Have No Fear Even Though Ebola Is Here!

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rcktnut

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Yea Right! Don't worry we'll get it under control, it can only be spread thru contact with bodily fluids. Think I've heard that once before, they call it Aids. CNN now reporting that dozens may have been exposed. Brought it here just in time for the flu season, so we can all ask ourselves is the flu or is it Ebola?? UN FRICKEN BELIEVABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
This is all such old news.

May I suggest an excellent read:

index%20(42)_0.jpeg


Written in 1994, this book is a truly eye-opening look into what is (and isn't) happening now.

The opening quote is blood-chilling:

"This is not a work of fiction...."


All the best, James
 
it can only be spread thru contact with bodily fluids. Think I've heard that once before, they call it Aids.

I think Ebola is a lot easier to catch than HIV. Someone with Ebola is spewing bodily fluids from every orifice as they puke and poop and bleed. It's usually caregivers who are exposed to it. Patients with HIV only spew bodily fluids under specific circumstances, and it's not at the people trying to save their lives.
 
OK - everyone just take a deep breath. At this point, Ebola is a nasty disease, but the danger and risk are minimal here. Given proper treatment, the survival rate of Ebola is actually rather high. Even under the worst conditions (such as in Africa) it is not always fatal. Ebola is also not easy to catch- you have to come in contact with the bodily fluids from someone who is actually sick and showing symptoms. Before they start showing symptoms they are NOT contagious. If you take proper precautions around someone who is sick with Ebola (protective wear such as medical gloves) and are careful not to touch contaminated clothing and bed clothing, as well as when cleaning up vomit or other fluids, your chances of catching it are low.

As for curing the disease - no, there is no cure right now. However, unless our immune systems are seriously compromised, our bodies WILL fight and defeat this disease. The primary treatment is to treat the symptoms (replace fluids and electrolytes lost), protecting from hazardously high fevers and so forth.

Yes, Ebola CAN be lethal. So can the flu, measles, diphtheria and numerous other viral and bacterial diseases. Historically, there have been flu outbreaks than makes Ebola pale in comparison. The reason? Flu is a whole lot easier to spread than Ebola.

Bottom line - don't panic and don't just slip into reactionary behavior. This is NOT a conspiracy to kill Americans, nor is it the result of incompetent behavior. Yes, the people at the hospital where he was first treated dropped the ball, but are all of you perfect every second of the day? They made some mistakes, but that happens - I can name any number of disasters where a mistake or chain of mistakes led to multiple loss of life. It isn't the end of the world and we simply need to learn from mistakes and not repeat them.

Also, keep calm and use YOUR head. You know someone from Liberia or one of the other countries hit by the epidemic? If they haven't gone back there in the last year and haven't had any contact with anyone from that region, they are NOT at risk and are not a danger. Know someone who just got here from somewhere else in Africa? Africa is a huge continent - there are lots of countries in Africa that are thousands of miles from the affected area.

Again - use your head. Learn the facts about this disease and don't pass along spurious advice or misinformation. Demanding that congress pass laws to keep "those people" out is not only a bad idea, it is dangerous. One of those "slippery slopes" we keep hearing about. Learn about it, deal with it if you have to, but keep you head and use your brain. A few months from now, I predict that this will just be another footnote in history, overshadowed by other events of much greater importance.
 
A couple comments...

First, Greg's statements are pretty much spot-on. Don't get caught up in media hype; spend some time reading about this, and learning. If you do so, you'll realize that part of the reason they're having such a hard time stopping this in Africa is because of people being uneducated about Ebola and how it spreads, and reacting rather than thinking.

Second, some of the comments made have been along the political lines. If that continues, this thread will disappear into the abyss. We're not going there.

-Kevin
 
I don't know this is a true story; the main reason it spread the first time around was a burial practice of opening dead Uncle M'Bogo's abdomen then passing around a bowl of food to the participants of the funeral party....

I can't imagine how it's being spread now and spreading fast. Maybe Chuck can answer, is it more communicable than we are being lead to believe?
 
I can't imagine how it's being spread now and spreading fast. Maybe Chuck can answer, is it more communicable than we are being lead to believe?

