From a scientific point of view, the Ebola virus is intriguing: a contradiction lies at its core. On the one hand, there is something intentional about a virus that creates in its host precisely the conditions it needs to travel. Ebola can pass from one host to another only through direct contact with an infected patient’s bodily fluids, and once it is inside a human body, it activates several different mechanisms that cause a host to release bodily fluids in several varieties. On the other hand, it’s not contagious enough, typically, to compensate for the speed with which it kills. It can’t move through the air; it can’t live in the water. It can be transmitted only when the host is symptomatic, at which point the host will likely die so quickly that the virus doesn’t have much of a chance to lodge someplace new. But its chances of survival improve markedly if it strikes in a part of the world—like Guinea—where funerals tend to be intimate affairs; where the family lays its hands on the deceased, and sweat, tears, and other fluids have the chance to mix. Then, killing the host becomes not a dead end for the virus but an opportunity to travel further.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 14:16:45 +0000
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