Sunday, October 26, 2014

Ebola's Airborne Potential, US Army Studies, CIDRAP Advisories, and .... Snopes Gets Breitbart Wrong

Infowars reports that a U.S. ARMY 1995 study concludes " Demonstration of fatal aerosol transmission of this virus in monkeys reinforces the importance of taking appropriate precautions to prevent its potential aerosol transmission to humans."    The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Frederick, Maryland, proved in 1995 that the Ebola goes airborne when the temperature drops below that normal for West Africa. That is a FACTThe study is titled: "Lethal experimental infections of rhesus monkeys by aerosolized Ebola virus."  Here's the US gov direct link to the study, originally published in the International Journal of Experimental Pathology http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1997182/   

Here's the direct link to the Info Wars article quoting extensively from the original study: http://www.infowars.com/u-s-army-ebola-goes-airborne-once-temperature-drops/ 

Of course, it's probably a matter of time before people start asking what "Snopes" says, but it is true regardless. If you search "Ebola is Airborne" on Snopes, you will get labels of "False" about other articles - but even those, as of this writing,  are factual, truthful articles that  I think should not be labeled false. 

I don't know why, but Snopes is still mislabeling as "False" the absolutely correct Breitbart Oct 14, 2014 statement "The highly respected Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota just advised the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) that “there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles,” including exhaled breath. "   when in fact, that is a direct quote from the the CIDRAP article Breitbart references, which is titled on CIDRAPs own site : "COMMENTARY: Health workers need optimal respiratory protection for Ebola",  The full specific quote on CIDRAP says: "We believe there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles both near and at a distance from infected patients, which means that healthcare workers should be wearing respirators, not facemasks.1 ""

So how could that possibly be "False"?????? 

Snopes cites a CIDRAP disclaimer to claim falsehood, but CIDRAP and Snopes both use the same recursive semantic tricks to obscure the issue: chasing a red herring about timeliness of the article, and answering questions that were never asked.  Snopes tries to give the impression that reporting a medical fact is somehow outdated within a month:  " Breitbart's use of the term "just advised" gave the impression that the CIDRAP commentary was recent to mid-October 2014, when in fact it was published prior to the first diagnosis of Ebola in the U.S. in late September 2014.

The article was published less than a month earlier on Sept 17th 2014 - extremely current as medical research and advisories go, despite the Snopes and CIDRAP pretense that less than 30 days is outdated. (If anything, this is even more damning evidence that the CDC had evidence and good advice that it did not put to use to protect the people of America from this disease. )

Further, CIDRAP ends its own "disclaimer" by saying : "This commentary in question specifically addressed transmission risk within a healthcare setting and does not address community transmission." In other words, the article in question is accurate and an appropriate advisory, just as Breitbart reported.  

The Breitbart articles are clear and factual:  
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/10/14/CIDRAP-Confirms-Ebola-Transmittable-by-Air

and here: 
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/10/15/CIDRAP-Director-Airborne-Ebola-Single-Greatest-Concern-of-My-Career

The original CIDRAP article is here:

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/09/commentary-health-workers-need-optimal-respiratory-protection-ebola

Here's the  link to this Snopes article: http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cidrap.asp  

And the link to CIDRAP's "Response": 
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/response-statements-falsely-attributed-cidrap-regarding-ebola-transmission

Read them all,and decide for yourself. 

It's a shame that Snopes seem to have let politics get in the way of the facts. They had built a solid reputation. I hope they don't squander that, because we need trustworthy sites that can show genuine myths for the falsehoods they are.  Unfortunately, much like Wikipedia, where any article with any political value is tainted with progressive leanings and talking points instead of a pure neutral POV, so it seems that we now have to be skeptical even when reading the anti-rumor sites to be sure they aren't starting one of their own.... 









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