Genetic Study finds 'perfect storm'...
A combination of densely populated cities and porous borders between neighboring countries helped ignite the historically deadly West African Ebola outbreak that killed more than 11,200 people, according to a comprehensive genetic study of the virus published in Nature.
Tulane University infectious disease researchers Dr. John Schieffelin and Robert Garry are co-authors of the study which analyzed more than 1,600 Ebola virus genomes to reconstruct the dispersal, proliferation and decline of the virus throughout the region. The study found that population size, geographic distance and international borders all influenced the rapid spread of the virus.
“It was apparent to a few of us familiar with the differences between West Africa and the sites of previous outbreaks in central Africa that this might not be a ‘normal’ outbreak,” Garry said. “The high population densities and mobile population of Sierra Leone and surrounding countries proved to be a perfect storm, allowing the unprecedented spread of Ebola.”
Dr. Robert Garry is seen in the pic. Those of you who may have accees may read full article here ---
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature22040.html
I remember a couple years back when you mentioned his great work out of Tulane. Thanks for the heads up, I will order the paper and read in the next few days. This will no doubt be a highly cited publication.
We reveal that this large epidemic was a heterogeneous and spatially dissociated collection of transmission clusters of varying size, duration and connectivity. These insights will help to inform interventions in future epidemics.
np, I am disturbed by the revelation that the clusters are in fact spatially dissociated. Terrifying, as border migration in sub-poverty regions, that created the "perfect storm" are once again in play via the ravages of [religious, smile] wars in same said regions. Q for U: Does the possibility exist for dormant carriers???
Concept: Refugee migration in 3x fold in the last 12 months compare to the pre outbreak.....
A cold Guinness and an appreciation for your post.
In reply to pelon
Good question brother Pelon. That scenario you played could certainly result in breakouts if any of those cross-border folks have a dormant virus strain genome that gets activated by the required conditions as in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Don't rush to purchase that article -- I'll send you a full PDF - via my access here ...
information sharing it's called. And I'm all about sharing this kind of info.
Constant vigilance and counter actions needed via LESSONS LEARNED.
In reply to pelon
Hook me up with your e-addy via text message!!
In reply to np
Good spot; thank you!
Follow-up.
np - finally had time to read the impressive paper over the weekend. Been fighting some battles (that I can't win) that sucked up all my time!
Thank you kindly for the update, the paper - and most of all: congrats to your team down in Tulane.
Though this study is focused on Ebola, the genome sequence methodlogy has proven to be the 'gold standard' - facilitating phylogenetic histories and compounding the [concept] work of P. Lemey et al.
The positive effect of population sizes combined with the inverse
effect of the geographic distance implies that the spread of the epidemic
followed a classic gravity-model dynamic. Gravity models, widely used
in economic and geographic studies and a natural choice for modelling
infectious disease transmission, describe the movement of
people between locations as a function of their population sizes and
the distance that separates them. Here we use viral genomes to provide empirical evidence that such a process drove viral dissemination during
the EVD epidemic.
Having dug around in the actual data, and some web investigations, I came across a visualization platform that I think you should take a look at:
LINK (just hit play)
I am also fascinated to see the metadata available on
github for manipulation.
NEW: AS reported TODAY on
cnn, another
"brew" is on the horizon.
Stay tuned.
Bump, back on the horizon again.
you guys crack me up - Ebola was man made, ain't it? dem saying bout perfect storm - dem want wipe out black people
check it out here
