Elola paranoia

[Lyle Najita]

Mr. Leonard, 
In response to your post on bionet.virology (article below), I would like
to make a few comments. 
If you are willing to believe that WHO and CDC (and any other "official"
government agency 
for that matter) would lie about the facts, then you open yourself to the
possibility of relying on people who have absolutely no clue what is going
on. We can all speculate as to the extent of the spread of this current
outbreak and how long it will last, yet the fact remains that it is just
speculation - I certainly don't know any more than I am being told. I don't
have the resources or the time to go and find out for myself. If there were
any indications that this epidemic could be worse, I believe that port of
entries in the US would have been informed to stop potentially infected
people from entering given the response to people suffering from AIDS
trying to enter the country. If you want to be paranoid about something,
how about the fact that CDC will have a budget decrease amounting to almost
half its current budget and NIH getting a budget decrease amounting to 10%
of its current budget. We'll be in great shape for the next great outbreak
when we have no one studying anything remotely related and don't have the
personnel to perform the surveillance. As a burned out post-doctoral fellow
(researching a hepatitis virus), I can tell you that after more than ten
years of college, grad school and post-doctoral training I'm not looking
forward to spending ten to twelve hours of day in the lab for the next five
to ten years trying to keep grant funding for my grand salary of maybe $40K
a year (if I'm lucky). It is clear that my training and expertise (as sorry
as it may be) are not worth it to people in the US or any other part of the
world. Don't worry about Ebola, worry about the next big flu strain change
that was unanticipated because of poor surveillance or the emergence of
multiply drug resistant TB (which is airborne). 
 
Lyle 
 
 
In response to the recent comments here to the effect that the discussion
of this outbreak has become overly paranoid, let me ask you all:  If this
particular mutation of ebola (e.kikwit ?) has become an airborne pathogen
do you think the WHO, the CDC or the governments involved would broadcast
this fact to the world?  They would, of course, tell us that the virus is
contained to a small area, that its spread beyond this area is unlikely and
the mortality figures would be conservative.  This is exactly what we have
heard thus far from WHO and CDC spokespersons.  I have to assume that there
will be much more disinformation available than reliable facts.  I also
have to assume that in the case of an emerging _airborne_ filovirus, be it
ebola, marburg or some unknown agent, we will not be told of it until the
epidemic has spread.  I don't think this makes me paranoid.  A health
crisis of such proportions would cause world wide painc.  The melodramatic
scenarios described in the movie "Outbreak" would become all too real. 
Even as we type these correspondences across the electronic highways, human
populations continue to encroach on ecosystems where these virus lie in
wait for their new host.  The reality of our situation then seems to be
that sometime in the near future we may have to face a pandemic of viral
hemorrhagic fever.  How will we deal with it? 
 
Mike Leonard