While Ebola is a growing cause for concern, is panic necessary? Some experts are calling the current outbreak a “dress rehearsal for the next big one.” But is that so? Biopharmaceutical advances have made a passive immunity cure for Ebola—an antibody that first exposes the virus in your body and allows the immune system to fight it, then neutralizes the virus so other cells can’t be infected. So far it’s working for the two patients with Ebola in which it is currently being tested. Meanwhile, researchers have cut the time it takes to pinpoint a particular strain of influenza dramatically from 4-6 weeks to less than a week. These advances show that this “dress rehearsal” could in fact be a curtain call for epidemic-level viruses.
Don’t worry (too much) about Ebola
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