Thursday, March 26, 2015

Blog #6 Ebola Virus No Mutations


Ebola Virus No Mutations

 It is thought that Ebola is the deadliest epidemic in History. Right now they are trying to figure out how fast the virus is mutating based on the evidence of other viruses and diseases. They are trying to come up with an idea of where the virus is going so that they can get a vaccine out and start to diagnose people with Ebola to get them treated quicker than they are being treated now. There is the fear that the virus could become like a doomsday scenario where it gets airborne but the scientist state that the possibility of that happening is very slim. So far the virus has effect 24,000 people and killed at least 10,000 people. With the information that the scientist have gathered the virus has not been mutating any fast than any other virus, it might just be that it is not mutating at all. The virus has been tracked from different places and there was a study going around that the virus was mutating and spreading rapidly but Dr. Feldman stated that the report was misinterpreted and that if you look at the study and go five months farther into it you see that there was no dramatic changes in the virus spreading or mutating.  The next step for them to do would be for them to test the sample they got from Liberia in August and compare it to recent studies to see any more mutations have happen over the course of 8 months. The first sample test that was done was based on the number of cases in Mali in October and November to Guinea in March of 2014 and Sierra Leone of June 2014.

 

I don’t think that comparing samples from two or more separate places will do much help for anyone. I think that if you are going to test samples from places then they all need to be from the same area this way you can tell if there is really a big change or if things are the same. Then you would compare it to other places to get an idea of what is going on in their country. Now after you have tested in two separate areas you can then see if it is something with that environment of where the people who are infected are located or if it is the virus that is changing itself.  

 

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