There’s No Need To Panic…But Don’t Be Stupid

Ebola is some scary stuff.  It turns your immune system into an internal ‘self-destruct’ mechanism, can be contracted from animals (fruit bats are its natural host…and they fly) and most of the time, 55% in the latest outbreak, it’ll kill you (compare: the 1918 Flu Pandemic had a death rate under 20%).

I’d call the healthcare workers going to West Africa to deal with the Ebola outbreak heroic…maybe a little crazy, but definitely heroic.  But when two of those heroes who’d contracted Ebola were brought back to America for treatment, I got a little anxious.  If one drop of infected blood gets on one un-quarantined person, in 2 to 21 days the disease is introduced to the American population.  And it wouldn’t be the first time Ebola laden blood has leaked on American soil.

Human Ebola hasn’t been a threat here in the US, but back in 1989 one-hundred Crab-Eating Macaques flew from their origin in the Philippines, through Tokyo, Taipei, Amsterdam and New York City, to a Government primate quarantine facility in Reston, VA.  Within a month all one-hundred of the monkeys were dead.

A vet performed several necropsies on the dead animals, concluded Simian Hemorrhagic Fever Virus (SHFV) and sent frozen samples wrapped in foil to the U. S. Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease at Fort Detrick for confirmation.  By the time the samples reached the level-4 biohazard facility, complete with its  multiple airlocks, biohazard suits, top level security clearance and plenty of paranoia, they’d thawed and were leaking.

As the big boys at USAMRIID were analyzing samples, other monkeys back at Reston were dying.  The tests showed it wasn’t SHFV but Ebola that’d killed the macaques.  What’s more, the monkeys now dying had had no exposure to the Pilipino monkeys except through the ventilation system.  Reston-Ebola, though not a human pathogen, appeared to be an airborne (Ebola strains affecting man have been associated with direct-contact transmission only).

All remaining monkeys were euthanized, the facility decontaminated (using vaporized formaldehyde), one of the monkey handlers was hospitalized with a heart condition and another with high fever and nausea but presumable not from Ebola.  Had this strain affected humans, families, friends and passing strangers would’ve been exposed before its danger was realized.  An unsuspecting America would have been smacked with deadly repercussions and a body count.

Probably because of its quick contact-to-death timing and (currently) direct contact only transmission method, human pathogenic forms of Ebola don’t threaten a pandemic.  But viruses evolve.  A non-human form has already shown a probability of having gone airborne. 

In the latest outbreak the ‘index case’ (first human to get the disease) appears to be a 2-year-old in Guiana.  The child, a sibling, the mother and grandmother died before the virus escaped to a healthcare worker and then on to a couple thousand others.  The toddler probably got it from contact with a fruit bat but not necessarily from direct contact, maybe from droppings or consuming a piece of fruit a bat had eaten on; or from any number of animal species (many are vectors).  It’s tragic but it’s not a first.  As you consider public safety, there’s no need to panic…but don’t be stupid.