Posted on 10/28/2014 9:43:18 AM PDT by Nachum
This week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) admitted that Ebola can travel through the air in aerosols, but claims that it can never go more than 3 feet.
Let's check their math ...
CDC (like the World Health Organization) admits that Ebola can be spread through sneezing or coughing.
But the CDC itself admits that flu droplets can travel 6 feet.
Mythbusters demonstrated that sneezes can nail people some 17 feet away:
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
The same ones who can’t figure out how to collapse an umbrella to pass under an arch. I think the clinical term is “Moron”.
That’s too funny!!
EBOLA PANIC IN THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT...!!!
Soldiers returning home from Ebola infested African countries are quarantine 21 days in Italy before entering U.S.
430 doctors and nurses died killed by the disease while treating Ebola patients in Africa...
Some African countries put 42 days in quarantine those coming from Ebola countries.
Why are health care workers from Ebola countries not forced to be at least 21 days in quarantine when they return to U.S.A. for the protection of their own families and the country?
LOLLOL!
It only takes 3-10 virions to infect a patient. The ebola virus is encapsulated and its size is about 70nm x 1400nm long.
The HEPA filter standard is to filter paticulate matter down to 0.3 microns at about 99.97% efficiency.
An infected ebola patient in an advanced stage, near death, have been reported to have concentrations of 3.2 million virions per droplet of blood. Of those 3.2million virions, the most risky are those which in cells which have replicated to the point of rupturing the cell walls and not contained, or free to flow in the environment of the cell. Say, 1,000 to 100,000 of the virions might be in that stage. The infected person breathing normally, is likely to exhale 100,000 particles/minute at >/=0.3 microns when they are fully at rest (sitting or sleeping).
It wouldn't be surprising for a human to exhale thousands of virions/minute whereever he is located.
It might be argued a person who is infected, with fewer symptoms, presenting a healthy appearance, is more likely to spread the contagion to others at a distance of 20 ft, simply because they might speak and breath more heartily, introducing particulate matter into the airstream to travel naturally a greater distance before it is filtered or disinfected by heat, UV or chemcical disinfection.
THink of it this way. If you can smell somebody's body odor, breath, or clothes from several feet to 20 feet away, you can also catch ebola from that same distance.
Apparently it can travel all the way from Africa!
Depends entirely on the patient and their stage. If one of us spent a few seconds in the room with Duncan as he died we would probably have been infected. Earlier his GF and apartment dwellers and the GF's daughter and family were around him for extended periods and did not get infected. That outcome is entirely personal. Duncan might have never sneezed or politely sneezed into his arm. He might have washed his hands well. We have no idea except the generality that earlier stage victims shed fewer viruses.
The reason it has not is that it spreads slowly.
There is no doubt a modified bell curve of infection probability with increasing distance with most of the integral within 3 feet. In other words, most infections occur with a meter or so.
And, of course, time exposed acts as a multiplicative factor on the distance probability.
Sorry, the middle of the bell curve is at zero distance or the direct contact point.
That’s what I was referring to...they can disappear the patients, but outside of threatening healthcare workers, we’d still be hearing about more than one or two.
Sneezing is a symptom of the common cold and flu. With 10,000 diagnosed cases of Ebola (estimated 25,000 actual cases, roughly 1/4 of them still active), isn't there a chance that a few of them also have a cold? Or allergies? Or the flu (with flu season starting)? I'll agree that 20 feet is long range, but 3 feet is not realistic in the other direction.
Ebola is highly infectious at certain stages but not, thankfully, highly contagious because it is not easily aerosolized. If it ever mutates to a contagion like influenza it wll be lights out Irene because if we know anything from the few cases brought here it is that our medical communit is grossly unprepared for a highly contagious and infectious virus with mortality rates greater than 50%.
If you're comparing it to the flu or a cold it's not a good comparison. There are hundreds of strains of the flu and cold so when a bunch of people are sick they're not all sick from the same strain. The one strain of ebola going around right now, the Zaire strain, is the only one. But it's just as easy to catch it as it is to catch any single strain of cold or flu virus. And it's caught in pretty much the same way.
Here is a link to a paper by the MIT researchers: http://math.mit.edu/~bush/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Sneezing-JFM.pdf. This paper was published in J. Fluid Mech. (2014), vol. 745, pp. 537-563. copyright Cambridge University Press 2014 doi:10.1017/jfm.2014.88. The MIT publication Technology Review had a recent article about the research, but the Journal of Fluid Mechanics paper above contains more details.
The Journal of Fluid Mechanics paper indicates that very small sneeze/cough droplets tend to become part of a buoyant cloud and consequently might travel many meters. The paper does not discuss Ebola or how far Ebola might be transmitted in a cough or sneeze. However, considering the small size of Ebola virons and the findings of the MIT authors' sneeze/cough research, there may be cause to worry.
Figure 18(b) of the paper shows that a 30 micron (i.e., 30 micrometers or 30,000 nanometers) sized sneeze/cough droplet can travel almost 8 feet before it falls out. A 30 micron sneeze/cough particle could contain one or more infective Ebola virons. The paper cites other work showing that the majority of droplets in a cough are less than 30 microns in size. The paper says that a 10 micron size sneeze/cough particle can remain in the buoyant section of a sneeze/cough cloud many meters from the person coughing.
This link (Link) cites the CDC for Ebola viron sizes indicating that infective Ebola virons need only be 0.97 microns large (i.e., 970 nanometers). Ebola virons can range up to 14 microns in size (i.e., 14,000 nanometers). These sizes suggest that infective Ebola virons could be carried by small sneeze/cough droplets.
All of this assumes that the air passages of the lungs, nose, or throat of a person infected with Ebola contain infective Ebola virons that might be expelled in sneeze/cough droplets.
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