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I am shocked that the CDC and the government are still not being completely honest with the public in the name of trying to maintain calm. Shocked, I say!
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Ebola...
- Thread starter Maximus
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I am shocked that the CDC and the government are still not being completely honest with the public in the name of trying to maintain calm. Shocked, I say!
KI4MVP
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It's time to replace the head of the CDC
Sumac13
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Whether you believe what's being said in the media or not, I feel like the reactions I'm seeing in here are exactly the types of reactions they'd show you during an intro montage in a post-apocalyptic movie.
First responders took all precautions and they still caught it...
The threat is being exaggerated...Not really a global threat...
The CDC is LYING TO US...
The stock market is going to crash...
There's nothing wrong guys. The virus isn't that contagious...
.gif "Cha (28) :cha (28):")
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Not that you've ever been deceptive, but this was so bizarre I thought that maybe you missed something. So I read the link, and you're absolutely right. Within the space of a few sentences he said you can't catch it while riding a bus, then said that someone who is infected might give it to someone else while riding the bus. Unbelievable.
I also saw Megyn Kelly question Frieden about the logic of not banning tourist flights, and Frieden was eviscerated when he went to the "we won't be able to get medical help into the country" card. Then I saw some other guy say that he'd spoken to Frieden about it, and his answer in private was that those nations are fledging democracies and a ban on outbound flights to the U.S. would hurt their economies.
I still think that's a crappy reason, but at least it makes some sense in theory. So why won't they advance that justification publicly?
I'd like to know why the nurse was able to leave Dallas in the first place. I keep reading about her flight from Cleveland to Dallas but I'd like to know why she even allowed to leave Dallas until the 21 day period was over..
I mean given her "extensive contact" with the original Ebola patient, I'm not sure how she could be cleared to travel in the first place.
I mean I get a desire to see family. I'd probably want to do that too after being a nurse to a person with a deadly illness. But there a bigger things at stake here.
I mean given her "extensive contact" with the original Ebola patient, I'm not sure how she could be cleared to travel in the first place.
I mean I get a desire to see family. I'd probably want to do that too after being a nurse to a person with a deadly illness. But there a bigger things at stake here.
elcheato
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I know nothing about stocks but whoever is the leader in the manufacturing of surgical or general face masks seems like a good investment.
Sumac13
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Out of curiosity, when you say 'not allowed to leave', what you mean? Not allowed out of their house? Not allowed to go shopping? Not allowed out in public? Not allowed to have any contact with anyone? Not allowed to drive to … ? How far would one be allowed to drive? Who would monitor them? Would a federal marshall be at their side at all times? Would they be required to wear an ankle monitor? Does the CDC or any city/state/federal agency currently have the authority to impose any of these measures? People say the 'federal government' … as if it is a single entity.
Granted she should not have been on a plane. But, if she were have been allowed to go shopping locally and then infected someone and THAT person got on a plane…PANIC IN THE STREETS. It almost seems that anyone that had any contact should have been put in a quarantined area for a 21 days regardless. No movement of travel allowed. Draconian sure. But hell, be safe. Compensate them afterwards.
Granted she should not have been on a plane. But, if she were have been allowed to go shopping locally and then infected someone and THAT person got on a plane…PANIC IN THE STREETS. It almost seems that anyone that had any contact should have been put in a quarantined area for a 21 days regardless. No movement of travel allowed. Draconian sure. But hell, be safe. Compensate them afterwards.
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I don't have an article to quote but I was listening to CNN in the car earlier today. They had Sanjay Gupta and another MD talking about the disease. They did agree Ebola can mutate and it can be transmitted via other ways (i.e. airborne) but that is mathematically unlikely. They used the AIDS virus as an example stating the AIDS virus has mutated many times over yet it's always been transmitted via bodily fluid.
This whole thing is very serious but talk of it going airborne is pretty unlikely from what I understand.
This whole thing is very serious but talk of it going airborne is pretty unlikely from what I understand.
When I say not allowed to leave, I guess I mean not allowed to fly commercially for 21 days. You can't expect everyone to lock themselves in a room for 21 days. I get that.
We aren't talking about someone who simply worked at the hospital. This is someone who had extensive contact with the patient. There should be strict regulations on her. Especially since the goal is to prevent the disease from spreading.
I guess what made reaction more volatile to this announcement was that we found out a day or two ago that a nurse contracted Ebola.
Then today we find out another nurse contracted Ebola and suddenly she is in Cleveland/Akron. Logically it makes you go wtf.
Though it seems the second nurse left for Cleveland before the first nurse was diagnosed.
Hopefully all other nurses and those who treated the Ebola victim are being "quarantined," that is, being monitored not allowed to fly across the country.
We aren't talking about someone who simply worked at the hospital. This is someone who had extensive contact with the patient. There should be strict regulations on her. Especially since the goal is to prevent the disease from spreading.
