Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Dufnis. We
Speaker 1: are back from a short little break there, for a
Speaker 1: little summer break, and we're here to talk about really
Speaker 1: an important topic, especially at this at this time, and
Speaker 1: that is the topic of in bola. That's right today,
Speaker 1: just for fultonsperiency is August six, So where we are
Speaker 1: in this process will probably change by the time it
Speaker 1: gets your earlobes. But we did want to discuss it
Speaker 1: because it has picked up obviously so much traction in
Speaker 1: the last couple of weeks here. Yeah, I mean, just
Speaker 1: the word ebola on its own, especially right now, is
Speaker 1: enough to just summon all these feelings of fear, these
Speaker 1: feelings of personal body horror, uh, and even xenophobia. I
Speaker 1: mean you see that popping up, especially all over social media,
Speaker 1: where it's suddenly these attitudes of keep it over there,
Speaker 1: keep people away from me, I'm gonna lock myself with
Speaker 1: my home and no strangers allowed kind of mentality. Um,
Speaker 1: But you don't have to give into the full on fear,
Speaker 1: the full and paranoia, uh, certainly Ebola is a very
Speaker 1: dangerous virus, and we're going to discuss why it's dangerous
Speaker 1: and and and why it is UH pivotal that we
Speaker 1: that we focus on it. UH. But in this episode,
Speaker 1: we want to we want to lay out the science
Speaker 1: of ebola, the science of the of a Bola virus
Speaker 1: disease and UH and discuss what it is, how we're
Speaker 1: fighting it and UH and and hopefully you'll leave this
Speaker 1: podcast with a lot more information about what's going on
Speaker 1: in the world right now with it. Yeah, because it
Speaker 1: can be overwhelming to hear the statistics and to hear
Speaker 1: how it spreads. And I have to say, I think
Speaker 1: that's some news meeting outlets don't necessarily give it the
Speaker 1: context that it needs. So you have all these sort
Speaker 1: of free floating facts out there that can really inspire
Speaker 1: UM a lot of fear in people. And here's here's
Speaker 1: a good example. This is, you know, the worst outbreak
Speaker 1: of evil of this virus and history UM happening right
Speaker 1: now in West Africa, is claimed more than seven lives
Speaker 1: and this is according to the latest count from the
Speaker 1: World Health Organization. And we have deaths occurring in Sierra Leone, Liberia,
Speaker 1: Guinea and Nigeria. So I'm sure you guys have all
Speaker 1: heard about this and that it is spreading. In fact um,
Speaker 1: Margaret Chan, who is the chief of the World Health Organization,
Speaker 1: said that this outbreak is moving faster than efforts to
Speaker 1: control it. All of that sounds a little a bit chilling,
Speaker 1: But we'll discuss more about why this is and give
Speaker 1: it a better context so that we don't react to
Speaker 1: it in a way that's fear based, and hopefully we
Speaker 1: can come to this conversation with with more thoughts on
Speaker 1: how it's actually working and why it's spreading quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean on top of that, of course, the
Speaker 1: other side of the equation here is that that we
Speaker 1: have two American AID workers from blind Berria that are UH.
Speaker 1: They are currently in Atlanta right here where we record
Speaker 1: the show UH to receive treatment from Emory and the
Speaker 1: CDC Special Treatment facilities, and people have responded to that
Speaker 1: with varying levels of fear and paranoid like I have
Speaker 1: you Have you even seen it on the the stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind Facebook message board where we have
Speaker 1: we have a lot of followers now, so that's different
Speaker 1: demographics are are represented there. But I've seen comments like,
Speaker 1: you know, of course, keep them away, don't bring it here,
Speaker 1: or or what if the plane crashes, or and and
Speaker 1: a lot of this is it's you know, there there
Speaker 1: are several different forces at work here. I mean, part
Speaker 1: of it is, you know, people are tuning into UM
Speaker 1: even in just in their peripheries, into a into a
Speaker 1: twenty four hour cable news cycle that has to really
Speaker 1: ride stories like this until the horse collapses, uh and
Speaker 1: get as much as much juice out of it, as
Speaker 1: much fear as possible. You're you're also dealing with people
Speaker 1: who have with the people who have depended on movies
Speaker 1: for a lot of their understanding of of what what
Speaker 1: the pandemics and epidemics that consists of. I mean, even
Speaker 1: right now, one of the more immediate examples that comes
Speaker 1: to mind is there's just a show on effects called
Speaker 1: The Strain with a vampire pathogen and granted nobody's looking
Speaker 1: at that would I would imagine and and seeing anything
Speaker 1: other than fiction there, But there's enough uh reality in
Speaker 1: the coloring of that show that that it ends up
Speaker 1: informing your perception of what it means to bring UM
Speaker 1: a pathogen into the country. But you know, particularly when
Speaker 1: you consider, too, that bats are peripherally involved with this virus,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in a moment. Um. This is
Speaker 1: from Time magazine writer Scott z Burns. He says, the
Speaker 1: people who are infected with ebola developed a screenwriter's list
Speaker 1: of symptoms, bleeding from the mouth, nail beds, and eyes,
Speaker 1: as their capillaries disintegrate inside them, their brains awash in
Speaker 1: the blood of hemorrhagic fever, become deranged, and there is
Speaker 1: no vaccine, there is no cure approved for use. So again,
Speaker 1: to your point, this has a filmic quality to it,
Speaker 1: and you can't help sort of run with some of
Speaker 1: that now, and you would be so silly, I must said, too,
Speaker 1: can be completely you know, unfazed by that description. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is a fearful reality that we're talking about there.
