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I don't think luck is involved. Ebola is _hard_ to transmit. It requires direct contact with body fluids. As we've already seen, health care workers are at some risk. The general public is not.>>
>>So you do not believe that the virus is capable of mutating?
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>Of course, it's capable of mutating. But Ebola has been around for decades and to the best of my knowledge, has never mutated to airborne transmission and apparently, that kind of mutation is non-trivial:
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-the-ebola-virus-will-go-airborne/>
>Tamar
Not only is it capable of mutating, it actually went through mutations across West Africa. But, to the best of my awareness, none of the mutations changed the method of transmission.
When AIDS became the huge topic in the mid-late 1980's, that was also a fear - that the virus would evolve/mutate.
While I can't position this in scientific terms, there does seem to be a distinction between what "can happen" and "what does happen". And I'll go back to the AIDS/HIV issue. In the early 1990's I was living in Atlanta and got to hear much of the talk from the CDC. There was a major story about whether "deep kissing" could transmit the HIV virus, because (and I'm paraphrasing) of the concentration of dendritic cells in the mouth. The one medical comment I recall that has probably turned out to be true (I think) was someone saying that while it was theoretically possible, it was so mathematically rare.
So while the 2 researches from Minnesota received national attention for stating that Ebola "could" theoretically go airborne if someone sneezes directly at a person, most of the infectious disease experts are responding in ways that remind me of the HIV issue.....that presently there are too many physical respiratory hurdles for that to happen.
The other argument with mutation is whether the virus loses some of its infectious nature. I've heard people make arguments on both sides, and since I'm not a scientist, I don't know how to mentally process those debates.
I'm personally not fearful of Ebola right now.
All I know in my little world is that I've had bronchitis for going on two weeks and finally got a Z-pack today.
