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 ...
“This situation is absolutely ludicrous, IMO.”
Agreed
I’d hate to be on a cruise right now. All the normal sea sick cases are going to cause a panic situation
This is a new strain and is different as per the real front line folks fighting this, not the political hacks wearing white smocks in the US
Right. And a tornado that causes massive death and destruction going through a residential neighborhood *must* be a different kind of tornado than the one that hit a mile away and only caused damage to a corn field, because it causes so much damage.
Ebola has never reached a major population center before, so the chain of transmission is more difficult to break. The virus itself has not changed.
This is NOT a new strain of Ebola. As I said before, if this had been a new strain, we would have known about it in March, when the outbreak was first identified as Ebola. We have sequence data from this outbreak--it is very clear from the virus itself that it is Ebola Zaire. For it to be a different strain, its sequence would be at least 30% different than any known Ebola--but it isn't. It is 98.5% exactly the same as Ebola Zaire circulating around DRC. That small 1.5% difference in sequence does not mean very much; all viruses mutate during the course of an infection and tend to be slightly different in different geographical areas. While analyzing those mutations helps to determine where the virus came from and establish whether the outbreak was caused by a single introduction event or multiple events, it does not mean that the virus is new or has characteristics never before seen in Ebola.
I do not know of any political hacks wearing white smocks. The politicians are all getting educated on Ebola by the actual scientists and physicians who are familiar with the virus and know the science about it.
Absolutely. I read somewhere that it is common for people to die while on a cruise—about 200 deaths per year. In this climate, this rather common event will no doubt spark massive panic.
I get information from a variety of places, like the links to Africom that I posted. All of my information on the virus itself comes from scientific publications written by the people doing the research.
They’re planning on rotating the troops who have been over there... and quite possibly are infected ... back to the United States. I don’t believe there will be a 21 day waiting period. Have you heard anything about that?
And what did you think of the link I sent...
And what did you think of the link I sent...
There is no reason for them to be put into quarantine unless there has been an exposure event. From what I understand, they are there to provide support. The people who will be providing care are actual medical personnel who have a considerable amount of training in working in PPE.
The four hours training given to the soldiers is probably more than enough, given their support role. The main thing is to sensitize them so that they won't do anything like try to help someone who is clearly sick without having the proper PPE on hand.
The link you sent is fine...
Being symptomatic only means your density level of virus is high enough to cause visibile symptoms. Prior to showing symptoms you still contain a lowered density of virus. Just a numbers game for gamblers.
Yep.
I bristle everytime that clown Frieden says that there is really not a risk of being infected from someone with Ebola unless he/she is “symptomatic”, and you have direct contact with his/her body fluids.
Who wants to play Ebola Roulette? Ugh.
Duncan’s family is under armed guard - how many others are under armed guard? How do you feel about this?
From the link:
...in the Ebola outbreak. Friends and family who had contact with Duncan before he was hospitalized were confined to homes under armed guard...
From the article:
The unusual confinement order was imposed after the family failed to comply with a request not to leave their apartment, Jenkins said.
I don't typically go around "feeling" about things, since I'm far too logical to have patience with feelings. That said, I have no problem with enforcing a quarantine if people will not voluntarily comply with the terms of the quarantine themselves. I have been criticized many times by libertarian FReepers for stating that I fully support quarantine and other measures that subjugate individual freedom in favor of protecting public health.
Even though I have only seen evidence that one of Duncan's family members was a high-risk contact, I still think that it is wise to take precautions. Contact tracing and quarantine are old methods, but they still work to control infectious disease outbreaks. Ultimately, they are the measures that will bring Ebola under control in Africa. Thank goodness our military is stepping in to help with this.
IF we stop flights out of Africa that's like 'quarantining them, right? So you would be OK with that... They don't have the right to come here and infect us... right?
Thanks for the ping!
No. I'm for targeted quarantines--keeping people who are known case contacts from flying. And I'm for airport screenings and temperature checks to keep potentially infected people from flying. And for closing our southern border where a whole lot of people with diseases that have significantly more potential to cause widespread illness and death than Ebola are walking right in.
A disease that causes high mortality but is minimally contagious is not as much of a public health issue as a disease that is highly contagious and causes low mortality. Or, in simple language, Ebola is not a public health threat; influenza is. So are measles, polio, Chagas disease, etc.
Do you think Ebola in Africa IS totally different than Ebola in the United States? Or do you think it's the same virus that infects and kills in the same manner?
Earlier this year there was only ONE case of Ebola in Africa. Was it NOT a dangerous disease back in March?
The virus is the same, but the culture and infrastructure are completely different.
If a tornado is observed to cause little property damage when it sweeps through fields, but causes massive damage and loss of life when it sweeps through a residential area, the difference is not in the destructive power of the tornado. The difference is in the area where the tornado appears.
Those countries where the Ebola outbreak keeps on going are all countries that have been devastated by years of civil war. They have poor infrastructure, and terribly inadequate healthcare. Even in hospitals, most nursing care is provided by family members. They have burial customs that involve washing and touching the dead. The conditions in those countries essentially create perfect storms for Ebola to continue infecting people.
Here in the US, the cultural and infrastructural conditions that lead to continued transmission of the disease in Africa do not exist. Now, there *is* a problem in that the hospital in Dallas was not ready for this--completely inexcusable. Other hospitals have dealt with Ebola-like diseases without a single secondary transmission of the disease. We know how to control infection and stamp out outbreaks; we do this all the time, and the CDC is a crucial part of this effort.
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