Posted on 09/26/2014 4:00:56 AM PDT by markomalley
He was 69 years old, I don’t know why this wasn’t mentioned in the article.
According to the World Health Organization, around £614m is needed to prevent the outbreak from turning into a human catastrophe.
AND WE PLAN TO KEEP INFECTING PEOPLE UNTIL WE GET THE MONEY.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
You keep saying it isn't very contagious, but the doctors on the ground (now, some of them in the ground) in Africa describe the disease as "highly contagious".
Feel free to laud the facilities, the aircraft with isolation chambers built in, the transfer protocols to get the patient from the plane to facilities without spreading the virus, but please do not downplay the disease. It is pretty evident from the safeguards and PPE (and level 4 classification) that we aren't dealing with something to play pattycake with.
I am sorry but even the doctors here I talk to think this thing is way scary and are blowing holes through the propaganda being spewed in the news and are screaming quarantine. The "it is not a problem" propaganda gets old especially when you add the Canadian 2012 study and the question what the meaning of airborne is.
I understand not panicking people and the need for common sense look at the situation and that yes, we would have a better chance to put a stop to it before it got out of hand as long as it was not used in a large diversely released attack but at some point it is just sticking your head in the sand or you have an agenda.
Compared to influenza (or, as my boss puts it, "a disease that can actually start a pandemic"), Ebola is hardly contagious at all. It requires direct contact with infected bodily fluids. It is "highly contagious" in the sense that it takes so few viral particles to cause illness (ID50 is about 10, IIRC)--but not in its mode of transmission. It transmits purely through human behavior--stop the behaviors, and the virus will stop.
I do not downplay this disease at all, although I do think it's rather bizarre that it's getting so much attention. To put some perspective, we have horrible contagious diseases right here in the US. Rabies--also spread by direct contact with infected bodily fluid--is 100% fatal once symptoms appear. Hantavirus has a CFR between 19 and 56%, and is airborne (although not spread from human to human). I freak out any time a rodent gets into my house, because Hanta is endemic in rodents in many parts of the country. Looking outside of the US, there are persistent avian flu infections--H7N9 and H5N1--each with fairly high CFRs (about 30% and 60%, IIRC)--and there is a real danger that through recombination or natural mutation, they will become human to human transmissible. Or some other influenza virus could pop up, highly transmissible, with a high CFR.
No, I am not downplaying Ebola at all. I realize that most people had never heard of it until this year, and the hemorrhagic form is quite dramatic. But it's not the most dangerous disease threat, even in Africa.
Is it the guy who was flown to Nebraska, by any chance? That would prove you can beat it without ZMapp, as some in Africa have apparently done.
Let's see--that guy had malaria, so the Ebola was not recognized right away. Healthcare workers got sick because they thought they were dealing with malaria, and did not know about the Ebola. Spouses of health care workers also got sick. There were a total of 19 confirmed and one suspected case in Nigeria, with 8 deaths. Some media reports tell of 21 cases, but the CDC says 19 and one suspect. Every single case had physical contact with the index case or a secondary case. There is not a single instance of transmission through casual contact or even fomites.
Once the index case in Nigeria was identified as having Ebola, he was isolated and contact tracing was initiated. As of 9/20/2014, the last traced contact remained symptom-free. Since an outbreak is declared over when 2 incubation periods (=42 days) have passed, I'm calculating that in another 15 days, Nigeria will officially be Ebola-free.
The death rate for this outbreak is around 60%. The WHO recently declared 70%, but I question that--I calculate less than 60%.
I am sorry but even the doctors here I talk to think this thing is way scary and are blowing holes through the propaganda being spewed in the news and are screaming quarantine. The "it is not a problem" propaganda gets old especially when you add the Canadian 2012 study and the question what the meaning of airborne is.
Do any of the doctors you talk to have personal experience working with Ebola, either as health care providers or researchers? Have they read every study on Ebola, until they are bored stiff with the subject? I would say that without that perspective, they are no different than the average person on the street as far as their knowledge level goes. The "propaganda" being spewed in the news is information being provided by the researchers and clinicians who deal first-hand with Ebola. I've seen many names quoted, people who have been working with Ebola for decades. As long as the news articles are quoting highly experienced Ebola researchers (or the head of the CDC, who talks to them), I am comfortable with the accuracy of the news reports.
I do not know what "the Canadian 2012 study" is, so cannot comment. If you care to provide a reference, I'll be glad to take a look and figure out what the study really showed.
I understand not panicking people and the need for common sense look at the situation and that yes, we would have a better chance to put a stop to it before it got out of hand as long as it was not used in a large diversely released attack but at some point it is just sticking your head in the sand or you have an agenda.
My "agenda" is to insert some rationality into the discussion. I see a lot of people who know little about the subject blowing it up to apocalyptic proportions that really are not justified by any facts. While I realize that some people love to worry about some existential threat, that mode of thinking is completely foreign to me. I'm practical--you identify a threat, determine how serious it is, how likely it is, and decide on mitigation measures. There's no need for panic or hysterics in a rational risk-assessment exercise.
Thanks for the ping!
Rubbing eyes, nosepicking, not washing after using the lavatory, eating without washing hands, so many human behaviours which are second nature have the potential to infect.
Yes, there are diseases which are more readily transmitted through the air. Few kill quite so well.
H5N1 might mutate to a form easier to transmit H2H, but we've been waiting for that for nearly a decade. Hasn't happened yet. It still prefers the higher temperatures of the lower respiratory tract, and isn't likely to get sneezed around.
Ebola is deadly today, so long as the virus is present in the area and not strictly confined by BSL protocols and PPE.
I have only been following the adventures of the filovirus clan for a decade or so, but it really remains the nasty bug in Africa with the greatest potential to succeed, given the right situation, along with Marburg.
For now, though, play the hand you are dealt.
Unlike Malaria (by far, so far, a greater killer), it does not rely on the cooperation of another species besides those affected to get around, although it appears dogs and pigs may be asymptomatic and yet test seropositive. At least Fido froths at the mouth and acts strange when he has rabies (easily enough avoided by vaccine). Friends have had to do the series--good thing they did, the critter was postive--and it isn't cheap, even though it is not as brutal as it once was.
But now that Ebola has plenty of raw material to work with in urban environments in Africa, it has been having a heyday.
Why does Ebola capture the human imagination?
Thank the shambling masses of the "Zombie Apocalypse" and movies like 28 Days After, (incidentally, although fictional ailments, also transmitted by bodily fluid contact and human--well, sort of--behaviour).
It is easy to ignore the diseases that are mundane to most, the flu (not many recall the Spanish Flu--my grandmother lived past 100 and was a little girl when that went through), Bubonic Plague (finished up the world tour back when), even Hantavirus, (who really breathes crystallized mouse urine, anyway?).
The latter, I share your caution, I have worked in an area which had an outbreak, and declared war on small rodents which are always looking for a warmer place to send the winter. I still wonder if the week I spent with fever and coughing up pistachio green chunks of junk in Northern Montana was related....maybe, maybe not, but I survived by jealously guarding lung capacity.
I actually thought the Christmas I spent debrieding spider bite wounds with a jacknife and a spray bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide was less fun, but only by a smidgen. When I finally saw a doctor, he told me to take more of the antibiotic I had been taking, said he'd never seen anything like that, and asked if he could take pictures. Yeah, whatever, knock yourself out.
Three months later, the last one finally scabbed over and I knew I was on the mend. Silver Chloride ointment provided the greatest relief from the sensation like someone putting a cigarette out on the bite site.
So, I'll pick and chose what I'd least like to see in the wild.
I'm less afraid of H5N1 (don't live with poultry), abide no rodents in my buildings or temporary quarters, and stay clear of people with the sniffles.
But bleeding out of every orifice just doesn't appeal to me. I suspect that may be a part of the 'fascination' people have, the same reason plane crash videos get hits on YouTube.
As a practical matter, no, I'm not afraid of Ebola at the present, but only because at the moment the likelihood of encountering the virus where I live or work is fairly low.
I think I have a pretty good handle on how it can be caught if present, and that includes fomites, and understanding it lessens fear.
In other venues, yes, even in North Dakota, there are contingents of foreign workers, some of whom are from Africa. Signs of sickness are enough to get me to keep my distance, even though that crew has been in the States for a couple of months now. Probability of a problem is so low as to be off the charts, but I keep up with who has been visiting who...
That does not leave me complacent, and possibilities are something I have always dealt in, though not to generate fear, but enthusiasm.
In this case, I am not enthusiastic at the possibilities, but I need to recognize them--failure to do so by the agencies which could have limited the outbreak months ago has allowed the mess in Africa to develop to this extent.
Failure to do so here could allow the same, given the disease in the wild. So, preventing that situation as much as possible is paramount here.
You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!
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