outbreak
oracknows | March 21, 2017When it comes to the measles, antivaxers love to repeat a series of talking points. One is that measles is not a dangerous disease and was considered a normal part of childhood 50 or 60 years ago. This is what I like to refer to as the "Brady Bunch" gambit, mainly because antivaxers who try to make this argument often invoke an episode of The Brady Bunch from 1969, Is There a Doctor in the House?, in which all six kids contract the measles within a day of each other. Their illness is played for laughs, with the kids shown playing board games and enjoying having a few days off from school,…
oracknows | February 19, 2017]As hard as it is to believe, I've been dealing with the antivaccine movement since at least the early 2000s. Back then, I didn't have a blog, either this one or my not-so-super-secret other blog, and most of my online activities were restricted to Usenet. For those of you who don't remember Usenet, which has largely become the province of trolls and spam these days, it is a massive set of online discussion boards on literally thousands of topics. Indeed, I first encountered antivaccine advocates on Usenet and started to learn the sorts of pseudoscientific arguments they make, so that when I…
tsmith | October 27, 2016The news over the past 24 hours has exclaimed over and over:
HIV's Patient Zero Exonerated
How scientists proved the wrong man was blamed for bringing HIV to the U.S.
Researchers Clear "Patient Zero" from AIDS Origin Story
H.I.V. Arrived in the U.S. Long Before ‘Patient Zero’
Gaetan Dugas: "patient zero" not source of HIV/AIDS outbreak, study confirms
HIV's supposed "Patient Zero" in the U.S., Gaetan Dugas, is off the hook! He wasn't responsible for our outbreak!
This is presented as new information.
Gaetan Dugas, from Wikipedia.
It is not, and I think by focusing on the "exoneration" of…
tsmith | September 27, 2016The 2013-2016 West African Ebola virus outbreak altered our perception of just what an Ebola outbreak could look like.
While none of the three primary affected countries--Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-have had a case since April 2016, the outbreak resulted in a total of over 28,000 cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD)--65 times higher than the previous largest EVD outbreak, and more than 15 times the total number of cases of all prior EVD outbreaks combined, from the virus's discovery in 1976 to a concurrent (but unrelated) outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2014.
In March 2016…
tsmith | February 3, 2016Like cockroaches, the conspiracy theorists suggesting the Zika virus outbreak is anything but a normal, naturally-occurring event have begun to come out of the woodwork. To be expected, the theories they're espousing make no sense scientifically, and each theory is incompatible with the others, but why should anyone expect that conspiracy theorists would actually use logic?
Claim One: the current Zika virus outbreak is due to the release of genetically-modified mosquitoes by British company Oxitec. The suggestion is that GMO mosquitoes were released in the same area of Brazil now…
tsmith | February 1, 2016As you've probably seen, unless you've been living in a cave, Zika virus is the infectious disease topic du jour. From an obscure virus to the newest scare, interest in the virus has skyrocketed just in the past few weeks:
I have a few pieces already on Zika, so I won't repeat myself here. The first is an introductory primer to the virus, answering the basic questions--what is it, where did it come from, what are its symptoms, why is it concerning? The second focuses on Zika's potential risk to pregnant women, and what is currently being advised for them.
I want to be clear, though--…
tsmith | December 15, 2015I have a paper out in the Christmas issue of BMJ on the coming zombie apocalypse.
You read that right. And yes, it was peer-reviewed.
I've discussed previously how I've used the attention paid to zombies to talk about infectious diseases with children and other audiences; and to bring some science to the Walking Dead and other zombie tales. I even include a zombie lecture as part of the talks I give in my position as an American Society for Microbiology distinguished lecturer.
Why?
Like them or hate them, zombies are part of the zeitgeist. The Walking Dead is still one of the highest-rated…
tsmith | January 15, 2015Measles has come to the happiest place on Earth. As of this writing, a total of 32 cases of measles have been linked to Disneyland visits that took place between December 17th and 20th. About 75% of the cases identified to date were not vaccinated, either because they chose to forgo vaccines or because they were too young, and at least 6 have been hospitalized.
