The Ebola Thread

[Satyr]

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/healt...tion/16460629/

DALLAS — A Dallas hospital is holding a patient in "strict isolation" as that person is evaluated for possible exposure to the deadly Ebola virus.
In a statement issued Tuesday night, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas said the patient was admitted based on symptoms and "recent travel history."

It could potentially be a matter of time until a person with Ebola makes it through a commercial airport while contagious to go to their home country.

Might have just happened.

I'm gonna go buy some hand sanitizer and bleach now.

[Sarah K]

It's basically a lot of panic over nothing(in the US). Nebraska(where I'm from) has the largest biocontainment unit in the country. When that doctor was brought back to the United States from Liberia, they immediately took him to Nebraska. All of these assholes there were like EW SEND HIM BACK! Send him back to WHERE, you dumb shits? He is an AMERICAN CITIZEN.

Dude is fine now: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/201...SBP/story.html

Hopefully they can get shit in Africa under control soon, though. I know a guy who works at a nonprofit corporation here in NYC that deals with disaster relief. He is getting ready to travel to Liberia to hash out plans for building medical facilities over there specifically for this crisis. I wish I could work for him.

[Baphomette]

[Baphomette]

CDC: Ebola confirmed in Dallas patient

[Your Name Here]

Minus the zombies in place of contagion and the Walking Dead comes to life.

[Satyr]

It's basically a lot of panic over nothing(in the US). Nebraska(where I'm from) has the largest biocontainment unit in the country. When that doctor was brought back to the United States from Liberia, they immediately took him to Nebraska. All of these assholes there were like EW SEND HIM BACK! Send him back to WHERE, you dumb shits? He is an AMERICAN CITIZEN.

Dude is fine now: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/201...SBP/story.html

Hopefully they can get shit in Africa under control soon, though. I know a guy who works at a nonprofit corporation here in NYC that deals with disaster relief. He is getting ready to travel to Liberia to hash out plans for building medical facilities over there specifically for this crisis. I wish I could work for him.

I know a lot of people that specialize in Infectious Disease that aren't as confident as you are.....

[Sarah K]

Yeah. Knowing "a lot of people" who specialize in that extremely specific field totally sounds like something real, and not a thing that you just made up.

[DigitalChaos]

A whole lot of people in the USA seem to be fearful that they are likely to swap bodily fluids with a whole lot of other strangers. I'm not one to judge but... the people freaking out over ebola don't strike me as nightly attendees of power exchanges or anything like that.

[Sarah K]

[Dra508]

Right. This isn't TB they're dealing with. I'm more afraid of that flu from a couple years ago.

[DigitalChaos]

don't forget semen and all the other fun body fluids.


Now... I can pretty much guarantee that I come into contact with most of this list every day I ride public transit, and Ebola can stay viable for many days outside the body. The thing is, "touching" isn't very accurate. You have to get it in an open cut or something. I think blood has the highest concentration of the virus so if it happens to aerosolize (like someone with a bloody nose sneezing) then that could infect you if you inhaled it.

So uhhhh... don't fuck used gym towels??

[Satyr]

Yeah. Knowing "a lot of people" who specialize in that extremely specific field totally sounds like something real, and not a thing that you just made up.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/top-do...rticle/2554213

I guess this guy is making stuff up.

[Sarah K]

http://washingtonexaminer.com/top-do...rticle/2554213

I guess this guy is making stuff up.

So, you know that guy?

That is a conservative blog. Creating panic is kinda what they do. If you read actual news sites, they all basically say "Sure, spread is possible. But highly unlikely". This isn't fucking Outbreak. People just always want something to panic about. It's like the conservative blogs are having all of their dreams come true... Something that they can cause panic over, and something where they can point fingers at other countries.

[DigitalChaos]

The scariest thing that seems possible is if a young kid gets it and brings it to daycare. If that happened, all the kids there would swap their drool and bring it home to the parents. That's about where it would stop though. So, you'd have a sort of self-contained bubble. However, when you involve public play areas... it could get nasty.

[allegro]

I was talking with an RN who's done all kinds of specialties including infectious disease and she said the African ENVIRONMENT is really important to keep in mind: extreme heat, lack of air conditioning, lack of general hygiene that we take for granted, etc. And lots (MOST) of them contracted it from improper handling of the BODIES. Once the victims are dead, plus all those other conditions, yucko, the bodies explode contaminates.

Haven't you guys read Defoe's "Journal of a Plague Year?"

I don't understand why we're not automatically quarantining people (for a minimum of 21 days) who fly in from high-risk areas.

[allegro]

This American Texan victim was seen "throwing up all over the place" after he'd already been to a Dallas hospital but had been discharged.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifest...ry.html#page=1

Article says he helped transport a pregnant Ebola victim to a hospital where she was turned away, then helped transport her back home (where she died). So "bodily fluids" he touched must be her sweat? Did nobody ask him about this incident upon his return to the US, so that he'd be quarantined?

[Deepvoid]

All I'm hearing is how much Dallas hospital fucked this one up.

[allegro]

Yeah, sure sounds like it.

[DigitalChaos]

Isn't the Dallas guy the one who lied to the Liberian airport/boarder authorities and is now being sued by them?

edit: yup http://abcnews.go.com/International/...-home-25908233 "In Liberia, authorities announced plans to prosecute Duncan, alleging that he lied on a form about not having any contact with an infected person."

