Truly sad...Sure, it is yet another ebola post

A team of health care workers in Guinea were murdered as they tried to raise awareness about the deadly Ebola virus.

I know that ebola has a huge stigma issue surrounding it, but this seems way over the top for human behavior. There is much fear and loathing in the ebola stricken areas of West Africa.

Bloomberg is reporting that that the worst case scenario for ebola cases in West Africa could be more than 500,000 cases.

That is very, very bad.

This is far, far worse.

From a tin-foil hat website: VIROLOGIST: 'IT’S TOO LATE, EBOLA WILL KILL 5 MILLION’The article cites Canadian researchers as stating that that "the virus has likely gone airborne."

Surely this can take place under specific conditions. In Reston, VA it was strongly suspected that ebola Reston(EBOVR) was at least partly transmitted via the aerosol route. Since EBOVR is almost a twin to EBOV(formerly ebola Zaire), it doesn't take a virologist to at least wonder that the aerosol transmission route is at least possible.

That is one of the problems with emergent diseases. 40 years of study with--until now--relatively few cases does not produce enough data to state things like transmission routes in all situations with authority. Of course the virus is under selective pressure as well. This is not a directed event.

Ebola could almost as easily mutate into a form asymptomatic to humans, as becoming more transmissible. The selective differences may be quite small, but a drift towards higher transmissibility would lead to the virus replicating more easily. Hence, those virii that randomly came equipped with a higher transmissibility rate would tend to out-multiply in the host organisms and lead to higher and higher levels of itself. Natural selection in action. Not the most cheery thought on a Friday, but one that bears keeping in the back of one's head.

I am deeply curious as to what those 395 mutations found thus far in the current outbreak are capable. Anyone can do selective pressure algebra. The key is to have a clear sense of the value of one trait versus another. I cannot give you those figures for ebola virus, as I do not know them. It is really this simple. Sure I picked the Peppered Moth example. It is a good one as the two colorforms pre-existed the selective pressure(s). Population genetics are--in this case--very simple.

For further reading, I recommend Sean B. Carroll's The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution. Carroll lays out some simple examples of selective pressures, and the math is nothing more than basic algebra. It is not like attempting to digest S. Wright, R.A. Fisher and/or J.B.S. Haldane's mathematical treatments that really ushered in the 'modern synthesis.' Sean B. Carroll's other fabulous book: Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo is a must read. I should note that I hold S.B. Carroll in the highest regard. While he is not a prolific author, his books enable most any curious reader to peer into very modern biology with wit and insight; and he never talks down to his audience. I have read four of his six works published for the non-scientist, and he never fails to educate and amuse. His books are, if anything, too quickly over!