A measles outbreak is a public health disaster, which can cost into the millions of dollars in health resources. You can be sure that public health workers in California and beyond are working overtime trying to identify cases, educate…
oracknows | December 10, 2014
One aspect of my life that's kind of strange is how I've basically ended up back where I started. I was born and raised in southeast Michigan (born in the city of Detroit, actually, although my parents moved to the suburbs when I was 10). After going to college and medical school at the University of Michigan, I matched at a residency in Cleveland (regular readers know that it was Case Western Reserve University), and then did a fellowship in surgical oncology at the University of Chicago. Finally, I ended up taking my first "real" (i.e., faculty) job at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey…
tsmith | October 19, 2014Though I haven't had a chance to write about this here, I have an article at Mic.com on Kent's experience with Ebola exposure in our area. Amber Vinson, the second Ebola-infected nurse in Texas, is a Kent State alumna and has relatives that work here. Our experience on campus so far is described here in this article.
gregladen | October 12, 2014The first person ever to catch Ebola in the United States is now in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
Don't panic, even if you live in Dallas. But also, don't fall into the hyperskeptical trap of assuming that because scientific authorities tell you everything is fine that concern is irrational. There are very rational reasons to be concerned. But you need to be smart about what to be concerned about.
A couple of weeks ago, as you know, a man came to Dallas with pre-symptomatic Ebola, and became symptomatic there. This was the first case of a person being diagnosed with…
oracknows | October 3, 2014
Countering the misinformation regularly promulgated by the antivaccine movement, be it antivaccinationists who are completely off the deep end, like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the crew at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism, or that epitome of the Dunning-Kruger effect mixed with an annoying self-absorption and coffee klatch vibe (that is when it's not a wine party), The Thinking Moms' Revolution, or from seemingly more "reasonable" antivaccine advocates like pediatricians Robert "Dr. Bob" Sears or Dr. Jay Gordon. The reason is simple. Vaccines save lives. They prevent children from…
gregladen | October 2, 2014According to popular literature (some fiction, some not) and movies, Ebola can cause havoc, infecting thousands of people, killing over half of them, and threatening an entire nation if it were to become airborne. Turns out that's not true. Ebola can do all those things without becoming airborne. In several nations.
The confusion caused by this misconception is further enhanced in a more subtle way. Since the Hollywood version of Ebola (or some other similar disease) indicates that it is dangerous because it becomes airborne, we see constant claims today on the Internet that Ebola must be…
tsmith | September 30, 2014My first article at The Guardian is up: No, Ebola in Dallas does not mean you and everyone else in the US is going to get it, too.
tsmith | September 23, 2014Have a new article up at Slate. Nine months into the worst-ever Ebola outbreak, here's where we stand.
tsmith | August 8, 2014By the same lead author that published the pig Ebola transmission paper comes a new publication examining airborne transmission among primates. In these, Ebola did *not* spread between non-human primates (NHPs) via air. I sent an email to the PI to comment; will update the post if he responds, but in the meantime, some money quotes directly from the publication:
"One experiment reported contact free transmission between infected NHPs to one uninfected NHP although cross-contamination due to husbandry practices could not be ruled out with certainty26. Interestingly, EBOV infected swine…
tsmith | August 7, 2014Yambuku, Zaire, 1976. A new disease was spreading through the population. Patients were overcome by headaches and bloody diarrhea. The disease was spreading through entire families and wiping them out.
Eight hundred and twenty-five kilometers to the northeast, a similar epidemic was reportedly raging across the border in Maridi, Sudan. Were these outbreaks connected? Despite enormous challenges trying to navigate both the logistics of crossing a landscape of unpaved and unmarked roads, as well as the political difficulties of an attempt to enter and collect samples in an area marked by recent…
tsmith | August 3, 2014Since yesterday's post, several people have asked me on various social media outlets about the airborne nature of Ebola. Didn't I know about this paper ("Transmission of Ebola virus from pigs to non-human primates"), which clearly showed that Ebola could go airborne?
Indeed I do--I wrote about that paper two years ago, and it in no way changes my assertion that Ebola doesn't spread between people in an airborne manner.
Let me back up. The paper in question was an experimental study done in the wake of the 2008 finding of the Reston Ebola virus in pigs and a previous study looking at the Zaire…
tsmith | August 2, 2014It's odd to see otherwise pretty rational folks getting nervous about the news that the American Ebola patients are being flown back to the United States for treatment. "What if Ebola gets out?" "What if it infects the doctors/pilots/nurses taking care of them?" "I don't want Ebola in the US!"
Friends, I have news for you: Ebola is *already* in the US.
Ebola is a virus with no vaccine or cure. As such, any scientist who wants to work with the live virus needs to have biosafety level 4 facilities (the highest, most secure labs in existence--abbreviated BSL4) available to them. We have a number…
tsmith | August 1, 2014In the light of the current Ebola outbreak, I thought this post from 2007 was once again highly relevant.
As another Ebola outbreak simmers in Uganda (and appears to be increasing), I recently was in touch with Zoe Young, a water and sanitation expert with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF*, known in the US as Doctors without Borders), who was working in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the DRC Ebola outbreak earlier this fall (and blogging it!)
Regular readers know of my interest in this virus, but I'm obviously geographically removed from any of the outbreaks. As such, Zoe and her…