There's a lot of misinformation flying around in the countries in Africa, along with distrust of their governments. That, coupled with an uneducated population that just sees family members going into hospitals and never coming out, along with the bodies not being returned to them. It's leading to distrust of the medical community, causing them to hide sick people from the medical workers.

Ebola really is harder to catch. People have raised HIV as a comparison, but it's not a good one -- you can be a carrier for HIV, and have zero symptoms. If you're contagious with Ebola, you have symptoms.

There are other problematic diseases that are much easier to catch in public -- resistant TB is a good example.

Ebola is a problem, and it's obvious there was a breakdown in a variety of places which allowed the man from Liberia to expose others.

-Kevin
 
U
I don't know this is a true story; the main reason it spread the first time around was a burial practice of opening dead Uncle M'Bogo's abdomen then passing around a bowl of food to the participants of the funeral party....

I can't imagine how it's being spread now and spreading fast. Maybe Chuck can answer, is it more communicable than we are being lead to believe?

I sincerely doubt that the above story is true - the Internet is full of stories like this that are known to be pure fabrications. Rumors and stories like that serve only to stir the already incendiary pot to make Africans seem like stupid savages - an unfair stereotype at the minimum. Again - if you don't know it's true, don't spread it. If you aren't sure, Snopes.com is your friend.

As to the rest, the fast spread of Ebola in Africa is due to two major factors. First, medical practices are primitive due to lack of funding and trained personel. Why? The doctors and other medical people caught Ebola from their patients and many of them died, leaving a vacuum not easily filled. Plus, the survival rate is much higher in hospitals that have ample supplies to treat the symptoms - many hospitals in these countries have no such capabilities. It doesn't help that the citizenry are uneducated and believe many of the lies and innuendoes spread by people who are eithe uninformed or have an agenda. These are the people attacking aid workers, breaking quarantine and rioting, all of which worsens the situation.

The other reason for the rapid spread are the funeral practices in these areas. No, they don't eat the organs of their dead, but the do touch the bodies of their loved ones, many of which can still spread the virus for many hours after death. The best way to deal with these corpses is through cremation, but that is a horrible fate to many in Africa and is not practiced nearly enough.

This outbreak is no more contagious or deadly than any before it. The difference is that it was not controlled in the early stages as were earlier outbreaks so it has spread farther and faster. We do not help the situation by spreading rumors and misinformation, even in the form of jokes. Please learn about the disease and help spread the truth about it. If we do this, we will overcome the disease much faster and with minimal life lost. Panic ALWAYS leads to disaster, not solutions.
 
My concern is a plane coming in from Liberia to the U.S. and nobody was screened at all. Also allowing passengers to fill out a form and taking their word that they were not exposed to the disease. The man apparently lied. The way the case was handled after he went to a hospital for treatment is also very disturbing. Dallas is not a little isolated village of a few thousand people, nor is New York, LA, Chicago, etc. the potential for it spreading here is much greater. Granted the survival rate will be higher here due to the correct care but at what cost? There are children already quarantined for 21 days subject to arrest if they want to go outside and play.
 
And the solution is... ?

The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. It is a global economy with moderately restricted travel from anywhere to anywhere. What are we to do, then? Close our borders and not let anyone in or out? Because restricting flights from affected regions would not work. Someone could meet someone in an airport in Switzerland who is contagious and contract Ebola from them, then bring it back to our country. Closing our borders would collapse our economy in a heartbeat. Panic and innuendo will solve nothing and will only increase our paranoia - does that guy over ther blowing his nose just have allergies or Ebola? Education and rational thinking are the only solutions. And we must redouble our efforts to control and shut dow the infection at the source. We can't afford the old "it's their country - let them deal with it" attitude.
 
My concern is a plane coming in from Liberia to the U.S. and nobody was screened at all. Also allowing passengers to fill out a form and taking their word that they were not exposed to the disease. The man apparently lied. The way the case was handled after he went to a hospital for treatment is also very disturbing. Dallas is not a little isolated village of a few thousand people, nor is New York, LA, Chicago, etc. the potential for it spreading here is much greater. Granted the survival rate will be higher here due to the correct care but at what cost? There are children already quarantined for 21 days subject to arrest if they want to go outside and play.

The guy flew to Brussels and then to the US. He may have had no idea why the woman he helped was sick. He was asymptomatic when he flew and so would have passed all screening.

