Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas monitoring patient for possible Ebola

Dallas Morning News ^ | 9/29/14 | Claire Cardona

[Nachum]

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas is carefully evaluating a patient who may have Ebola Virus Disease. Based on the patient’s symptoms and recent travel history, the patient has been admitted into “strict isolation,” said spokeswoman Candace White in a prepared statement. Preliminary test results are expected Tuesday. The hospital is following Centers for Disease Control and Texas Department of Heath recommendations to ensure the safety of patients, staff, volunteers, physicians and visitors, White said. In August, Dr. Kent Brantly, a Fort Worth doctor who contracted Ebola while working as an aid worker in Africa,

[redgolum]

From a legal and economic stand point, that is the preferred choice.

Simply put, if a quarantine works, then it was unnecessary (by that I mean the system of locking large numbers of people down till it burns out). Quarantines will disrupt the economy something fierce.

Now a full blown outbreak will be worse, but that is an “act of God” and carries no political liability.

[KGeorge]

Is UV light ineffective against ebola?

[null and void]

The game of Ebola Roulette continues...

*click* spin *click* spin *click* spin…

Eeeee-bolllll-aaaaaa ping!

Bring Out Your Dead

We’re gonna need

a bigger cart!

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

[ProtectOurFreedom]

After just finishing "The Hot Zone," simply respiratory isolation is nowhere near sufficient. The Army infectious disease experts at Ft. Detrick required the highest level of bio-safety containment called "Biosafety level 4." There's a short article on Wikipedia and at the CDC's Laboratory Biosafety Level Criteria: BSL-4 on page 45.

The book's author and various researchers have donned BSL-4 rated protective gear to enter Kitum Cave in Africa which is strongly suspected to be a reservoir of the Ebola virus.

I'm no bio-safety expert (heck,I couldn't even pronounce it until Ebola erupted), but it seems the U.S. is taking a mighty cavalier attitude to the risks of this disease that turns your internal organs into puddles of mush.

[DannyTN]

"Whether or not this patient turns out to have Ebola, the likelihood of Ebola making its way into the continental United States increases with each passing day that it spreads unabated across African nations."

Suspected Ebola patient now in isolation at Dallas Presbyterian Hospital-Natural News

And that's why I support troops to stop the spread in Africa. Because the odds of the troops bringing it home if the military uses common sense, is a lot less than it reaching America on it's own.

"Currently, two million residents of Sierra Leone are living under government quarantines, with food shortages already widely reported. If an Ebola outbreak begins to spread in the United States, there is little question that the federal government will declare and enforce quarantines of cities or even entire regions."

"Once those quarantines go into place, routine deliveries of food and other supplies are likely to be sharply restricted or disrupted."

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[lafroste]

Is UV light ineffective against ebola?

Yes it is, however, as a disinfectant I would tend not to use it because of the tightly enclosed geometry required to make it work. You could buy a UV disinfection system for water treatment, but many things can't be put through it (door knobs for example). Also I am not aware of a quantified UV dosage for ebola, but water disinfection units are typically designed to provide 30 microWatts per square cm. However, it has been shown that some virii require higher dosage, plus the kill ratio may not be adequate because of the low dose of virons necessary to cause ebola. Also there is no residual disinfection and any particle that goes through the UV that is shielded from the rays by a speck of dust or other solid in the water will emerge unscathed.

[lafroste]

Whoops, I thought it said “effective”. Sorry.

[DouglasKC]

Marburg is almost identical to Ebola, except that the fatality range is higher, about 83-90% (by contrast, Ebola is 45-90%).

You've got this wrong. The fatality rate for Ebola Zaire (the strain that's in Africa right now) has historically been between 70% to 90%. Right now in Africa the exact numbers are very hard to quantify since the true number of infected and deaths aren't really known. There's no reason to think that it's NOT still between 70% and 90%.

Marburg death rates run between 24% to 88% according to WHO

. I'm glad that diseases like Ebola and Marburg aren't very contagious.

I'm not sure where you get this idea. Ebola is very virulent. The virus literally pours out of the bodies of victim and it takes a very small amount of the virus to infect someone. And even if you believe that it's NOT contagious...we had better treat it like it is highly contagious because of the high death rate.

If you're comparing it to something like the measles than sure, it's not very contagious. But measles aren't going to kill up to 90% of its victims. If 100 people get measles from someone else nobody is going to die. With Ebola, chances are greater that whoever gets it, dies. So if each victim "only" infects one person in their sphere of influence that's a massive death rate.

[Gadsden1st]

Political Correctness is what will trump any advantages America has in dealing with Ebola.

I have not been able to find any information regarding how long this person has been in country, what Airline(s) he used during his trip, etc. A hint that is was just a couple of days. Also it appears he presented at the hospital. Did he drive himself, arrive via taxi, public transportation, EMS? Has any contact tracing started?

