Thread: Ebola

Originally Posted by shooter74743

THANK YOU! I have friends in the healthcare industry and thank goodness the cold/flu season hasn't really kicked off.

I minored in Biology due to my interest in virus's and bacteria in the late 80's-early 90's...hemorrhagic fever was around then & it was common speak that there were a couple military locations like Ft. Detrick, one or two private labs, and of course CDC who had vaults of the bad stuff to test/play with and of course vaccines for said bad stuff. Unless this was lies & I truly doubt it, where is all of this information/research now? You can't tell me such a bad virus (and old) has not been researched more than is being told...unless the testing is "classified" due to folks not liking that the government was involved in biological warfare testing. Furthermore, you can't tell me that there isn't a vaccine for it in some vault deep underground. I can't help it but feel my conspiracy theory meter is climbing & I truly try to stay informed to see through the bull crap. Is it a money thing? Is it a way to get a rfid in everyone "vaccinated"? Is it population genocide? Is this "ebola scare" some sort of re-direction? Hard not to let some thoughts go rampant when there is so much bull, actions, and lack of actions going on.

Ok, rant over...

It has probably been studied. However, there are countless strains of such bad germs. They're studied, and then stored away. Vaccine development at significant quantities costs oodles of money. Making medicine even more so. I work for a big pharma company; I know how much it costs. To bring an approved product to market costs hundreds of millions, and about 7 years, assuming that you already have a running plant you can use. There are so many of those bugs, and the risk of such a bug going pandemic is so low that literally noone is going to spend any money on production or even developing ramp-up scenarios.

The notion that they can just pick something out of a closet and say 'here it is', is completely wrong. They may have some untested, experimental stuff in very low quantities, that has never gone through human trial. When it's gone, it's gone. That is why only a couple of health workers got it so far. People have been treated with it. There is none to spare. Even to make a raw batch of untested, unvalidated take-at-own-risk vaccine or medicine could take half a year, depending on just how it is made. The stuff we make, takes months. If the product hasn't been made the the processes have been shelved for a while, it could be much longer. Because manufacture of many such treatments rely on biological processes, it is vastly more complex and time consuming than mixing up a batch of aspirin. At this point in time, the handful of survivors donate a lot of plasma because that is the best bet for now. Basically, their bodies produce the antibodies that we'd need for a treatment. And reproducing this process in a bioreactor is very costly, very time consuming to get right, and very difficult. As I said, hundreds of millions and 7 years, which is why there is no commercial stuff nor the resources to ramp up quickly.

Also, while there has been some research into hemorrhagic fevers, all big players have abandoned it for weapons use (except for the ones that have known to be developed at some point in the past, which is why soldiers still get innoculated against smallpox). A fever that would be a great weapon would also be so uncontrollable that you may just end up liquidating your own army or population. Anthrax and other such nasties is where the research is at: things that can be controlled and targeted accurately.

Originally Posted by Bruno

It has probably been studied. However, there are countless strains of such bad germs. They're studied, and then stored away. Vaccine development at significant quantities costs oodles of money. Making medicine even more so. I work for a big pharma company; I know how much it costs. To bring an approved product to market costs hundreds of millions, and about 7 years, assuming that you already have a running plant you can use. There are so many of those bugs, and the risk of such a bug going pandemic is so low that literally noone is going to spend any money on production or even developing ramp-up scenarios.

The notion that they can just pick something out of a closet and say 'here it is', is completely wrong. They may have some untested, experimental stuff in very low quantities, that has never gone through human trial. When it's gone, it's gone. That is why only a couple of health workers got it so far. People have been treated with it. There is none to spare. Even to make a raw batch of untested, unvalidated take-at-own-risk vaccine or medicine could take half a year, depending on just how it is made. The stuff we make, takes months. If the product hasn't been made the the processes have been shelved for a while, it could be much longer. Because manufacture of many such treatments rely on biological processes, it is vastly more complex and time consuming than mixing up a batch of aspirin. At this point in time, the handful of survivors donate a lot of plasma because that is the best bet for now. Basically, their bodies produce the antibodies that we'd need for a treatment. And reproducing this process in a bioreactor is very costly, very time consuming to get right, and very difficult. As I said, hundreds of millions and 7 years, which is why there is no commercial stuff nor the resources to ramp up quickly.

Also, while there has been some research into hemorrhagic fevers, all big players have abandoned it for weapons use (except for the ones that have known to be developed at some point in the past, which is why soldiers still get innoculated against smallpox). A fever that would be a great weapon would also be so uncontrollable that you may just end up liquidating your own army or population. Anthrax and other such nasties is where the research is at: things that can be controlled and targeted accurately.

Agree with all this. But a few points - I'm not a fan of the monopolies that pharm companies have here in the US. Take the hep C treatment - it's $20k/pill here, but costs about 1% of that in India because the drug companies don't have a patent monopoly there. Although pharm companies do have to spend money to get the drugs through FDA, there's is MILLIONS to BILLIONS spent in basic research through tax dollars that lead up to that. A big reason that our healthcare costs are so far above the rest of the world's is that we allow patent monopolies on drugs. Also, like you said, ebola is not good for weaponizing. It's not easily spread and the quickness of the lethality makes it unlikely to become very widespread.