Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry in our
Speaker 1: germ free sealed off recording booth in Atlanta. I assume
Speaker 1: this is isolated. Yeah, I don't think it's a biological
Speaker 1: safety level four. Then you would you say maybe three?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think we're probably zero. Have you
Speaker 1: ever been to the CDC? Now, um, they have you
Speaker 1: can go into their lobby. There's like a lobby museum,
Speaker 1: a couple of stories with a lot of interacting, interactive
Speaker 1: exhibits and um you me and I went and she
Speaker 1: tried on one of those biological safety level four suits.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. I got a very cute picture of
Speaker 1: her in one. They probably swallowed her up. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: had extra small. I think I have one size. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just kind of drooping down. But it's a
Speaker 1: really neat museum. If you're ever in Atlanta, I strongly
Speaker 1: recommend going to the CDC. Yeah I'm gonna wait. Well,
Speaker 1: not that I'm paranoid, because we'll talk about how you
Speaker 1: can get ebola, but it's still uh, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: just I'll just wait. I don't really blame you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean those two patients. There are two patients in
Speaker 1: Atlanta right now for those of you who have been
Speaker 1: under a rock lately, UM, who are being treated for bola,
Speaker 1: apparently successfully through a UM at the time, an unapproved
Speaker 1: drug um or therapy, i should say. And they're at Emory,
Speaker 1: though they're not at the CDC. The CDC is only
Speaker 1: dangerous because you know they keep antraks and unlocked refrigerators
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. Yeah, and hey, we want
Speaker 1: to thank Jerry for speeding this one through. Uh we
Speaker 1: got a lot of requests to do this, obviously because
Speaker 1: it's timely, and uh we waited a week and there's
Speaker 1: been some new developments and there will be more in
Speaker 1: the coming weeks obviously. But um, we're recording this today
Speaker 1: and it's coming on on Thursday, and like it's Tuesday,
Speaker 1: Today's yeah, so bam, it's dropping, that's right. Um. So
Speaker 1: there's people in Atlanta with ebola right now, and those
Speaker 1: people came from Liberia. There are a couple of missionaries
Speaker 1: and they were flown back to America to be kept
Speaker 1: in isolation units in Emery with controversy surrounding that move. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you're a utilitarian philosopher, that was a monstrously
Speaker 1: stupid thing to do, to voluntarily bring ebola into the
Speaker 1: United States. Yes, and you you there's a good chance
Speaker 1: that you will save the lives of two people, but
Speaker 1: you also threaten the lives of several hundred million people
Speaker 1: who may not have ever otherwise been exposed to the virus.
Speaker 1: So I'm not one for like panic and especially not
Speaker 1: fomenting panic. Um. But just if you if you understand
Speaker 1: utilitarian philosophy, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But we're
Speaker 1: compassionate humans, not robots, so utilitarian philosophy doesn't usually go
Speaker 1: over that. Well have you seen Contagion? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we've talked about that on the show. Reading all this
Speaker 1: stuff really like, Solderberg kind of nailed it. Yeah, he did.
Speaker 1: And uh, I believe in that movie it became airborne though,
Speaker 1: which is was it a bowler in the movie? Well, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think they was something similar. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: even think they named it because so they could take
Speaker 1: a little bit of fictional license, or maybe they named it,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's a Bola but you know,
Speaker 1: started with a fruit bat and you know transferred. We'll
Speaker 1: get to all that stuff. Yeah, that one scene where
Speaker 1: Gwyneth Paltrow is that fruit bat on her face and
Speaker 1: she can't get it off. Very scary movie though, Man
Speaker 1: it is Outbreak was pretty good too. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: it in many, many years, but I liked it at
Speaker 1: the time. It's all right, it was okay, not as
Speaker 1: good as Contagion. Dustin Hoffman plays an epidemiologist like no other. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's get down to it. Man, let's talk about
Speaker 1: a bull. It's uh, as far as discovery goes, it's
Speaker 1: a relatively new player on the deadly virus infects a scene. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess we should go back to nineteen seventy six. Um.
Speaker 1: It's actually named for and I didn't know this, the
Speaker 1: Evola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which UM
Speaker 1: imagined that river didn't see a lot of traffic anymore
Speaker 1: with that name. But it has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that they discovered it in the river or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It's just the region. Yeah, and at
Speaker 1: the time that country was known as Zaire And even
Speaker 1: still there's a strain of Ebola known as zaire type ebola,
Speaker 1: and it's the deadliest of all. Yeah. Each of the
Speaker 1: five strains are named for the origin country or area.