[DigitalChaos]

[Deepvoid]

I like this clip as well.

[DigitalChaos]

So much for the whole concept of superior US handling of this. Not only did the Dallas hospital send him home, here is how they cleaned up his vomit:

yes, that's a power washer.


https://twitter.com/wfaachannel8/sta...39906211528704

[Baphomette]

@DigitalChaos brought up exactly what I've been wondering. If you're in a small space with someone who is incubating the virus and they sneeze, there is a chance you can become infected. Is that right? Or if you handle something (like a gas pump) that an infected person has used, could you get it?

[DigitalChaos]

@DigitalChaos brought up exactly what I've been wondering. If you're in a small space with someone who is incubating the virus and they sneeze, there is a chance you can become infected. Is that right? Or if you handle something (like a gas pump) that an infected person has used, could you get it?

A typical sneeze won't do it. The sneeze would have to have blood in it. There just isn't enough of the virus in saliva to transmit through the air via spray.

As for transfer via common surfaces, you'd have to have an open cut on your hand or put your dirty hands in your mouth. Ebola can stay viable outside the host for many days.

[Ryan]

Bet ya'll wish you were 'Strayin *waves from below*

[allegro]

A typical sneeze won't do it. The sneeze would have to have blood in it. There just isn't enough of the virus in saliva to transmit through the air via spray.

As for transfer via common surfaces, you'd have to have an open cut on your hand or put your dirty hands in your mouth. Ebola can stay viable outside the host for many days.

How did the Dallas guy get the virus from helping to transport the pregnant woman to and from the hospital? This is a rhetorical question since you're not an infectious disease expert, natch. With the plague in Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" (a fictionalized account but with a ton of actual fact based on the Great Plague of London / Bubonic Plague), victims became a lot more contagious the closer they were to death; I wonder if Ebola has the same properties. It's like the virus has some kind of self-protecting properties and wants to exit the dying host.

[Ryan]

That's ridiculously good.

[DigitalChaos]

How did the Dallas guy get the virus from helping to transport the pregnant woman to and from the hospital? This is a rhetorical question since you're not an infectious disease expert, natch. With the plague in Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" (a fictionalized account but with a ton of actual fact based on the Great Plague of London / Bubonic Plague), victims became a lot more contagious the closer they were to death; I wonder if Ebola has the same properties. It's like the virus has some kind of self-protecting properties and wants to exit the dying host.

He was helping carry her the day before she died (multiple family members and neighbors of her's also died). So, he was in *direct* contact. I am curious how the believe the transfer occurred though. When it is that late in the infection, vomiting and bleeding occur. Those are the highly infectious fluids.


I will admit that much of the media is downplaying the situation a bit (excluding Fox), but it is out of necessity. There is a much bigger threat to our hospitals than Ebola, and it is a panicked public overloading facilities and dramatically decreasing their ability to handle the true disease. This happens just about every time this stuff hits the news, such as H1N1. My parents are both in the medical field and treat patients. They are definitely concerned about people freaking out.

[allegro]

See this.

See also this.

Officials have emphasized that people are only infectious if they have symptoms of Ebola. There is no risk of transmission from people who have been exposed to the virus but are not yet showing symptoms. You are not likely to catch Ebola just by being in proximity to someone who has the virus. It is not spread through the air like the flu or respiratory viruses such as SARS.

Instead, Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids. If an infected person’s blood or vomit gets in another person’s eyes, nose or mouth, the infection may be transmitted. In the current outbreak, most new cases are occurring among people who have been taking care of sick relatives or who have prepared an infected body for burial.

Health care workers are at high risk, especially if they have not been properly equipped with protective gear or correctly trained to use and decontaminate it.

The virus can survive on surfaces, so any object contaminated with bodily fluids, like a latex glove or a hypodermic needle, may spread the disease.

How does the disease progress?
Symptoms usually begin about eight to 10 days after exposure to the virus, but can appear as late as 21 days after exposure, according to the C.D.C. At first, it seems much like the flu: a headache, fever and aches and pains. Sometimes there is also a rash. Diarrhea and vomiting follow.

Then, in about half of the cases, Ebola takes a severe turn, causing victims to hemorrhage. They may vomit blood or pass it in urine, or bleed under the skin or from their eyes or mouths. But bleeding is not usually what kills patients. Rather, blood vessels deep in the body begin leaking fluid, causing blood pressure to plummet so low that the heart, kidneys, liver and other organs begin to fail.

[DigitalChaos]

In terms of curious Ebola infections through seemingly indirect contact....
http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/20...happened?rss=1


Q: Any idea how you became infected?
N.W.: I don’t know how I became infected and how I contracted it. There are some thoughts about how I might have gotten it. Nobody is really sure, least of all me. I never felt like I was unsafe and I never felt like I walked into a situation where I was being exposed. I was on the low-risk side of things. I never was in the crisis or the Ebola center. I was always on the outside. I made sure doctors and nurses were dressed properly before they went in, and I decontaminated them before they went out. We kept a close check on each other about whether people felt safe.
We had an employee who was doing the same job that I was doing. He got sick and I didn’t know he was sick. He didn’t tell anybody. He actually thought he had typhoid. The day that I started having symptoms, at least a fever, was the last day I saw him. He did have Ebola. He did not survive.
I never remember touching him, although it’s possible he could have picked up a sprayer to decontaminate someone, and I could have picked up the sprayer. Or we touched the same thing. I never touched him.