Yes, seems like the Dallas hospital dropped the ball. I expect that there is some serious education going on at this point.

The reason why the USA is safer is that we have an excellent public health system where we can do reasonable tracking and containment. We've dealt with ebola before. Everybody needs to practice common sense and this can be stopped.
 
From reading the above posts, I reccommend listening to Greg and Kevin. These areas of Africa are VERY poor. This applies to the infrastructure as well as the people. There are parts of the world that still re-use needles. now before everybody goes bug-eyed like this->:y:, we re-used needles here in the good ol' U.S.A. as late as the 1970's Needles were made of stainless steel, and made to be autoclaved. Disposable needles are used here because they are cheap here! This is just an example of what we take for granted here.

Burial practices are different there. They do not have a mortician in every town as we do here. They handle the bodies and prepare them for burial.with dignity and respect. Unfortunately they do it mostly without LATEX GLOVES. (oh yeah, those are expensive there too.)

We have a lot going for us here that they don't. We will be safe, and we will get through this with almost no disturbance to our daily lives.

If ISIS wanted to attack us with a biological WMD, there are much more devastating agents avaliable, even to them.

The White Plague was based on a Man-Made agent and was a work of fiction.
I would be more afraid of catching the virus that developed from crossing the Bird Flu with the Herpes Simplex virus.
It's called CHIRPIES.
It's a Canarial disease,
and is untweetable!

"Nuff said,
Evil Ed
 
First, Greg's statements are pretty much spot-on. Don't get caught up in media hype; spend some time reading about this, and learning.
I always do and it's amazing how often and by how much information from reputable sources can differ from the "party line." But you need to dig, often into technical subjects, to find that even many of the so-called experts speak with more certainty than is justified. You need to find true experts in the fields directly related to the expertise required to find truly authoritative statements.

First of all, this is nothing to panic about in the US (Africa is another story) as portrayed in some sensationalist media garbage, but on the other hand it is being taken more lightly than it should be in too many reports. For instance, the cancer clinic MD guest interviewed about Ebola last night on "The Colbert Report" who basically gave a "don't worry, be happy, you nearly need to drink their blood to catch it" message didn't know what the hell he was talking about!

These disease transmission experts do. Emphasis mine:

COMMENTARY: Health workers need optimal respiratory protection for Ebola
Lisa M Brosseau, ScD, and Rachael Jones, PhD
Sep 17, 2014

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-per...ers-need-optimal-respiratory-protection-ebola

Editor's Note: Today's commentary was submitted to CIDRAP by the authors, who are national experts on respiratory protection and infectious disease transmission. In May they published a similar commentary on MERS-CoV. Dr Brosseau is a Professor and Dr Jones an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health, Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Excerpt:

The precautionary principle - that any action designed to reduce risk should not await scientific certainty - compels the use of respiratory protection for a pathogen like Ebola virus that has:

1. No proven pre- or post-exposure treatment modalities
2. A high case-fatality rate
3. Unclear modes of transmission

We believe there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles both near and at a distance from infected patients, which means that healthcare workers should be wearing respirators, not facemasks.

The minimum level of protection in high-risk settings should be a respirator with an assigned protection factor greater than 10. A powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) with a hood or helmet offers many advantages over an N95 filtering facepiece or similar respirator, being more protective, comfortable, and cost-effective in the long run.

We strongly urge the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to seek funds for the purchase and transport of PAPRs to all healthcare workers currently fighting the battle against Ebola throughout Africa and beyond.

There has been a lot of on-line and published controversy about whether Ebola virus can be transmitted via aerosols. Most scientific and medical personnel, along with public health organizations, have been unequivocal in their statements that Ebola can be transmitted only by direct contact with virus-laden fluids2,3 and that the only modes of transmission we should be concerned with are those termed "droplet" and "contact."

These statements are based on two lines of reasoning. The first is that no one located at a distance from an infected individual has contracted the disease, or the converse, every person infected has had (or must have had) "direct" contact with the body fluids of an infected person.

This reflects an incorrect and outmoded understanding of infectious aerosols, which has been institutionalized in policies, language, culture, and approaches to infection control. We will address this below. Briefly, however, the important points are that virus-laden bodily fluids may be aerosolized and inhaled while a person is in proximity to an infectious person and that a wide range of particle sizes can be inhaled and deposited throughout the respiratory tract.

