We're doomed!

Either way, you're still dead.

Welcome your new viral overlord.

So most of them died from the fever rather than the bleeding, so that's alright then!

When humans are still dying from the likes of Ebola, Marbourg and other terminal medical conditions how the hell can we just justify University funding for crap like studies into making the perfect bacon sandwich/existence of homosexuality in sheep and whether they pine for absent friends and of course whether beer increases your IQ.

If we had directed the funding properly, I doubt we'd be reading headlines such as this now.

Makes me sick

pctechxp

[So most of them died from the fever rather than the bleeding, so that's alright then!]

Yes, because usually when people catch and subsequently die from an Ebola infection they are liquidated by the virus. Their insides bleed out from *every* orifice, and that blood is teeming with Ebola. Contact with the blood is extremely unwise.

If however the sufferer dies from fever and either doesn't bleed or only bleeds in small quantities then other people are far less likely to become infected and die a quite horrific death.

The other advantage is that researches now have a new strain to look at. They can hopefully see which changes in its make up make it less dangerous and use that information to design a vaccine.

I bet the monkies are laughing at us now. We thought we had the upper hand, we could butcher them in their homes, but between Ebola and HIV the tables are starting to turn...

"Makes me sick"

Symptoms of Ebola hemorrhagic fever range from fever, "VOMITING", and diarrhoea to internal and external bleeding,

Oh oh...

In order to do research on ebola, you need to be a virologist or microbiologist, and you have to be willing to work with wildly contageous and deadly viruses. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather study homosexuality in nice wooly sheep. Maybe ebola research is fully funded after all.

It's also interesting that your community gets a say in whether to let you build a lab for studying incredibly dangerous viruses. They get all paranoid and start mumbling about bioweapons research when the word "ebola" surfaces. Hardly anyone cares what you do to sheep (except perhaps the sheep), since the general alternative is for them to be cut up and eaten.

Since Ebola usually kills 50-90% of those infected (WHO statistics), and here only 16 out of 51 cases - or slightly over 31% - were fatal then, yes, mild is the correct expression.

Mild for Ebola, that is.

Here's hoping this means someone can develop a treatment, and that the Great Moneygrubbing Multinationals will make the treatment/vaccine available to those who most need it, although said people are usually as poor as churchmice it's as likely as fried pig wings in barbecue sauce.

(where's the icon for "stomps off, muttering darkly under his/her breath"?)

One reason Ebola has not turned into a pandemic is because it is too virulent. It is a stupid virus that (a) lives in a under-populated jungle, (b) away from major transport links and (c) kills its hosts so fast when (d) it can only survive for short periods outside a live human.

Mild Ebola may be just what's needed to give Bird Flu a run for its money.

There were 16 deaths total out of 51 infected. MOST of those 16 died from fever rather than the norm for Ebola: bleeding out. NORMAL Ebola has a kill rate of about 90% or higher. This new one is mild in comparison, having (thus far) a "mere" 31% kill rate.

Directing scientific funding fundamentally doesn't work.

Scientific research is incredibly unpredictable. You never know *where* the really interesting results are going to come from. What if it turns out that homosexual sheep don't get scrapie? It could yield a treatment for spongiform encephalopothies, and that has a far bigger medical payoff than a cure for ebola.

And it's good to keep risk levels in mind too. Eboal deaths are graphic, but the total number of recorded deaths from ebola is less than the number of people killed *every year* by acetaminophen (Tylenol) poisoning.

As for the perfect bacon sandwich, I'm willing to fund any research into improving the bacon. That's better than research into improving orgasms.

'I'd rather study homosexuality in nice wooly sheep'... You're not Welsh by chance??

:-)

but I can reaosnably expect to see many bacon sandwiches.

The trick is to be able to tolerate more than one person thinking about more than one thing.

Ooooh, don't confuse the manichean simpletons...