Speaker 1: It is also a sensationalized version of this too, and
Speaker 1: we'll get into that when we talk about symptoms. But
Speaker 1: let's just tether this to to some other information. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody knows this, but I think it's it's
Speaker 1: helpful to just repeat it. Um, we're talking about human
Speaker 1: to human transmission are occurring as a result of close
Speaker 1: contact with blood secretions or tissues from patients where the
Speaker 1: virus can travel to a new victim through mucostal surfaces
Speaker 1: or breaks in the skin. So this is not something
Speaker 1: that you can catch in the air. Um. Again, that's
Speaker 1: just I feel like that must be grounded in our
Speaker 1: imaginations here, because otherwise we can kind of run well
Speaker 1: with this. And I think hence your point about the
Speaker 1: message board and oh what if the train of the
Speaker 1: plane goes down, and what if it spreads from person
Speaker 1: to person? Yeah, yeah, we we do not see that
Speaker 1: in the in the in the variations of abola that
Speaker 1: we're talking about here. Um, it's not the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that is that a healthy looking stranger on a
Speaker 1: train is going to cough in your general vicinity and
Speaker 1: then you're gonna catch it. No, but it would in
Speaker 1: the film. It would in the film, of course, because
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's the kind of fearful pathogen that you
Speaker 1: want to base a movie around. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: down to brass tacks and talk about this virus. Yes,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it is important to just start at the
Speaker 1: very basics. We are talking about a virus, and a
Speaker 1: virus is a small infectious agent that replicates only inside
Speaker 1: the living cells of other organisms. Biological viral infections are
Speaker 1: spread by the virus, which is essentially a small shell
Speaker 1: containing a genetic material, and it injects its content into
Speaker 1: a far larger organism cell and so then that cell
Speaker 1: is infected and eventually transformed into a biological factory producing
Speaker 1: replicants of the virus. So you know, it's it's the
Speaker 1: basic genetic mission of any organism at a very simple level.
Speaker 1: It just gets in there, it makes more copies of
Speaker 1: itself and pumps those out. Um. But of course it's
Speaker 1: a it's an invader, and there are uh, with any virus,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be there's there's the potential for for varying
Speaker 1: ill effects and uh, and that's the problem, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so the Ebola virus that we're talking about here
Speaker 1: is a is a philovirus belonging to the virus family
Speaker 1: Philo variety. So far, we've only identified two members of
Speaker 1: this family, the Marburg virus and the Ebola virus, and
Speaker 1: of a Bola viruses we've identified five species. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: the Thai forest formerly known as the Ivory Coast ebola.
Speaker 1: There's Sudanese Ebola, there's Zaire Ebola, there's rest in Bola Ebola,
Speaker 1: and Bunda bug Yo. Yeah, and the one that is
Speaker 1: taking hold right now in Western Africa is the Zaire strain. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: the rest of his strain is an interesting one. If
Speaker 1: you guys want to find out more about that, check
Speaker 1: out the how stuff works article how Ebola works, because
Speaker 1: that kind of goes into that strain which is not
Speaker 1: dead lady humans. It is among other animals, but not
Speaker 1: to us. And that one originally in the Philippines apparently
Speaker 1: that did, but it has made its way into the US.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to spend a long time on
Speaker 1: that one because it really truly isn't deadly to humans. Uh.
