Scientists: "There Was Almost a Rush to Assure the Public That We Knew A Lot More Than We Did" About Ebola; Experts Now Concede Ebola May Be Transmitted by Purely Airborne Route

Incidentally, the Washington Post, which is itself an Expert at Writing to whom you should bow and scrape, reported his words as "there was a rush to ensure the public," which is not what he said, because it's stupid. And if he did say it, you throw a "(sic)" after it to indicate the error is in the quoted material, not in your own writing.

But anyway, Yay Experts. I love being falsely "ensured" by them as if I were a child in constant need of Daddy's Comforting Hand.

A team of prominent researchers suggested Thursday that limited airborne transmission of the Ebola virus is "very likely," a hypothesis that could reignite the debate that started last fall after one of the scientists offered the same opinion.

"It is very likely that at least some degree of Ebola virus transmission currently occurs via infectious aerosols generated from the gastrointestinal tract, the respiratory tract, or medical procedures, although this has been difficult to definitively demonstrate or rule out, since those exposed to infectious aerosols also are most likely to be in close proximity to, and in direct contact with, an infected case," the scientists wrote. Their peer-reviewed study was published in mBio, a journal of the American Society of Microbiology.

The study's lead author, Michael T. Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, touched off a small furor and was condemned by some experts last Sept. 11 when he raised the same possibility in an op-ed piece in the New York Times as concern over the spread of the deadly disease was increasing rapidly....

"There was almost a rush to ensure the public that we knew a lot more than we did," Osterholm said in an interview Wednesday night, repeating a theme he has raised many times before. "But we're saying you can't rule out respiratory transmission."

Yeah. Almost a rush.

I assume he is speaking here of a proper airborne transmission, and not the layman's "airborne" transmission; either way, the experts who so ensuredly ensured us that there was no way to get ebola from the air were wrong.

Not just wrong. Arrogantly and loudly wrong.

See, the media is not particularly bright but they are Bossy and they like pretending they Love Science. So when they see an opportunity to Pretend to Be Scientists and Yell At Their Dumb Readers, they seize upon it, even if they don't have any idea about what the fuck they are talking. (Note preposition smartly undangled, all expert-like.)

The media were always wrong on this, and the CDC was always deliberately deceptive. This new information about an actual airborne route of transmission is new (ish), but even before, the CDC was falsely suggesting that "no airborne transmission" meant that you could not catch ebola except by direct contact with an infected person or his fluids, like his blood and stool.

They sort of forgot that his "spit" and vapor in his breath counted as "liquids," so you could in fact catch ebola by what the layman would call an airborne route. (Scientists do not call this path of transmission "airborne" transmission, but rather "spray" transmission or "droplet transmission.")

The CDC deliberately lied to people, and the demented little Apple Polishers of the media rushed to scream at the rest of the class that you could not possibly get ebola by anything other than direct contact.

And they were either lying or ignorant, and on this one, I'm pretty sure it's "ignorant," because seriously, they're not very smart at all and barely show any interest in doing their jobs.

And now it turns out that even that false "ensurance" was... well, even more false, I guess.

Lies In the Public Good: Vox's prolific idiot Max Fischer confessed today that he just basically always lies about Islam, in order to #StopH8.

Oh and I don't mean that in one of those blogger-lies-about-someone-admitting-to-lying sort of ways. I mean he admits it.

Yes idiot we know, we've been saying so for a long time now.

posted by Ace at 05:27 PM

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