Ebola - 30,000 In Nigeria Believed Exposed, No One Knows Who

http://www.inquisitr.com/1383702/ebola-outbreak-30000/ ^ | July 31, 2014 | unknown

[Veto!]

The catastrophic Ebola outbreak in West Africa may be spreading faster than health experts previously believed. Yesterday, officials in Nigeria said that they were looking for up to 59 people who may have been exposed to the lethal virus by flying on a plane with Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer, who died soon after getting off a flight in Lagos.

On Wednesday, the health authorities there said that they have expanded their search from 59 people — to 30,000.

[steve86]

Fellow passengers on his plane were given warnings about the disease’s symptoms, which can include bleeding from the nose and mouth, but were allowed to continue on their journeys.

It is the normalcy bias fallacy, which can lead to dead people in a situation like this.

[wrench]

“Actually spreads more like the AIDS virus - it’s not airborne:”

Probably no longer true as this recent incident shows:

The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of peoples’ lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola’s spread.

The original case in that instance is believed by epidemiologists and virus experts to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea before returning, unwell, to her home village in neighbouring northern Liberia.

The woman’s sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the Ebola virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.

Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband - an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.

She took a communal taxi via Liberia’s capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola

[Heartlander]

My brother is a doctor and has told me basically the same thing as McCloskey - do you have the link to the Reuters article? I’d like to read it...

[MaxMax]

With the average home only having a few days of food, 30-days will not work
even here in the USA. Masks and zero contact would though.
And reinforcing our borders.

[driftdiver]

The difference being the govt was hyping those two (SARS and SWINE Flu) but are pretty darn quiet about this one.

[Williams]

For example, I could imagine a toilet spreading the virus.

[driftdiver]

It can be transmitted through any bodily fluid, including sweat. Or a mosquito bites an infected person and then moves on to other hosts.

[riri]

She took a communal taxi via Liberia’s capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola

Probably pretty packed in but no more so than a metro in any large city at rush hour.

[jjsheridan5]

Certainly:

Taxis, planes and viruses: How deadly Ebola can spread

I raised a hypothetical question on another thread, and will raise it here again, especially for those that think that this Ebola outbreak is obeying the rules outlined in the textbook: if a person entered a communal cab with the flu (or the common cold), on average, how many others would contract the disease? The article doesn't say how many shared the cab ride, but assume 6, for the sake of argument. My guess is that only 2 or 3 would come down with the flu, yet 5 came down with Ebola. I fear the doctor is wrong, and is forgetting that viruses do mutate over time.

[ThomasMore]

Some are asking to bring two American workers HOME to the USA. They belong to Franklin Graham’s missionary group. They are infected. Are they nuts! This virus needs to be ISOLATED NOW!

[wrench]

Pretty packed for sure. But real doubtful anyone would have been infected had it ben aids, unless way more goes on in those taxis than what I would imagine.

[DBrow]

Thanks. The first article says that transmission is difficult and not airborne, but the woman in the article infected everyone in her taxi and they died:
“Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband - an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.

She took a communal taxi via Liberia’s capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola. In Monrovia, she switched to a motorcycle, riding pillion with young man who agreed to take her to the plantation and whom health authorities were subsequently desperate to trace.”

[Veto!]

Viruses mutate, Heartlander. Thus new flu shots are developed each year. So Ebola may or may not stay the same.

Meanwhile, at least one company is working on a vaccine for Ebola: Tekmira, a Canadian company, is hassling with the FDA at this time:
http://www.azonano.com/news.aspx?newsID=30671

[Williams]

I don’t think masks alone will do it.

[Dick Bachert]

At the risk of duplication, here’s a short video you really need to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnQVUf775VE#t=180

[Williams]

Right, if you can transmit with sweat then anyone or anywhere the infected person touches becomes a problem.

[Williams]

To stop THIS outbreak but I guess the virus is around anyway. I’ve read transmission from an infected animal, and I guess you have homes and areas contaminated by a previous patient or their burial site.

[Raebie]

Can you also ask him how doctors in hazmat suits contracted it? TIA.

[Black Agnes]

http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00811/full/srep00811.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/health-ebola-transport-idUSL6N0Q570N20140731

[Heartlander]

Something does not make sense - from the article:

Gatherer noted that while Ebola doesn't spread through the air and is not considered "super infectious", cross-border human travel can easily help it on its way. "It's one of the reasons why we get this churn of infections," he said.

The risk of the Ebola virus making its way out of Africa into Europe, Asia or the Americas is extremely low, according to infectious disease specialists, partly due to the severity of the disease and its deadly nature.

Patients are at the most dangerous when Ebola haemorrhagic fever is in its terminal stages, inducing both internal and external bleeding, and profuse vomiting and diarrhoea - all of which contain high concentrations of infectious virus.