Ebola

[deep]

A lot of people don't go to the doctor when they get sick. They figure they can just ride it out. I know people that had been sick for weeks with pneumonia and think it is just a bad cold or the flu and almost die before they are rushed to the E R.


It is much easier to come in contact with a body fluid unknowingly or more likely without any real regard. I can not count how many times I have clean up after sick people living with me without wearing a contamination space suit.



If the only concern was not to touch the body fluids (vomit, urine, diarrhea, etc) a good pair of gloves would be enough.

[deep]

Just to be clear, I do not believe this will spread out of control and kill millions of people as portrayed in the movie Contagion.

I just won't dismiss this as some of you seem to be doing. I can see this possibly spreading to 2000, 3000 people or more.

With a population of 314 million that may seem like nothing, more people will choke on a bone and die.

But I don't remember anyone saying 911 really was nothing, less than 3000 people died.

[anitram]

That graphic is also silly - anyone who uses public transit in a very busy urban centre (think NYC, Chicago, Boston, Toronto, etc) has a high probability of touching any one of those bodily fluids on any given day (maybe multiple times).

Nevermind people sitting down on public toilet seats, touching escalators or guardrails in stairwells, changing diapers or blowing noses of their sick kids, etc.

[BEAL]

So what do we do? Say fuck it and never leave our home?

Our species survived the Black Death. We will survive Ebola.

Those that are in the most danger are 3rd world countries. Not to say there won't be casualties here and other developed nations, but just stop with the doom and gloom.

The cdc and other organizations are doing their best. There is nothing I, or anyone who isn't a doctor or researcher can do.

I hope those 5 children are ok, but they also have something Africans do not....access to medical facilities to get the best possible treatment.


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[nbelcik]

I don't think people realize just how hard it is to spread. We in America have an incredibly advanced health system (even though it still sucks). Most people do not need to worry about Ebola, this won't spread very far. There is the potential for minor outbreaks, but this will not become a major outbreak on the scale of what's currently happening in Africa.


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[Izzy.nyc]

Funny, but I haven't read a single definitive source regarding its transmission, and what it's limited to. Hard to say how wide spread it could or will be. Hopefully it is in fact hard to transmit.


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[deep]

So much for all those saying how well prepared we are to deal with this.
This Dallas Hospital seems about as organized as the Secret Service.

A bunch of jerk offs. What a shame, what an embarrassment.

Ebola Victim Thomas Eric Duncan's Nephew: I Had to Call CDC!!

The first person diagnosed with the Ebola virus in the U.S. wasn't appropriately treated for suspected infection until after a relative personally called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, his nephew told NBC News on Wednesday night.

Health officials have acknowledged that Thomas Eric Duncan, 42, was initially sent home from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas when he showed up on Sept. 26 complaining of fever and abdominal pain. He had to return two days later in an ambulance.

That was the day "I called CDC to get some actions taken, because I was concerned for his life and he wasn't getting the appropriate care," Duncan's nephew, Josephus Weeks, told NBC News on Wednesday night. "I feared other people might also get infected if he wasn't taken care of, and so I called them to ask them why is it a patient that might be suspected of this disease was not getting appropriate care?"

Weeks added that he hoped "nobody else got infected because of a mistake that was made."

Weeks said the CDC referred him to the Texas Department of Health and Human Services, which spoke to him and then took appropriate action. "I called the CDC and they instructed me of the process, and that got the ball rolling," Weeks said.

[nbelcik]

Originally Posted by Izzy.nyc

Funny, but I haven't read a single definitive source regarding its transmission, and what it's limited to. Hard to say how wide spread it could or will be. Hopefully it is in fact hard to transmit.


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Uhh, pretty much everyone agrees it's spread through bodily fluids. Which means that it's hard to transmit person to person. Not to mention it can't spread until a person is showing symptoms.


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[stray dog]

Originally Posted by anitram

I agree with you that it's not a bigger threat at this time but the reference to deaths from influenza is totally irrelevant.

