Don't panic. It's really, really hard to catch.
A Texas health care worker who was in full protective gear while providing hospital care for an Ebola patient who later died has tested positive for the virus and is in stable condition, health officials said Sunday. If the preliminary diagnosis is confirmed, it would be the first known case of the disease being contracted or transmitted in the U.S.
Meanwhile, a top federal health official said the health care worker's Ebola diagnosis shows there was a clear breach of safety protocol and all those who treated Thomas Eric Duncan are now considered to be potentially exposed.
Related: "I get to the kiosk...mark the fact that I've been in Nigeria and nobody cares, nobody stopped me,"
"Duncan had arrived at a friend's Dallas apartment on Sept. 20 — less than a week after helping his sick neighbor. For the nine days before he was taken to a hospital in an ambulance, Duncan shared the apartment with several people." None of whom have gotten sick with it. It IS really hard to catch.
"A Texas health care worker who was in full protective gear...."
.....infected, would contradict your false conclusion.
Many US units who landed at D-day would suffer casualty rates of 120-sometimes 140% casualties....literally they had no chance....and yet many, many survived without a scratch. There's just no sure way of predicting these matters.
And there is such a thing as luck....
This statement means you really know nothing about viral infections. Ebola is showing itself to be really easy to catch for a non-aerosolized infection. Hemorrhagic fevers are not respiratory system infections like SARS or the common cold. They don't burst into the air from exhalation, at least not in the early stages. The pace of transmission around the world shows that, in addition to its its high virulence in humans, it also has a low mass transfer infectivity, ie, it takes comparatively few virions to initiate an infection in non-reservoir hosts, and it apparently finds easy entry beyond the dermal layer. With an incubation period of upwards of 14 days before clinical symptoms, the virus is likely contagious by day 10. Hemorrhagic fevers like this disseminate by hemo and cell lysis - breaking down capillaries and causing contaminated fluid leakage that is easily transmitted on contact. Do not be deceived - this is one nasty bug.
Offshore quarantine stations need to be established for people returning to North America to wait out their incubation times. Two things need to happen: SLAM THE DOOR SHUT on exit out of the infected areas (wherever they are), and be prepared to choose containment over treatment. As I said in another post - this is a zoonotic infection - we don't want it reservoiring in North American mammals, and we don't want it attentuating in humans, or you WILL see aerosolizations happening. Now, maybe the Chief Bumbler can explain what he plans to do with all the servicemen he sent over to "assist" - an incredibly stupid decision, which just about guarantees they'll bring it home.
Health care workers handle the blood, vomit and fecal matter that actually transmits Ebola. One simple mistake with their PPE (personal protective equipment) can mean that they have exposed themselves to the virus. Unless you handle the blood, vomit and/or fecal matter of someone with Ebola, you are not going to get it. In the countries that are infected, over the 10 months that this outbreak has been going on, 0.018% of the population has died. And the conditions there are utterly deplorable, with terrible medical facilities, little sanitation and half the population believing that a witch doctor is a better bet than western medicine. It has not spread like wildfire across the rest of Africa, which tends to share the deplorable conditions and it is not going to spread like that in North America.
And once again you demonstrate you do not understand what you are dealing with. Your arguments are simplistic and naive. "It can't happen here" is the standard North American response, because you have faith that we know what we are doing. Willing to bet the farm on that? My hands-on experience and research with slow-moving fatals tells me a lot otherwise, let alone fast infectives like Ebola...which is why I'm now out of the field. Even with vaccinations, I was not safe. How many clinicals do you think an average Canadian hospital can treat at one time without breakouts? If you are in the medical field, you are dangerously naive as to what's at risk here.
To date there have been about 4000 deaths attributed to this outbreak. That is consistent with the reported doubling of infected people every 20 days over a 10 month timeline. If this doubling rate persists, in another 10 months this disease will have claimed upwards of 130 million deaths.
The only people who seem to get this thing are healthcare workers in hazmat gear and close relatives so I'm not worried.
The word out of the CDC is that the second Dallas case is a nurse working a second level care protocol with Duncan, using full protective suit, mask, gloves and face shield. It is believed she became infected during the disrobe/decontam procedure by breaching somewhere along the way the decontam regimen, allowing herself to become casually in contact with the virus. CDC believes she received a low-transfer dose, using her current low fever as a guide.
I'm sorry, but my training and experience is screaming about the ease of uptake of this virus. If she didn't actually break the skin during decontam, then the threshold for transmission is low indeed. What this tells me is the virus has a good survivability out of the body (expected because of the fluid its in, coming out),decontam has to be rigorous, and it doesn't take much to initiate an infection, meaning that standard entry portals of the body favour dissemination and propagation of the virus.
Hemorrhagic fevers, in varying degrees, kill the host by blood borne dissemination of the virus, followed by replication and lysis (literally - dissolving tissue) as they release into the blood steam further into the body. You die by, literally, falling apart internally as organs begin to collapse. Once blood borne infection has begun to go, every little pimple that gets picked and bleeds, or a cut, or the characteristic hemorrhagic rash when scratched exposes virus.
