Replies

That's right. The USA has 128 Million people who commute to work every day. Only 75% of these people drive alone. The rest really "commute", sharing the ride by carpooling, bus, train, subway, plane. Lots of filthy people contact all along the way.

There are many ways in which our culture is not conducive to the spread of a disease like Ebola.

The most important way is in the way we treat the dead. We don't wash the bodies, we don't give them enemas. Instead, we ship them off to a mortuary to prepare for burial or cremation. During the funeral, most people do not touch the body. This is very different than the African burial customs which are completely responsible for the early spread of Ebola. Later on, nocosomial infection became important.

For another thing, even in the most crowded situations, we avoid touching each other. I noticed this at Disneyworld over the summer: no matter how crowded an area was, every American had a no-touch zone around him or herself. This was not true of some of the foreigners, who did not seem to mind bumping or being bumped.

Ebola requires direct contact to spread. While other potential means of spread have been mentioned--droplet transmission, fomites--there is no real evidence supporting those means. People who are sick enough with Ebola to be shedding virus in fluids aren't going to be out riding buses and so forth--they are really, really sick. I could see such a person hunkering down in their home until they die, but not being out and about contaminating public restrooms with their diarrhea and vomit.

If Ebola were easy to catch, this thing would have already gone around the world. Compare to influenza--it is about to sweep the northern hemisphere again, and it will essentially hit every continent at once, because it spreads easily and it spreads through aerosols. Ebola, on the other hand, is still confined to three countries--the imported outbreak in Nigeria is controlled, and I don't think there are new cases.

I meant to say, I don’t think there are new cases in Nigeria. There are certainly new cases in the other countries.

The most important way is in the way we treat the dead. We don't wash the bodies, we don't give them enemas. Instead, we ship them off to a mortuary to prepare for burial or cremation. During the funeral, most people do not touch the body. This is very different than the African burial customs which are completely responsible for the early spread of Ebola. Later on, nocosomial infection became important.

My brother-in-law recently died from a short battle with cancer at home. While he was dying he was kissed and hugged repeatedly by his wife, kids and grandkids. They knew he was dying and they were saying goodbye.

People aren't robots. When someone is dying at home of Ebola they're not going to gown up. They're not going to refrain from kissing and hugging them out of love and compassion. That's exactly what's happening there. That's part of the "culture" that we have over here.