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To: exDemMom
Given that Ebola is not very contagious--it requires direct contact with infected bodily fluids--

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.

24 posted on 09/26/2014 9:26:31 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: Smokin' Joe
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".

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.

26 posted on 09/26/2014 6:42:49 PM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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