Who will provide the logistics support for this initiative if the military doesn't participate?
First of all, it's not their job. Their job is to protect our borders and our citizens.
Don't you think containing the Ebola epidemic to West Africa protects our citizens and national security?
Plus - are these military going to be held in quarantine for 7 months? That is how long the virus apparently lives in sperm. Are we going to ask these people to be celibate for 7 months?
What is the source of that assertion? I just watched the Congressional Hearings on Ebola and one of the American doctors who survived the disease, Dr. Kent Brantly, said he was evaluated as being disease free. Other medical authorities who were on the panels never mentioned any such lingering remnants of the disease. i.e., for 7 months.
According to the WHO, people are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. For this reason, infected patients receive close monitoring from medical professionals and receive laboratory tests to ensure the virus is no longer circulating in their systems before they return home. When the medical professionals determine it is okay for the patient to return home, they are no longer infectious and cannot infect anyone else in their communities. Men who have recovered from the illness can still spread the virus to their partner through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery. For this reason, it is important for men to avoid sexual intercourse for at least 7 weeks after recovery or to wear condoms if having sexual intercourse during 7 weeks after recovery.
Ebola virus was isolated from semen 61 days after onset of illness in a man who was infected in a laboratory. The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms, is 2 to 21 days. The disease lasts about two weeks. You either die or survive during that period.
Thanks you. I feel better already. It’s seven weeks, not seven months.
It should be no problem asking young military men to avoid sex for seven weeks.
From Scientific American:
Q. The World Health Organization maintains that patients can continue to be infectious via their sexual fluids for several months after recovery. What did you recommend to Brantly and Writebol?
A. There are data that go back several decades—over several outbreaks—that suggest when you have individuals that have recovered from Ebola virus infection they may still be shedding nuclear material [genetic material from the virus which could potentially help spread it] in semen in males and vaginal secretions in females and also, potentially in urine. People have done this by doing assays looking specifically at the nuclear material of the virus. There has been very little attempt to demonstrate if this is viable virus that these individuals are shedding. It’s important when looking at epidemiological investigations that no one has been able to show people shedding these nuclear materials as a source of infection after they are discharged.
Looking at Ebola survivors who were discharged and successfully resolved the infection, following up several months later and evaluating their family members, there has never been any evidence that family members became infected. A lot of the thinking now is this probably was not live and is not important in terms of control of infection. We did give both of our patients the standard recommendations, which are contained on the CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control] Web site—not having unprotected sex for three months.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ebola-doctor-reveals-how-infected-americans-were-cured/