.

[Nay]

25. That book gave me nightmares. I hope I never see the day when something

really bad gets loose in a large population.

[Katashi_itto]

10. There are four types of Ebola. Ebola Reston, is the airborne variety...

named after the strain discovered in primates in a lab in Washington DC .

Reston ebolavirus (REBOV)
Discovered during an outbreak of simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV) in crab-eating macaques from Hazleton Laboratories (now Covance) in 1989. Since the initial outbreak in Reston, Virginia, it has since been found in non-human primates in Pennsylvania, Texas and Siena, Italy. In each case, the affected animals had been imported from a facility in the Philippines,[7] where the virus has also infected pigs Despite its status as a Level‑4 organism and its apparent pathogenicity in monkeys, REBOV did not cause disease in exposed human laboratory workers.

[laundry_queen]

13. Yeah, they got lucky that time

the fear is that the next time it mutates to become airborne, it may not lose its virulence in humans like the Reston strain did. That would be a global catastrophe.

[Katashi_itto]

14. Well, it would be a reboot for the Human race. There are positives. It would stop climate change.

[laundry_queen]

15. True.

Good for the earth. Bad for us.

[Katashi_itto]

16. Pretty much, but so far, we always had a few immunes amongst the population... so far.

[laundry_queen]

17. Well, I'm certain I read the survival rate

was between 3 and 10% for the worst Ebola strain (Zaire? I think?) so there would still be quite a few people left. It would likely take a long time to rebuild though from the collapse of civilization. Also, I'm sure the .01% ers would have their bunkers ready if they managed to escape the initial spread.

[Katashi_itto]

18. Correct, floats around a 90% fatality, so your right quite a few would escape the first spread.

It's the secondaries that would be worrying. The remaining people may not be Humans having good survival skills. It would be no guarantee that it would be a Rambo type to make it through the plague to survive at the end and carve a new civilization.

[Laffy Kat]

20. I thought that was Marburg?

Still a filovirus.

[Katashi_itto]

21. Marburg virus (/ˈmɑrbərɡ ˈvaɪrəs/ mar-bərg vy-rəs[1]) is a hemorrhagic fever virus first noticed and

described during small epidemics in the German cities Marburg and Frankfurt and the Yugoslavian capital Belgrade in the 1960s.
Niemann–Pick C1 (NPC1) appears to be essential for Ebola and Marburg virus infection.

[icymist]

7. Ebola's back?!! Oh God! nt

[Barack_America]

11. Never went away. There are yearly outbreaks in Africa. nt

[Barack_America]

12. Did they ever find out what the damned host is?

Haven't paid attention to Ebola news in a while, though I have a lot of respect for the filoviruses.

[PADemD]

22. Pigs, dogs, and chimps

In other animals
recent research
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_disease

[Barack_America]

24. That bit about airborne transmission is pretty terrifying.

I was also wondering what the hell it was doing all the way over in Guinea.

[Marrah_G]

29. There are a number of different strains

There was an outbreak near there in the past in a population of Chimps.

[Marrah_G]

28. They have never found the resevoir host though.

They've spend decades trying to find it. Other animals can get it, but they haven't found the source animal yet.

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. Virus in Guinea capital Conakry not Ebola

Tests on suspected cases of deadly Ebola virus in Guinea's capital Conakry are negative, health officials say.

On Sunday, UN officials said that the virus had spread to the capital, a port city of up to two million, from remote forests in the south, where some 59 people have died.

But a World Health Organization spokesman told the BBC the Conakry tests had come back negative.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-26717490

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. Guinea Ebola outbreak: Bat-eating banned to curb virus

Guinea has banned the sale and consumption of bats to prevent the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, its health minister has said.

Bats, a local delicacy, appeared to be the "main agents" for the Ebola outbreak in the south, Rene Lamah said.

Sixty-two people have now been killed by the virus in Guinea, with suspected cases reported in neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.
...
People who eat the animals often boil them into a sort of spicy pepper soup, our correspondent says. The soup is sold in village stores where people gather to drink alcohol.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-26735118