Speaker 1: But the article has a great treatment of it and
Speaker 1: great information about it. So if you look at this
Speaker 1: at the philovirus virons of iron being the individual virus um,
Speaker 1: it may appear in various shapes, including long or branched
Speaker 1: filaments as well as a shorter filaments that may look
Speaker 1: like a six or a U or a circle. By now,
Speaker 1: I feel like every article you found on find online
Speaker 1: about ebola is kind of using the same image of
Speaker 1: the viron. So just think of a colorful shoe lace,
Speaker 1: and you kind of have the idea of what you're
Speaker 1: looking at. Yeah, it's that blue shoelace among the red tissue.
Speaker 1: And this is a small crater. We're talking filaments to
Speaker 1: measure up to fourteen tho nanometers in length. They have
Speaker 1: a uniform diameter about eighty nanometers and they're enveloped by
Speaker 1: a fatty membrane. And each viron contains one molecule of
Speaker 1: single strand negative sense RNA. So it's it's a very
Speaker 1: simple little creature. This is I mean to even call
Speaker 1: it a virus, a creature. You get into a lot
Speaker 1: of uh contested space there, but it's a it's a
Speaker 1: very simple element in the body that causes this. But
Speaker 1: it begins replicating and that's where the problem. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: scientists don't have all the details about how evil it
Speaker 1: works in the body, but they do have a handful
Speaker 1: of facts. Um, you just mentioned a couple. The Ebola
Speaker 1: virus is most closely related to the viruses that cause
Speaker 1: measles and monks. And one of the proteins, and it
Speaker 1: is suspected to be the superpower of the ebola is
Speaker 1: called glycoprotein, and it binds to host cells, so that
Speaker 1: the virus can enter and then replicate, and the other
Speaker 1: version is then released from the infected cell and may
Speaker 1: play a role in suppressing the immune system. And then
Speaker 1: the virus is pretty much impartial and will infect a
Speaker 1: wide range of cells in our bodies, but early on
Speaker 1: typically it goes after those associated with the immune system. So,
Speaker 1: just to give a little history on an ebola here,
Speaker 1: this is not one of those illnesses that we have,
Speaker 1: you know, ancient records of. If we go back to
Speaker 1: the ninety seven that's when lab workers in Germany and
Speaker 1: Yugoslavia were handling tissues from green monkeys and they developed
Speaker 1: hemorrhagic fever and we ended up identifying the Marburg virus um.
Speaker 1: There were thirty one cases seven deaths so associated with
Speaker 1: this particular outbreak, and the virus was named after Marbor,
Speaker 1: Germany because that was the side of one of the outbreaks. Now,
Speaker 1: fortunately we haven't seen that many outbreaks of Marburg virus
Speaker 1: over the years. The worst of these was two thousand four,
Speaker 1: two thousand five outbreak angola, and that claimed two fifty
Speaker 1: lives with death rate. But but so far that's been
Speaker 1: the worst of Marburg. Now, as far as I Bola
Speaker 1: virus goes. We first identified that in seventy six when
Speaker 1: two outbreaks occurred in northern Zaire and in southern Sudan,
Speaker 1: and these both occurred in the in the area of
Speaker 1: the Ebola River. Thus the name in Bola virus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to just get into a little bit
Speaker 1: of detail of one of those cases, the one and
Speaker 1: then in the then country Zaire Um that was in
Speaker 1: as you say, and that wasn't a man named Mabolo,
Speaker 1: and he had some symptoms of a really high fever
Speaker 1: and they thought, okay, malaria, right, and they used the
Speaker 1: drug Quinnona on him. It was administered to and with
Speaker 1: a needle. And because medical supplies were in in really
Speaker 1: short supply, a needle in high demand, they use that
Speaker 1: needle over and over again, and that just infected scores
Speaker 1: of other hospital patients. Now, a month later, Maballo died
Speaker 1: and his family performed the ritual burial of removing all
Speaker 1: food and waste from his body with their bare hands.
Speaker 1: So this is you've probably seen this in the media
Speaker 1: before that this is part of the burial ritual. Weeks later,
Speaker 1: eighteen of the family members participating in the ritual died,
Speaker 1: and since then ebola has reserve for something like twenty times,
Speaker 1: spreading farther and farther out, perhaps because of bats and
Speaker 1: and changing conditions due to climate change. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that in a moment um. But I think
Speaker 1: that that example kind of sets the stage for what
Speaker 1: we're seeing today. Yeah, key there, especially the handling of
Speaker 1: dead bodies and close contact with sick individuals during the
Speaker 1: depths of their sickness. Yeah. And of course now we
Speaker 1: have disposal methods in place for a new needles that's known,
Speaker 1: but that was sort of the first vector there. Yea. Now,
Speaker 1: so you mentioned the bats, and currently sciences scientists believe
Speaker 1: that bats are likely the reservoir host for a bola. Now,
Speaker 1: reservoir host can harbor a pathogen indefinitely with no ill effects.