Speaker 1: And uh. In this case, a man named Mabolo Um
Speaker 1: sought treatment for a fever in nineteen seventy six. Uh.
Speaker 1: They thought it was malaria, which a lot of times
Speaker 1: they still mistake it from malaria or other diseases. So
Speaker 1: they treated him with a shot of quinine and said,
Speaker 1: this should make you feel better. Let me reuse that
Speaker 1: needle because of sire and we're underfunded medically speaking. And
Speaker 1: uh that of course sprea. And before you know it,
Speaker 1: relatives friends after performing burial rituals where they have close
Speaker 1: contact with bodily remains and fluids, people started dropping like flies.
Speaker 1: It's really scary. There's so and then that was they
Speaker 1: think he was patient zero. At the very least, he
Speaker 1: was an index patient, which is the patient zero is
Speaker 1: like the first person to ever contract it, and an
Speaker 1: index person is the first person in an outbreak. I
Speaker 1: believe it's possible that Maballo is both. He could be
Speaker 1: patient zero and the index patient for that particular outbreak,
Speaker 1: but the patient zero for all of ebola. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: in this case, in of the three and fifty eight
Speaker 1: people died and uh, it's kind of a near simultaneous
Speaker 1: outbreak happened in Sudan, and of the two and eighty
Speaker 1: four died in Sudan, which is pretty good because it
Speaker 1: generally kills about Okay, so that's Sudan type bola. It's
Speaker 1: less deadly than Zaire type of bola. Game, yes, but
Speaker 1: even still you're talking it's way better than But consider this, chuck,
Speaker 1: I looked this up. You know, the influenza um of uh,
Speaker 1: the Spanish flu, I think is what it's frequently Back then,
Speaker 1: there something like I think twenty million to forty million
Speaker 1: people died in one year across the world. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: the the average life expectancy in the US dropped by
Speaker 1: ten years that one year because of that one flu.
Speaker 1: It had a mortality rate of only two point five percent.
Speaker 1: I bola has a mortality rate of n Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why it's so frightening, because if it became airborne
Speaker 1: or aerosol and widespread, it's could eradicate, like the planet,
Speaker 1: pretty much of human being. Luckily, it's only been shown
Speaker 1: to be able to spread via aerosol, like through the
Speaker 1: air among monkeys. That's kind of cold comfort though if
Speaker 1: you think about it, because we can get it from monkeys,
Speaker 1: and if monkeys can give it to each other like that,
Speaker 1: then who that's terrible. That's bad stuff. The reason why
Speaker 1: they think a bola has not spread as one because
Speaker 1: you can't catch it through the air, but also kind
Speaker 1: of chillingly, it kills people too fast for them to
Speaker 1: infect that many other people. One of the problems and
Speaker 1: you you you've mentioned it in that story about Maballa
Speaker 1: patient zero or at least the index patient from ninety six.
Speaker 1: UM in Central Africa, there are a lot of burial
Speaker 1: customs that require, like you said, the family and friends
Speaker 1: of the deceased to wash the body sometimes to clean
Speaker 1: the waste and food out of the body, and um
Speaker 1: to not use protection or gloves or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Like contact with the body is key, right, It's a
Speaker 1: part of the ritual burial. And it's still it's like
Speaker 1: even during this outbreak now you have like World Health
Speaker 1: Organization people going from village to village saying do you
Speaker 1: have any dead that we can take away to bury
Speaker 1: and they're like, no, no one's died here, and they're
Speaker 1: literally hiding the bodies because they don't want they're they're
Speaker 1: deceased to not be honored in the way that they
Speaker 1: should be based on custom and tradition. The problem is
Speaker 1: that this custom and tradition is also simultaneously spreading the
Speaker 1: Ebola virus. Yeah, I mean just something like that. If
Speaker 1: they could just talk them into at least like wearing
Speaker 1: gloves or something like, any little bit would help at
Speaker 1: this point. Yeah. So, um, you said there's five types
Speaker 1: of ebola. Yeah, I guess we should talk about the
Speaker 1: philo virus family, because Ebola is a virus, and it
Speaker 1: is a philo virus, which isn't that different from any
Speaker 1: kind of kind of virus actually, but it is a
Speaker 1: worm like particle that's described as hooked like a shepherd's
Speaker 1: crook or a six or you. But you mentioned the
Speaker 1: five ferent types and they're named after the region of
Speaker 1: their origin, desire and pseudan strains that we talked about,
Speaker 1: the Bunda Bugyo, the Thai forest formerly the code Duvoir,
Speaker 1: and the rest In type as in rest in Virginia,
Speaker 1: which is uh, you might think, yeah, but it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a shipment of crab eater monkeys that came
Speaker 1: out of the Philippines, which is the origin of the
Speaker 1: rest and type E bolavirus um. And they were sent
Speaker 1: to U LAB, a testing facility in Rest in Virginia,
Speaker 1: and um, a bunch of the monkeys started dying. Actually
Speaker 1: two shipments I think of monkeys died from this. And
Speaker 1: in the second shipment, some of the monkeys infected some
Speaker 1: of the humans, and the humans contracted the virus, but
Speaker 1: nobody showed symptoms. So we found out that the rest
Speaker 1: and virus humans don't respond to. Yeah, it's not deadly
Speaker 1: at this point at least, which is great. Um, it's great,
Speaker 1: but when less deadly of bolivirus is definitely good. Yeah, seriously. Um.
Speaker 1: All of the genetic information though from uh, the bola
Speaker 1: is comes from RNA instead of DNA like US humans.
Speaker 1: And it's really pretty basic. Compared to US, if we
Speaker 1: have three billion base pairs of DNA, they're only about
Speaker 1: nineteen thousand number of RNA and a philo virus, which
Speaker 1: is uh, you know, it's pretty basic. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: RNA actually is basically like with any virus, it's just
Speaker 1: there to say, here's the instructions to replicate me, and uh,
Speaker 1: here you go. And they the virus. The Bola virus
Speaker 1: spreads like any other virus, where it basically enters the cell.
Speaker 1: It injects that RNA, which in turn hijacks the processes
Speaker 1: of the cell and turns it from its regular duties
Speaker 1: into becoming a replication machine for the virus. And it
Speaker 1: turns out all of these UM, all of these different
Speaker 1: virus particles viryons I think is what they're called UM,
Speaker 1: and those things eventually overwhelmed the cell. And if it's
Speaker 1: an enveloped UM virus like a Bola, that means that
Speaker 1: the virus can go in and out of the cell
Speaker 1: membrane because it's surrounded by like a fat, lipid coating UM.
Speaker 1: It can go in and out of the host cell
Speaker 1: without destroying the host cell. A naked virus goes in,
Speaker 1: injects its stuff, it takes over the host cell, which
Speaker 1: makes so many that the host cell just ruptures. And
Speaker 1: then that's the way that the the other viruses are released.
Speaker 1: With the bowl of virus, it just basically secretes in
Speaker 1: a really gross way. But a cell that's been hijacked
Speaker 1: secretes new UM BOWLA viruses. Yeah, and it uh, I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of this is still a mystery that
Speaker 1: we're figuring out, but they do know that it can
Speaker 1: infect a lot of different types of cells, but mainly
Speaker 1: attacks the immune system and then from there travels to
Speaker 1: the lymph nodes and then the spleen and the liver
Speaker 1: through the bloodstream, and once it's in those cells, it's
Speaker 1: going to release a bunch of nasty chemicals. They think
Speaker 1: it's related to the closest to the measles and the
Speaker 1: momps actually, which um, all that stuff is helpful and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out yours. So they think from what
Speaker 1: they understand of the E. Boulavirus, Now, as you contracted
Speaker 1: through contact with body fluids and it gets into your
Speaker 1: mucous membranes or breaks in the skin, and once there
Speaker 1: it shows a preference for immune cells. Like it goes
Speaker 1: after talk about an aggressive virus. It goes after the
Speaker 1: very cells that are meant to destroy it and it
Speaker 1: messes with them. Depending on the type of cell, it'll
Speaker 1: either make their function go hey wire, which accounts for
Speaker 1: like a huge immune response, or it will shut down
Speaker 1: like an immune cells defenses right, So it makes your
Speaker 1: immune system go hey wire, but also prevents your immune
Speaker 1: system from mounting a defense, which is why you're in
Speaker 1: so much trouble if you contract a bowla because it
Speaker 1: just goes after your immune system, and then once your
Speaker 1: immune system is suppressed, Uh, it goes after other cells
Speaker 1: like epithelial cells or endothelial cells, so like connective tissue
Speaker 1: cells or um neurological cells, cells that line them the
Speaker 1: interior of your blood vessels, which makes your blood vessels
Speaker 1: weaken and start to bleed internally. Um. And it then
Speaker 1: it like you said, it goes into your liver and
Speaker 1: your spleen and just hijacks everything they're ultimately leading to
Speaker 1: tissue damage and then organ failure. Yeah, that's how you
Speaker 1: will eventually die as multi organ failure in shock. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know you mentioned the the antibodies. That's typically
Speaker 1: how they test for ebol anaus to looking for the
Speaker 1: antibody instead of the virus. But like you mentioned, it
Speaker 1: may have suppress the immune system such that they can't
Speaker 1: even detect it. And the only test they have are
Speaker 1: expensive and they're tough to transport, require machinery, So it's
Speaker 1: not the kind of stuff that uh, they're sending over
Speaker 1: to Western Central Africa for the most part. Yes, sadly,
Speaker 1: so it makes it the fact that it's in um
Speaker 1: often very remote locations, that the outbreaks have been kind
Speaker 1: of um uh contained. I guess they've been relatively small.
Speaker 1: Um I think something like people out of outbreaks since
Speaker 1: nine Yes, I have three thousand cases in two thousand
Speaker 1: deaths and that's up to the minute, like that it
Speaker 1: includes this current outbreak. Yeah, this was like from three
Speaker 1: hours ago. So that's I mean, that's if a lot
Speaker 1: of people, especially if you live in Central or West Africa.
Speaker 1: But if you're looking at the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: especially for as virulent as this virus is, uh, that's
Speaker 1: not that many people. So the fact that it's so
Speaker 1: contagious that it's hard to get and that it's hard
Speaker 1: to detect makes it very difficult to work on a bola,
Speaker 1: work on a vaccine, work on a treatment for it,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Well, and sadly, like I know
Speaker 1: this isn't across the board, but pharmaceutical companies developed drugs
Speaker 1: that will make them money. Uh, they're not in it
Speaker 1: for curing the world of rare diseases that number in
Speaker 1: the hundreds or low thousands. And basically there's it's it's
Speaker 1: stuff to admit it, but there's not a market for
Speaker 1: these vaccines, a money market, which is a big failure
Speaker 1: for humanity. Yeah yeah, Well it takes the threatened life
Speaker 1: of two American missionaries to really get the pharmaceutical industry going.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what's happened. All right, Well, let's um take
Speaker 1: a break here and then we'll talk about some of
Speaker 1: the actual symptoms right after this message. Okay, you're gonna
Speaker 1: know if you have ebola. Well, actually you won't know
Speaker 1: for a little while. It's what's kind of scary, is
Speaker 1: it may it may think it's something else, but when
Speaker 1: it enters your body, Uh, it's gonna kind of just
Speaker 1: sit there silently for two to twenty one days, typically
Speaker 1: about four to ten, and then you're gonna start noticing
Speaker 1: fever's headache, chill, um joints aching, You're gonna be really tired.
Speaker 1: And then that's when you will likely be misdiagnosed, right
Speaker 1: with malaria or something else, maybe dingay fever, uh, maybe
Speaker 1: yellow fever, but typically malaria is the one that they
Speaker 1: go with because the Central and West Africa, so you
Speaker 1: know there it's lousy with malaria anyways, and it looks
Speaker 1: exactly like malaria. It's after a couple of days of
Speaker 1: showing symptoms that it starts to become apparent that possibly
Speaker 1: it's a bowla. And the reason why it's because you
Speaker 1: take a very sudden, very sharp term for the worse.
Speaker 1: After after the first couple of days of showing the
Speaker 1: normal flu like symptoms, Yeah, then you're gonna have um,
Speaker 1: bloody diarrhea, jaundice, really bad sore throat, you're gonna vomit,
Speaker 1: You're not gonna be hungry. And then once you have
Speaker 1: symptoms for about five days, about fifty of the victims
Speaker 1: will develop rashes on their shoulders and like chest area.
Speaker 1: And that's the second stage. There's still yet a third stage.
Speaker 1: It's about this time where um, you if you are
Speaker 1: going to have a large amounts of bleeding, this is
Speaker 1: where it's going to start to happen after several days. UM. Apparently,
Speaker 1: in very aggressive cases of ebola, like the Zaire type,
Speaker 1: you can die like in six days after symptoms, which
Speaker 1: is extraordinarily mind boggling lee fast for something like this, UM.
