Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Why Ebola will eventually become an epidemic in the USA? Here:
Today I was at a nice breakfast cafe. I sat outside as it was nice and sunny. At the table next to me sit two guys, one in his mid 20s I'd say, the other perhaps 50s. The older guy gets up and walks to the sidewalk and starts picking at his hand. I notice because now he is in my field of vision and it seems strange. He does this for a few minutes and then sits down (off to one side of me). He starts picking at his skin again (hands) and all kinds of flakes and who knows what peel off. They fall onto the table. They fall onto his lap. He goet up and goes inside and comes back out shortly. He sits down and starts picking again. He does this for quite a while.
Now, I could really care less what someone is doing so long as it doesn't hurt me but the wind blew in my direction and one of the skin flakes goes into my food. Thats it, I say in a voice loud enough so he can hear me "Excuse me, your picking at your skin and whatever it is you are picking off is blowing all over the place and I'm here to eat something and so is everyone else." He looks at me with a shocked look on his face and continues to pick at his skin (hands and arms). So I say in a bit more terse voice "you can either stop that or I'll have to ask the cafe staff to tell you to leave"
They ask for a check and leave.
I tell the server to be sure to wash to the table and chairs where they sat really well and described the guys behavior.
Here is the point. We can have all the protocols we want, equipment galore but when people like that simply don't care what they do, who they expose to their ills, what good does any of that do?
You are sitting in a restaurant and the person at the next table appears not quite right. They are sweating and it's not warm outside. What do you do? What can you realistically do? Not much.
The facts is that a single incident like the one in Dallas can be managed. Let more than a few get Ebola and there are many people who could care less.
Ewwwww.......I don't blame you for grossing out on that one! A lot of things might cross my mind at that point, not just Ebola. I don't know many who'd want another persons skin for lunch regardless. lol Eww, I'm making myself have barf face just talking about it.
I'm worried about that time when an ill person enters the ER, and waits with other ill and run down people before they realize they have Ebola. Similar to what happened in TX. When they are ill enough to go to an ER, and nobody realizes it's Ebola yet. I think now that that mistake has already occurred we will be more careful with admissions but it's crowded in most ER's and people are tired, and the patient might be too ill to interview correctly. That widow of time is what concerns me the most to be honest.
Haven't we seen people infected with HIV care less and go around having sex with other people without so much as a word that they are infected? Sure we have.
Do you think that disgusting individual I saw today would stop going to a common eatery and think about anyone else? Heck no.
BTW, the busser did clean the table with a disinfectant and wore gloves when he cleaned up the table and chairs. Yes, I stopped eating.
Glad to here the busser cleaned the table properly. So many times they just wipe it down with that dirty rag.
The first person known to have contracted Ebola outside of Africa has now been declared free of the disease. This further helps to support the notion that some developed nations, other than the US, are capable of successfully handling individual, not necessarily epidemic, cases in the future.
Still, people are dying in Africa and the problem must be nipped at the bud.
Location: 23.7 million to 162 million miles North of Venus
23,468 posts, read 12,487,658 times
Reputation: 10439
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leisesturm
Your comic book fantasy about enough Ebola vaccine being made market ready and in enough quantity to save West Africa is what is lamentable. To the American medical community and their total reliance on the pharmaceutical industry for their tools of the trade all problems look like a drug patent. Ebola in a large mobile population has never been seen or studied before. Hidebound thinkers won't beat it. It is time to start planning containment. It is time to create a fire-break, a literal dead zone around the perimeter of advancing cases. Everyone inside it will live or die according to the mortality tables established by precedent. Everyone outside the perimeter will be safe from Ebola but not from the several other things that cut short human life in sub-Saharan Africa.
(I can't rep you again right now) I agree that there won't be a vaccine, or a large quantity of it, available to save W. Africa for quite awhile.
GlaxoSmithKline is working on one, but they claim they won't know if it's safe or efficient for about another year. If they do discover that it is safe and efficient, it will probably take them yet another year to produce enough to help W. Africa. BBC News - Ebola crisis: Vaccine 'too late' for outbreak
The link you provided further down, regarding the drug that China has (thanks for posting that) .. it sounds like they've been working on antidotes for biological warfare for years. Even though they've been working on it longer, it sounds as if what they have must have some pretty serious side effects if they claim it's for "emergency use only in military situations, based on strong preclinical and safety data".