Speaker 1: But we've also seen ebola spread through guerrillas, chimps, and
Speaker 1: uh a duker, which is a type of antelope. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in these cases, uh, they're often deadly results uh.
Speaker 1: Though some also think that non human primates are just
Speaker 1: more or less an accidental host, much like human beings.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned uh only mentioned Scott z Burns earlier
Speaker 1: that pizza. He wrote for Time magazine opinion piece titled Contagion,
Speaker 1: screenwriter Ebola isn't the pandemic fear is. He has just
Speaker 1: a little bit at the beginning where he mentioned the bat.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to read that because I thought it
Speaker 1: was so concisely put. He says, there is an animal
Speaker 1: somewhere in Africa, most likely a bat, that has worked
Speaker 1: out an arrangement with a microscopic agent. The deal is this,
Speaker 1: the agent won't kill the bat if the bat will
Speaker 1: transport it to other warm blooded animals and give it
Speaker 1: a chance to do its gruesome work. All the bat
Speaker 1: had to do to enter this arrangement was built up
Speaker 1: resistance to the agent over generations and become a good
Speaker 1: hiding place and then continue about its business of being
Speaker 1: a bat. I like that because that really gets to
Speaker 1: the heart of again, what is a bola from from
Speaker 1: a biological standpoint? How does it fit into the environment.
Speaker 1: Because it's easy to just think of these diseases it's
Speaker 1: just an absolute sort of evil, awful thing that rises
Speaker 1: up and destroys and without remembering that, it is, like
Speaker 1: everything else, just fulfilling a genetic mission. It is a
Speaker 1: classic zoo nootic disease meaning that occurs naturally in animals
Speaker 1: but can be transmitted to humans. And it does look
Speaker 1: like bats are their best chance. As you say, they
Speaker 1: have built up an immunity. And according to the World
Speaker 1: Health Organization, pig farms in Africa can play a role
Speaker 1: in the amplification of infection because of the pres sense
Speaker 1: of fruit bats on these farms. And if you think
Speaker 1: about these pigs being infected and then being slaughtered, and
Speaker 1: if the practices aren't really very clearly done to specifications
Speaker 1: that UH would not allow a person to get infected
Speaker 1: in under their nails or you know, in their saliva
Speaker 1: on accident, then there you go. You've got transmission of
Speaker 1: the disease. Moreover, the areas in which fruit bats are
Speaker 1: dwellings seem to get further and further out in Africa,
Speaker 1: and this is thought because of the changing conditions due
Speaker 1: to global warming. So again you see this spread happening.
Speaker 1: This is these are these are all these sort of
Speaker 1: component parts of why the virus is spreading quickly. So
Speaker 1: there we see the jump from animals to humans because
Speaker 1: it may happen because of close contact with these with
Speaker 1: these pigs we've been in contact with the bats. It
Speaker 1: may occur from eating bush meat. You're eating ape, you're
Speaker 1: eating uh uh, you know, chump, you're eating bad and
Speaker 1: and and and and catching it that way. And then
Speaker 1: once it's in humans, then there's of course more potential
Speaker 1: to spread through burial practices, through caring for sick individuals
Speaker 1: coming into contact with their with their diarrhea, with their vomit,
Speaker 1: with their blood. Um. Furthermore, men who have recovered from
Speaker 1: the disease can stial transmit the virus through their semen
Speaker 1: throughout the seven weeks following the illness. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things about a bow in one
Speaker 1: of the facts that you here repeated again again that
Speaker 1: I Bola remains active for for an extended period of
Speaker 1: time here. Yeah. Now, compounding that, of course, is just
Speaker 1: you know, a distrust of government officials, a distrust of
Speaker 1: UM medical facilities and medical workers and UM. Imagine too,
Speaker 1: someone trying to quarantine your family member and how upsetting
Speaker 1: that would be to you, or how upsetting it would
Speaker 1: be to you if there was a certain burial tradition
Speaker 1: that you were family UM in your community had always
Speaker 1: engaged in. And then we're told to stop because as
Speaker 1: we know, these are the sort of traditions are are
Speaker 1: deeply ingrained in us and part of the healing process,
Speaker 1: and to be told that you can't do that probably feels,
Speaker 1: you know, it's probably fueling some of that distrust towards
Speaker 1: people in official positions to try to put a stop
Speaker 1: to the spread. Now, the other thing to consider is
Speaker 1: that these parts of the world, these some of these
Speaker 1: countries have been hard hit over the decades with war,
Speaker 1: with many other different types of strife. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, one thing after another, and you
Speaker 1: have a community of people who they're only sort of
Speaker 1: way of dealing with life day to day is each
Speaker 1: other in the sort of bomb that they have, so
Speaker 1: trying to you know, these outside organizations coming in and
Speaker 1: trying to give them these directions probably feels very sort
Speaker 1: of alien to them and um and sort of disruptive
Speaker 1: of the ways that they have survived in the past.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a quick break, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're gonna get into these symptoms that
Speaker 1: occur as this virus spreads through a human host. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're back, and uh, as we continue to talk about
Speaker 1: ebola here and now, it's the point where we need
Speaker 1: to get into how the infection spreads in through the
Speaker 1: body and the various symptoms that they occur. Now, this
Speaker 1: is this is likely some of the material that you've
Speaker 1: you've definitely uh encountered already just through media consumption of
Speaker 1: the ongoing crisis. But if you remember, we talked about
Speaker 1: the virus in the cell and and how the virus
Speaker 1: needs to invade the cell and turn the cell into
Speaker 1: a virus producing factory. And what happens then is the
Speaker 1: virons burst out of the cells and begin producing the
Speaker 1: protein ebola virus glycoprotein and attaches to the cells on
Speaker 1: the inside of the blood vessels. So this is where
Speaker 1: things start getting um interesting because this increases the permeability
Speaker 1: of the blood vessels and blood leaks out of the vessels,
Speaker 1: and it also affects the body's ability to coagulate and
Speaker 1: thicken the blood. Yeah, because all of those things are
Speaker 1: triggering these chemical responses that we begin to see as symptoms. Now,
Speaker 1: when ebola enters a human being, it kind of hangs
Speaker 1: out seemingly harmless for about two to twenty one days,
Speaker 1: typically more four to ten, and then you get to
Speaker 1: see those symptoms come first. You see fever, chill, headache,
Speaker 1: muscle and joint aches, and tiredness, and then it begins
Speaker 1: to get uh much more intense. Yeah, and when the
Speaker 1: immune system fights back, the ebola actually works to elude it.
Speaker 1: It blocks the signaling to cells called neutrophils, and these
Speaker 1: are white blood cells that are in charge of sounding
Speaker 1: the alarm basically and uh so. And then on top
Speaker 1: of that, ebola will actually infect immune cells and hitchhike
Speaker 1: to organs such as the liver, the kidney, displein, and
Speaker 1: the brain. Yeah, we thought about the ability of virus
Speaker 1: to do that with the neutrophiles. It's kind of fascinating
Speaker 1: that they can game the immune system like that. Alright, So,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, we're looking at an incubation period about
Speaker 1: four to nine days after exposure, but it may last
Speaker 1: up to twenty one and then that's where the course
Speaker 1: of the illness really gets going. Um usually last between
Speaker 1: six and ten days. Uh. Days one through three, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're looking at flu like symptoms and just a general
Speaker 1: feeling of bodily weakness. Days four through seven. Uh. Patients
Speaker 1: may also get vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, low blood pressure, headaches
Speaker 1: and anemia. Yeah, and some of them will develop a
Speaker 1: rash on their trunk and their shoulders. Right. And then
Speaker 1: days seven through ten, this is where things can get
Speaker 1: far worse. Uh. This is towards the end of the
Speaker 1: illness where you may encounter just fury and feelings of confusion,
Speaker 1: bleeding both internally, uh and externally. And this can also
Speaker 1: progress towards coma shock and death, but not in all cases.
