Yeah, you and I seem pretty well anchored locally. A trip for me to Spokane now (145 miles) is a big deal. Weren’t you talking about visiting Italy a couple of years ago, though? Or was that just a dream? Please forgive me if wrong.
Thing I’m worried about is we (the town) have constant visitors coming through Dulles and from points beyond, including pretty much every country in the world with nuke plants.. In fact, my family had a visitor through Dulles just last week. Heck, even the biowarfare people come here now that the local national lab is doing detection work.
So far, the virus has not become truly aerosolized (”airborne”) but I worry about those visitors using the same door handles I do on the way downtown. Fortunately, transmission doesn’t seem to occur prior to symptoms or this would be a lot worse.
The WHO and CDC and NHS have generally been correct about the limited contagiousness and difficulty of transmission (just so we don’t get a huge spike in new cases in the next ten days or so).
It was a dream. My mother and I "were going" to Rome when she turned 75, but I had a baby, and that was the last year before my father moved into the Alzheimer's unit, so Mom couldn't leave him for a minute.
I suppose I could cross paths with someone at the Walmart, the gym, or church ... but I go year after year without getting the flu, when there are thousands of verified local cases. I think a lightning strike is far more likely than my contracting Ebola, and I have plenty of life insurance.
Not that anyone would do this, but you only need go to the rest rooms in the airports and watch the folks coming and going. For many people, a stop at the nearest rest room is the first stop off the airplane.
It only takes a few viral parts on a toilet seat to kill thousands. Sure, its not going to live forever on the seat, but it will live until the next butt sits down.
And the force of those flushes tosses up, literally, millions of water particles. Its not that we are pooping in the streets, but if you think you are immune because you cover the seat is simply naive.
We have to talk about uncomfortable issues here: Vomit, feces, hygiene, etc. The process of dying of Ebola is simply wet and horrible.