Speaker 1: And the thanks to our friends at the movie Outbreak.
Speaker 1: When people think of a bowla, they think of people
Speaker 1: like squirting blood out of their eyes. Um, there is
Speaker 1: typically some sort of internal bleeding with Ebola. It is
Speaker 1: a hemorrhagic fever. After all, about fifty percent of patients
Speaker 1: will have this bleeding, mainly in the gastro intestinal tract. So,
Speaker 1: but it's not gonna it's not coming out of your
Speaker 1: eyes or anything like that. But it is a result
Speaker 1: of the Ebola virus going after those endothelial cells, those
Speaker 1: cells that UM make up the structure of the blood vessels,
Speaker 1: and going after the tissues and the organs and UM
Speaker 1: just degrading them. Basically. It's also a part of your
Speaker 1: immune response. Like you can have an over inflammation as
Speaker 1: a result too. So all this stuff is adding up
Speaker 1: to you bleeding internally. And we should say, though, chuck,
Speaker 1: like you're not gonna bleed to death. Um, people who
Speaker 1: die from a vote bullet typically die as a result
Speaker 1: of UM that internal bleeding may lower their blood pressure
Speaker 1: and they'll die from hypotensive shock. Yeah. So, I mean
Speaker 1: what happens is your your your blood tries to clot
Speaker 1: thanks to proteins, and there's so much clotting going on
Speaker 1: and so many proteins hard at work, it can't keep
Speaker 1: up essentially, and once the tissue damage starts, those proteins
Speaker 1: are busy and you're bleeding is uncontrolled at that point, right,
Speaker 1: and it's very sad result. Speaking of proteins, ebola makes
Speaker 1: a two types of this, one specific protein a glycoprotein,
Speaker 1: and one is pretty straightforward. It allows the ebola to
Speaker 1: move in and out of a host cell. The second
Speaker 1: use of them, the it's called secreted glycoprotein s GP.
Speaker 1: That stuff basically goes out and hushes the immune response.
Speaker 1: It says, you'd be quiet, be still, and it just
Speaker 1: basically goes in shuts down the The antigens is what
Speaker 1: they're called, that come after things like ebola and kill them,
Speaker 1: and it basically just ties them. It ties them up,
Speaker 1: in gags them. Wow, I know. And that it's just crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a nasty, nasty virus um. What we
Speaker 1: know about it right now is and this is one
Speaker 1: of the other scariest parts is that, uh, they are
Speaker 1: still not for sure where ebola hangs out for the
Speaker 1: years that it lies dormant in the world, because it
Speaker 1: doesn't go away. That went away, it wouldn't come back.
Speaker 1: It just means it's out there somewhere in a reservoir
Speaker 1: and a host. It is a zoonotic disease, so it
Speaker 1: occurs naturally in animals, but obviously it's transmitted to humans,
Speaker 1: and like I said, it doesn't go away. What they
Speaker 1: have to look for and what they've tested and killed
Speaker 1: scores of animals doing, is to see if an animal
Speaker 1: can survive the virus, because if they can survive the virus,
Speaker 1: they are a good candidate to be the host a reservoir. Yeah, exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: So they've tested all kinds of animals and what they're
Speaker 1: pretty sure of but still not a cent sure of,
Speaker 1: is that it is the fruit bat. Yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: a lot like the fruit bat. The reason that they've
Speaker 1: been having such a hard time finding it is because
Speaker 1: from after the six outbreak, Ebola just like went island
Speaker 1: until the nineties until there's another outbreak in the nineties,
Speaker 1: which is really suspicious as far as epidemiology is concerned,
Speaker 1: because that's not supposed to happen. So it made them
Speaker 1: think that maybe there was some exotic animal or exotic
Speaker 1: plant or something that was acting as the reservoir. Um.
Speaker 1: But now they're starting to think more and more that yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the common fruit bat. Yeah, because they fruit bats
Speaker 1: can have the virus and not get sick. And that
Speaker 1: is uh. And they've you know, fruit bats are in
Speaker 1: locations where they have the index cases. Yeah, pointing towards
Speaker 1: the old fruit bat. Yeah. Plus you can get they've
Speaker 1: shown um that ebola can be transmitted through bat guano,
Speaker 1: which is bat poop, which is what happened in uh contagion.