Did he visit WalMart in the past two days? Did anyone bump into him? Pick up the can of peas he had just looked at and put back on the shelf? Pick up the pack of ground meat he had picked up and then put back cause he felt too sick for tacos?

The next three weeks will be a fun time in old Dallas, and anywhere else he may have been the past few days.

[Smokin' Joe]

You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!

[therapsida]

Bathroom door handles....big...problem

[therapsida]

http://foxct.com/2014/09/25/health-wrap-fighting-ebola-with-uv-light-exercise-bad-for-your-teeth-post-workout-rewards/

[bigredkitty1]

CDC has confirmed the patient admitted last night to Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas does have Ebola.

[dragnet2]

Yeah, the the Texas Ebola person has been traveling all over the U.S.

[bigredkitty1]

Nuts! Where? This just keeps getting better and better.

[KGeorge]

No problem. I should never post in a hurry & I always do. (getting ready to travel) I should have specified for money (which I’d think would be the least controllable vector/ highest risk. And also the possibility of a wand, if such a thing exists, for airline seats or in public areas.

I’m only very familiar with UV, as you said, in water (aquarium situations)

Listening to Hannity on the way & the news, I kept thinking “why isn’t anyone looking at the route this person took?” That’s what matters & where the heads up ought to be, imho. (The cities/ neighborhoods, modes of transportation specifics)

It feels like this is deliberate.

[exDemMom]

You've got this wrong. The fatality rate for Ebola Zaire (the strain that's in Africa right now) has historically been between 70% to 90%. Right now in Africa the exact numbers are very hard to quantify since the true number of infected and deaths aren't really known. There's no reason to think that it's NOT still between 70% and 90%

CDC table of Ebola outbreaks. The lethality rate of Ebola Zaire ranges from 47% to 89% (I do not count the single cases since an outbreak of size n=1 is either 0 or 100%). I really do not know how the WHO comes up with the 70% number for the current outbreak; my calculations show the CFR as being far lower.

Marburg death rates run between 24% to 88% according to WHO

I quoted that 83-90% Marburg fatality figure directly out of the MMWR report on the imported Marburg case that I previously linked. If that number is incorrect, take it up with the authors of that report.

I'm not sure where you get this idea. Ebola is very virulent. The virus literally pours out of the bodies of victim and it takes a very small amount of the virus to infect someone. And even if you believe that it's NOT contagious...we had better treat it like it is highly contagious because of the high death rate.

Virulence (pathogenicity) is not contagiousness. A disease can be highly virulent without being at all contagious. Malaria, dengue, chikungunya, tick-borne encephalitis, all fall into the virulent but not contagious category.

In general, virulence is inversely related to contagiousness. Common colds, for instance, are very contagious but not very virulent. This inverse relationship between the contagiousness of a microorganism and its virulence has been observed so often that it is almost a paradigm among microbiologists and other infectious disease experts.

Virus does not "pour out" of Ebola patients. It is contained within bodily fluids, and in order to get Ebola, one must have close contact with the patient or with the infected fluids. This means that Ebola is not very contagious. It is, however, highly infective since only a few viral particles are capable of causing clinical disease.

[DouglasKC]

Virus does not "pour out" of Ebola patients. It is contained within bodily fluids, and in order to get Ebola, one must have close contact with the patient or with the infected fluids. This means that Ebola is not very contagious. It is, however, highly infective since only a few viral particles are capable of causing clinical disease.

The body fluids "pour out" of Ebola victims and all of these body fluids are heavily virus laden. Sweat, puke, diarrhea, vomit, snot and blood all exit the body in copious amounts and leave the virus wherever they touch.

But again you're completely missing the point. It's highly virulent AND has an extremely high death rate. That's why people are concerned. It's a very dangerous disease.

Did you ever read the Hot Zone yet? I'm pretty sure it's been linked multiple times.

[exDemMom]

The body fluids "pour out" of Ebola victims and all of these body fluids are heavily virus laden. Sweat, puke, diarrhea, vomit, snot and blood all exit the body in copious amounts and leave the virus wherever they touch.

But again you're completely missing the point. It's highly virulent AND has an extremely high death rate. That's why people are concerned. It's a very dangerous disease.

Did you ever read the Hot Zone yet? I'm pretty sure it's been linked multiple times.

Contaminated bodily fluids being expelled by the body is not the same as virus "pouring out" of the body.

Keep in mind, I am a scientist, and my mind is extremely literal. I also insist on absolute precision of expression.

No, I have not read the Hot Zone, nor do I plan to. Sensationalist books like that annoy me greatly. I restrict my Ebola reading to the many scientific journal articles on the subject, and I also watch documentaries about it. I prefer to keep things real.