Ebola spread faster among some than others:
The analysis, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows nearly two thirds of cases (61%) were caused by 3% of infected people…
The study looked at cases in and around the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown.
By looking at the pattern of where and when cases emerged, the researchers could tell how many people each infected person was passing the deadly virus onto.
Prof Steven Riley, one of the researchers at Imperial College London, told the BBC News website: “Most cases had a relatively short infectious period and generated low numbers of secondary infections, whereas a small number had longer infectious periods and generated more infections. …
Children under 15-years-old and adults over 45 were more likely to be spreading the virus.
“My feeling is this may be explained by human behaviour,” said Prof Riley…
Prof Jonathan Ball, a virologist at the University of Nottingham, told the BBC: “The recent West African outbreak was on an unprecedented scale and many cases, especially those occurring out in the community, appear to have arisen from a surprisingly small number of infected individuals.
“Knowing who is most likely to transmit the virus can help in focusing interventions designed to prevent virus spread, and the current study suggests that infected children and the elderly were more likely to pass their virus on.
“Whether this was this due to biological or social factors is unclear, and these will be important questions to address if we are to understand how Ebola virus super-spread occurs.”
My guess would be there is a large behavioral component to being a superspreader. How many times I have seen people who when sick, seem to be pruposely trying to spread it. I would not even be surprised to see a high degree of Narcissistic Personality Disorder among spreaders. Nothing would trigger a narcissist like the sight of healthy people, when they themselves are sick. It should also not escape notice that those who were less likely to be super-spreaders were in the prime of life, old enough to have authority and not feel powerless, and young enough to not be really old and thus jealous of the young.
Bear in mind that the r-strategy has a very strong component of covert competitiveness with peers, trying to screw those around them covertly, without being held to account. Do you think liberals who are trying to import Muslims to destroy civilized society might also be prone to spread a disease purposely, especially if it made everyone else as sick as they were?
Mark my words, when the Apocalypse hits it will bring a pandemic with it. The only question is just how bad it will be.
[…] Ebola Super-Spreaders Spread The Pandemic […]
There’s alst that woman in Britain who still had the virus in her system. Sometimes superspreaders are asymptomatic.
There was also that nurse who came back and broke quaratine. Christie held her a couple of days IIRC.
In my college dorm in the 1980s the topic came up of “What would you do if you caught AIDS?”. The consensus answer seemed to be, “Spread it around as much as I can, then when the symptoms get really bad, shoot myself in the head.”
Ahem… market merchants??? Getting into contact with many people professionally?
Don’t expect government scientists to think that far! You’ll have to wait for the meta-analysis of 20 papers in 5 years!
Fair warning: I have known r-types (didn’t know if I was imagining at the time) who, when an illness was going round, they’d have the sudden impulse to socialize with what I think of as their B-group of friends, the ones they secretly hate. This included me. Telling them I was in quarantine but happy to chat online caused pure RAGE. Every time bar none I get an invite to catch up with an ‘old friend’ I guarantee they’ve caught something. I’ve seen it enough times to be a tactic. Thankfully I have great genetics but some of my friends got very sick being ‘nice’ to these people, who’d also sit next to me, sniffling and trying to touch my possessions. Vit C is depleted when your body is under stress, always take about 120-200% daily. Please warn people.
That is interesting. Narcissists increase their efforts to fuck others up when they are fucked up. I have hypothesized that when their amygdala goes into high gear, the only way to quiet it down is to make things so they feel others are worse off than them. I never wondered if it was evolved, how it would evolve, or carried it through to how it would play out with illness.
I wonder if that is at play with sick rabbits. Maybe the evolution of that desire to fuck others over when screwed up themselves could be related to disease. Imagine if nature actually programmed those urges in that deeply, that it was predictable, and an integral part of the machine?