Speaker 1: Was it bat poop? Yeah, that's scene where um Gwyneth
Speaker 1: Paltrow's is eating a bowl of bat poop on a bat.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, I think it was through a bat through
Speaker 1: a pig that eventually found this way to a restaurant. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: The way that movie unfolds at the end, man is
Speaker 1: just chilling. Yeah. So, like we said, we know how
Speaker 1: it's transmitted, uh event through first human animal contact, then
Speaker 1: the infection, and then through you know, bodily fluids and
Speaker 1: secretions and uh dirty needles is the biggest culprit though,
Speaker 1: and depending on how you get it, uh could affect
Speaker 1: the outcome. If you have gotten it through a needle,
Speaker 1: you have on chance of dying since nineteen seventy six, Um,
Speaker 1: if you've gotten it other uh like through other contact, um,
Speaker 1: it can be about eighty percent, So I guess that's
Speaker 1: where they come up with the rate. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the hundred percent rate was for the outbreaks specifically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a hundred percent of people who transmitted it via needle
Speaker 1: in that outbreak died. That is insane. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: the incubation period is different to three to six days
Speaker 1: for a patient if you're stuck with a needle, versus
Speaker 1: five to nine for intact exposure. Yeah. So, Chuck, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about how to prevent the spread of ebola
Speaker 1: up next, and what's going on right now with possible cure.
Speaker 1: So so, up until recently when we had these patients
Speaker 1: shipped over to America, your only chances of contacting ebola's
Speaker 1: if you went over to Central or West Africa, um,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people do, a lot of people
Speaker 1: live there as well. Uh. And they suggest that if
Speaker 1: you find yourself over there, you not dwell in forests
Speaker 1: or caves because that's where the fruit bats are. Well.
Speaker 1: Plus you can contract it from guerrillas and stuff too. Sure,
Speaker 1: so you shouldn't eat bush meat, shouldn't touch dead guerrillas,
Speaker 1: shouldn't touch dead animals, period, try and limit that contact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably a good idea. And of course, UM, if
Speaker 1: you're over there working as a healthcare worker, or if
Speaker 1: you're just over there working or living, you should avoid
Speaker 1: any kind of reuse needle because that's your guaranteed to
Speaker 1: get it. Almost So we mentioned already the burial practices
Speaker 1: that are becoming a vector for disease, the spread of
Speaker 1: Ebola UM. There's also a couple of other factors that
Speaker 1: are coming into account. They the they think that if
Speaker 1: the fruit bat is the reservoir for Ebola UM, then
Speaker 1: the reason that it's spread because it was always just
Speaker 1: in Central Africa before. Now suddenly it's in West Africa.
Speaker 1: The March two thousand and fourteen outbreaks started in Guinea UM.
Speaker 1: They think that it's because the fruit bats migration patterns
Speaker 1: might be shifting because of climate change, so that could
Speaker 1: be fostering the spread of ebola. One of the other
Speaker 1: problems with this is that UM there's a very widespread
Speaker 1: lack of trust for the governments of West African countries
Speaker 1: and UM, so there's a lot of misunderstanding, misinformation. There's
Speaker 1: very little trust for the World Health authorities. UM, there's
Speaker 1: very little trust for the government some of the governments
Speaker 1: are using it as political tools like um, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think Sierra Leone they call it East Bowla because
Speaker 1: the government in power their main opposition strongholds in the East,
Speaker 1: so they're blaming the East on a bullet. It's just
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff going on over that it's
Speaker 1: not helping with this particular outbreak right now. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: really sad. Uh you mentioned about it. Start This the
Speaker 1: strain or this outbreak started in Guinea. They think they've
Speaker 1: traced traced it back to patient zero, two year old
Speaker 1: patient there. It was about eight months ago. Um, they
Speaker 1: think that this toddler died. They she suffered from fever
Speaker 1: and black stool and vomiting and then died on December
Speaker 1: six of last year, even though they don't know how
Speaker 1: she got it. And then shortly after her mother died
Speaker 1: on December. Then her three year old sister died on
Speaker 1: December twenty nine, and then her grandmother died on January one.
Speaker 1: And this is all in the village of I know,
Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna butcher this, but it's Meliando and Guika
Speaker 1: do nice. It's my my best effort there in Guinea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then that's that's the area is really close to
Speaker 1: the Sierra Leone and Liberia borders, which explains a lot.
