FDA Approves Ebola Vaccine with 100% Success Rate

Merck has developed an Ebola vaccine with a 100% success rate which has been approved by the FDA.

This is really wonderful news for the planet, especially when you look at the 2014–15 outbreak in West Africa where the death toll exceeded 28,000 people. Viruses with an ability to spread through casual contact in an age of global air travel are nothing to shrug off.

Technically, Ebola is not spread though “casual contact.” If we use a CDC definition of the term. But if we use a civilian definition of the term, one might want to argue the point. It’s spread through bodily fluids. But then: “If a person sick with Ebola coughs or sneezes, and saliva or mucus touches another person’s eyes, nose, mouth, or an open cut or wound, these fluids may spread Ebola.” That’s pretty darn casual. And it can acquired by touching such fluids on door knobs or other surfaces if one then transfers that inoculant to a mucus membrane such as one’s mouth, nose, eyes, etc. That’s a pretty common occurrence. Again, sounds pretty casual. Few people on the street or in their office in Kinshasa or anywhere else are going to be wearing gloves and goggles the way scientists going into Ebola zones wisely do. A co-worker’s sneeze might mean Ebola transmission. So the word “casual” in “casual contact” when used in relation to Ebola might just be a misleading term used in a sedative phrase intended to quell public panic.

The different strains of Ebola have varied wildly in terms of mortality, with some variants…