Texas Ebola nurse says hospital failed her and her colleagues

MSN World News ^ | March 1 2015 | REUTERS

[CorporateStepsister]

The first person infected with Ebola in the United States, nurse Nina Pham, said she was used for publicity purposes by her hospital, which also invaded her privacy and did not properly train her, the Dallas Morning News reported on Sunday.

Pham, 26, told the newspaper that chaos hit the Dallas hospital when it admitted Thomas Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States after he contracted it in Liberia. Nurses were ill prepared and received little guidance on how to treat Ebola or protect themselves.

[Morpheus2009]

So long as the person on the bus doesn’t vomit on you and do the death spray of blood, then sure. But then again, the chances are pretty good that the vomit is norovirus or the flu, or maybe even just motion sickness instead of ebola, which is assuring.

[Sherman Logan]

That’s pretty much the whole point. It’s highly unlikely anybody who’s at the “death spray of blood” stage is going to be on a bus.

From what we know about Ebola, after infection there’s a considerable period during which the person is not infectious at all and there are no symptoms. Followed by a period during which symptoms are relatively mild but getting increasingly worse, with degree of infectiousness roughly paralleling the severity of symptoms.

Eventually the “spraying fluids in all directions” stage is reached, then death. The corpse is apparently the most contagious of all for a few days, then stops being contagious as the virii “die.”

[Morpheus2009]

AFAIK, not all bodily fluids are equal regarding ebola. Blood is the #1 infectious bodily fluid, followed by others. IIRC, you wouldn’t be allowed to give blood if you had been in West Africa as a malaria precaution as it is, though correct me if I am wrong.

[Sherman Logan]

I’m sure you’re right, though by the end stage of the disease all body fluids are full of blood.