Ebola Patient Zero Identified, Probably Infected By Bats 112
BarbaraHudson writes The CBC is reporting that scientists have possibly found the source of Patient Zero's Ebola infection. From the story: "Patient Zero, two-year-old Guinean Emile Ouamouno, may have been infected while hunting or playing with bats inside a hollow tree near his home in a small village named Meliandou. The study determined Ouamouno's interaction with bats is the likely cause of transmission by ruling out other possibilities, namely that the virus was spread by the consumption of bushmeat. Only children and women presented symptoms or died in the beginning of the current epidemic. Research published in the EMBO Molecular Medicine journal finds that the single transmission, from bat to boy, was then spread human to human."
Great. Bat Genocide Incoming (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine once word of this gets out to people in certain African nations infected by Ebola, it'll get distilled into "bats are threatening our survival" and lead to wholesale slaughter of bats. Something similar happened with cats mistakenly being associated with the Black Death. This will then lead to a surge in mosquito populations, which will then lead to a surge in malaria cases, which will likely kill more people than the Ebola outbreaks themselves.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
It means "patient zero for this outbreak". Unlike some diseases, Ebola doesn't have a constant presence in the human species. Most of the time, there are no humans on the planet infected with Ebola (compare and contrast with the common cold, which exists in an endemic steady state among humans).
Ebola outbreaks begin when a human is exposed to the disease from a non-human source (bats have been suspected for decades, but it was tricky to pin down). So "patient zero" for an Ebola outbreak is the human who is the first to be infected (and who then goes on to infect others).
One of the big questions about Ebola outbreaks is why there aren't more of them. If bats are the carriers, then given how widespread bats are across Africa, why do outbreaks so isolated? Tracking down the patient zero for each outbreak is crucial if we're going to understand that (and understanding it could be the key to preventing future outbreaks).