Speaker 1: And then it spread outside their village to people that
Speaker 1: attended the grandmother's funeral because of course, again they had
Speaker 1: close contact with the body. And then two of those
Speaker 1: funeral attendees brought that back to their village. Than healthcare
Speaker 1: workers there and family members got sick, and healthcare worker
Speaker 1: and Guika do is Uh was suspected to have triggered
Speaker 1: the spread to three other villages in February of this year.
Speaker 1: And that just shows man again, just like in contagion,
Speaker 1: it's just like from person to person, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden it's in places nowhere close to where it started,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, it's in places not
Speaker 1: super far from where it started. Did you know that there?
Speaker 1: Did you hear about the health care bots that caught
Speaker 1: the outbreak before the announcement there? There's these bots. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of the company that runs them,
Speaker 1: but they're basically just their job is to just scan
Speaker 1: the internet, scan journal articles, scan um news. They're probably
Speaker 1: hitting the deep Way, by a guess, and they are
Speaker 1: looking for any and all mentions of things, um, that
Speaker 1: have to do with outbreaks, I think health care stuff
Speaker 1: in general. But nine days before the announcement by the
Speaker 1: Guinea authorities, Um, these bots caught this outbreak in that
Speaker 1: area nine days. That's pretty impressive stuff. And hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: come in in handy further down the road when people
Speaker 1: learn to trust that. Yeah, but still, this one's been
Speaker 1: the worst yet. And one of the scariest reasons is
Speaker 1: because it's happening so fast. Um, the common methods we
Speaker 1: have for dealing with it aren't working quick enough. Well,
Speaker 1: the common methods we have for dealing with it are
Speaker 1: as follows. Like you said, there's no there's no way
Speaker 1: to to well, there are, there are ways, there's tests
Speaker 1: that show this is a bowla. They're tough to get
Speaker 1: to these areas, so it's mostly you know, um, shoe
Speaker 1: leather diagnoses I guess um. And then the other aspect
Speaker 1: of it is that there's no treatment aside from rehydration,
Speaker 1: Like consider that chuck. Like, if you're struck down with
Speaker 1: a bowla, guess what treatment they give you? Ivy fluids.
Speaker 1: That's it. They isolate you and give you ivy fluids
Speaker 1: to try to replenish what you're vomiting out, diary ng
Speaker 1: out and um losing in sweat. Yeah, that's the treatment.
Speaker 1: Well it was until about five hours ago. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this UM. I wish we had some sort of a
Speaker 1: news wire. Jerry knows one. Remember when I went do
Speaker 1: Do do and then that she had one accompanying and
Speaker 1: and it might not even be out yet. So let's
Speaker 1: debut it right now, Chuck. This is fresh off the
Speaker 1: wire via CNN. UM. What they have now are an
Speaker 1: experimental serum um called z MAP and it's made by
Speaker 1: MAP Biopharmaceutical. UM. I'm not sure where they're located, but
Speaker 1: there's another another one called Kentucky Bioprocessing, which manufactures another
Speaker 1: version of the drug. And they're the ones who are
Speaker 1: making this brand new, very experimental drug, and so new,
Speaker 1: so experimental that this week the World Health Organization had
Speaker 1: to get a group of ethicis together to say, should
Speaker 1: we use this stuff? Because the normal testing process is
Speaker 1: way way longer than what they've got time wise, so
Speaker 1: can we speed this through? Should we use it? The
Speaker 1: WHO panel said unanimously, yes, it's ethical. We've got to
Speaker 1: do something. I think the u N came on board
Speaker 1: just a few hours ago as well, and so they
Speaker 1: treated um the two Americans Dr Kent Brantley and Nancy
Speaker 1: right bowl they are recovering. But sadly, Miguel Pijaris, the
Speaker 1: Spanish priest, died this morning even though he was treated
Speaker 1: with the z MAP as well. So it has a
Speaker 1: two thirds success rate at this point so far. But
Speaker 1: that's the deal with experimental drugs is they don't know
Speaker 1: if it's gonna work, or how it's gonna work, or
Speaker 1: who it's gonna work on. Um, it's a it's sort
Speaker 1: of an ethical quandary because if there's already people saying, well,
Speaker 1: you've used it on these Americans, Uh, why haven't you
Speaker 1: used it in Liberia? It's sort of a no win
Speaker 1: situation this early because if they had died. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this is from Paul root Wolp. He's a director for
Speaker 1: ethics at Emery here in Atlanta. He said, you know,
Speaker 1: if it had killed both these Americans, people wouldn't be
Speaker 1: saying anything. But because it worked, they're saying, why isn't
Speaker 1: it being used in Africa? He said, But if we
Speaker 1: would have taken it to Africa and it killed them,
Speaker 1: they would have said Americans are experimenting this drug on
Speaker 1: poor Africans. Well, the way they've done it then is
Speaker 1: exactly right. They experimented with Americans and then ship the
Speaker 1: rest of it to Liberia. The Liberia has the remaining
Speaker 1: stock of z MAP right now. There's no more of
Speaker 1: it in the US. It's all in Liberia. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: applied for it, and they're like you said, they've got
Speaker 1: it all and they're already out and uh it takes
Speaker 1: a while to make. Well, it's they've figured out some
Speaker 1: ways to make it even faster. So what um z
Speaker 1: MAP is is called a monoclonal antibody treatment therapy. Basically,
Speaker 1: um they they introduce something like ebola into in this case,
Speaker 1: a tobacco plant, and they create antibodies. The plant creates
Speaker 1: antibodies to the virus, and then they say, okay, these
Speaker 1: are the antibodies we need for ebola. Let's synthesize them.
