Revising Epidemiological Scientific Guidance: After 45 Years, It Seems Ebola's Minimum Incubation Period Is ~4 -- Not ~2 -- Days.

To be clear, this seemingly relatively small distinction. . . matters immensely -- in building real world, "on the ground" -- contact of contacts tracing protocols.

As regular readers of my stuff know, the Ebola vaccine is administered in a "ring" fashion -- injecting all people who've had direct contact with someone known to have Ebola, and those with contact with these contacts, within a specified period of time. And then. . . to contacts, of those contacts, within the time window -- and so on.

But if the health authorities and WHO workers are only looking backward, or forward two days. . . the effort will miss a much wider swath of potentially sick people, and potential transmission sources.

So, this fine empirical work firmly establishing four days as the minimum incubation period is an important epidemiological life science advance. While no one may ever truly know -- in any outbreak, with certainty -- where the index case is (or who was/is patient zero), using a four day contacts list will get much closer to a more rapid arrest of the virus, in a any given community -- assuming the people reporting will report the full truth of all their contacts.

In this regard, extramarital affair partners (and/or paying for sex workers) presents a vexing problem to health workers. They, or their partners, may well not easily admit to having been with someone in an intimate contact, at even two days, let alone four -- out.

So the psychological suasion work is and remains every bit as important, as the actual decision-making around who, and how many -- receive the vaccine jabs. Now you know. Onward -- into a quiet weekend, with baby girl departing for the Grand Canyon -- and then LA, and then. . . a month in the Australian outback. Woosh!

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