Ebola Turning Sexually Transmitted?

Christopher Walken says, “I need more apocalypse!”:

It has long been known that the Ebola virus can remain in semen for months after patients have recovered from the disease. But two studies published on 14 October in the New England Journal of Medicine1, 2 have raised concerns that sexual transmission of the virus might cause flare-ups of Ebola in West Africa after the region has been declared Ebola-free. Nature explains the implications of the findings.

What did the studies show?

One study recruited 93 men who had survived Ebola in Sierra Leone; they were examined between two and nine months after they first showed symptoms of the disease. Half had Ebola viral RNA in their semen. That was not a complete surprise because traces of the virus are known to linger in semen for many months. Those who first showed symptoms two months ago were most likely to test positive for the RNA. But even in the 43 people who first showed symptoms 7–9 months ago, around one-quarter still had Ebola RNA present in their semen.

I’d love to say these researchers were reading this site, but this was always glaringly obvious since the case in May. If it hangs around in the semen, it is there, waiting to break out. It could even be related to the two new cases in Guinea.

Bear in mind, if Ebola is like PPMoV, the pepper RNA plant virus, which appears to replicate in the large intestine using bacteria genetic machinery, then those who engage in anal sex may be even more susceptible. Just a small inoculation of virus to the lumen of the LI could replicate into much larger numbers in the stool, making a small chance of infection into a much larger one by amping up the viral inoculation.

The “good” news is vaccination looks promising. The bad news is that surviving Ebola is not all rainbows, unicorns and Skittles.

Thousands of West Africans who were infected with the Ebola virus but survived it are suffering chronic conditions such as serious joint pain and eye inflammation that can lead to blindness, global health experts said on Friday.

Ebola survivors who fought off the most severe bouts of infection are the most likely to suffer ongoing medical problems, World Health Organization experts said, and their health is becoming “an emergency within an emergency”.

“The world has never seen such a large number of survivors from an Ebola outbreak,” said Anders Nordstrom, a WHO representative in Sierra Leone who took part in a five-day conference this week about Ebola survivors.

“We have 13,000 survivors in the three countries (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone). This is new – both from a medical and from a societal point of view,” he told reporters on a telebriefing.

Daniel Bausch of the WHO’s clinical care team on Ebola survivors said about half of all those who fought off the virus now report joint pain, with some suffering such severe effects that they can’t work.

Eye problems including inflammation, impaired vision and – in severe but rare cases – blindness, have been reported by about 25 percent of survivors, Bausch said.

Even those who have defeated the disease can carry it and suddenly experience a flare up, which means even the vaccinated will probably not be truly immune. The worse news is if it is a virus that can be carried asymptomatically, the gay population will spread this amongst themselves like wildfire if it ever makes in into their community, and history would indicate that such an outcome is only a matter of time.

As it spreads, there will be a large segment of the population walking around dependent on first world medical care, and prone to start dropping like flies at the first sign of hardship. I can’t imagine what a Depression-era economic collapse, combined with a population experiencing flare-ups due to related nutritional deficiencies, and medical workers not showing up to work out of fear of getting infected would look like. You’d literally be looking at bodies dumped in the streets.

And all of that assumes Ebola doesn’t mutate around the vaccines, and again become an untreatable, unvaccinate-able plague. It will probably even mutate to transmit more easily. Every day it is cooking in a human, as everyone tries to kill it, we are making it stronger by selecting for the most capable mutations. The apocalypse is strong in this one.

The only positive is that sexually transmitted diseases are rabbit plagues. If this goes hot, it will wipe out the entire base of the left, tearing through the lower-income who are less family oriented, those packed together in cities, as well as the morally/culturally degraded. Those who can survive the mess will see an American renaissance unlike anything they can imagine. Freedom, responsibility, intelligence, threat awareness, self-control, morality, and being happy left alone will all be human traits it will naturally select for. I’d expect art, science, innovation, and just the feel in the air would be magical once the apocalypse was over. It is just that the path there will be as horrific as anything mankind will have ever seen.

May you live in interesting times.

Apocalypse cometh™

For those looking to stock a post-Apocalypse medical cabinet, Zoloft and Vascor may fight Ebola infection, though you shouldn’t take them together.