E-Bola

[MisterCreosote]

There have been a little more than 7,000 cases - almost entirely limited to three poverty-stricken African countries - since the outbreak began 10 months ago.

I understand. Please don't mistake me for an epidemic panicker. I'm the farthest thing from it. I just don't understand how this thing spreads, even to this degree. I come into contact with one person's bodily fluid's. My wife's Sometimes my 1-year-old's, but even then, not into my mouth, ear, or an open cut.

I'm surprised this spreads, even to the degree it has, without sex.

It spreads mainly in countries where healthcare workers don't take the proper precautions and populations bury their own dead, and without first-world waste management infrastructure. None of those are an issue here.

Also, it doesn't spread until a person is symptomatic. Once that happens, chances are the infected person won't be able to move much, period, let alone wander around spreading infected fluids. At very least, they'd be very easy to spot and avoid.

 

[Dick Whitman]

The national news won't stop with this until everybody is full-fledged panic mode.

I was driving with my wife the other night and she made some little Ebola comment.

I said, "You're worried, aren't you?"

"No."

"Yes, you are. I know what kind of things worry you, and I know exactly how you bring it up when you're worried."

"I'm not worried."

"Yes, you are."

"OK, I am."

"A lot?"

"Just a little."

"Tell me the truth."

"OK, a lot."

"You know that's irrational, right?"

"I know."

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

****, I am smart enough to admit when I don't know **** about something.
Haemorrhagic fever is one of those things.

 

[MisterCreosote]

****, I am smart enough to admit when I don't know **** about something.
Haemorrhagic fever is one of those things.

I work in the medical field, dealing almost exclusively with infectious disease research and surveillance. Happy?

 

[YankeeFan]

It spreads mainly in countries where healthcare workers don't take the proper precautions and populations bury their own dead, and without first-world waste management infrastructure. None of those are an issue here.

Also, it doesn't spread until a person is symptomatic. Once that happens, chances are the infected person won't be able to move much, period, let alone wander around spreading infected fluids. At very least, they'd be very easy to spot and avoid.

I'll be curious to see if any of the family members he was staying with get sick.

They're all being quarantined together, which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, and they're being quarantined in the house where he stayed, where the bed linens he slept in have not been removed (until last night, I think).

If one of them gets it, they might all get it.

 

[Bob Cook]

Hey, remember when we worried SARS would kill us all?

Actually, if we really want to prevent dying from an infection we actually get get easily, we all should get flu shots.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/flu.htm

 

[The Big Ragu]

I read this, this morning. It is tangentially related.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29442642

These forensic scientists traced the origin of the AIDs pandemic (the spread of HIV) to Kinshasa in the 1920s. I find that amazing (and had never thought about it) because it didn't get any global attention until the 1980s when it spread west.

 

[Neutral Corner]

****, I am smart enough to admit when I don't know **** about something.
Haemorrhagic fever is one of those things.

I work in the medical field, dealing almost exclusively with infectious disease research and surveillance. Happy?

And I'm primary care medical. You know, the people who handle sick people all day every day.

There is one case so far in the US. The hospital dropped the ball because their software settings were not allowing the doctors to immediately review the information the intake nurse put in. You can bet that's no longer true.

If there is anything that worries me about a pandemic, and frankly I'm a lot more worried about a mutated H1N1 or similar flu, similar to the 1918 pandemic, its that Americans don't think public health law applies to them. If a wildfire infection breaks out, public health officials are going to need to clamp down on the movement of the potentially infected population. They will be confined to their homes and neighborhoods. Troops will be needed to seal off areas to be certain that some damned fool does not go to the grocery store, or to the bar to watch the football game with his buds. There will have to be isolation protocols with teeth, that make people stay away from anyone else until the potential infectious period is over.

Ammuricans are not good at listening to talk like that, because Freedom.

And ignorance. And science is just a bunch of theories.

In the meantime, I work a job where the potential of catching something nasty is a very real part of the job. I may not have a degree in epidemiology, but I'm pretty good at applied handwashing and disinfection... and I'm highly aware that it's a crapshoot. For instance, what's the first thing that they do when they get someone with a fever and cough in the office? Get a chest x-ray. If they happen to have active tuberculosis, if they cough, the bacillus can hang airborne for up to 45 minutes or so. So I can take an entirely different person into x-ray, breathe, and become infected.

Shrug. That's family practice.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

More people in America have died from football this week than from Ebola ever.

 

[Bob Cook]

****, I am smart enough to admit when I don't know **** about something.
Haemorrhagic fever is one of those things.

I work in the medical field, dealing almost exclusively with infectious disease research and surveillance. Happy?

And I'm primary care medical. You know, the people who handle sick people all day every day.

There is one case so far in the US. The hospital dropped the ball because their software settings were not allowing the doctors to immediately review the information the intake nurse put in. You can bet that's no longer true.

If there is anything that worries me about a pandemic, and frankly I'm a lot more worried about a mutated H1N1 or similar flu, similar to the 1918 pandemic, its that Americans don't think public health law applies to them. If a wildfire infection breaks out, public health officials are going to need to clamp down on the movement of the potentially infected population. They will be confined to their homes and neighborhoods. Troops will be needed to seal off areas to be certain that some damned fool does not go to the grocery store, or to the bar to watch the football game with his buds. There will have to be isolation protocols with teeth, that make people stay away from anyone else until the potential infectious period is over.

Ammuricans are not good at listening to talk like that, because Freedom.

And ignorance. And science is just a bunch of theories.

In the meantime, I work a job where the potential of catching something nasty is a very real part of the job. I may not have a degree in epidemiology, but I'm pretty good at applied handwashing and disinfection... and I'm highly aware that it's a crapshoot. For instance, what's the first thing that they do when they get someone with a fever and cough in the office? Get a chest x-ray. If they happen to have active tuberculosis, if they cough, the bacillus can hang airborne for up to 45 minutes or so. So I can take an entirely different person into x-ray, breathe, and become infected.

Shrug. That's family practice.

I highlighted the above because the family of the infected man is under armed guard because they violated an order not to leave their apartment.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/10/02/armed-guards-confine-ebola-patient-hosts-in-dallas.html

Imagine that on a wider scale, in a country where Jenny McCarthy is treated seriously as a health expert.

 

[Songbird]

The Long Island football coach would have been much more consoling to friends of the Ebola fatality.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

The Long Island football coach would have been much more consoling to friends of the Ebola fatality.

He was sitting in the corner consoling the outbreak monkey.

 

[Songbird]

Great band name, Outbreak Monkey.

 

[Bob Cook]

More explanation on what Neutral Corner was talking about regarding software issues:

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/texas-hospital-makes-changes-after-ebola-patient-turned-away-n217296

 

[MisterCreosote]

If there is anything that worries me about a pandemic, and frankly I'm a lot more worried about a mutated H1N1 or similar flu, similar to the 1918 pandemic, its that Americans don't think public health law applies to them.

Or H5N1, the bird flu, which is much more virulent and attaches much deeper in the lungs. That's the main reason it doesn't spread very easily, but one or two mutations could change all that.

Or, how about measles? As a reminder, all of the panic about disease threats lately is taking place amid the largest outbreak of that disease in more than 20 years. It's a disease that was ELIMINATED from this country in 2000, and is now resurfacing because people refuse to get vaccinated against it. At its worst and our most vulnerable, measles infected MILLIONS of Americans every year.

 

[amraeder]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/how-to-protect-yourself-against-ebola,37085/

 

[Neutral Corner]

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.

 

[Bob Cook]

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.

 

[MisterCreosote]

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.

 

[YankeeFan]

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.