[Followed by much technical justification for their position]

--------------

This uncertainty exists because there was "no money in it" for big pharma to study Ebola (they have SAID as much) because Ebola used to be such a rare disease and the danger and, therefore, the expense of privately researching Ebola resulted in a dearth of studies about it and its modes of transmission. Thus, most transmission info is anecdotal.

And, as usual, one doesn't get much confidence about "our government agencies 'at work'" on the Texas case from these facts:

1. The hospital sent him home even though he said where he'd come from
2. The hospital took him out of the regular ER and isolated him only after a "close associate" who doesn't want to be identified called the CDC
3. They didn't quarantine the ambulance used to take him to the hospital but instead continued to use it for another 48hrs
4. They didn't quarantine the family immediately
5. They didn't clean up the vomit outside the apartment building for how long?

Delay in Dallas Ebola Cleanup as Workers Balk at Task
By KEVIN SACK and MANNY FERNANDEZOCT. 2, 2014

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/us/dal....

"In the latest indication, state and local authorities confirmed Thursday that a week after a Liberian man fell ill with Ebola in Dallas, and four days after he was placed in isolation at a hospital here, the apartment where he was staying with four other people had not been sanitized and the sheets and dirty towels he used while sick remained in the home. County officials visited the apartment without protection Wednesday night.

The officials said it had been difficult to find a contractor willing to enter the apartment to clean it and remove bedding and clothes, which they said had been bagged in plastic. They said they now had hired a firm that would do the work soon. The Texas health commissioner, Dr. David Lakey, told reporters during an afternoon news conference that officials had encountered a little bit of hesitancy in seeking a firm to clean the apartment."

--------------

And here's what should be considered in the Liberian man's case. A Liberian man with a US Visa finds out he was heavily exposed to Ebola when he carried to a clinic in Liberia a pregnant woman who shorty thereafter died from it. His choices are: lie on some exit paperwork in Liberia about not being in contact with Ebola while there, hop on a flight to the US and get top health care including the best doctors, nurses and treatment OR stay in Liberia and die like a dog in a crowded makeshift clinic with inadequate everything.

How many more times do you think this might happen in an epidemic that is still growing? How many times might this have already happened, but not been caught (yet)?

--------------

More from my Ebola investigatory file, all you need to know.

The latest CDC model projections are that, worst case, as many as 1.4 million will be infected in Africa by Jan 2015. Since experience with this epidemic in Africa has shown that the vast majority of cases go unreported, suddenly appearing and swamping treatment facilities immediately after they are built, most of those 1.4 million cases will be unreported and, thus, the infected individuals will not be quarantined:

The CDC Was Wrong About How to Stop Ebola
News that a man has been diagnosed with the virus in Dallas days after arriving from Liberia is alarming—and to prevent more U.S. cases, certain rules must never be broken.

by Dr. Kent Sepkowitz s an infectious-disease specialist in New York City
1 Oct 2014

https://www.thedailybeast.com/artic...ebola-from-spreading-to-other-u-s-cities.html

"Although we lack carefully performed studies, Kent Brantly, the physician who developed the disease and was airlifted to Atlanta, seemed to have no gross exposure to the disease, though he worked on an Ebola ward. Ditto for Nancy Writebol the other American flown back in that dramatic first wave. According to reports, they were mighty careful at every step, but just not careful enough."

--------------

Make haste on experimental Ebola treatments, urges World Health Organization group
By Jon Cohen 5 September 2014
Science Magazine

https://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2014/09/make-haste-experimental-ebola-treatments-urges-who-group

Excerpt:

Researchers and health professionals should fast-track extraordinary efforts to give people unproven treatments and vaccines in locales hard hit by Ebola, more than 200 experts attending a World Health Organization (WHO) forum recommended today.

“We have to change the sense that there is no hope in this situation to a realistic hope,” said WHO Assistant Director-General Marie-Paule Kieny, who spoke at a press conference with two other attendees of the consultation. More people have become sick and died from Ebola in the last few months than in the 4 decades since the virus was discovered, she noted.

