It’s an important distinction for the public at large too. People need to learn what words mean. Epidemiologists shouldn’t be forced to make the “dumb person” version of announcements, people should get smart. Especially in this internet age when we’re all one google search away from being able to learn what they mean when they say a disease is not airborne.
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. But a person that’s just started the illness doesn’t make such a hot zone. Someone that’s still in incubation period doesn’t make a zone hot at all. THAT’S the thing people need to wrap their heads around.
Nurses are the number one at risk group for most illnesses. Because they’re in the hottest of the zones. They’re right there interacting with the patients, and their blood, and feces. It’s a very dangerous job, even when there isn’t an ebola outbreak. They are, as you said, on the front line. But it’s important to understand her situation and your situation are different. 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.
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.