Speaker 1: And that's one thing to keep in mind here at
Speaker 1: all times. Um, you'll you'll often see that nine mortality
Speaker 1: rate thrown out with ebola, but that that is just
Speaker 1: it's more correct to say that the mortality rate can
Speaker 1: be up to with ebola, and it's gonna reach its
Speaker 1: high highest levels in areas where it is not treated
Speaker 1: or not treated effectively. You see that that mortality rate, Um,
Speaker 1: it's still high, but you'll see it go down ten
Speaker 1: and twenty thirty points or thirty points are more in
Speaker 1: cases where the patients are are are actually going to
Speaker 1: be cared for in in a more u sustainable way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And with this zy ear strain that is currently under way,
Speaker 1: in the past has been but I think they've got
Speaker 1: it down to about sixt right now, that's where I've
Speaker 1: seen it hanging out. Yeah, and you probably already mentioned this,
Speaker 1: but I did want to say that the blood does
Speaker 1: start to cot al throughout the body. That's that's it
Speaker 1: causes sort of this breakdown of the organs and the
Speaker 1: failure of organs, and when it's clotting throughout the body,
Speaker 1: that exhaust the supply of proteins that handle clots. So
Speaker 1: that means that when tissue damage occurs in the other
Speaker 1: personal body, those proteins aren't available to do their clotting work,
Speaker 1: and that's where it all begins to break down internally.
Speaker 1: And generally death is not a result of the hemorrhaging,
Speaker 1: but from multi organs failure or shock. Yeah. Now, of
Speaker 1: course not everyone dies from ebola, and when people survive ebola.
Speaker 1: There are a few different factors that that that that
Speaker 1: play a role here. I mean, one, of course, is
Speaker 1: just the overall immune system health of an individual. Is
Speaker 1: this a young person with you know, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: in the prime of their life that have encountered the virus,
Speaker 1: or is this uh an older individual is to someone
Speaker 1: with an already compromised immune system, etcetera. The other factor
Speaker 1: here that that that scientists are still trying to understand
Speaker 1: exactly how it plays plays into this. But how many
Speaker 1: virons does want and up taking into their system? How
Speaker 1: big is the initial viral invasion of your body? Is
Speaker 1: it a small number, is it a larger number? Obviously
Speaker 1: that is thought to play a role as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that might depend on whether the animal or the
Speaker 1: human you are infected from where they were in that illness.
Speaker 1: So as you say, how many virons are present in
Speaker 1: the bloodstreamer, saliva or whatever it was that was the
Speaker 1: infecting um element, So the way that it's transmitted can
Speaker 1: also Uh, it can also influence the mortality rate. For instance,
Speaker 1: needles have a greater mortality rate than say saliva. So
Speaker 1: you're probably wondering at this point, Um, how does one
Speaker 1: treat a bola? How does one treat a bola under
Speaker 1: more or less ideal circumstances in the field in Africa? Well,
Speaker 1: currently no licensed vaccine for ebola is available. That several
Speaker 1: vaccines are being tested, but none are available for clinical use.
Speaker 1: So if you're a severely ill patient with a bola, uh,
Speaker 1: what's generally going to happen is gonna be dehydrated, so
Speaker 1: you're going to require oral hydration with solutions containing electrolytes
Speaker 1: or intravenous fluid, so sailing the infusions and electrolytes to
Speaker 1: keep you hydrated. And beyond that, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: that can be done in the field. However, there are
Speaker 1: some some additional experimental treatments they're making the news and
Speaker 1: in which there is a lot of hope. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: before we get to that, I wanted to say that
Speaker 1: studying is kind of I would say difficult as well,
Speaker 1: because there exists these things called biological safety levels that
Speaker 1: correlate to different types of lab studying different viruses, and
Speaker 1: b LS one is the least life threatening, while BSL
Speaker 1: four is the most. An ebola requires a b s
Speaker 1: L four lab protocol, so scientists have to work in
Speaker 1: space suits with respirators and get decontaminated before entering and
Speaker 1: leaving these labs. And only about a dozen of these
Speaker 1: labs current only exists in the United States. And furthermore,
Speaker 1: because the number of victims has been low relative to
Speaker 1: other diseases right. Malaria is a good example, and the
Speaker 1: outbreaks tend to happen in remote parts of the world.
Speaker 1: A k outside of the United States UM. Because we're
Speaker 1: so American centric um where it's difficult to administer vaccines,
Speaker 1: there hasn't been a lot of industrial support for creating one.
