Originally Posted by
Stephanie
To just quickly snap back to an earlier post re viral mutation -- I think you mentioned how people get a flu jab every season.
The reason people have to get a flu jab every season is because the flu virus is one of those that mutates rapidly.
Last year's vaccine would not be effective against this year's strain.
Some viruses are volatile (like flu/cold viruses) , others are more steady : Hep B for example. Hep A. Chicken pox.
Small pox (before it was eradicated). Rubella , Polio , etc.
Even HIV is a fairly steady virus compared to the flu.
The danger with viruses is that they constantly mutate. Imagine Darwin's Evolution theory on steroids :
With every generation there might be a slight change in the traits of an individual animal/organism , a slight change in
genetic makeup . Some of these changes will be beneficial to that organism and it will thrive / survive and carry on those
new genes , other mutations will be null or detrimental and that organism will be at a disadvantage and may die off.
Now if you look at this on the viral level , you may be talking about a new generation of organisms every single day
(within a single infected person) , or the very least every single time the virus travels from one host to another.
To try to put it simply : patient Zero in the current outbreak was a two year old little kid in Guinea , he became ill with
Ebola and died last year December. (<<< that was ten months ago !).
Ever since that original case , every time this strain of virus infected a new host (a new person becoming ill) , it had a
chance to mutate , and mutate it does.
As a crude analogy , imagine a blind man shooting an AK47 in an enclosed space. Eventually he will hit something , no ?
In the case of Ebola , the fear is that while this virus is 'shooting blindly' in its mutations , sooner or later it will hit the
target and may become truly airborne (like the flu or cold that we are familiar with : aerosolised particles can hang in the
air for an extended period of time , can travel on the slightest draft in a room , can infect someone standing 12-20 feet away).
At the moment Ebola is not as airborne as the flu , but it is airborne enough to infect you if you are in close proximity
of a person who is showing active signs of the illness. : fever , headache , upset stomach , etc.
And those symptoms sound just like an any- Sunday hangover , no ?
Would you go punting ? Would a bloke fresh off a plane go punting ?
Many would of course , and I think that's why awareness and public education and information is so important.
Look at what happens without it !
So long we don't have it in the country we are cool.
Can you predict if/when it will get here ?