One thing ends(waiting for the whyPhone) and one thing is really only beginning(the ebola outbreaks)

Apple released details and pricing of the the various whyPhone 6 yesterday. It's odd, my $30 LG Android phone w/KitKat has a microSD slot--it even came with a paltry 4GB card installed--Apple still does not offer expandability in any whyPhone. My $30 expandable phone is also unlocked. A 64GB iPhone (not the special model, but whyPhone Lite) is $300. I snagged a 64GB class 10 card for $28. Is my phone as good as the iPhione 6 Lite? I dunno. My phone is pretty fast, it is unlocked, and now sports 72GB of memory for nearly 90% less.

I should add that my phone is not jailbroken either. I am sure Apple will sell lots of them. I hope so, as two semiconductor companies in which I have a vested interest in are whyPhone chip suppliers.

No one I know is pining for the whyWatch.

That may not be saying much as the people I discuss such matters with are timepiece purists. It looks like a $350 novelty.

Time claims that we "What We Know About Ebola Hasn’t Changed Much".

I think it more accurate to state that Time does not know much about ebola. Even given that ebola first entered the lexicon in 1976, much more is known about ebola than My Pet Illness: Borreliosis.

Heck, the Russians know enough about ebola to have reportedly have recombined ebola and Smallpox(variola major) into a bioweapon. It has been reported that this macabre weapon was discarded as it did not increase the fatality rate of one of the agents. The hyper virulent India-1 strain of smallpox is really scary.

I know, insertion of genes into at least some pox viruses can be done by any real researcher in the field of virology...and even by people with less training as once one is shown the technique, it is pretty mechanical.

Time does have newer case rates than has been widely reported. Again, in this case I really loathe being correct about the trajectory of the outbreak. It is now breathtaking, and getting worse with each passing day.

I need to steer this boat back on course.

Time is certainly aware that ebola research has been going on at USAMRIID since 1976<<--that article is a smasher!

I am sure that this is a real page turner: Filoviruses: A Compendium of 40 Years of Epidemiological, Clinical, and Laboratory Studies. The pub. is dated to 2007, and lots more has been done since then. A blurb:

The author details the history of all Marburg and Ebola outbreaks during the 40 years from the discovery of Marburg in 1967 to the latest Marburg outbreak in 2007 in Uganda, including difficult-to-find information. The clinical and pathologic presentations of Ebola and Marburg diseases in human and animal models contain a substantial number of black and white and color illustrations. With the range of the Ebola and Marburg viruses still unknown and the search for the animal reservoirs ongoing, antibody serosurveys in humans and animals have been conducted in most countries in Africa and in the Philippines after the Ebola Reston outbreaks; Kuhn dedicates a long chapter to this subject. All animal species tested are presented in tables but, more interestingly, also indexed at the end of the book. This information is particularly valuable for ecologists and epidemiologists searching for the reservoir of filoviruses.

Kuhn explains the structure and replication of the filoviruses, with the actual role of each gene of the virus from entry into the target cells to production of infectious virus. He lists diagnosis techniques and experimental treatments of the Marburg and Ebola diseases, from the traditional healers to the molecular antisenses RNA approaches. In the past 10 years, preexposure and postexposures vaccinations have resulted in tremendous progress in schedules, routes of administration, and more importantly, understanding mechanisms of action. Lack or efficacy of inactivated and live-attenuated constructs is reviewed of all testing in available animal models.

The CDC has 2,880 articles that at least mention ebola in just the Emerging Infectious Diseases module of the website. As much as Time may not acknowledge it, USAMRIID, the CDC, the WHO, and others have full time ebola researchers. USAMRIID, the CDC, and the WHO had all sent teams to Africa by 1980 in the midst of outbreaks. One has to wonder if Time's writers read The Hot Zone, and thought research on ebola stopped in 1994. I should note here that Preston's book is so antiquated as to be of nearly no use in understanding the current state of ebola research.

No doubt there will be lots of really awful books about the current African outbreaks.

One really good treatment of the outbreaks may be written sans Preston's anthropomorphisms.

What is really needed for a lay audience--and this includes me--is a treatment on a par with Siddhartha Mukherjee's treatment of cancers as found in: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer or John M. Barry's The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. Mukherjee's book is a really fantastic book; as a book. Batty's book is for readers that want the whole story. It could be excruciatingly boring to some people as much of the book is dedicated to the sociology behind how modern medicine came to be practiced. If you want it all, Barry's exhaustive work is a gem.

As I typed those last few sentences out I can see a need for both types of books. Should they be penned, I will own both.