The curious thing about Ebola virus disease is the way it actually kills you. You may hear it turns you to soup, or you bleed out from everywhere including your skin or that the immune system is taken out first thing or that the virus punches holes in your veins. All of the are true not only of Ebola but flu. Ebola just happens to do it faster and 50x worse, that is Ebola has a 50X higher mortality rate associated with that than SARS does, the worse flu in recent history. SARS kills at 10x the rate of true influenza.
While there was ample press on the 2014 Ebola Epidemic in West Africa, there was very little in the press about what they did for the people in care. Nore that several US citizens in the US and several citizens in the UK were treated for the disease and these half dozen people all survived, that is a 0 death rate from a disease known to be 99% fatal by WHO statistics.
One newspaper did however report what one was given:
"
British nurse cured of Ebola credits new drug - and strawberries
"Back in Britain, the decision to try MIL 77 was not difficult. “I said ‘I have Ebola, so, yes, I’d rather have that than high-dose vitamin C,’” she said"
"“I reckon I’ve had 10 punnets,” joked Corporal Anna Cross, who smiled nervously as she talked for the first time after her treatment at the Royal Free Hospital in north London." (10 punnets would be about equal to two 1000mg injections a day)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11499584/Nurse-who-became-first-in-world-to-be-cured-of-Ebola-by-experimental-drug-is-discharged.html"
Now lets's look at this. First why ZMAPP (MIL-77)? It it not a proven effective vaccine and is a triple recombinant vaccine made from three strains of Ebola, none of which were the strain she had while one of the three was of the non-fatal Philippine ("Reston") strain - in there for no particular reason other than a guess. The shot does not and not work and there was greater success with transfusing blood from recovered patients than there was from ZMAPP of which there are only 7 doses; it takes a very long time to make. What was also reported: "high dose vitamin C" and she's rather eat strawberries, so she did, ten boxes at a time. The zmapp didn't do anything the vitamin C in the strawberries did. A vaccine cannot supply the chemicals the body needs to repair itself. Again in this case
"the infection is over but all is not well".
Incidentally the cure for Ebola turned out to be the trace nutrient Selenium, proven by a Harvard scientist in 2015 which also explains the mysterious immunity to the disease known since the its discovery in 1976. High selenium diets are well known in the parts of the African continent and the details of those who are immune are now well understood: eating of local tree nuts, where plants concentrate the mineral from the selenium rich soil are eaten evry day in the form of a nut curry paste, which is the national dish of Gabon, the the immunity was last tested in depth by te Pasteur Institute in France that tested every 10th person in Gabon and found up to 33% of poeple had the disease but never had a symptom during their immunoassay for ZEBOV.
Note that Klenner in the 1950s treated a case of Marburg virus, little brother of Ebola only 50% fatal with only intravenous Ascorbic Acid and suggested a dose twice as strong would work on Ebola. So even without selenium we already knew how to treat the disease. We could have used this for flu long ago and instead opted for a mono culture of prevention which in the end has not paid off.
Refs:
1967: The first known Filovirus breaks out. "Forty Years of Marburg Virus".
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/196/Supplement_2/S131/858753
1970: the movie Andromeda Strain is released based on a book Michael Crichton wrote in 1969 while attending medical school at Harvard.
1976: The Ebola virus, the second known filovirus, first struck humans living in northern Zaire (in 1997, renamed the Congo Republic). Of the 318 persons infected with Ebola virus in that outbreak of 1976, 88 percent died (1–4). The responsible strain of this virus, called Ebola Zaire, surfaced again a year later in southern Zaire, but only one person died. The reason for the difference in the virus’ virulence or the host susceptibility between the two outbreaks is not understood. The virus then lay quiescent until 1995, when it erupted to cause another epidemic in Southern Zaire.
1979: Andromeda Strain or Local Pathogen? Science isn't sure.
Ann Intern Med. 1979 Jul;91(1):117-9.
Ebola virus and hemorrhagic fever: Andromeda strain or localized pathogen?
Johnson KM.
PMID: 111590
1995: Taylor, Theoretical Evidence that the Ebola Virus Zaire Strain May Be Selenium-Dependent: A Factor in Pathogenesis and Viral Outbreaks?
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1995/articles/1995-v10n0304-p131.shtml
2000: Ebola immunity documented again
Gonzales: "Ebola and Marburg virus antibody prevalence in selected populations of the Central African Republic"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10717539
2010:
2015:
