Posted on 10/27/2014 5:37:46 AM PDT by lifeofgrace
Like most Americans, I suffer from a bad case of Ignorantia Febris Ebola, or Ebola Ignorance. When Ebola first hit American shores, my gut instinct was to simply ban travel from the affected countries, or at least quarantine travelers for 21 days. I wrote “I’m all for preventing a panic, but a panic is what we will get if we don’t get this situation in hand quickly.”
The media-fed panic we are seeing (and it’s not a true panic, more a malaise or angst) is the result of the rapid spread of Ebola Ignorance, which has an R0 value of at least one million*. Ironically, Ebola Ignorance is very curable, and in fact the cure is all around us. Double-ironically, the cure does nothing for the symptoms: an unspecific, uneasy, and persistent fear of Ebola spreading, possibly closer to me than comfort allows. But it does at least make the sufferer feel more informed about the real disease that kills people.
Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever is a terrible disease, a virus which can literally cause its host to bleed to death from the inside. There’s no cure and no reliable treatment. There’s no vaccine, and any candidates (short of a miracle cure) are likely to take years to test and deploy, if found to be effective.
At this point, Ebola Ignorance is a much worse disease since most of us have it. That goes for the emergency room receptionist at a Fairfax, Virginia hospital who has to ask if you’ve got a fever or have traveled to Africa in the last 21 days, or the security guard in Reston who stops you before you even enter the ER, as reported by the Daily Signal.
[Journalist John] Siniff had to go to the radiological department to undergo X-rays for an upper-respiratory infection, he told The Daily Signal. Upon approaching the receptionist to check in, she immediately asked him two questions:I’m sure of one thing: if anyone answers “yes”, the woman will have a close encounter with the Grim Reaper, accompanied by all the predictable symptoms and laundry requirements. Even in healthcare facilities, people suffer from Ebola Ignorance, albeit a different strain.Do you have a fever?
Have you traveled to Africa in the past 21 days?
Siniff answered, but was curious what would have happened if he replied, “Yes.”
The woman told the journalist she wasn’t sure, as she normally didn’t work in that specific department.
The reason for the angst is simple: there’s no fast and reliable test for Ebola in use right now. The lab test the CDC and other health organizations use is called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and takes between 12 hours and 4 days to yield a result. The smaller the viral load in the patient, the less reliable the test. In fact, there have been reports of false negatives (meaning the test reported no Ebola when the patient in fact was infected) in Ebola PCR tests done in Africa. This is the why the CDC is performing all Ebola PCR testing in the US**—it’s got the most reliable labs right now.
It’s also the reason why countries like Belize and Mexico wouldn’t get within a nautical mile of the Carnival Magic cruise ship. If the CDC says PCR testing isn’t 100% reliable, especially in patients who are not exhibiting full-blown symptoms, there’s no way less-developed countries are going to allow any contact with potential exposed persons. They simply don’t have the infrastructure to support it.
If there were an instant, reliable test to screen potentially exposed people entering the US, it would be far better than the health screening kit they get now.
The travelers also will be handed a care kit that includes a thermometer, a tracking log, a pictorial description of symptoms, a colored card they can present to health care providers if they are ill, and information on where to call and what to say if they develop symptoms, [CDC Director] Frieden said.A box of stuff I can get at CVS and a couple of “call me if you’re sick” cards does not build my confidence in our public health system.
Two companies are ready to produce near-instant Ebola tests, which would work with people already exhibiting some symptoms (which means a detectable viral load). The FDA has issued an emergency authorization for two tests made by BioFire Defense, which can detect Ebola in one hour. According to the company, more than 300 hospitals possess equipment to use the tests, including Emory Hospital and Bellevue Hospital. Cogenix, working with Tulane University under a NIH grant, has developed a handheld, instant Ebola test, which the Daily Beast reported is “as easy as a pregnancy test”. But this test has not been deemed reliable enough for the FDA, at least not yet.
Without a reliable method to quickly determine who has Ebola and who does not, we have a terrible situation of ignorance. Everyone in West Africa who dies from flu-like symptoms is assumed to have had Ebola; anyone who gets a health screening for Ebola in West Africa is likely not to return to the hospital for the results—they don’t have the resources to quarantine everyone who is waiting for test results; therefore, many Ebola patients die at home after spreading the disease. On the other side of the Atlantic, everyone in America who reports flu-like symptoms, who has flown on an airplane, enjoyed an ocean cruise, visited a hospital in Atlanta, Dallas, or New York, is going to be treated like Typhoid Mary until test results are confirmed, while the rest of us must merely submit to a few questions when visiting the hospital for gallstones.
One good prognosis from a bit of Ebola Ignorance cure is the knowledge that Ebola won’t be spreading fast in the USA, ever. One disconcerting bit is this from the CDC: Ebola can survive on dry surfaces outside the body for serval hours, and in bodily fluids (such as blood) for several days at room temperature. This, combined with the most germ-infested places on the planet—airline seats and bathrooms—doesn’t make me feel any better about flying, at least not without a box of Clorox wipes at hand.
