I'm not saying it wouldn't good for people to know the difference. I'm saying that it's not realistic to expect that of them. And because it's not realistic, it's reasonable (i.e., based on reason) to expect epidemiologists to give out their information in ways that the masses will understand. To the average person, "airborne" means you can get it by someone sneezing or coughing. And that's what the CDC says can happen. It's not realistic for the subtlety of true airborne vs. droplets to enter into the masses' understanding. What they need to know is that if a person who has Ebola sneezes in their close proximity--is it really only 3 feet?--then they can get infected. That's the information that's going to help them make the kinds of decisions they will need to make.
I wouldn’t go in your theoretical room because I understand about droplets and I understand that an enclosed space where someone is in the final spew is a very hot zone.
Then would you be willing to sit in a room for the first 8 hours of fever, without any sort of mask, 4 feet away--1 foot further than the official 3 foot limit--from a patient who was known to have been in contact with the blood of an Ebola patient 8-10 days ago? I would not. And I'm not being irrational to come to that determination. BTW, that "room" could be an emergency department, or a bus, or an airplane, or a waiting room at the local doc-in-a-box. So it's not only doctors and nurses who would be in that position.
But it’s important to understand her situation and your situation are different.
I'm not concerned about my situation. I'm concerned about hers.
And of course there probably won’t even be any pediatric ebola cases in your state, all the more reason to not get so worked up.
On the contrary, if there are any pediatric Ebola cases in the U.S., then my state is high on the list of probable states in which it would occur.
And finally, when it comes to making personal decisions, I think it makes sense to consider the source of any information, and what their interests might be. Assuming no nefarious motivations, the CDC has two legitimate competing interests. On one hand they want to get ahead of this thing, and on the other hand they don't want to cause panic. The first interest argues for publicizing the facts. The second for minimizing them. Being human, they will not always get it right. But what that tells me is that it just may be a little more communicable than they're letting on.
And then if you want to bring in nefarious motivations, then there are all sorts of motivations for minimizing the public's understanding. But I'm not going there. Yet. You do have to wonder, though, why Obama is so resistant to a common sense quarantine of people who are known to have been exposed.
I think it is realistic and reasonable. We need to stop coddling stupidity in this country. It’s easy to find out what the word means in context of the discussion, use it correctly let people learn. In the 50s, 60s and 70s we didn’t coddle, we used the right words in the right context and let people figure out, with the world at our fingertips there’s no reason not to be on that path. The average person needs to stop being a moron, and they won’t stop until we MAKE them. When hantavirus hit in the 90s people didn’t get confused about the fact that it could be inhaled even though it wasn’t airborne, 20 years later we should be able to handle it.
First 8 hours of the fever same room no touching? Sure no problem. But we ain’t playin cards, and I’m washing really really good after.
Her situation is that she is a nurse and is therefore in the #1 risk group to get AIDS and Hepatitis and herpes and a whole bunch of other junk. Because that’s the job. When looked at purely through the tunnel of infectious disease nursing is the most dangerous job on the planet. It’s not a question of if your patients will get you sick but when and which disease you’re getting.
But there probably won’t BE any pediatric Ebola cases in this country. In the entire 40 years we’ve known about it we’ve had a dozen or so come in with it (most we knew ahead of time, a couple we didn’t) and 2 actually catch it here. It’s just not that easy to catch, partly because it’s not airborne.
Those aren’t competing interests. Lack of paranoia helps them get ahead of diseases. When people are acting intelligently they take proper precautions which help stop a disease in its track. When people act off paranoia they act stupidly and actually make the situation work, like killing the cats during the bubonic plague.
Anybody whose nefarious motive involves Ebola, a disease that has only killed a couple of thousand people in 40 years on the entire planet, is stupider than the people who can’t be bothered to google what airborne really means.
People on the other side of the aisle talk a lot about “common sense gun control”, both they and you seriously misuse the words “common sense”. Mass quarantines aren’t that easy, figuring who should be in them and who shouldn’t is difficult, done wrong you actually help spread a disease by locking non-sick people up with sick people, plus it encourages panic, and makes all the people who don’t get sick mad which inevitably lands you in court.