Ebola

Dr. Rima Laibow speaks out about Ebola,

“I have confirmed information from the United States Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, those are the same people that helped develop eight separate patents that the United States government holds on ebola and its genetic sequence, and make no mistake, this is a weaponized virus, that same institute published a special report… and they say that the airborne transmission of ebola is real,” she said.

Dr. Rima Laibow goes on to say that ebola is a highly infectious disease worse than influenza, which the only way that you can get infected is through the respiratory system. If an influenza droplet lands on your hand it has no impact on your body unless you lick it or get it in your respiratory tract. However, the ebola virus can penetrate any cell in your body if a droplet lands on your hand, or eye or a cheek it can penetrate the skin and enter the blood stream. Dr. Rima Laibow believes that the virus is likely to spread rapidly in the winter months, when coughing and sneezing is common.

“ The US Government spent several million dollar on a laboratory device to aerosolise it to study this” When aerosolised and taken into the respiratory tract its far more deadly, than if you get it through your skin or eyes, that is when the death rate reaches and exceeds 90 percent,” said Dr. Rima Laibow. So public funds have been spent on research to make the ebola virus into a weapon of mass destruction. But they may even being another angle to this-read on..

U.S. health officials Tuesday laid out the worst-case and best-case scenarios for the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, warning that the number of infected people could explode to at least 1.4 million by mid-January — or peak well below that, if efforts to control the outbreak are ramped up.

More than 3,000 people have died in the Ebola outbreak, with the epicenter of the crisis in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea – neighboring west African nations that are struggling to contain the spread of the virus owing to weak and under-developed health systems.

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that Europe would almost certainly see more cases of Ebola after a nurse in Spain became the first person known to have caught the virus outside Africa.

Already the virus is having an impact on the movement of people. There have also been reports from South Africa of tours and conferences being cancelled, despite the country being thousands of miles from the epicenter of the outbreak.

Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank which last week approved $140m to help tackle the social and economic consequences of the crisis, said the international community had been “very slow to respond” to the outbreak, while acknowledging the global response has now picked up.

The US is deploying 3,000 soldiers to west Africa to help fight the outbreak and has pledged $175m to help tackle the crisis, while the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have pledged $300m in emergency aid for the three most affected nations.

But Mr Kaberuka said more was still needed. “I think the economic consequences are not yet clear. It will depend on how we deal with this pandemic of fear – mining companies, airlines and so on,” he said.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s finance minister, told the Financial Times' Africa Summit that the manner in which the outbreak was being presented as a “west African” or “African” problem risked inflicting widespread economic damage across the continent.

“I have strong views about the way we should present it,” she said. “We should not run away from the fact that this could have a very negative impact on the economies of the countries, the continent, or even the world if it were to run out of control . . . People are really scared of Ebola, we must manage the news on it properly.”

On the effect on Africa, Ms Okonjo-Iweala said that, for example, businesses had postponed meetings in Nigeria because they could not get travel insurance for staff to travel to the country. “If you carry on with this kind of thing, you can have a country like Ethiopia, anywhere, very far away [from the outbreak] having business cancelled, travel cancelled and so on, and this could impact the economies of these countries,” she said.

The economic fallout from ebola is also being felt in Europe, with the travel sector being most affected. Tui Travel dropped 15p to 367p while British Airways owner International Airlines Group slipped 2.3p to 343.3p and cruise company Carnival lost 29p to £22.99.

What about Ebola investing?

At the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s Investor Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday, Tekmira’s. Murray said he wants investors to understand that being a biotech company with a treatment candidate in a developing crisis like Ebola is like being in “shark-infested water.”

“You want to be very careful,” Murray said. “In many cases your partner, or your funder, if it’s a government agency, will have a completely different culture than what you’re trying to create in the business.”

Plus, Tekmira’s Ebola program is only one part of the company’s pipeline research, Murray noted. Also, there’s the factor that getting the Ebola treatments to market may take a while.

The stock shot up last week after The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first US case of Ebola. The stock has now fallen out of favor this week.

“I think there is certainly a roller coaster going on in the public market,” Murray told attendees at the BIO Forum.

Another biotech company to get a boost on Ebola treatment developments; Chimerix Inc.  Shares received a boost Tuesday after the Food and Drug Administration authorized an emergency investigation treatment of the biotech’s Ebola treatment.

Some biotech companies are beginning to light up like a Christmas Tree.