--------------

Ebola Is Rapidly Mutating As It Spreads Across West Africa
by MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF
August 28, 2014
NPR.org

https://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsands...dly-mutating-as-it-spreads-across-west-africa

Excerpt:

For starters, the data show that the virus is rapidly accumulating new mutations as it spreads through people. “We’ve found over 250 mutations that are changing in real time as we’re watching,” Sabeti says. While moving through the human population in West Africa, she says, the virus has been collecting mutations about twice as quickly as it did while circulating among animals in the past decade or so. ”The more time you give a virus to mutate and the more human-to-human transmission you see,” she says, “the more opportunities you give it to fall upon some [mutation] that could make it more easily transmissible or more pathogenic.”

Comment - OR it could mutate into a LESS transmissible and/or LESS deadly form which is to be sincerely hoped for since it looks like the only way this epidemic will be stopped is for it to burn itself out.

--------------

Disease modelers project a rapidly rising toll from Ebola
By Kai Kupferschmidt 31 August 2014
Science Magazine

https://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/08/disease-modelers-project-rapidly-rising-toll-ebola

Excerpts:

Extrapolating existing trends, the number of the sick and dying mounts rapidly from the current toll—more than 3000 cases and 1500 deaths—to about 10,000 cases by 24 September, and hundreds of thousands in the months after that.

If the disease keeps spreading as it has, most of the modelers Science talked to say WHO’s estimate will turn out to be conservative. “If the epidemic in Liberia were to continue in this way until the 1st of December, the cumulative number of cases would exceed 100,000,” Althaus predicts.

Such long-term forecasts are error-prone, he acknowledges. But other modelers aren’t much more encouraging. Caitlin Rivers of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg expects roughly 1000 new cases in Liberia in the next 2 weeks and a similar number in Sierra Leone.

The models are only as good as the data fed to them; up to three-quarters of Ebola cases may go unreported. The modelers are also assuming that key parameters, such as the virus’s incubation time, are the same as in earlier outbreaks.

--------------

Liberia's Ebola problem far worse than imagined, says WHO
Science News Staff 8 September 2014

https://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2014/09/liberias-ebola-problem-far-worse-imagined-says-who

Excerpts:

All agreed that the demands of the Ebola outbreak have completely outstripped the government’s and partners’ capacity to respond. Fourteen of Liberia’s 15 counties have now reported confirmed cases. Some 152 health care workers have been infected and 79 have died. When the outbreak began, Liberia had only one doctor to treat nearly 100,000 people in a total population of 4.4 million people. Every infection or death of a doctor or nurse depletes response capacity significantly.

Liberia, together with the other hard-hit countries, namely Guinea and Sierra Leone, is experiencing a phenomenon never before seen in any previous Ebola outbreak. As soon as a new Ebola treatment facility is opened, it immediately fills to overflowing with patients, pointing to a large but previously invisible caseload.

--------------

Can Ebola Go Airborne?
Forbes, 9/03/2014
Dr. Scoot Gottlieb

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottgottlieb/2014/09/03/can-ebola-go-airborne/

Excerpt:

But our relative comfort in the U.S. is based on our belief that our public health tools could easily contain a virus spread only through direct contact. That would change radically if Ebola were to alter its mode of spread. We know the virus is mutating. Could it adapt in a way that makes it airborne?

It’s highly unlikely. It would be improbable for a virus to transform in a way that changes its mode of infection. Of the 23 known viruses that cause serious disease in man, none are known to have mutated in ways that changed how they infect humans. Of course, we only know about a small portion of the existing viruses.

It’s already possible that Ebola can spread, in rare cases (comment - "rare" only because they haven't been heavily documented in the scientific literature, that being due to the rare attention paid to the formerly "rare" virus in the medical science community because of the danger in studying it coupled with its rarity causing a "no money in it" attitude from big pharma), through direct contact with respiratory secretions. This might occur, for example, when an infected person coughs or sneezes directly on another, uninfected individual. The Centers for Disease Control specifically recommends “droplet protection” be taken in the hospital setting when healthcare workers are treating patients infected with Ebola. This kind of direct spread is sometimes referred to as “droplet contact,” but it’s distinct from airborne spread.