I guess what made reaction more volatile to this announcement was that we found out a day or two ago that a nurse contracted Ebola.
Then today we find out another nurse contracted Ebola and suddenly she is in Cleveland/Akron. Logically it makes you go wtf.
Though it seems the second nurse left for Cleveland before the first nurse was diagnosed.
Hopefully all other nurses and those who treated the Ebola victim are being "quarantined," that is, being monitored not allowed to fly across the country.
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-the-ebola-virus-will-go-airborne/
Could Ebola go airborne? That’s the fear set off last week by a New York Times op-ed entitled “What We’re Afraid to Say about Ebola” from Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Although clinicians readily agree that the Ebola virus leaps from one person to the next via close contact with blood and other bodily fluids, Osterholm warned that the risk of airborne transmission is “real” and “until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.”
But interviews with several infectious diseases experts reveal that whereas such a mutation—or more likely series of mutations—might physically be possible, it’s highly unlikely. In fact, there’s almost no historical precedent for any virus to change its basic mode of transmission so radically. “We have so many problems with Ebola, let’s not make another one that, of course, is theoretically possible but is pretty way down on the list of likely issues," says infectious diseases expert William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University. "Everything that is happening now can easily be comprehensively explained by person-to-person spread via body contact. We don’t have to invoke anything else.”
Here is what it would take for it to become a real airborne risk: First off, a substantial amount of Ebola virus would need to start replicating in cells that reside in the throat, the bronchial tubes and possibly in the lungs. Second, the airborne method would have to be so much more efficient than the current extremely efficient means of transmission that it would overcome any genetic costs to the virus stemming from the mutation itself. Substantial natural hurdles make it unlikely that either event will occur.
Currently, Ebola typically gains entry into the body through breaks in the skin, the watery fluid around the eye or the moist tissues of the nose or mouth. Then it infects various cells of the immune system, which it tricks into making more copies of itself. The end result: a massive attack on the blood vessels, not the respiratory system.
Even viruses that are well adapted to attacking the respiratory system often have a hard time getting transmitted through the airways. Consider the experience so far with avian flu, which is easily transmitted through the air in birds but hasn’t yet mutated to become easily spreadable in that fashion among people.
What's the hold-up? “The difficulty is that those [flu] viruses don’t have the protein attachments that can actually attach to cells in the upper airway. They have to develop attachments to do that,” Schaffner says. So even if a virus were exhaled, it would need to lodge onto something in another person’s cells that are already prepared for it in the upper airway. “Since the virus doesn’t have attachment factors that can work in the upper airway, it’s very rare for it to go human to human, and then it almost always stops and doesn’t get to a third person,” Schaffner notes. Similarly for Ebola, the virus would have to develop attachments that would allow it to easily attach receptors in the upper respiratory pathway—something that neither it (nor any of its viral cousins) has been known to do in the wild.
And yet Ebola already spreads very easily without such mutations. The delicate lock-and-key protein–virus fit required for the virus to successfully latch onto and replicate in the airway has not developed because there is no evolutionary pressure for it to do so; it simply would not be an efficient option. Epidemiologists can take some comfort in that.
As the virus continues to circulate through west Africa, it may like any other pathogen continue to acquire genetic mutations. So far, however, there is no indication that Ebola is mutating in a way that could allow it to make the leap from becoming transmissible via contact with body fluids (as it is now) to become a germ that could be transmitted by breathing the same air, according to WHO. With Ebola, "I don't think we have the information at this time to know what the real risk is but it is probably not zero,” says Ebola expert Thomas Geisbert, a virologist at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
The incident that put the specter of airborne Ebola on the map was chronicled in the book The Hot Zone, wherein, in 1989, the virus was apparently spread via the air from monkey to monkey (although it did not make the leap to humans working in the lab). But experts have subsequently wondered if that lone circumstance of primate-to-primate air transmission was fueled by the lab setting and man-made systems. As Osterholm notes in his piece, in 2012 researchers found that a strain of Ebola was spread from pigs to nonhuman primates via the air in a different lab setting. The virus, however, did not then spread from monkey-to-monkey in those circumstances.
Questions remain about the current strain of Ebola thriving in west Africa. Apart from the environmental, economic and social circumstances that have fueled its spread, does the virus itself have special characteristics that set it apart? Is it, for example, growing faster or at higher viral concentrations than previous strains? But the jury is still out on this and other questions. Right now we have few answers about this Ebola strain, yet we do know that a massive injection of finances and personnel will be needed to contain it in the months ahead. As of Friday it had claimed more than 2,400 lives.
Could Ebola go airborne? That’s the fear set off last week by a New York Times op-ed entitled “What We’re Afraid to Say about Ebola” from Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Although clinicians readily agree that the Ebola virus leaps from one person to the next via close contact with blood and other bodily fluids, Osterholm warned that the risk of airborne transmission is “real” and “until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.”