So, are you going quarantine every eczema sufferer, every acne sufferer, every one who shows up with hives and a fever? The incubation period doesn't give public health much time to establish environmental linkages for possible exposures, and they are already behind the curve by the time an individual shows any kind of suggestive symptoms. If you want to keep it out of North America - containment before treatment, otherwise you are just rolling loaded dice.
Skip, thanks for the info. That doctor in the video that just entered Germany and then the US without any checking despite saying she had been in Nigeria says it all. Just as the vast amount of security checking at the airport is totally useless and a make work project so will the Ebola checking prove to be.
Some basic epidemiology 101 for SDA readers: Foci of contagious diseases follow, generally, one of two paths - either they collapse upon themselves and dissipate, or they breakout and support continued growth and spread. Rabies is of the former type due to its slow pathogenesis, high mortality and existence of a vaccination break in susceptibles. Ebola is of the latter type because of its fast pathogenesis, high mortality and no vaccination break amongst susceptibles. This makes Ebola particularly dangerous. It doesn't give you much time, politically, or biologically, to intervene.
We can treat rabies exposures, specifically because of its slow pathogenesis (progress of development in the body), by intense wound irrigation, reducing the number of infective virions, followed up by a post exposure vaccination regime to stimulate a massive antibody response before the wild virions get a chance to ramp up numbers sufficient initiate clinical disease.
We can only irrigate and disinfect with Ebola. Ebola has a fast pathogenesis, favouring the blood stream (rabies favours the nervous system with low-level slow muscular proliferation at the injection site). There is no post exposure immunization available, and it wouldn't be effective if there was - the body can't respond fast enough, not unless there was already an active immune response present, and because of the high mortality, that population of individuals remains small. So, epidemiologically, Ebola is very dangerous.
It may be possible, sadly, to make a case that the attempted treatment of Ebola victims by missionary doctors and and other well-meaning groups may have enhanced the outbreak. With a disease like Ebola, in the absence of a rigorous quarantine and treatment protocol, containment without or before treatment may have been the best epidemiological solution. Trying to save people in the conditions that exist may have actually enhanced the dissemination of the virus by increasing the pool of infectives for a longer period than standard mortality would have provided for. Previous outbreaks have been shorter lasting, in part because of high mortality and a relative incapacity to try effectively to save people. Literally, the outbreaks "die" out.
Good information Skip... thanks.
this is a zoonotic infection - we don't want it reservoiring in North American mammals, and we don't want it attentuating in humans, or you WILL see aerosolizations happening.
It appears that MrZero's policies are designed to make that happen.
Ne jamais attribuer à la malveillance ce qui est bien expliqué par l'incompétence.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Napoleon Bonaparte
In this case it appears to be both malice and incompetence.
All federal agencies have been infected (or made worse) with the toxic political correctness of the Obama Administration. I can't imagine the CDC being immune.
Thanks for the enlightenment Skip.
Back in April, it was determined that this is a new strain of Ebola.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/17/us-guinea-ebola-idUSBREA3G11W20140417
A 3% difference in DNA can represent the difference between a house cat and a tiger. I'm quite certain that we treat them differently.
What difference does it make? Well Hillary... er.. Terio, quite a bit. It means that science as yet has no idea how easily this virus is transmitted, through what mediums, and how long the virus remains viable in vitro. The fact that they won't admit it is not astounding. Looking at the grand fiasco known as climate science should offer comparative perspective.
Ebola can be transmitted through the air. Evidence from the strain known as Ebola Reston demonstrated this.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ebola-questions-20141007-story.html#page=2
Fortunately this strain did not infect humans. Well, at least fortunate for myself as I probably would not be posting this comment if that were the case. You might think otherwise.
The true magnitude of this outbreak has yet to be appreciated. Reported numbers and the real situation may be quite dissimilar.
Given the reported numbers and the duration of this outbreak it is not unreasonable to speculate that this strain is at least a bit heartier, a bit more infectious, and potentially air borne.
Respect science scrutinize the scientist.
It's already 'airborne' in that it can be transmitted in particles expelled by coughs and sneezes. The debate is only about how long it remains virulent and contagious in that state.
thanx skip and pandemic
and then we have some idiot lefty stating that there are ppl other than USA citizens who have a right to enter the USA
The dems have got to be sh*tting them selves over obumbles incompetence on this, elections and all
All eyes on Boston now.....
and agreed John Galt, let's all play pick a particle.
http://cdn.wonderfulengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/slow-motion-9.jpg
MrZero's approval rating is at an all time historic low for any president.
The Donks have a narrow 8 vote lead in the Senate, it will be interesting to see if if enough voters are pissed off in November to give the GOP the majority in both houses of Congress. Maybe they'll impeach the n1gger and let him go play golf with his hero Tiger Woods.
Yes, it's amusing to see the 'authorities' scrambling to convince everyone that air travel is completely safe, when anyone with a shred of common sense can see the folly in that assumption.