Speaker 1: And they make synthetic antibodies, and they take those synthetic anybodies,
Speaker 1: the monoclonal anybodies, they inject them into you, the ebola patient,
Speaker 1: and these anybodies go in and mimic your body's immune response,
Speaker 1: which in turn mounts a real immune response and then
Speaker 1: fights off the BOWLA virus. And they only just use
Speaker 1: it for a BOWLA. They try this on cancer, on
Speaker 1: all sorts of other viruses. So monoclonnell anybody therapy isn't new,
Speaker 1: but using it against ebola, the specific one for a
Speaker 1: bola is new. And then also using tobacco plants as
Speaker 1: the the source of the antibodies, it's fairly new too,
Speaker 1: but it makes it so that you can turn it
Speaker 1: over a lot faster. Pretty cool stuff. Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: very cool. Uh, but like we said, it's so new.
Speaker 1: I mean they've literally just treated these few patients and um,
Speaker 1: one of them died. So, uh, the jury is out.
Speaker 1: In the coming days, we're gonna learn a lot more
Speaker 1: about z MAP so hopefully it'll save Liberia. Yeah, they've
Speaker 1: I never knew this either. An out break is considered
Speaker 1: over after there's been forty two days straight, which is
Speaker 1: double the incubation period um without any new cases. So um,
Speaker 1: everyone's hoping for that forty two day period very soon.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping for it. You got anything else? No, did
Speaker 1: we ever mentioned Marburg virus? No, that is a cousin
Speaker 1: that is also deadly right, it's the other it's the
Speaker 1: other Nona bowl of virus and the file of virus family.
Speaker 1: It is deadly, but it's extraordinarily rare. It's named after
Speaker 1: a German town where there is an outbreak in the
Speaker 1: sixties because of some monkeys that were shipped for testing. Wow,
Speaker 1: so I guess it's a disease naming convention. Here is
Speaker 1: it they? Or everywhere? Is it? Name it after where
Speaker 1: it started? Bola Marburg? Yeah? Here? Yeah, there you have it.
Speaker 1: That's up to the date. Ebola info. Yes, I don't
Speaker 1: have anything else. You don't need to know, but you
Speaker 1: know what you guys, if you want to follow this, um,
Speaker 1: we should follow up in our video series. You better
Speaker 1: believe it that you can find on our YouTube channel. UM.
Speaker 1: We use that. We take you in the studio to
Speaker 1: kind of follow up on some stories, talk about news
Speaker 1: the items, or make corrections. It comes out every Monday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can go to see that at I think
Speaker 1: it's our YouTube channel, Josh and Chuck. Yeah, so we'll
Speaker 1: follow up on this as things develop. Good thinking, Chuck. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about the ins and
Speaker 1: outs of ebola, you can type people into the search
Speaker 1: bar How stuff works dot Com and since I said
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Speaker 1: all the hard work you do, and also for inspiring
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Speaker 1: it's easy. I think you have to add some talent.
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Speaker 1: about that? Thank you, Corey, good voice. I don't blame you.
Speaker 1: We're gonna totally oppress the other podcast with this. Yeah,
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