Why does the title say it is a patient with ebola symptoms and the article says the patient does not have any symptoms?
I assume this ship of over 3,500 passengers is on it’s way back to Galveston. Having seen first hand how Norovirus goes through cruise ships, this makes me very nervous.
The similarities between Norovirus and Ebola are interesting. Same method of transmission, R naught rate and virulence. Norovirus is pretty common. I’d hate to imagine if Ebola became as common.
What is interesting is the fact that thus far those closest to patient zero have not showed symptoms, or at least there have been no reports yet. Patient zero was exposed to full blown Ebola victim that died very shortly thereafter. The nurses that have come down with Ebola were exposed when patient zero was very ill. Not to minimize the danger, but this strain of Ebola (and others may be different) appears to be very contagious when the patient is very sick, and thus ultra precautions are warranted when exhibiting such symptoms.
I think we will learn a lot from this whole episode, and hopefully enable rational approaches to dealing with it (cutting travel when so much is unknown sure would have been prudent). The biggest problem is the potential for mutations that increase the chance of contracting it from victims at earlier stages of the disease. My own doctor mentioned during an office visit last week that another doctor in the practice had recently returned from volunteer work treating Ebola patients. Worked in the appropriate protective gear, but saw workers sharing food from common containers (rice...) after removing their gear, just simply unsafe cultural practices. He was very careful with food preparation....