But interviews with several infectious diseases experts reveal that whereas such a mutation—or more likely series of mutations—might physically be possible, it’s highly unlikely. In fact, there’s almost no historical precedent for any virus to change its basic mode of transmission so radically. “We have so many problems with Ebola, let’s not make another one that, of course, is theoretically possible but is pretty way down on the list of likely issues," says infectious diseases expert William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University. "Everything that is happening now can easily be comprehensively explained by person-to-person spread via body contact. We don’t have to invoke anything else.”
Here is what it would take for it to become a real airborne risk: First off, a substantial amount of Ebola virus would need to start replicating in cells that reside in the throat, the bronchial tubes and possibly in the lungs. Second, the airborne method would have to be so much more efficient than the current extremely efficient means of transmission that it would overcome any genetic costs to the virus stemming from the mutation itself. Substantial natural hurdles make it unlikely that either event will occur.
Currently, Ebola typically gains entry into the body through breaks in the skin, the watery fluid around the eye or the moist tissues of the nose or mouth. Then it infects various cells of the immune system, which it tricks into making more copies of itself. The end result: a massive attack on the blood vessels, not the respiratory system.
Even viruses that are well adapted to attacking the respiratory system often have a hard time getting transmitted through the airways. Consider the experience so far with avian flu, which is easily transmitted through the air in birds but hasn’t yet mutated to become easily spreadable in that fashion among people.
What's the hold-up? “The difficulty is that those [flu] viruses don’t have the protein attachments that can actually attach to cells in the upper airway. They have to develop attachments to do that,” Schaffner says. So even if a virus were exhaled, it would need to lodge onto something in another person’s cells that are already prepared for it in the upper airway. “Since the virus doesn’t have attachment factors that can work in the upper airway, it’s very rare for it to go human to human, and then it almost always stops and doesn’t get to a third person,” Schaffner notes. Similarly for Ebola, the virus would have to develop attachments that would allow it to easily attach receptors in the upper respiratory pathway—something that neither it (nor any of its viral cousins) has been known to do in the wild.
And yet Ebola already spreads very easily without such mutations. The delicate lock-and-key protein–virus fit required for the virus to successfully latch onto and replicate in the airway has not developed because there is no evolutionary pressure for it to do so; it simply would not be an efficient option. Epidemiologists can take some comfort in that.
As the virus continues to circulate through west Africa, it may like any other pathogen continue to acquire genetic mutations. So far, however, there is no indication that Ebola is mutating in a way that could allow it to make the leap from becoming transmissible via contact with body fluids (as it is now) to become a germ that could be transmitted by breathing the same air, according to WHO. With Ebola, "I don't think we have the information at this time to know what the real risk is but it is probably not zero,” says Ebola expert Thomas Geisbert, a virologist at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
The incident that put the specter of airborne Ebola on the map was chronicled in the book The Hot Zone, wherein, in 1989, the virus was apparently spread via the air from monkey to monkey (although it did not make the leap to humans working in the lab). But experts have subsequently wondered if that lone circumstance of primate-to-primate air transmission was fueled by the lab setting and man-made systems. As Osterholm notes in his piece, in 2012 researchers found that a strain of Ebola was spread from pigs to nonhuman primates via the air in a different lab setting. The virus, however, did not then spread from monkey-to-monkey in those circumstances.
Questions remain about the current strain of Ebola thriving in west Africa. Apart from the environmental, economic and social circumstances that have fueled its spread, does the virus itself have special characteristics that set it apart? Is it, for example, growing faster or at higher viral concentrations than previous strains? But the jury is still out on this and other questions. Right now we have few answers about this Ebola strain, yet we do know that a massive injection of finances and personnel will be needed to contain it in the months ahead. As of Friday it had claimed more than 2,400 lives.
bob2the2nd
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so exposure/giving someone ebola are two very different things. For instance jigo can expose his penis to other guys all day long, that doesnt mean they will become gay.
if he said those exact 2 things, then they are totally accurate statements, and dont conflict each other.
it is mind boggling the panic people have over this. the flu kills 36,000 americans a year, a YEAR.. 36,000 AMERICANS A YEAR. but lets set fire to bridges and shut down everything because ebola has now killed 1 american.
Sumac13
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… in the U.S.
I'm fine with that scenario. It would help rid us of the troll population, to boot. He-he. I am not running out and loading up on toilet paper and water. But, I'd like to know it HAS been contained. If a month passes without any new cases in the U.S., I will feel better.
I don't think it is panic. But I'd rather stomp it out early, when it will be much easier to do so. I don't care if it means being overly cautious. I am all for removing human error, which as @The Human Q-Tip noted can foil any set of protocols.