I certainly benefited from my vaccination against Ebola Ignorance, but like all vaccines, it’s got a bit of the disease mixed in. The more I know, the more I know how little We (with a capital “W”) know about the deadly African killer.
*R0 is the number of people who will be infected by one infectious patient. The R0 of Ebola is 2.
**The CDC uses its Laboratory Response Network to perform the actual tests.
The nonsense is the 21 days. It is NOT 21 days.
There have been cases of longer times,
and cases of transfer after “cure” of MONTHS!
Any theoretic model which does not include
that is useless.
Health/life BUMP! Thanks for posting.
The RO of ebola is 2? Where did he come up with that? Any number of people can be infected by an Ebola patient.
The false neqatives are important. When the doctors themselves deny that they could have Ebola, and then qet a false neqative, they qo on to infect a lot more people.
I will be the first to admit I was wrong about how Ebola would spread here. Thank God. IMHO, it has been luck more than anything else. In Medicine there are “NEVER” events. Any effort to prevent them is not too much. Ebola is a never event. We already have crossed that threshold. Curious how those who want to disarm us “if it saves one child” seem willing to accept a low level of risk when it comes to Ebola.
The problem is the absolute statements being endlessly repeated. 21 days, fluid contact, not contagous unless symptomatic, etc. etc. are taken as absolutes. There will be exceptions.
CDC has changed it’s fever guidelines. That wasn’t due to ebola mutating, that was a political decision.
We are living in an analog world and decision makers are making digital decisions. What will happen when the “trip to Africa” has to be eliminated when we have “community” spread? That is the case in Africa now. Decisions made from a check list, depending on HONEST answers. Denial is a human condition, not a cultural one.
So RO is an averaqe - not the potential. It was misstated in this article. All it would take to totally blow that averaqe is for somebody who picks lettuce to keep workinq when they’re just feelinq a little bit “off”.
E. coli is not very contaqious because of the way it is spread - just throuqh poop - but it only took unclean miqrant workers to cause a lot of trouble all over the country. And you can bet your bottom dollar that if somebody poops in the pool, that pool is “quarantined” from use until it’s had time to be disinfected.
The NPR article doesn’t bear in mind that the countries where Ebola is rampant don’t necessarily have the same mass-production as we do here so that keeps the RO lower. Nor does it factor in that the number of Ebola cases is believed to be larqely underreported, and monitorinq of exactly who infected whom is often impossible to track. And even harder to track accurately because the time of possible contaqion turns out to be much lonqer than 21 days (that article says the time of contaqion is about a week).
I haven’t checked it out yet, but I’ve been told that Niqeria was able to defeat Ebola because they ordered anti-virals known to work on Ebola directly from Japan after the WHO would not qive them any. If that is true, Niqeria’s safety record would offset other places. But unless you’re qoinq to qive anti-virals to everybody, those can only be effective if you DO know who is infected and thus who they exposed - which isn’t possible when you’ve qot open borders (we can’t even keep track of who IS within our borders, much less which of those people have been exposed to Ebola...).
And that NPR article also doesn’t account for the fact that there are terrorists who have been tryinq to weaponize Ebola for some time - because they intend to use it as a weapon of mass destruction AQAINST THE US. Not aqainst Liberia. And that’s the difference between the “averaqe” number of people infected and the POTENTIAL people infected, which is why this thread’s article is misleadinq.
One person with Ebola who wanted to do a mass attack would have enouqh virus-laden puke, poop, pee, spit, semen, sweat, and blood to infect a LOT of people, if he had helpers who were willinq to deliver the virus to places where lots of people would be exposed, and would have no idea that they even were exposed so would pass it on freely without anybody knowinq. By that point there would be extremely lethal concentrations in those body fluids - hundreds of millions of the virus in a sinqle droplet, and it only takes 10 of the virus to infect a person.
And this is exactly the kind of thinq that the Islamofascist terrorists do. In Qitmo, the quards were constantly subjected to bio-contamination because the inmates would save up their body fluids and then throw it at the quards. We’re not dealinq with civilized people.
I have really tried to avoid the “DOOM” sites and reports. I have really tried to understand my own personal weaknesses and frame of reference from my own life experiences. As a result I tend to “discount” my apprehension about ebola.
There are a wide range of views here on Free Republic that I respect and use for perspective.
But I have some questions. I would appreciate any response, from pancake bunny, on up.
1. There is a major cry for stopping this at it’s source, Africa. Some examples follow:
The WHO said this past week that there is no evidence the infection rate is dropping. A report in the Lancet medical journal said, based on a mathematical model of the outbreak in Liberia, that the U.S. military’s plans to create 1,700 new beds for Ebola patients is inadequate and that there is a “rapidly closing window of opportunity for controlling the outbreak and averting a catastrophic toll.” Liberia: Ebola Could Kill 90,000 in Liberia By Year-End Unless Efforts Scaled Up-Study
24 OCTOBER 2014
http://allafrica.com/stories/201410271471.html?viewall=1
London — Efforts to control the Ebola virus in Liberia must be quickly and dramatically scaled up or tens of thousands of people will die in the coming months, said a study published on Friday.
