Ebola vaccine

This is good news:

An experimental Ebola vaccine completely protected people from the killer virus at the end of the west African epidemic, researchers report.

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3 thoughts on “Ebola vaccine

  1. I believe very little of what the government and big pharma say …
    They say the flu vaccine, MMR, and whooping cough vaccines work.
    The flu vaccine is (maybe on a good year) about 8-15% effective.
    In the recent whooping cough ‘outbreak’ virtually ALL of those stricken had recently been vaccinated.
    The measles vaccine had been given to a large percentage of those who caught the measles in last year’s ‘outbreak’ (which resulted in considerably less than 200 cases nationwide).
    Am I at all confident of their claims of an Ebola vaccine … oh HELL no!
    Vaccines are big business and the FDA has been a revolving door for big pharma executives for decades, just like the USDA has been for Monsanto execs.

  2. Another note of caution, while the general impression is that Ebola is a virtual 100% death sentence, outbreak after outbreak illustrates the point that outbreaks diminish on their own, faster with medical intervention, but as you get to the “end of the outbreak” more and more individuals who contract the virus survive such that around 15% of those who contract the virus survive….toward the end of the outbreak. To my knowledge there isn’t a definitive reason for this but speculation includes that the virus somehow ‘weakens’ over time, it takes time for modern medical practices and strict quarantines and sanitation practices to have a substantial effect, or it could be that natural selection is occurring and only the less virulent ‘offspring’ of the virus survive to infect. This makes biological sense in that a 100% virulent strain of virus doesn’t have a lot of evolutionary future. Surviving victims also build up antibodies to the virus and one of the early treatments….actually continuing treatments is to draw blood from survivors, and give either the whole blood or serum to recent victims. All this also makes me a believe but verify, with qualifications, of the good news that they have an effective vaccine. And, while ‘Big Pharma’ is easily disparaged…. and I be one of those disparagers…. they are also responsible for the wiping out of Small Pox (no ‘small deal….ahem) and a great reduction of Polio, of which I was one of the fortunate survivors in the early 50’s and am grateful that our children no longer have to fear those dread diseases…if they get their immunizations.

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