Prox Authors & Ebola
The evolution of Ebola virus: Insights from the 2013-2016 epidemic. (Nature paywall: $32 for a 6-page paper! Sponsored by Wellcome VIZIONS - how does that fit with Wellcome's policy in support of open and unrestricted access to research literature? You can buy a whole book on the outbreak by Constantine Nana for $7-8 - way more insights.)
Pub: Nature, October 2016.
The 2013–2016 Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic in West Africa appears to have begun following human contact with an animal (probably bat) reservoir of Ebola virus (EBOV) in December 2013, in the small village of Meliandou in Guéckédou Prefecture, Guinea.
Straight off the bat, the authors promulgate/imprint an unsubstantiated origin narrative first developed by Baize et al- the toddler, the hollow tree, in a remote village of Meliandou, Guniea - the pangolin narrative of the day.
Oddly, for a paper titled The evolution of the Ebola virus: Insights ..., they strangely skip right over any examination of this theory in the first sentences saying: the origin and spread of the 2013–2016 EVD epidemic seem well resolved.
Baize's paper reports the first confirmed case was in a Health worker at Gueckedou hospital on Feb 23. It speculates about a chain of 12 unconfirmed but suspected cases going back to the bat tree - that may have lead to the first confirmed case but notes the epidemiologic links are not well established.
That's academic skulduggery by Holmes et al. The very paper they cite to say it's well resolved says it's not well established.
Baize's not well established theory, in turn, is based on initial epidemiologic investigation that he doesn't cite but it appears to be Fabian Leendertz expedition.
Science: Soon after the outbreak was identified as Ebola in March 2014, wildlife epidemiologist Fabian Leendertz of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin went to southeastern Guinea to look for signs of an outbreak in wildlife. Leendertz, with three more German veterinarians spent 4 weeks in the region, capturing bats from four sites and surveying two protected forest areas.
So more than 3 months after the death of the toddler.
The researchers found no evidence that wild animals were dying of Ebola, they report in a paper published online today in EMBO Molecular Medicine. The populations of chimpanzees, duikers, and other large mammals were at about the same levels they had been in the previous surveys in the region. They also found no direct evidence of Ebola virus infections in any of the 169 bats (from at least 13 species) that they captured and tested.
No evidence of any animal infection. Not that that's ever stopped a zoonotic scientist before.
But their visit to Meliandou yielded intriguing clues.
(The) researchers learned of (a) tree and linked it to one of the outbreak's first victims. But, in a frustrating twist, the tree had burned to a stump just before they arrived, thwarting their search for evidence that might confirm the scenario.
So convenient.
12 unconfirmed cases along a not well established epidemiological trail is burned out tree that thwarted the search for evidence - with no evidence of animal infection.
So why are Andersen, Holmes, Rambaut saying the origin seems well resolved?
Thanks to this cohort of scientists, the narrative became well established - repeated by other researchers - who fed it to the media. Who printed it as science gospel. Notice any similarities?
And so it goes that another origin story gets passed into science zoonosis lore - without any substantial proof.