Comment - it's called "droplet transmission." Here's a bit on that from Wikipedia:

Viral droplet nuclei transmission

Droplet nuclei are an important mode of transmission among many infectious viruses such as Influenza A. When viruses are shed by an infected person through coughing or sneezing into the air, the mucus coating on the virus starts to evaporate. Once this mucus shell evaporates the remaining viron is called a droplet nucleus or quanta. The mucus evaporation rate is determined by the temperature and humidity inside the room. The lower the humidity, the quicker the mucus shell evaporates thus allowing the droplet nuclei to stay airborne and not drop to the ground. The low indoor humidity levels in wintertime buildings ensure that higher levels of droplet nuclei will survive: droplet nuclei are so microscopic that they are able to stay airborne indefinitely on the air currents present within indoor spaces. The Wells-Riley equation predicts the infection rates of persons who shed quanta within a building and is used to calculate indoor infection outbreaks within buildings.

An infected person can release viruses by talking, sneezing, coughing and breathing, though less are released by just breathing. Some of viruses will become droplet nuclei. If these droplet nuclei are breathed into nose or mouth of an uninfected person (known as a susceptible) – then the droplet nuclei may penetrate into the deep recesses of their lungs. Viral diseases that are commonly spread by coughing or sneezing droplet nuclei include (at least):

Common cold
Influenza A & B
Mumps
Measles
Rubella
SARS

--------------

An early warning of a pending epidemic? ZEBOV is the same strain now infecting humans in the current epidemic.

Science 8 December 2006:
Vol. 314 no. 5805 p. 1564
DOI: 10.1126/science.1133105

Ebola Outbreak Killed 5000 Gorillas

https://www.sciencemag.org/content/314/5805/1564

Over the past decade, the Zaire strain of Ebola virus (ZEBOV) (poster comment - this is the same strain causing the human epidemic right now) has repeatedly emerged in Gabon and Congo. Each human outbreak has been accompanied by reports of gorilla and chimpanzee carcasses in neighboring forests, but both the extent of ape mortality and the causal role of ZEBOV have been hotly debated. Here, we present data suggesting that in 2002 and 2003 ZEBOV killed about 5000 gorillas in our study area. The lag between neighboring gorilla groups in mortality onset was close to the ZEBOV disease cycle length, evidence that group-to-group transmission has amplified gorilla die-offs.
 
U

I sincerely doubt that the above story is true - the Internet is full of stories like this that are known to be pure fabrications. Rumors and stories like that serve only to stir the already incendiary pot to make Africans seem like stupid savages - an unfair stereotype at the minimum. Again - if you don't know it's true, don't spread it. If you aren't sure, Snopes.com is your friend.

As to the rest, the fast spread of Ebola in Africa is due to two major factors. First, medical practices are primitive due to lack of funding and trained personel. Why? The doctors and other medical people caught Ebola from their patients and many of them died, leaving a vacuum not easily filled. Plus, the survival rate is much higher in hospitals that have ample supplies to treat the symptoms - many hospitals in these countries have no such capabilities. It doesn't help that the citizenry are uneducated and believe many of the lies and innuendoes spread by people who are eithe uninformed or have an agenda. These are the people attacking aid workers, breaking quarantine and rioting, all of which worsens the situation.

The other reason for the rapid spread are the funeral practices in these areas. No, they don't eat the organs of their dead, but the do touch the bodies of their loved ones, many of which can still spread the virus for many hours after death. The best way to deal with these corpses is through cremation, but that is a horrible fate to many in Africa and is not practiced nearly enough.

This outbreak is no more contagious or deadly than any before it. The difference is that it was not controlled in the early stages as were earlier outbreaks so it has spread farther and faster. We do not help the situation by spreading rumors and misinformation, even in the form of jokes. Please learn about the disease and help spread the truth about it. If we do this, we will overcome the disease much faster and with minimal life lost. Panic ALWAYS leads to disaster, not solutions.

Not an internet story, something I read and saw on the evening news.

Some things actually pre-date the internet...
 
Ebola found in biological samples:

ebola.png


Note the predominant showing in saliva and nasal blood, meaning that coughing and the resulting droplet transmission is a possible mechanism, not necessarily via inhalation since the virus is so huge, but through contact with droplets and the skin or via the ingestion of droplets that reach the mouth. Also, note the very limited number of samples. Like many in the field have said, not enough research has been done.
 