Speaker 1: But given that this outbreak has happened and people are
Speaker 1: now engaged, people are are definitely more interested in finding
Speaker 1: a seroreum that could work. And as you say, there
Speaker 1: have been some reports in the media. I think some
Speaker 1: media outlets have called it a secret theorem, which is
Speaker 1: really problematic. It's not secret. Again, I feel like this
Speaker 1: is this the word serum is so loaded from a
Speaker 1: news sense you can you almost can't help it adds secret,
Speaker 1: secret theorem from a laban. And the fact of the
Speaker 1: matter is is that there's a treatment. There's a drug
Speaker 1: that has been in development and has been used only
Speaker 1: in animals so far, but you could say that about
Speaker 1: nearly any other disease or virus out there. There is
Speaker 1: a drug that is being worked on UM. But as
Speaker 1: we say, the conditions for it going to market haven't
Speaker 1: exactly been like, hey, let's accelerate this until now. So
Speaker 1: the yeah, the the particular treatment in question here, the
Speaker 1: serum is is known as z MAP and uh this
Speaker 1: is uh, this has been developed by a San Diego
Speaker 1: based company, map Bio Biopharmaceutical and it's one of a
Speaker 1: class of new drugs known as monoclonal antibodies, and these
Speaker 1: use uniquely manufactured proteins to prevent in theory, the ebola
Speaker 1: virus from infecting new cells. Um they've also been used
Speaker 1: in the treatment of some cancer, so it's not just
Speaker 1: completely an ebola centric treatment strategy. And so with z MAP,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a three antibody cocktail. Again, not a vaccine,
Speaker 1: but just a way of artificially boosting immune response against
Speaker 1: sugar tag proteins on the outside of the ebola virus.
Speaker 1: And interestingly enough, tobacco plays a role in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but particularly an Australian strain of of the tobacco plant
Speaker 1: is involved in this. And there's actually a division of R. J.
Speaker 1: Reynolds to tobacco that's tied up in the drug trials
Speaker 1: for this. But anyway, in this circumstance, this secret serum,
Speaker 1: if you will, is being administered to the two Americans
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta with it, or has been administered Dr
Speaker 1: Kent Brantley and Missionary Nancy right Ball, that's right, and
Speaker 1: only three doses had ever been created, so two of
Speaker 1: those were used on them, and of course we'll see
Speaker 1: what the results are. Yeah. I think everyone's pretty hopeful
Speaker 1: about it and and also ultimately hopeful about the potential
Speaker 1: here to create a better treatment regime for use in Africa. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, because again, this is this virus just it
Speaker 1: ravages the body, and here we have this opportunity to
Speaker 1: perhaps um lesson suffering and do something about it. Um.
Speaker 1: I did want to share a letter from a listener, Jessica,
Speaker 1: because I think it helps to give a little more
Speaker 1: context to this um. Yeah, because ultimately we are we
Speaker 1: we are not in direct contact with you know, we're
Speaker 1: seeing this from Afar, and she has has been there
Speaker 1: and and say she wanted to share some of her thoughts.
Speaker 1: She said, in two thousand and eight, I traveled to
Speaker 1: Sierra Leone for six week immersion with a large group
Speaker 1: of early twentysomethings. We visited schools and clinics. She put
Speaker 1: quotation marks on this, partly to expand our mindsets, but
Speaker 1: also to provide what little help we could to a
Speaker 1: recovering community. Siriel Leone experienced a horrifically brutal civil war
Speaker 1: from the late ninety nineties to the early two thousands
Speaker 1: and is still attempting to heal. The people of the
Speaker 1: country are truly the friendliest, most open and loving people
Speaker 1: I've ever met in my life changed dramatically in US
Speaker 1: a few weeks I was there. I write because of
Speaker 1: the Ebola happenings, and I've attached photos of what consists
Speaker 1: of available medical care in Freetown, the capital city, which
Speaker 1: is home to nearly one point one million people. Many
Speaker 1: Americans have allowed their fear to get the better of
Speaker 1: them with the recent transport of an infect American doctor
Speaker 1: back to the United States for advanced treatment. What many
Speaker 1: people don't realize is that the standard of care and
Speaker 1: underdeveloped countries doesn't even come close to what we have
Speaker 1: available in the United States. The hospital in Freetown, which
Speaker 1: was still under construction in two thousand and eight, consists
Speaker 1: of a three level, multi room mud brick building with
Speaker 1: running water. However, running water, the luxury that it is,
Speaker 1: isn't sourced from a public water treatment facility like it
Speaker 1: is in the US. It may come from a tap,
Speaker 1: but it's not potable due to ramp at equally and
Speaker 1: lack of proper sanitization. And then she goes on to say,
Speaker 1: when it comes to disease fatality, you cannot consider the
Speaker 1: disease itself in isolation. You must consider the accompanying conditions
Speaker 1: under which has been fatal. Even common diseases such as
Speaker 1: the flu, kills dozens of infants in the US every year,
Speaker 1: consider the social and medical factors in tandem. These are
Speaker 1: cultures that are based on physical contact and closeness. Even
Speaker 1: people you've never met before will greet you with a
Speaker 1: full body embrace. Physical contact for the living and the
Speaker 1: dead provides the basic foundation of many African societies. And
Speaker 1: as for the medical factor, many of these quote treatment
Speaker 1: facilities are little more than four walls and what may
Speaker 1: or may not amount to a solid roof. Thatching and
Speaker 1: tarps are common because they're simply nothing else available, especially
Speaker 1: outside of the quote unquote city. And then she goes
Speaker 1: on in a little bit more detail, and she says,
Speaker 1: top that off with a social fear of modern medicine,
Speaker 1: and you've got the worst conditions possibly for a highly
Speaker 1: communicable disease. Moving and infected US citizen back to high
Speaker 1: level medical care is not only best for him, but
Speaker 1: it's truly in the best interests of research for finding
Speaker 1: effective treatment and a cure, not only now but for
Speaker 1: future outbreaks. I left a large piece of my heart
Speaker 1: in Sierra Leone, and I wish so much to relieve
Speaker 1: their continued suffering. Anything that we can do, we should.
