Saturday Morning Cartoon [Y-not]

I'm going to a ball tonight.

No, really!

So I decided to delay the next installment in our 2016 Presidential Candidates thread until next weekend rather than rush it and not be around in the comments.

But I thought it would be nice to have a Saturday morning cartoon. This one has SCIENCE!

**Fixed (I think) with a better version of the episode below.**

Speaking of SCIENCE, did you see this twit's tweet?

It will come as no surprise to you that this confident statement of sciency-science came from a lawyer-turned-journalist.

Meanwhile, here's what the Material Data Safety Sheet for Ebola virus has to say about its transmission (emphasis mine):

MODE OF TRANSMISSION: In an outbreak, it is hypothesized that the first patient becomes infected as a result of contact with an infected animal (15). Person-to-person transmission occurs via close personal contact with an infected individual or their body fluids during the late stages of infection or after death (1, 2, 15, 27). Nosocomial infections can occur through contact with infected body fluids due to the reuse of unsterilized syringes, needles, or other medical equipment contaminated with these fluids (1, 2). Humans may be infected by handling sick or dead non-human primates and are also at risk when handling the bodies of deceased humans in preparation for funerals, suggesting possible transmission through aerosol droplets (2, 6, 28 ). In the laboratory, infection through small-particle aerosols has been demonstrated in primates, and airborne spread among humans is strongly suspected, although it has not yet been conclusively demonstrated (1, 6, 13). The importance of this route of transmission is not clear. Poor hygienic conditions can aid the spread of the virus (6).

And here's some unsettling information about its stability outside the human host:

SURVIVAL OUTSIDE HOST: The virus can survive in liquid or dried material for a number of days (23). Infectivity is found to be stable at room temperature or at 4 C for several days, and indefinitely stable at -70 C (6, 20). Infectivity can be preserved by lyophilisation.

But you are anti-SCIENCE if you're concerned about catching this thing. You can trust Zerlina Maxwell... she read all about it in Glamour.

Open thread.

posted by Open Blogger at 09:35 AM

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