The vast majority of people who die of influenza are the sick, the old, the very young and the immunocompromised. That is NOT the case with Ebola at all, which is actually what makes it much more frightening.

Kind of frightens me that someone I love that is sick old/young and or immunocompromised might succumb to anything. It's really not frightening at all if you understand math/statistics

[Izzy.nyc]

Originally Posted by nbelcik

Uhh, pretty much everyone agrees it's spread through bodily fluids. Which means that it's hard to transmit person to person. Not to mention it can't spread until a person is showing symptoms.


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Not quite, but ok. There's talk about airborne spread as well.


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[LemonMelon]

There's a study from 2008 that showed a pig spreading the disease through the air to a macaque. However, pigs are physiologically different from humans in their release of viruses, which is also relevant in the spread of swine flu:

Are we *sure* Ebola isn’t airborne? – Aetiology

So no, there's no "talk" among physicians about ebola going airborne from human to human.

[Izzy.nyc]

Wow. Sorry. And the article I was talking about was published in nature in 2012, not a newspaper.

Wait was I supposed to put talking in quotations? Haha
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[BEAL]

You mean this one?

http://m.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20341423

"One possibility is that the monkeys became infected by inhaling large aerosol droplets produced from the respiratory tracts of the pigs."

""What we suspect is happening is large droplets - they can stay in the air, but not long, they don't go far," he explained.
"But they can be absorbed in the airway and this is how the infection starts, and this is what we think, because we saw a lot of evidence in the lungs of the non-human primates that the virus got in that way."
The scientists say that their findings could explain why some pig farmers in the Philippines had antibodies in their system for the presence of a different version of the infection called Ebola Reston. The farmers had not been involved in slaughtering the pigs and had no known contact with contaminated tissues.
Dr Kobinger stresses that the transmission in the air is not similar to influenza or other infections. He points to the experience of most human outbreaks in Africa.
"The reality is that they are contained and they remain local, if it was really an airborne virus like influenza is it would spread all over the place, and that's not happening." "

Again, it's not air born with humans. There are a lot of what ifs. What if a super flu comes about and wipes us out?? What if a meteor smashes against the earth from our blind spot??

How many people have died in Africa? Too many, but this isn't some mass killer that a few in here are making it out to be. We here in the US can treat it. Will treatment be 100% successful? Nope. But it's much more likely


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[Izzy.nyc]

http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/1211...srep00811.html


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[BVS]

Originally Posted by Izzy.nyc

Not quite, but ok. There's talk about airborne spread as well.


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There was a great interview on Fox News last week that went something like this:

Neil Cavuto: "Isn't there a chance it mutates into an airborne virus?"

Physician: "From what we know of virus, it's highly unlikely."

Neil: "but it's not impossible? If you were going to give us odds what would they be?"

Physician: "the likelihood right now is 1 and a million, this shouldn't be our fear, our fear should be..."

Neil: "So there is a chance?! You heard it here folks. Sorry doctor, that's all the time we have. Scary stuff."


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[Izzy.nyc]

Wow. A news interview that sensationalizes. Haha.

I like the Lloyd Christmas reference
"......so you're saying there's a chance!"


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[BEAL]

And worrying about Ebola going airborne is not sensationalizing? It's not. Could it? Sure, but the medical community thinks it's unlikely at this point.

We can't worry about everything that could happen. We know what the virus is now, how it's transmitted, and we should focus on setting ourselves up (and other countries) on how to best deal with it.

Again, if it goes airborne, there ain't shit we can really do without a vaccination (and even then, that's not 100%).

I bring up the point of the black death, our species survived it, with a lot less resources, we will survive Ebola.

[deep]

the black death really is not a good model
1/3 of the population died

to have 2.5 billion people die would be , wow, what?


perhaps a reasonable culling for an over populated planet

[deep]

the origins are probably bush meat
bats in some regions of Africa


bats are carriers of Ebola and do not die from it.


ETA

a decent article here

http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/09/ebola-outbreak-cdc/

[corianderstem]

Originally Posted by deep

perhaps a reasonable culling for an over populated planet

Are you volunteering?