I was wondering about the software they use to track this process, if any? Say, for example, you get the manifest for a plane where a passenger was infected. If you wanted to track infections from that point, which is unlikely but possible, that's a lot of work. And if it spirals out from there?
What is the actual mortality rate? I have heard reports varying from 40% to 90%.
Current outbreak appears to be around 50-55% mortality.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moreorless
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/moreorless/moreor...
edit - It also says that 52% is the current figure on this outbreak and that if you count up all cases, then Ebola has a mortality rate of 60-65%.
With the Zaire strain, now just called plain Ebola virus, normally with an observed fatality rate of 83% or 76% (two figures from different Wikipedia articles) and up to 90%, and at the other end a Reston ebolavirus with no fatalities among exposed lab workers.
This West African outbreak has been sequenced and is a Zaire strain with plenty of mutations that perhaps have significantly dropped its fatality rate, see this section and the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_virus_o...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_immunity
By calling it a "drug", and that its way of action 'is unknown' etc., the article makes it sound a bit like they were talking about the engineering of a new chemical compound, when in fact the way of action seems straight-forward. The new work will probably just be in details of the production and perhaps embedding or some such of the antibodies.
Maybe my rejection stems from my native language (German) calling treatments like this "passive Impfung", literally "passive vaccination", while we seem to reserve the word "Medikament" (drug) for non-biologic actors.
Oh, let's see if I can remember the main groupings...
Primates ->
> Lower Primates ->
> > Tarsiers
> > Aye-Ayes
> > Lorises
> Lemurs & Red Pandas
> Simians ->
> > New World Monkeys
> > Old World Monkeys
> Hominoids ->
> > Gibbons & Siamangs
> > Great Apes ->
> > > Orangutans
> > > Gorillas
> > > Chimpanzees ->
> > > > Chimpanzee
> > > > Bonobo
> > > > Humans
Tribe Hominini
Subtribe Panina
Genus Pan
Chimpanzee (common chimpanzee), Pan troglodytes
Central chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes troglodytes
Western chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes verus
Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes ellioti
Eastern chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii
Bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee), Pan paniscus
Subtribe Hominina
Genus Homo
Human, Homo sapiens
Anatomically modern human, Homo sapiens sapiens