Speaker 1: It's the human thing to do. Thanks so much, Jessica, indeed,
Speaker 1: thank you for writing in then in providing that a
Speaker 1: personal account that that deals with today's topic. So there
Speaker 1: you go, there's ebola in a nutshell. Look at the virus,
Speaker 1: a look at the symptoms, I look at some of
Speaker 1: the treatments available to us, and and overall, you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully this helps to distill some of the fear, uh
Speaker 1: that is that's out there. Yeah, and I hope that
Speaker 1: that you know, it's it's looked at in a different context.
Speaker 1: And when you hear than knowing that in the past
Speaker 1: the ZI year strain has been mortality, but it's not
Speaker 1: it's now. Or if you hear that it's spreading rapidly,
Speaker 1: then it's more understood in the ways that it's being
Speaker 1: um spread. It's not spread in the air. It's spread
Speaker 1: because of these other actors, the extenuating factors, and certainly
Speaker 1: in in a place like the United States, we don't
Speaker 1: even begin to have those factors at play. So for
Speaker 1: people to fear that it could somehow incubate here and
Speaker 1: infect us all and become this pandemic is like highly
Speaker 1: highly unlikely. So yeah, this is not the strain, This
Speaker 1: is not Stephen King's the stand. Uh, this is real life.
Speaker 1: And hopefully we've provided you a little information to go
Speaker 1: on here, and if you want to learn more, do
Speaker 1: check out that article how Ebola works on how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, and of course, uh, the CDC and
Speaker 1: the World Health Organization both have excellent resources about this
Speaker 1: as well. Indeed, I mean, really there's a phenomenal amount
Speaker 1: of of information out there on the web right now
Speaker 1: to douse the fires of paranoia with. But the thing
Speaker 1: is you have to you sort of you have to
Speaker 1: open your eyes, your ears and in your mind and
Speaker 1: actually engage with that information. And know, I do want
Speaker 1: to underline the the urge to to to just give
Speaker 1: into the fear is understandable. I mean it's when you
Speaker 1: when you're when you're faced with some sort of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, deadly virus, you want to run away from it.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's part of our our program. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it well, but we should remember that we've been here
Speaker 1: before and on more intimate terms with the virus and
Speaker 1: I'm talking about H one and one bird flu or stars,
Speaker 1: so um. You know. Again, it's just it's important to
Speaker 1: review the facts and and to try to see what
Speaker 1: sort of cultural lenses on top of this, is there
Speaker 1: a little of the stranger factor of the fear of
Speaker 1: of foreigners going on. I don't know. They're all things
Speaker 1: happening under the cover of unconscious. If you would like
Speaker 1: more information on our show, go to stuff Toble your
Speaker 1: mind dot com. That is where you will find all
Speaker 1: of our blog post all of our podcast episodes are
Speaker 1: videos links out to our various social media accounts. I'll
Speaker 1: be sure to check out our YouTube page Mind Stuff Show.
Speaker 1: We you're constantly updating that with new shows and new
Speaker 1: show ideas and new content. And no doubt you have
Speaker 1: some thoughts swirling about your mind about this topic. We
Speaker 1: would like to hear about them and get your perspective,
Speaker 1: and you can send those thoughts to us via email
Speaker 1: at below the mind at how staff works dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot com