Ebola Victim's Family Prepares to Leave Quarantine (47 exposed to Duncan to be cleared Mon. 12am)

NBC DFW ^ | October 18, 2014 | Randy McIlwain

[palmer]

And there are plenty of viruses in units other than blood as well....

Sure. Stool: 2/4, tears, 1/1, skin swab 1/11, etc See my link. All of those could have been transmitted, but also rather easily avoided. Mostly I would have expected Troh (the GF) to have touched Duncan's skin. But Duncan was not acute at that point ("high antigenemia" in the study) and only one out of eleven was positive in the study even in acute illness.

I see nothing suspicious whatsoever in their health, just a not-yet-acute victim and some luck. OTOH, for the nurses I see inadequate protection at an acute stage where they were exposed to lots of virus laden blood include in tiny droplets.

[jetson]

I wonder if flu shots or fluoride in the water could slow down the incubation time?

[palmer]

There could be several factors. Our flu shots are supposed to produce antibodies to flu viruses, not any virus. Don’t know about fluoride but that could be antiviral. The other factors people mentioned are diet and the fact that Africans have other diseases that we don’t have here. Ebola attacks the immune system and the immune system has peculiar characteristics in Africans.

[Mom MD]

One thing 30 years of practice has taught me is that I do not trust studies unless they have been repeated several times and borne out by clinical practice. I have always maintained we will not know how this virus acts until we have seen a couple hundred cases of it. Otherwise we don’t know what we don’t know. And it is the unknown that will get us, not the known. I hope we do not get the clinical experience we need to feel comfortable knowing how this virus is transmitted in a health care setting. Unfortunately I am afraid we might indeed get it.

[palmer]

I agree with that, especially considering the study that I linked had so few samples. Like you say, other researchers would have to repeat it to rule out mishandling, contamination, etc that might occur in this single study.

Also I agree that we will unfortunately get a lot more cases to study. There is roughly 1 in 1000 infection right now and 150 a day are coming to the USA. That means we will see roughly one new infected person a week unless they present symptoms at the airport (i.e. instead of just in incubation) and are caught by some flunky with a digital thermometer and aren't one of the 13% who don't get the fever.