I think they just don’t know—except through eating infected meat itself. There’s a lot we don’t know about ebola.

This is what I mean:

Megabats constitute the suborder Megachiroptera, family Pteropodidae of the order Chiroptera (bats). They are also called fruit bats, old world fruit bats, or, especially the genera Acerodon and Pteropus, flying foxes. Fruit bats are restricted to the Old World in a tropical and subtropical distribution, ranging no further than the eastern Mediterranean and South Asia, and are absent from northwest Africa and southwest Australia.

My understanding is that’s the group that carries ebola. Not all fruit bat species carry it, either; the ones that do carry it don’t live in this hemisphere.

In the book Spillover he talks about how one village outbreak started from eating an infected chimpanzee. It sounds like they were sick from butchering and eating it, since 18 people got sick, but I’m not 100%. (this was Mayibout 2). But that chimp was scavenged and dead already when they found it. I’m not sure how that translates to bats, who don’t actually get sick from the disease, like we do (and chimps, gorillas, monkeys, etc).

That device appears to have not gone though the complete testing process yet for ebola; I’d like to see evidence of its accuracy. But in any event, it has no relevance to Duncan’s first ER visit, when it would have mattered, for one simple reason: for the doctors at Dallas Presbyterian to have used it on Duncan, they would have had to have suspected he had ebola. They appear to not have even considered the possibility on that first ER trip. They did not test him in the conventional manner for ebola until his second trip to the ER when his symptoms were extremely obvious, and it took two more days to get the definitive diagnosis through blood test. But even before receiving that diagnosis they had him isolated, and staff was wearing some protective gear (although inadequate gear). They seem to have strongly suspected it on that second visit even before the diagnosis, and not suspected it at all on the first visit.

what do you mean we dont?
Artibeus
Neotropical fruit bats
The genus consists of 21 species, which are native to Central and South America, as well as parts of the Caribbean.

and dont forget the vampire bat, which can feast directly on blood..
New World leaf-nosed bats (Phyllostomidae)
are found throughout Central and South America, from Mexico to northern Argentina. They are ecologically the most varied and diverse family within the order Chiroptera. Most species are insectivorous, but the phyllostomid bats include within their number true predatory species as well as frugivores (subfamily Stenodermatinae and Carolliinae). For example, the false vampire (Vampyrum spectrum), the largest bat in the Americas, eats vertebrate prey including small dove-sized birds. Members of this family have evolved to use food groups such as fruit, nectar, pollen, insects, frogs, other bats, and small vertebrates, and, in the case of the vampire bats, even blood.

🙂

The Associated Press has also reported the medical records reveal nurses didn’t wear full protective gear while treating Duncan for two days while they awaited the results of his Ebola test.

Fruit bats would have to be imported—they don’t live in the western hemisphere.

And at this point I’d say “let’s keep it that way.”

They don’t sound very tasty to me.