The figures so far are encouraging. Hope it stays that way:

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/ebola-patient-tested-washington/story?id=25948325

"After issuing an alert to hospitals and medical providers in July, the CDC has looked into approximately 100 Ebola scares in 33 states, as of Oct. 1, the agency said. Among those, the CDC has tested the blood of 15 possible Ebola patients and found only one patient who tested positive, according to Dr. Beth Bell, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. That patient is Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man diagnosed in Dallas."
 
The figures so far are encouraging. Hope it stays that way:

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/ebola-patient-tested-washington/story?id=25948325

"After issuing an alert to hospitals and medical providers in July, the CDC has looked into approximately 100 Ebola scares in 33 states, as of Oct. 1, the agency said. Among those, the CDC has tested the blood of 15 possible Ebola patients and found only one patient who tested positive, according to Dr. Beth Bell, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. That patient is Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man diagnosed in Dallas."

How is this encouraging? First case, is still the first case (along with its resultant exposure)
 
I agree with some of what is said above. As an Army physician, I have death with many infectious outbreaks that we keep secret to avoid public hysteria.

Example: H1N1 on an assignment. They were killing pigs in the streets in the middle east. If it hit the news that our post had H1N1 infections, it would have been an international incident. We kept it quiet and used a high index of suspicion to protect the mission and our Soldiers. If you has a 0.1% chance of having H1N1, we put you in isolation (quarantine if you prefer). If you violate isolation, we put and armed guard out side your quarters.

I am not making a political statement. I operate under the believe that the public good is more important than that of the infected individual and I could not live with myself if my lack of action resulted in the death of others.

This hospital failed to act because ebola did not enter their thoughts. Now the CDC is working to get the word out to physicians. I already knew about ebola but many do not. My entire staff (1000 physicians and support staff) watched a 30 minute video on ebola this week.

We will not have an epidemic of ebola on US soil unless the virus mutates (unlikely).
 
Thanks for adding to the real information here, Chuck - this exactly what we need. No doubt about it - Ebola is a nasty bug, but I worry more about influenza and enterovirus than about Ebola - both are much more communicable than ebola. And only someone who thinks their rights trump everyone else's would think your views on quarantine are political - they are not only common sense, but have been standard medical practice for over a century.

Bottom line - we'll weather this just like everything else that has come down the line, and panic and misinformation will only make it harder on us while we do so.
 
I agree with some of what is said above. As an Army physician, I have death with many infectious outbreaks that we keep secret to avoid public hysteria.

Example: H1N1 on an assignment. They were killing pigs in the streets in the middle east. If it hit the news that our post had H1N1 infections, it would have been an international incident. We kept it quiet and used a high index of suspicion to protect the mission and our Soldiers. If you has a 0.1% chance of having H1N1, we put you in isolation (quarantine if you prefer). If you violate isolation, we put and armed guard out side your quarters.

The reality is that public hysteria can cause just as many problems as the contagion it's about.

Of course, the snake oil vendors would dearly love for there to be hysteria about Ebola, as they'd cash in on it. Jenny <cough> McCarthy.....

-Kevin
 
The Federal government needs to reserve air time on the broadcast TV, cable TV and satellite TV channels for about an half an hour or an hour during Sunday night with repeats on Tuesday night so the head of the CDC, several doctors, head of some big city FD's response units, CEO's / presidents of the larger private hazmat firms, etc. can explain Ebola, it's transmission, government plans to prevent the spread of the disease here, assurances of response, individual's preventive actions and measures to limit an outbreak. etc. Address the public's conserns, do not causally dismiss their fears. Nip the bud before it blossoms and spreads the seeds of distrust, disbelief, anarchy and death.
IMO
 
The reality is that public hysteria can cause just as many problems as the contagion it's about.

Of course, the snake oil vendors would dearly love for there to be hysteria about Ebola, as they'd cash in on it. Jenny <cough> McCarthy.....

-Kevin

I do nto disagree.
 
How is this encouraging? First case, is still the first case (along with its resultant exposure)
It is encouraging in that it shows some degree of vigilance. It is further encouraging in that it shows that that vast majority (all but one) of suspected cases were not Ebola as would be expected since, except for later stages where one bleeds from every orifice (thus, "hemorrhagic fever"), Ebola has common flu-like symptoms.
 
This hospital failed to act because ebola did not enter their thoughts.

