E-Bola

Yup. Measles and chicken pox, neither of which should amount to squat in this country, are back because "immunizations are bad, mmmkay"?

Morons. If infections such as this didn't hit innocent children, and could be confined to the households of the vaccinations are bad crowd, I'd be happy to write it off as evolution in action, draining the shallow end of the gene pool.

 

Maybe because it's against FREEDOM, but people seem to have difficulty understanding the concept of herd immunity, and the fact that a disease can travel if the people carrying it do so. That's why Ebola, even though it's mainly confined to west Africa, is a worldwide outbreak. Well, especially the infected guy flying from there to Dallas.

 

That, and the fact that a disease can make it around the globe in a matter of hours.

Back to the 1918 bug, it was so powerful that it killed almost 40 million people around the world in a matter of eight or nine months. Think about that, and think about how much harder it was to get AROUND THE WORLD then as opposed to now.

If a 1918-style flu resurfaced today, I'd go as far as to say we could see 40 million deaths in a week, maybe two.

 

Heard the NBC correspondent who was working in Liberia with the cameraman who was diagnosed with Ebola.

She says she's not to worried, because she works with is "hyper vigilant". They don't hug or shake hands.

Now, if a medical doctor is concerned about hugging or shaking hands, that tells me it's no too incredibly difficult to transmit.

The symptoms alone make it more easily transmitted than other viruses. It gives you flue like symptoms. It makes you sweat, vomit, and gives you diarrhea, so you've got a lot more "bodily fluids" available to make contact with others than someone with another virus.

And, I believe I heard that the ambulance that took the patient to the hospital in Dallas has been quarantined. So, they are concerned about contact with items that have been soiled by a patient, and not just direct contact with the patient.

With the number of people they are tracking due to this one case, I can't imagine the resources required if even 10 people were infected, or if he had become symptomatic while traveling through our airports or on airplanes.

 

Hundreds of people travel from city to city, thousands of miles apart, hundreds of times every day. A true pandemic would be horrendous, because people just don't think it could happen, especially to them.

It's a lovely subject for me to think on, because I know that if it ever happened primary care medical workers would become an endangered species almost literally overnight, as would their families. We'd have to decide whether to get up and go to work, knowing the risks, or to allow our patients (and friends and acquaintances) to die untended in their time of greatest need.

One isolated case in Dallas so far, and I devoutly hope it remains that way.

 

But we have much better medicine and preventative measures now. Why would you think it would be so deadly?

And, while not minimizing it, wouldn't it likely kill the old, the very young, and those who are already sick/already have a weakened immune system?

 

Even with all the measures we have today, flu still kills thousands and thousands every year in the U.S. The annual average is between 30,000-40,000 deaths.

H1N1 was so dangerous because it was killing healthy children and adolescents. Plus, flu vaccines require vigilance. The yearly vaccine contains specific strains of the virus, so most likely wouldn't offer protection against a new strain. That's what we saw in 2009 and why everyone had to get two shots instead of one.

There have also been strains that are resistant to Tamiflu or other antivirals. If that had been the case with H1N1, that would've been much, much worse.

You just never know for sure.

 

That's not always the case. When H1N1 broke out a few years ago, teens and young adults -- usually considered the least vulnerable -- were hardest-hit.

http://www.kidsgrowth.com/resources/articledetail.cfm?id=2564

Also, we have better medicines, but the viruses and diseases evolve, too, whether you believe in evolution or not. Also, antibiotic overuse has helped create bigger and badder bugs. And has been remarked, people eschewing vaccinations hurts, too.

 

Find out if and how they are going to pay the bill.

 

If a really bad strain got loose, you'd most likely see children and the elderly dying off first. Parents tending their children would begin to become infected. In a true pandemic, primary care medical workers would begin to become infected and sicken, some dying, and that work force would become depleted. You'd also see medical workers making the decision that their job is not worth their lives and possibly the lives of their families.

There is the potential for breakdown in the supply chain of needed medical supplies, whether in manufacturing or distribution. The need for quarantine areas may also prevent distribution.

A really bad one, a true pandemic, has not been seen in so long that we forget how bad they can potentially be. We know a lot more, but if a mutated version that didn't respond to treatment got loose, that wouldn't help all that much.

Wikipedia says that the 1918 flu infected 500 million people and killed from 50 to 100 million of them, 3 to 5% of the worlds population. Something on that scale... nobody is ready for that.

 

They do that before you get in the door, but you can still cough and snot and sneeze in the lobby and spread it free of charge.

 

Mark Segraves @SegravesNBC4 · 23m 23 minutes ago

Patient traveling from Nigeria admitted to Howard Univ Hospital in DC with possible Ebola symptoms.