Nearly 4,900 deaths have been recorded across West Africa since the virus was first detected in Guinea in March, according to the World Health Organization. Liberia has been the hardest hit of the countries most affected by the virus, with 2,705 deaths and 4,665 recorded cases.
Without accelerated efforts to control the disease, Ebola will kill 90,000 in Liberia and infect 171,000 by mid-December, a study in medical journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases said.
“Our predictions highlight the rapidly closing window of opportunity for controlling the outbreak and averting a catastrophic toll of new Ebola cases and deaths in the coming months”, Alison Galvani, one of the authors of the study, said in a statement.
Additional medical facilities for Ebola treatment, a fivefold increase in detection of new cases, together with allocation of protective kits for households could avert as many as 98,000 cases by mid-December, the study said.
Researchers based their analysis on a study of Liberia’s Montserrado County, which encompasses the capital Monrovia and where the vast majority of cases have been recorded.
Without expanded efforts to control the epidemic, the national toll would be even higher, they said.
DOES ANYONE THINK EBOLA WILL BE STOPPED IN AFRICA?
Senior officials in China and India have been scrambling to prepare their countries’ medical systems to cope with possible cases. In India, top officials overseeing policy on health, civil aviation, shipping and other related issues met on Oct. 16 to coordinate plans. In China, the National Health and Family Planning Commission has called for medical institutions across the country to upgrade infection-control precautions by the end of this month.
“The first thing at the top of their minds now is Ebola,” said Malik Peiris, director of the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, after meeting on Friday with senior Chinese doctors and officials from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Peiris, who is best known as a leader in the fight against SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, in 2003, said that flight and trade patterns between Asia and West Africa meant that five cities in the region would be at the front line in preventing Ebola from spreading: Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in mainland China; Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory; and Mumbai in India.
DOES ANYONE THINK EBOLA WILL NOT REACH INDIA?
Soneone, anyone, pancake bunny, please give me a reasonable, logical, explanation of how the world will not be in deep ebola doo doo.
An ebola attack is very much possible against our soldiers stationed in Liberia, if it is weaponized.
And this is exactly the kind of thinq that the Islamofascist terrorists do. In Qitmo, the quards were constantly subjected to bio-contamination because the inmates would save up their body fluids and then throw it at the quards. We’re not dealinq with civilized people.
A young man from Nigeria was willing to castrate himself with a bomb. That’s pretty far from civilized, in fact, I wouldn’t see it beneath them to blast an infected body to bits.
I was thinkinq that one of the biq ways of infection is after the body is already dead. Once a sick “martyr” had reached the point of explosive diarrhea and vomitinq, they could be euthanized and even little chunks of their body could be used to keep culturinq the virus and put in places where the virus would qet all over everythinq.
The earnestness of our enemies to destroy us contrasts sharply with the apathy of those who are supposed to be protectinq us. Our enemies mean business even if we don’t - and THAT is what makes Ebola scary. With all that we know about Obama and his reqime it is most likely that he is on the side of the people who want to destroy us. Either that, or he and his entire reqime are so incompetent that they would “accidentally” destroy us anyway.
I don’t want us to panic about Ebola. I want us to recoqnize that we’ve qot a foreiqn enemy combatant in our White HOuse, illeqally placed there in a coup by our sworn enemies with help from the black-ops communist side of our own CIA. And I want us to actually fiqht back aqainst those enemies - and all their enablers within this corrupt system, which IS qonna qet us all killed if we don’t do somethinq very soon.
Or we could just roll over and die, which is what the media and the corrupt system wants us to do. “Trust us”, oozes from their slimy reptilian tonques, as they lull us to sleep...
I'm pretty ignorant regarding exposure to a freezing vacuum on the dark side of the moon also. But that ignorance is not particularly dangerous, because I won't deal with the situation anytime soon.
Ebola Ignorance is delightful when one lives in a place which is separated by an ocean from the nearest Ebola outbreak. All that is needed is sound policy to ensure continued separation.
The real question is why it is so important to expose Americans to this deadly disease, which is not indigenous to our shores?
Scanned your article. Ebola CAN’T be stopped in Africa. There is a natural reservoir. As I have been saying for weeks this is clearly an attenuated strain that doesn’t kill as fast. So it can spread.
When I say never event I mean such as how acceptable would it be if I missed a case of meningitis as an ER doc? Thank God I don’t do that anymore but when I did I knew that had to be a never event. Ebola is highly contagious, not as bad as Smallpox but much more so than HIV. While isolation is a routine hospital procedure it is used for diseases that are much less serious and for less communicable when used in this country. Breaches in technique are common but without consequence. With this virus any breach in technique could be fatal. There was no need for our country to take that risk.
I hope this answers you questions.
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