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People who are infected with Ebola, once symptomatic tend to have the constitution of an arthritic 85 year old. They are barely able to walk, let alone frolic about to spread the disease. In this capacity, Ebola is very much self limiting.
Again - Sawyer, made it onto the plane healthy, started vomiting and having diarrhea ON the plane, collapsed in the airport.
Where and how these symptoms start for a person is a russian roulette to how many others will be infected. A person starts feeling sick at work, takes public transit to try and get back home, vomits all over said transit - and there you go.
Which is why people travelling from high-risk regions, regardless of whether or not they're showing symptoms, should be kept the hell away from all other countries. Period.
People who are infected with Ebola, once symptomatic tend to have the constitution of an arthritic 85 year old. They are barely able to walk, let alone frolic about to spread the disease. In this capacity, Ebola is very much self limiting.
Did they, or did they not, stop that traveler from entering Minneapolis with active Ebola in his body.
It galls me a lot, how little Big Pharma understands about their mandate to society, and how much wasted R&D energy there is going into designer drugs, etc. Ebola has been simmering away in East Africa all my life. So has Hep C although not in Africa. Big Pharma has had nothing but time to come up with a response! Recently, a treatment, not a vaccine, for Hep C has been approved but the stuff is so expensive that no insurance company will pay for it. The transmission models of Ebola and Hep C are similar. What good would an Ebola vaccine do for anyone if it cost $100K? But why don't we have one yet? You go ahead and defend the indefensible. I will question and wonder out loud about the depraved indifference of Big Pharma. Someone has to.
There isn't any big money to be made in saving African lives and there isn't any good will to help people who fall ill with AIDS or various kinds of Hepatitis because they are usually societal outcasts. Treatments are for the occasional collateral contacts with the seamier denizens of society and they have the wherewithal to pay the outrageous sums that Big Pharma asks for when lives are on the line. This is the canary in the coal mine keeling over. We are getting closer and closer to that Outbreak event that shows just how unprepared we are for real trouble via a disease outbreak.
The U.S. needs to take over and nationalize a bio-tech or pharmaceutical company and put them to the good work of saving humanity. The usual suspects are too busy lining their pockets to notice that with a warming world, microbes that were once delicate and easily erradicated by nothing more than time and isolation can now have a somewhat increased active life. Somewhat is all that stood between the intense, but short, outbreaks of Ebola in East Africa and the present much more prolonged outbreak in West Africa. By some of the comments here there should not be any response by medical personnel in Africa. It is all simply hysteria over nothing much. Ebola can't survive in the U.S. Really? Some of you haven't looked at a weather report in awhile.
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Oh, I agree completely with you on the wasted R&D dollars spent in this country and around the world. In almost 40 years, there should have been greater advancements in the treatment and prevention of a virus like Ebola, but shoulda woulda coulda isn't going to change didn't and hasn't, and my point was that at this point in time, there is no wide spread, proven tested serum available, and it can't just be magicked up out of thin air in a matter of hours to deal with the current outbreak.
I do have to disagree with you that Ebola could easily become some widespread pandemic in the USA killing millions upon millions of people. Could it spread here? Sure, anything can happen. It's just not highly likely, and the very nature of the virus itself makes it difficult for it to spread widely if people practice some common sense. Sadly, the expectation of common sense is where it all falls apart.
The U.S. needs to take over and nationalize a bio-tech or pharmaceutical company and put them to the good work of saving humanity. The usual suspects are too busy lining their pockets to notice that with a warming world, microbes that were once delicate and easily erradicated by nothing more than time and isolation can now have a somewhat increased active life.
The US government already provides funding to universities to study diseases through the National Institute for Health; this is how UTMB in Galveston has been able to study Ebola. Unfortunately, this funding is constantly at risk of being cut (as it was during sequestration).
I think Ebola will eventually cause illness in the US or Canada or the UK or South America. I think it will cause several dozen or several hundred people to sicken and die. I think it will likely cause fewer deaths overall than that year's flu.
It's odd certain people are so concerned about ebola, that has basically zero chance of becoming an epidemic here, and yet no panic about gun deaths which clearly is an epidemic. Just sayin'. Priorities folks.
I wasn't talking about the two Americans brought back to Atlanta btw.
That is maybe a miniscule risk but I'm not too worried about that - they're being contained, precautions taken. They're the least of the worries here.
Much more worrisome is the fact that travel is still wide open and people - regular people, not-too-bright people, not medical professionals - are travelling from the affected areas freely, perhaps not knowing they're already infected. If they are, and they come back here and get sick, where and how their symptoms will show up and how many people they'll be in contact with between getting sick and actually being isolated in hospital, is a coin toss. Family members, coworkers, public bathrooms, public transit, waiting rooms, intake counters, there's plenty of opportunity for one person to infect at least a few more, and it goes exponentially from there.
A person who starts feeling sick does not suddenly and magically get teleported into a secure isolation room without coming into contact with anyone or anything in the process
We have plenty of experience with a hemorrhagic fever that would make for a much better epidemic: Lassa fever. It kills 5000 people every year, and there are probably between 100,000 and 300,000 people in Africa who are currently infected. It is transmitted like Ebola, but it doesn't necessarily kill its host, so it is actually way easier to spread.
And whenever a case shows up in the US, it still completely fails to start an epidemic.
Did they, or did they not, stop that traveler from entering Minneapolis with active Ebola in his body.
Patrick Sawyer died before he ever got that far. He was actively showing signs of the virus while flying. As far as I can tell, nobody from that flight was quarantined.
NY has had 6 people tested for ebola so far that we know about. Only one patient is in isolation. It's been over 24 hours for the patient in isolation; I thought the test results would be available within 24 hours but maybe I am wrong on that.
Did they, or did they not, stop that traveler from entering Minneapolis with active Ebola in his body.
Nobody "stopped" him from going to Minneapolis as he wasn't even in U.S. airspace. He had planned on doing so, within a month. However he came down with symptoms in Lagos, Nigeria, nowhere close to the U.S., but don't let that get in the way of some good panic-inducing hyperbole.
A man whose death is believed to be Nigeria’s first in a still-widening Ebola virus outbreak was planning a trip to Minnesota to visit his family next month, his wife said.
Patrick Sawyer, a 40-year-old consultant with the Liberian Ministry of Finance, was en route to a conference when he collapsed upon arrival in Lagos, Nigeria, the Associated Press reported.
Quote:
Sawyer says her husband contracted the Ebola virus from his sister, who recently died of the disease. He had cared for her when she became ill, but it wasn’t until after her death that family members became aware she was carrying Ebola.
Once again, close, personal contact with someone that was infected.
The second article states that the US doctor's family was in Africa with him, but they are now back in the US.
The disease can take up to 21 days to incubate, is highly contagious, and has a fatality rate of 70% Can you imagine what could happen if it got loose from one of the major airports in NY or LA, for instance?
They have already made a gazillion movies about that. You are way late to the party on this one.
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