Their drug isn't even going to the infected W. Africans, from what the article states. There are 10,000 Chinese nationals working in the affected countries, none of them have contracted the disease but the 10,000 doses of drug is for them.
So, if GSK won't be ready for quite awhile and with the drug that China is sending over is for their own people, who aren't sick, if there are no other vaccines that are ready to go then, sadly, those in W. Africa are sunk.
Quote:
If the world had wanted to save Africa they should have done it before it got to 500 cases. Once it reaches 25,000 cases it will be unstoppable, except for the perimeter I mentioned. H
Yep. It sounds like WHO dropped the ball on that one. The first case was in Dec of last year. It sounds like WHO had been contacted about it but since those areas were not the normal stomping grounds for ebola then WHO dismissed it. Finally at the end of March the Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) contacted WHO and said "Guinea was facing "an epidemic of a magnitude never before seen in terms of the distribution of cases in the country"." The very next day WHO contacted them back and chided them for "scaremongering". It wasn't until June when WHO decided that it was indeed an epidemic, yet it still took them until August to begin to do anything about it. BBC News - Ebola: WHO under fire over response to epidemic
Nigeria got extremely lucky. Their medical staff was on the ball, caught it very early and was able to backtrack it and quarantine before it became a major problem.
(just a note, I hadn't read every single post in this thread so if some of what I'd posted had already been discussed, then I'm sorry for re-hashing what had already been discussed)
Location: 23.7 million to 162 million miles North of Venus
23,468 posts, read 12,487,658 times
Reputation: 10439
Quote:
Originally Posted by PoppySead
Ewwwww.......I don't blame you for grossing out on that one! A lot of things might cross my mind at that point, not just Ebola. I don't know many who'd want another persons skin for lunch regardless. lol Eww, I'm making myself have barf face just talking about it.
I'm worried about that time when an ill person enters the ER, and waits with other ill and run down people before they realize they have Ebola. Similar to what happened in TX. When they are ill enough to go to an ER, and nobody realizes it's Ebola yet. I think now that that mistake has already occurred we will be more careful with admissions but it's crowded in most ER's and people are tired, and the patient might be too ill to interview correctly. That widow of time is what concerns me the most to be honest.
Glad to here the busser cleaned the table properly. So many times they just wipe it down with that dirty rag.
(I haven't been able to rep you again either. Pity .. so many good posts that deserved it-so few reps to give out )
I had the same reaction you did, ewww. Glad that Mack Knife noticed the guy before he began to eat his breakfast.
If ebola had dug in here, with flu season coming up on us there probably would be much more panic if someone started coming down with flu symptoms.
I suspect that we may soon hear that, in some countries, non-risk African employees are being terminated due to hysteria.
Speaking of Hysteria:
Texas College Rejects Nigerian Applicants, Cites Ebola Cases
At least two students from Nigeria who applied to a Texas college were told they wouldn't be admitted because of Ebola. Kamorudeen Abidogun, a Texas man originally from Nigeria, said he received two letters from Navarro College, a two-year community college with a campus about 58 miles from Dallas. Abidogun has five relatives in Nigeria who were applying to the school and who were using his home in Richmond, Texas, as a U.S. mailing address, he told CNBC. The college rejected the applications, citing confirmed Ebola cases in the country as the reason for the admissions decision. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/texas-college-rejects-nigerian-applicants-cites-ebola-cases-n226291]Texas College Rejects Nigerian Applicants, Cites Ebola Cases - NBC New
"The World Health Organization says that efforts are on track to distribute an experimental Ebola vaccine in West Africa in January.
Two potential vaccines are now being tested for safety in people, and Russia is developing another one. While quantities will be limited, scientists say even a relatively small supply of vaccine can help bring the epidemic under control."
CBS news today: "Beginning Wednesday, people whose trips began in Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone must fly into one of the five U.S. airports performing fever checks for Ebola, the Homeland Security Department said."
Does anyone here know which 5 airports?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
)
