Ebola
The first time I came across Ebola was during the eighties, there was large outbreak on the Continent of Africa and captured the imagination of the media; who gave nightly updates as to how many had died and how much damage it would do if it reached Europe or North America.
Fortunately for the rest of the world what makes Ebola so terrifying is also what prevents it from transferring so quickly around the world.
It’s a virus that once it gets into your system acts quickly, you become sick so quickly you don’t have time to travel or move far to spread it over great distances. The symptoms themselves are massively high temperatures, your internal organs liquify and begin to bleed from eyes, ears and mouth; which has created a mythological fear around Ebola that keeps others away so they also won’t catch it.
Ebola comes out of the blue and death is within three or four days, leaving only ten percent of people living… with neurological and health concerns for decades after their infection.
It disappeared during the nineties and early 21’st century, not so much because it was infecting people but because the television had decided that there were scarier things for us to be worried about; often ignoring the pain and suffering of those infected. It didn’t really reach our shores again until the last couple of years when another, large outbreak occurred in West Africa in 2014.
There was something different about this outbreak though, there was the same fear that somehow it would get across the water ways to Europe and North America; but now there was hope.
The Canadian Company Merk had been working on a Vaccine that was waiting for human trials; that sounds bad but it makes sense in reality as how would you know it worked on humans unless you actually had humans to test it on.
Several thousand of the Vaccines were sent down to West Africa as the outbreak was crossing over borders and given to front line workers as well as the already infected people; several of which have now almost completely recovered thanks to the vaccine.
I say almost, for some reason the scientists either don’t know or haven’t stated, the Ebola Virus seems to have made a home in their blood stream but isn’t active; I’m very curious as to why this is and hope that they figure it out… somewhere in the back of my mind is the worry that this’ll allow the disease to spread around the world… while at the same time I don’t want punish survivors for my own fear.
It’s just easier for everybody involved to cure it completely.
So where does that bring us today? Merk has made a deal with several groups fighting viral infections around the world to stockpile 300,000 doses of the vaccine in order to prepare for the next outbreak; while at the same time searching for a better formula that’ll just eradicate it.
This brings me to the World Community Grid program under BOINC https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ which is actively participating in the research for not only a better understanding of Ebola but looking for drugs to wipe it out. I ask that if you have spare computer time and don’t mind research running in the background that you download the program; along with several other research initiatives you can take part in.
As an added bonus, some nice folks also created Gridcoin, which I think is currently trading at .03 cents US, in order to pay you for your computer time; it actually builds up fast as well. It can be found at http://www.gridcoin.us/
Thank-you for reading; please feel free to resteem as it would be appreciated.
All pictures from Wikipedia. Gridcoin pic from @dutch