I agree.
Panic is counterproductive. There is no better way to induce panic than to tell people they are safe and then tell them (or let them discover) they are not.
Better to let them know something is as dangerous as it is so they can be adequately prepared to deal with it--and as I will continue to maintain, better to be a little overly prepared, a little better equipped than need be than to have inadequate PPE. EBOV remains a level 4 pathogen, and it is folly to treat it with less respect than it should receive.
Better to let them know something is as dangerous as it is so they can be adequately prepared to deal with it--and as I will continue to maintain, better to be a little overly prepared, a little better equipped than need be than to have inadequate PPE. EBOV remains a level 4 pathogen, and it is folly to treat it with less respect than it should receive.
No one, as far as I know, is telling people that Ebola is perfectly safe. The message has always been that Ebola is quite infectious--not contagious, but infectious--and requires the highest level of caution.
What I see going on are a lot of people hung up on this idea that Ebola *must* be airborne, because, somehow, an airborne pathogen must be MUCH more scary than a pathogen that is spread by direct contact. That popular conception, however, is wrong. Ebola is classified as a level 4 pathogen because it is so infectious and pathogenic once exposure has occurred--NOT because it is highly contagious. If contagiousness of a virus were the criteria in deciding its biosafety level, then the common cold would be a level 4 agent.
This whole attempt to pigeonhole Ebola into being an airborne respiratory virus is a dangerous diversion. People who take precautions against an aerosol virus, thinking that they are thus protecting themselves against Ebola, are doing no such thing. You can protect yourself against something in the air with a mask. A mask won't protect against Ebola, because Ebola is potentially lurking on surfaces--any surface that a patient has soiled with their bodily fluids, especially as they progress in the disease and those fluids are more likely to contain virus--their soiled bedding, objects that they have splashed with their vomit or diarrhea, chairs that they have sat on, etc. You have to protect yourself against contact with contaminated surfaces--that is far more stringent than protecting against something in the air.