Actually, they've changed their excuse to poor software design (as is too typical):

https://www.informationweek.com/hea...ames-ehr-for-ebola-mishandling/d/d-id/1316353

"Lack of interoperability between the nurse and physician workflows in its electronic health record system was the reason Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas initially sent home Ebola patient Eric Duncan, according to the healthcare facility. And similar interoperability issues could threaten other healthcare organizations, industry executives caution."

Gosh, who'd think that would ever be needed. Sheesh...

EDIT: They've changed their excuse AGAIN, Now, they have none...:

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas first said they had “thoroughly reviewed the chain of events” and blamed a flawed computer system for its staff not recognizing that Liberian native Thomas Duncan was at high-risk for having the deadly disease.

Late Friday – 24 hours after releasing the details in “in the interest of transparency” – the hospital reversed part of its account. Unlike before, they said Duncan’s travel history was visible to all in the hospital’s electronic health record (EHR) system. “There was no flaw in the EHR in the way the physician and nursing portions interacted related to this event,” the hospital said in a written statement.

But as of Saturday afternoon, no other explanation for the oversight has been given. Emails to the hospital with specific questions from Yahoo News have not been returned for days.


Now the CDC is working to get the word out to physicians. I already knew about ebola but many do not. My entire staff (1000 physicians and support staff) watched a 30 minute video on ebola this week.

I think the headlines have pretty much done the job on awareness, but not the training of course.

We will not have an epidemic of ebola on US soil unless the virus mutates (unlikely).

Agree 100% on no epidemic. The odds of mutation to what is technically "airborne transmission" is virtually nil. From the MD I quoted above:

"It’s highly unlikely. It would be improbable for a virus to transform in a way that changes its mode of infection. Of the 23 known viruses that cause serious disease in man, none are known to have mutated in ways that changed how they infect humans. Of course, we only know about a small portion of the existing viruses."

Trouble is, there's confusion about the most likely correct claim about no current airborne transmission (breathing the same air) vs droplet transmission (getting cough droplets in eyes or mouth). Droplet transmission is still "airborne" but is not technically the same as "airborne transmission" as that is defined. Thus, CDC's standard line about "direct physical contact" being required for transmission is misleading as evidenced by their and the WHO's droplet transmission protection requirements for health workers in proximity to Ebola.

Here's the WHO's claim about transmission:

People can be exposed to Ebola virus from direct physical contact with body fluids like blood, saliva, stool, urine, sweat etc. of an infected person and soiled linen used by a patient.

It can be spread through contact with objects, such as needles, that have been contaminated with infected secretions.


So, you see that "direct physical contact" doesn't just mean touching such infected items and secretions, it can also mean those secretions in airborne droplets traveling a short distance to touch you. You can see how the "direct physical contact" wording can easily be misinterpreted by the public.

Even though there's a heavy burden of the Ebola virus in saliva, in the ridiculously small (because there's "no money in it" and it's dangerous and, therefore, expensive to study) number of studies (ONE in this case), the virus for some unknown reason didn't seem to survive in saliva for very long. Unfortunately, it remains viable in semen and breast milk long after a victim has recovered:

https://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/196/Supplement_2/S142.full

Because of the ridiculously limited amount of research that has been done on Ebola, the two disease transmission national-level experts I quoted above think that even the N95 masks might be inadequate and want hoods with pressurized air to be worn. They have officially told both the CDC and WHO that.

Basically, what the CDC should say as a preface to any claims they make about Ebola transmission if they aren't already doing so is "Mostly anecdotal evidence indicates..."

Science magazine's Ebola article collection:

https://www.sciencemag.org/site/ext...m_content=ebola&utm_campaign=collection-promo

"But few studies have analyzed the relative risks of blood, urine, vomit, and other bodily fluids that health care workers encounter. And doctors and nurses rarely can pinpoint risky lapses in their behavior, says epidemiologist Daniel Bausch of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, who worked in Ebola units in Guinea and Sierra Leone when this outbreak surfaced.

“Very few people have anything specific to say,” Bausch says, although many, like Brantly, doubt that they got infected in the Ebola unit itself, where precautions are most stringent. “There's a tendency to want to believe people [protected medical workers] get infected outside the ward because it makes us feel better. It's probably a mixed bag.”
 
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