Posted on 10/17/2014 11:21:09 PM PDT by Steelfish
Ebola Scare Sends Caribbean Cruise Ship Back Home Oct 17, 2014 By MEGHAN KENEALLY
PHOTO: Jeremy Malone saw 30 to 40 crew members with buckets of disinfectant who were lined up on along his hallway as they prepared to clean the ship
The presence of a woman who helped care for an Ebola patient who died has left a Caribbean cruise ship unable to dock at foreign tourist ports and is now heading back to Texas.
One passenger said the announcement of the woman's presence has created "utter panic" on the Carnival Magic cruise ship, while others remained outwardly unfazed, sunbathing by the outdoor pool.
"People are scared,” passenger Jon Malone told ABC News as the ship was waiting miles off shore from Cozumel, Mexico. "I’ve seen people crying.”
The chaos started this morning when there was an announcement on the ship’s intercom saying "that someone who worked in the lab who handled the person in Dallas’s blood was on the ship,” Jon’s brother and fellow passenger Jeremy Malone told ABC. The cruise line said the woman is in isolation on board the ship.
"You're using the same buffet line as someone else, the same waiters, the folks that clean the state rooms. If someone was cleaning their state room and cleaned yours right after, the exposure that you have there to elevators..." he said. "It's very tight quarters and a lot of interaction. It's really difficult to control any type of virus that's on a cruise ship. It's like a floating petri dish. It spreads very rapidly."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I have an idea. Want to make a lot of money? Just get into the medical protective garment business now. Manufacturing, and selling. You will be a millionaire in a few months.
I don’t want there to be a coverup, I’m not claiming that there is. It’s just that in the instance of the Belize situation, there is enough information to validate what I read late on Thursday night and now none of that appears to be getting any acknowledgment. Call it what you will. Sounds like there was a freakout over this behind the scenes, med-evac plane at the ready, government figures in Belize stating that they were denied, etc. There’s a reason for that, and it wouldn’t seem to involve an asymptomatic person already in isolation.
I was joking yesterday about launching a Kickstarter campaign for Tyvek burkhas with built-in N95 mask and goggles.
Hopefully that talking point gets out in the news cycle.
Mexico sent illegals with Enterovirus, which has caused a spike in infant and toddler deaths, but rejects our health needs due to the risk to its citizens.
Many labs work with a variety of very dangerous substances, infectious, chemical, and radiological. OSHA and state agencies require a considerable amount of safety training, and often inspect these labs. Various institutions handle this in different ways, but the idea of a lab where safety isn't being pounded into everyone's heads at least monthly is inconceivable to me.
Is there anyone left at the higher levels of Govt. that CARE about their fellow American citizens and CARE about The United States of America, to speak OUT and STOP this folly of an Administration or are ALL of the upper levels of Govt. Administration-Political-Hacks now?
I despise this Administration. The mess they have created will be paid for by American lives, the death of the Middle Class, and Barry/Michelle/Valerie et al, will just jet off and leave the ruination behind.
The 0bama coverup team is in full court press mode right now, and the old lies are being told over and over again to make them sound familiar. Lots of “experts” with no more medical creds than the new 0bolo Czar.
I'm not sure what these "old lies" are. Ebola is a biological organism, not some supernatural entity--it is subject to the same laws of physics that control all natural things. We've known how Ebola spreads for the last 40 years, and we've seen the same pattern of spread here--direct or close contact for prolonged periods of time (like the nurses, who weren't even wearing PPE for the first couple of days). These are not "lies" being told over and over. These are the facts that must be repeated until people get over the misinformation they "learned" about Ebola when they read The Hot Zone.
I do not like that some political hack was appointed Ebola Czar. Unless he works VERY closely with the medical people, he's quite likely to say something utterly stupid and contribute to the misinformation about Ebola.
Some of us have been following the research on Ebola since LONG before it entered the public spotlight. I've never read The Hot Zone--don't care to, either.
Or allows plane loads of eloba carriers into the country.
And I understand there’s just one aircraft suitable for transporting infectious people safely
A virus like noro lasts months to years on dry surfaces. A virus like ebola last days on cool damp surfaces. There is still a risk, but orders of magnitude in difference especially when the alleged victim is quarantined.
The button would have to still be damp. Doesn't survive dry.
Sure, anyone who posts a single fact must be part of the coverup.
Are you serious? Even the CDC on their official statements say they aren't entirely sure how it is transmitted.
The largest Ebola outbreak in the US (the Reston outbreak) is still not understood, and they have been studying that outbreak for how many years?
The CDC has been playing word games betwen “airborne” and “aerosol” transmission. The difference to the end user is the difference between getting shot by a 20 gauge vs a 12 gauge shotgun.
And now the CDC is admitting there is evidence of AIRBORNE transmission.
And what happened in the last 40 years is interesting, but in no way lays a course for fighting today's outbreak. Much like th best the CDC can do with annual flu vaccines is GUESS what might go around this year. And that guess is wrong over 60% of the time year to year. We can not afford guessing, this disease is 140 times more deadly than the flu.
You have seen that there is strong suspicion that is a new strain, right?
You clearly do not know the requirements to work in a lab, and your opinion of our military's competence is obviously low.
How about informing yourself of the preparations our military is making for the Ebola fight:
Pentagon briefing on Ebola operation.
FYI, the military has been active in the Ebola fight ever since it was first identified, decades ago. Just as our military is active in a lot of other infectious disease fights: AIDS, monkeypox, cholera, etc. The military has other roles than enforcement of foreign policy.
Would you rather the military go in now and contain this threat while it is still in Africa, or would you rather no one do anything to contain the thread, and let it spread across Africa, into Europe and Asia, until it is impossible to keep it from spreading into the Americas? Personally, I'd rather see it contained.
Or allows plane loads of eloba carriers into the country.
Bringing infected Americans home for treatment is hardly "allowing plane loads of eloba carriers" into the country. It's not like there are tons of Africans traveling outside of Africa; most countries are screening passengers from Africa. Screening for infectious disease is not unusual at airports.
They have rarely studied the transmission because it is so deadly and so expensive to study. So we don't really know how easy or hard it is to transfer. But we do know that after the cordoned off the West Point slum figuring they would all get infected, there was no widespread infection. People avoided contact with both known victims and each other and the spread stopped. We can be pretty sure that the people in the apartment Duncan was in did not become infected (it is day 20 for them).
Airborne transmission is nearly certain IMO. But it requires something to make it airborne like projectile vomiting, explosive diarrhea, etc. The sneeze of an early symptomatic person is possible although probably very low risk.
It does show up in saliva. It can be on surfaces but mainly if it stays cool and damp. Those risks are not well studied and I will not neglect to mention them. But the evidence we have says they are very low, probably zero for most cases.
The CDC, the WHO, the researchers who actually research Ebola, and the healthcare personnel who travel to outbreak areas are all pretty clear on how people get Ebola--through direct close contact. This outbreak is no different. People are catching Ebola through direct close contact with sick people or corpses. The nurses in Dallas caught Ebola by caring for an Ebola patient for two days without adequate PPE. The transmission pattern is known.
The largest Ebola outbreak in the US (the Reston outbreak) is still not understood, and they have been studying that outbreak for how many years?
I don't know that anyone is bothering to study that any more. Investigators determined a long time ago that the conditions in that facility were deplorable, and there was plenty of opportunity for virus to be physically carried all over that facility. In controlled conditions, with better sanitation, monkeys do not spread Reston to each other if they are physically separated.
The CDC has been playing word games betwen “airborne” and “aerosol” transmission. The difference to the end user is the difference between getting shot by a 20 gauge vs a 12 gauge shotgun.
Airborne is the method by which aerosols transmit. Essentially, airborne and aerosol are the same thing. Now, there *is* a significant difference between aerosol and droplet transmission, and some non-scientists think that droplet transmission is the same as airborne because droplets do splash up into the air. But they are not the same--droplets are a form of direct contact.
Airborne or aerosol transmission occurs without physical contact and at a distance of greater than 3 feet.
And now the CDC is admitting there is evidence of AIRBORNE transmission.
I have never seen the CDC "admit" to any such thing. Here is the CDC link on transmission of Ebola. And here is a scientific document written on transmission. The scientific document notes that under artificial conditions, Ebola can be aerosolized, but those conditions are nothing like any natural setting. It also notes that many studies might superficially show aerosol transmission, but that more careful examination of the evidence in those studies reveals that they could not demonstrate aerosol transmission and that other mechanisms of transmission were responsible.
And what happened in the last 40 years is interesting, but in no way lays a course for fighting today's outbreak. Much like th best the CDC can do with annual flu vaccines is GUESS what might go around this year. And that guess is wrong over 60% of the time year to year. We can not afford guessing, this disease is 140 times more deadly than the flu.
The WHO has to look at data about current circulating influenza strains and try to make an educated guess about what WILL circulate some 9 months in the future. It's a lot like trying to guess the weather a month from now, based on the current weather and historical data. If you have a better way of determining which flu strains will be dominant next year, please publish your results so that we can have better flu vaccines.
Ebola, however, is not the flu. Unlike flu, its genes are all contained on a single strand of genetic material (flu has 8 separate pieces of genetic material), so Ebola cannot swap genes with similar viruses the way influenza does. So Ebola today is pretty much like Ebola 40 years ago, and the behavior of Ebola--and Marburg, which is very similar--is well-known.
Even in the case of influenza, the course of the disease is similar no matter which flu virus is involved. The only time influenza viruses behave differently is when they are bird flu viruses.
You have seen that there is strong suspicion that is a new strain, right?
I've read all of the scientific publications on this outbreak, and have seen that Ebola Zaire is responsible for this outbreak. If a new strain of Ebola were responsible, we would have known it in March. The few mutations that have been documented are expected, for a number of reasons. This virus is 98.5% identical to Ebola Zaire from the DRC, making it Ebola Zaire by definition.
He was a rebel, wasn’t he?
That was one of the best books ever written.
Talk about an entire industry that can’t catch a break.
Very nice excwept this outbreak is very different than anything in the last 40 years.
What you are listring is consensus, not settled science., Consensus is opinion, nothing more. And when these opinions are presented by gov’t employees that risk losing their income and retirement should thy disagree with their boss, these opinions are worth less than what th MSM offers every day.
Also, the WHO and the CDC are big Global Warming activists. Yet another “consensus” that is no where near any kind of settled science.
Taking global warming fear monger’s “research” is folly at best, and criminally negligent more likely.
The CDC is a political organization no different then the Democratic Party, they long ago ceased being a scientific research organization: global warming, gun control, fat lesbians, school lunches; have been occupying them lately, none of which have anything to do with Disease Control.
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