The Ebola Virus Explained — How Your Body Fights For Survival

What makes Ebola so dangerous? How can a virus overwhelm the very complex defense system of the body so quickly and so effectively? Let's take a look at what Ebola does. (Theme music) Ebola is a virus. A virus is a very small thing. A bit of RNA or DNA and a few proteins and a hull. It has no ability to do anything by itself whatsoever, and can only survive and proliferate by infecting cells. To avoid this we have the immune system. The immune system is super complex so we develop a visual system that makes it easy to understand. So it looks like this: Let's concentrate on the part that is critical to understanding Ebola and ignore the rest. So usually dendritic cells will activate the army of anti-virus cells, support cells and anti-body factories that work together with the guard cells wipe out the infection in a matter of days. But when Ebola strikes, it directly attacks the immune system. Some of the first cells it takes over are the dendritic cells, the brains of the immune system. The Ebola virus enters a dendritic cell by binding into receptors for cell transport. Once it is inside, it dissolves its outer hull and releases its genetic material, nucleoproteins and enzymes. In a nutshell it takes over the cell, disables the cells protective mechanisms and reprograms it. The cell now becomes a virus production machine and uses its resources to build Ebola viruses. Once the cell is saturated, it dissolves the cell membrane and millions of viruses are released into the tissue. The virus not only prevents the dendritic cells from activating the specialized and anti-virus forces, it manipulates them into sending signal proteins that tricks specialized cells into ending their own life's prematurely. So the immune system is seriously disrupted and unable to react. When the virus rapidly multiplies, we're talking billions, there are cells that should deal with infected cells, the natural killer cells, but they also get infected and just die before they can prevent the disease from spreading. At the same time Ebola infects the guard cells of the body macrophages and monocytes, not only managing to circumvent their defenses, it also manipulates some to signal to the cells make up the blood vessels telling into release fluid into the body Usually this makes sense, but in this case it just causes mayhem. All of the body's neutrophils are activated awaken by the virus and the macrophages signals then are not very effective against viruses and should not be involve in this fight and begin to do lots of stuffs they shouldn't do. The neutrophils signals to the blood vessels to release more fluid causing internal bleeding. Another area of the body Ebola attacks is the liver. The virus finds it very easy to enter the liver and it quickly starts killing loads of liver cells and causing organ failure and more internal bleeding. And all those things are going on at the same time. As the virus spreads, it's like nukes exploding every where. One incident of this in one region will be problem enough But now is starting to happen everywhere at once. All the mechanisms of the immune system have evolve to handle infections work against you. And the virus continues to spread and spread. And finally begins to infect more and more body cells while the body desperately struggles to stay alive. In a desperate last effort to turn the tide the immune system launches a cytokine storm. A cytokine storm is an S.O.S signal that causes the immune system to launch all of its weapons, all at once in a desperate kamikaze attack. This hurts the virus but leaves behind tons of collateral damage, Especially in the blood vessels. Paradoxically the healthier the immune system, the more damage it can do to itself More and more fluid leaves the blood stream. Blood pours after every opening of the body. You become seriously dehydrated that just not now blood left to supply the organs with oxygen and cells begin to die. If you reach this point the chance of you dying is very high. Currently six out of ten infected die from Ebola. Wow! Ok. Ebola is nasty. So it’s time to panic, right? No, not even close. The severity of Ebola gets paper sold and YouTube videos shared so everybody is talking about Ebola. But currently the only way to get infected by Ebola is to come into contact with the body fluids of a person who shows symptoms Or from infected bat. So just don’t do that. Ebola has killed 5,000 people since June 2014. The common flu kills up to 500,000 people each year. Malaria causes up to one million each year. 3,000 people every single day. Ten children since this video started. So even if Ebola is terrible and scary, don’t let yourself be scared. The most infectious thing about Ebola is the media hype around it. You could learn a bit more about the immune system though Transcription made by Miriam Delgado Subtitles by the Amara .org community Revised by: Ace Ervite

Channel: Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

Views: 8,655,228

Rating: 4.9446692 out of 5

Keywords: Ebola Virus, Virus (Type Of Infectious Agent), Ebola (Disease Or Medical Condition), Health (Industry), Medicine (Field Of Study), ebola virus, ebola outbreak, ebola symptoms, news, ebola 2014, decease, what is ebola, ebola us, life, infection, texas, dallas, conspiracy, documentary, United States Of America (Country), immune system, patient, liberia, el ebola, zombie, outbreak, science, amazing, funny, infographic, kurzgesagt

Id: sRv19gkZ4E0

Length: 5min 31sec (331 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 06 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/aleksfadini]

Question: so the ebola survivors are those that survivre the cytokine storm? Or do most of the survivors defeat the virus without that kind of "last resort"?

I have seen statistics that point to lower mortality in individuals with stronger immune systems, not weaker (kids and young adults seem more likely to survive, I don't remember the study exactly but it was posted on this thread). On the contrary, the video suggests that the more your immune system is strong, the worst is the mayhem to your body during the cytokine storm.

[u/thesetheredoctobers]

lmao @4:32 "WHITE PEOPLE AFFECTED! Now the virus has gone too far."

[u/407fefd3833138100041]

For the swarm!

[u/[deleted]]

Was a good video until it started comparing Ebola death numbers to other diseases. That is straight idiotic to downplay the significance like that. Ebola is in three countries, the flu is worldwide, is it any surprise that more people are dieing from the flu? Dumb-asses.