Posted on 10/03/2014 10:46:54 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
DALLAS — There is a little Ethiopian cafe here on Park Lane, down the street from where the man city officials call Patient Zero was staying. I walked in and asked the workers standing behind the counter if they knew anything about the patient, Thomas E. Duncan, a Liberian citizen who was the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. Next to the cash register was a bottle of hand sanitizer.
They did not know him. But they called over a customer. The customer, a middle-aged woman, walked over. I don’t think she heard my question, but she heard one word within it: “Ebola.” With a worried look on her face, she stretched her arm in front of me, pumped the sanitizer a couple times and rubbed it on her hands.
Covering Ebola in Texas is like this — fleeting moments of fear, often stirred by misinformation.
Perhaps if I was sick and infectious with Ebola and had sneezed on my hand, and then I shook her hand, and then she used that same hand to touch her eye, mouth or nose, then maybe, just maybe, she would have had something to worry about. But I didn’t even shake her hand. Ebola carries a kind of scarlet letter even in the United States, particularly in a working-class community of African immigrants, and no amount of news conferences, posters or statements by health officials reminding people that the disease is not spread through casual contact but through direct contact with the bodily fluids of a sick person can fully shake that perception....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If Ebola does hit us hard, it will also be in NYC, it will be interesting to see how this writer would handle that.
Has he never heard of a virus mutating?
I didn’t bother to read the article, but this whole Ebola thing in Tx gives me bad mumbo. Reeks of cooties.
While it's been like watching a modern-day revival of Keystone Cops as far as the way the whole thing has been handled down there up to now, Mr. Manny Hernandez hasn't seen fear and misinformation yet. Just wait 'til his beloved New York is directly affected, loaded with loudmouthed neurotics stacked on top of each other as they are.
New York writers and reporters do love to go out to the "hinterlands" and make very narrow-minded, stereotypical observations out of sheer ignorance, which they mistakenly believe is somehow representative of enlightenment. All they're actually doing is confirming their own biases picked up "back home," just as surely as any other untraveled bumpkin might do.
Ahhh...New York. It’s time to share a little of our Ebola with “yall”.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
Nothing I have read leads me to believe that change in the way it is transmitted is even remotely possible. THAT said, the article is incorrect and confusing. “Direct contact” could be a problematic phrase. When I read the warnings from experts, in my mind I see “indirect contact.” Touching an object a sick person transmitted fluids to seems “indirect,” not “direct.”
The africans think it can travel on money...or letters.
Talked to one at wallfart...she was wearing gloves...she said her family in africa told her to....for handling money.
I drove to Dallas last night with my wife to care for my daughter who had flu like symptoms. She is getting better already, and it is not Ebola, but I. An age where the “optics” are deemed so important, I can’t imagine what idiot editor is letting something like this out of the door.
Even knowing that my daughter had symptoms starting before the Ebola visitor arrived, I still had a knot in my stomach when my kid tells me her symptoms. I have read the news, they have done a horrible job of trying to contain this. Repeating the mantra all-is-well, risks the appearance of being clueless at best and being malicious at worst.
We were told it wouldn’t get here, it is. The administration can’t find emails, can’t stop fence jumpers, fights terrorism with hashtags.....
#StopEbola #OffToGolf #PresidentEmptyChair
I almost clicked on the link to see what else this author had to say and then I saw it was NYT. Whew! Close call.
“Cooties” I once had cooties as a kid and my mother wiped me down with Windex. She called it blue magic and I was fine the next day. I don’t think Windex works on Ebola but will check and get back to you.
Manuel “Manny” Fernandez apparently knows nothing about whatever drivel he writes, like most other NYT writers.
It would seem the virus can pass through skin.
Microabrasions and small cuts or scrapes, we all have them whether we notice it or not. Even a rash can provide a foothold for such a virus to enter the bloodstream.
The virus also lives for a few hours on dry objects, like doorknobs, or for a few days in moisture.
Flights -— https://flightaware.com/live/findflight?origin=MRLB&destination=New+York
Many to Miami and Atlanta — too many!!!
What arrogance and misinformation. How do they think a cold is spread? Much the same way and Ebola is just as virulent. And when someone with Ebola coughs or sneezes is that "bodily fluid" coming out of their lungs? Of course it is. And it's full of the virus. Equating it with adultery...the scarlet letter...as if wanting to protect from a deadly disease is the same as judging and labeling someone with adultery.
One surefire method of creating panic is to go overboard in preposterous claims there is no reason to worry.
The NYTI is trying to create panic.
Normal rational sane people know coming in contact with someone’s body fluids isn’t hard to do since most people know at least one person that spits when they talk and they have been sprayed more than once.
Personal experience tells people the claims are nonsense so it creates panic.
Obama’s doing the same thing as the NYTI but Obama has a “tell”.
Whenever Obama wants people to believe something isn’t planned, like this is, he plays a lot of golf, goes on vacation, or talks about something completely unrelated and nonsensical like global warming.
If Ebola requires direct contact to spread why did the head of the CDC say, earlier this week, that if you had indirect contact, stayed within three feet, with an Ebola infected person you became a medical person of interest who had to monitored for 21 days. BTW - 21 days of monitoring is the time that the CDC uses for people who had direct contact with an Ebola infected person.
IMHO this kind of internal contraction, a war between technically correct and practical application, is creating a significant part of the “Ebola Scare”.
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