Airborne illnesses are NOT the same as respiratory droplet illnesses!!! While some may overlap in their mode of transmission (see recent discoveries re: influenza), in medical circles these terms mean very different things. The latter describes illnesses where viruses and bacteria are passed between people by clinging to relatively large droplets expelled during coughing/sneezing, which can only travel 1-2 meters in the air before succumbing to gravity and becoming much less of a threat. The former, on the other hand, describes conditions such as chicken pox and tuberculosis (and possibly influenza, through aeresolization) and others, where the infectious particles are small and light enough to be able to travel longer distances through the air, following air currents without being pulled down to the floor immediately. From what I can tell, while researchers do believe ebola (and flu) may be able to travel via large droplets, there is no evidence or suggestion thus far that ebola is possibly becoming airborne.
These distinctions are hugely important in terms of how one handles infections, as well as implications of infection in terms of others around the patient. Droplet precautions only require masks, gloves and sometimes gowns; AIRBORNE precautions require negative-pressure ventilation to ensure no/little transmission to others via a very infective route. Airborne is WAY more concerning in general, at least in terms of transmission. This is sloppy reporting at best.
If you haven't done it yet, read the "Hot Zone" available on line. It's not fiction. It details some of the Ebola outbreaks up until the time it was written in the mid-90's. Ebola, in the lab, is treated as a class 4 virus and is always worked on in a negative pressure environment. The book also details Ebola Reston, which was definitely airborne in every sense of the word. Ebola Reston is so similar to Ebola Zaire (the kind in West Africa and the most deadly to humans) that they at first thought they were dealing with Eboloa Zaire. Anyways, I would recommend the book to ramp up the learning curve about Ebola and the various strains. It's well written and a fast read.
A distinction without a difference.
It’s being passed via public taxis in Monrovia.
Precautions sufficient to prevent transmission of HIV, also not airborne, have proven insufficient to prevent transmission of this strain of ebola. Just ask all the dead and dying medicos. Including western trained ones. I’m not ready to believe that hundreds of trained medicos all made the same exact type of mistake.
Also note how MSF garbs their people. They are going way beyond gloves, mask and gown. And so far have lost the fewest members to this.
I’d listen to MSF, they’re probably the organization with the MOST experience actually TREATING this disease.
It IS an excellent comment — thanks for pointing it out.
The simple thinkers here will never grasp it, however. That along with illegals causing all illness /sarc.
The problem is that the virus is mutating so that the ‘difference’ between ‘droplets’ and ‘airborne’ is becoming a null point.
It has always been ‘airborne’ (because bodily fluids are dispersed into the air constantly by your body. Feces is expelled into the air when you fart. If you smell someone else’s fart, you just inhaled microscopic particles of feces), it’s just that it couldn’t survive long enough to get very far. That is changing, and very quickly.
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Then how come it's classified as a level 4, and the people working in the labs have spacesuits and oxygen/negative pressure ventilation? Why aren't they just wearing masks, gloves, and gowns?
And the pics of the docs that I've seen have more than masks, gloves and gowns, yet the docs are getting sick too?
Better safe than sorry I say.
As to the distinction between airborne and droplets, the general public makes no distinction. To them droplets might as well be airborne, because if they don't touch the person, and get the disease when they were only in the room, they are going to feel like it was airborne.
Even though they may have simply stepped on the droplet and then taken off their shoe and got in on their hands and rubbed their eyes, they are exposed, and their story will be, I was only in the room. I never touched them, and I had nothing to do with their care, so it must be airborne.
At any rate, once they have the disease, I don't suppose they care whether it was truly airborne or not. They just want to get well, and are scared that they have been handed a death sentence.
Sloppy reporting is par for the course. You don't really expect reporters to do their jobs effectively do you? I haven't seen many if any for a long long time that do a good job.
Well, that's just me though. I wouldn't want to be in a room with an Ebola patient without the suit and negative ventilation, and oxygen etc. etc. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Guess I'm just a nervous Nellie.