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lucb1eyesterday at 7:51 PM1 replyview on HN

Not answering the question. Is there some small gene change that we're specifically worried about here or was GP wildly speculating?

> reproduced and mutated as rapidly as viruses

HIV spreads in similar ways afaik (some fluids, I don't know the details of Ebola but it's not respiratory), yet that hasn't gone airborne in decades. I'm well aware that pigs don't get a million offspring each, but it doesn't seem like a common event for viruses to completely change their mechanism overnight either. Hence the quadrillion odds I mentioned, I was indeed referencing that they mutate so much, and yet...


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jjk166yesterday at 8:21 PM

> Is there some small gene change that we're specifically worried about here

Yes. A single gene change allows for airborne Ebola transmission. This gene change has occurred in the Reston strain, which luckily does not cause symptoms in humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus

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