Ebola

[Dan H]

Well, a female nurse in Dallas who cared for the first guy has been diagnosed with Ebola. By all reports all interactions she had with him were while wearing PPE. Worrisome if she maintained procedures and still caught it.

http://mashable.com/2014/10/12/2nd-ebol ... -who-died/

The most worrisome thing to me is not so much the virus, but overreaction after initial inaction. They locked down Boston for one teenage bomber, and they've canceled hunting season and Halloween in part of Pennsylvania for one guy with a deer rifle (http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229493). What will be the response when there are a dozen or a hundred Ebola cases?

[Indy]

It's going to get crazy.

[carey]

It's going to get crazy.

Basically. But then again we can't get people to use a condom when there are 50K new HIV infections per year int he U.S.

[specialsauce]

It deservedly should get crazy. If she was wearing full PPE and still got it.....wtf. This means every healthcare worker is putting their life and all those in contact with them at risk.

This is a different ball game than HIV. Protect yourself from needlesticks and unprotected sex and you're free from HIV. Even if you get it, plenty of people can live normal lives on treatment.

There's no treatment for Ebola. Mortality rates reported range from 50-90%.

[Dan H]

Facepalm.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/ ... break.html

This post from Reason puts a pin in that nonsense quite nicely.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/10/13/can-y ... n-republic

[Mori Chu]

This whole Ebola thing is starting to scare me. If you can be a trained medical professional, trying your best to follow an anti-contamination protocol, and still get infected, what chance do the rest of us have?

[Indy]

Especially those of us that travel a lot.

[Cap]

This whole Ebola thing is starting to scare me. If you can be a trained medical professional, trying your best to follow an anti-contamination protocol, and still get infected, what chance do the rest of us have?

Apparently the training was insufficient. The nurse messed up when removing her PPE.

[Dan H]

This whole Ebola thing is starting to scare me. If you can be a trained medical professional, trying your best to follow an anti-contamination protocol, and still get infected, what chance do the rest of us have?

Apparently the training was insufficient. The nurse messed up when removing her PPE.

Latest news is that they're backing off of that. CDC Director apologized to her for saying it was her mistake.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/22 ... have-ebola

My opinion is they were probably only garbed up in level 2 PPE, which is basically just a face shield, gown and gloves. The mental image you get from the media is the 'moonsuit' which is not the case at all. They have been pushing out that you can only get it through direct fluid transfer, but there have also been cases of people catching it via non-direct contact. Preston's 'The Hot Zone' is incredibly disgusting, but I picked it up over the weekend and it has quite a bit of frightening info in it.

[Indy]

For some reason I thought it could be airborne. Is that not true?

[Cap]

No, it's not airborne, but there have been speculations that it could mutate into an airborne strain.

[Dan H]

For some reason I thought it could be airborne. Is that not true?

Not airborne per se, but borne on aspirated droplets - sneezes, etc.

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/10/12/key- ... act-ebola/

[Indy]

Yeah, that's what I meant/thought.

[Dan H]

http://richardpreston.net/preston-books/hot-zone

Excerpt from the book here . . . yikes.

[ShelC]

Not to be overly political but I'm afraid that, similar to some other situations, our government has been too slow to respond and didn't take this seriously enough. We should've been on top of this months ago when the outbreak really started, sent money and aid to isolate the problem and limited flights into the US. Now we're playing catch up.

[Dan H]

I posted this on FB a while back:

"Quarantine comes from the Italian phrase Quaranta qiorni, or forty days. During the Black Death, ships were quarantined in the port for forty days to prove they didn't have the disease. We are now less competent than medieval peasants."

[Dan H]

"You just got done caring for a patient explosively vomiting blood and virus particles, what are you going to do next?"

"I'm going to Cleveland, Bob!"

http://minx.cc:1080/?post=352468

[ShelC]

Crazy...this is seriously about to get out of hand. Now how many of the 132 people on that flight have interacted with how many people, how many of those people were in the airport getting on other flights with how many people, going to another airport....

Unreal.

[specialsauce]

Shit's about to get real. Right now it's easy to screen by asking a quick travel history. Soon every patient that rolls through with fever, vomiting and diarrhea is going to raise eyebrows....which is like 50% of ER visits.

[Dan H]

CDC Press conference: