Originally Posted By: Arney
Originally Posted By: Meadowlark
I am...re-reading my 20 year old copy of The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.

It's been a long time since I read The Hot Zone but the thought just occurred to me that Preston described another Ebola outbreak that really was airborne. The Reston strain spread through an animal facility in Reston, Virginia through the airborne route. Fortunately, that strain did not make people sick, just the primates.

Anyway, so we have already seen a truly airborne (as opposed to droplet/aerosol spread) strain of Ebola already. Let's hope the current outbreak doesn't lead to a similar mutation.


Timely mention of an airborne strain of Ebola. I am currently about a 3rd of the way through reading a fiction book in that the plot line is of Ebola being spread via airborne methods. This book - Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller is available on Amazon.com as of (today) a free Kindle Book and has garnered good reviews.

In one chapter, there is mention of real world statistics of how many people die of Malaria each year as compared to all the Ebola deaths. Although Ebola is contagious and can spread easily, it serves to demonstrate that the average person in Africa has a far greater chance of dying of Malaria then Ebola.
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Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

John Lubbock