Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

September 9, 2014

PLOS Resources on Ebola

Filed under: Bioinformatics,Open Access,Open Data — Patrick Durusau @ 7:09 pm

PLOS Resources on Ebola by Virginia Barbour and PLOS Collections.

From the post:

The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa probably began in Guinea in 2013, but it was only recognized properly in early 2014 and shows, at the time of writing, no sign of subsiding. The continuous human-to-human transmission of this new outbreak virus has become increasingly worrisome.

Analyses thus far of this outbreak mark it as the most serious in recent years and the effects are already being felt far beyond those who are infected and dying; whole communities in West Africa are suffering because of its negative effects on health care and other infrastructures. Globally, countries far removed from the outbreak are considering their local responses, were Ebola to be imported; and the ripple effects on the normal movement of trade and people are just becoming apparent.

A great collection of PLOS resources on Ebola.

Even usual closed sources are making Ebola information available for free:

Genomic surveillance elucidates Ebola virus origin and transmission during the 2014 outbreak (Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1259657) This is the gene sequencing report that establishes that one (1) person ate infected bush meat and is the source of all the following Ebola infections.

So much for needing highly specialized labs to “weaponize” biological agents. One infection is likely to result in > 20,000 deaths. You do the math.

I first saw this in a tweet by Alex Vespignani.

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