THE PORTAL PHASE by Seán McCarthy Dont mind me. I just like investigative work. And heres one during which I raise what I consider to be an important question. This interesting BBC video, made recently during an infected Spanish Nurses treatment, starts off with BBC Health Correspondent Tulip Mazumdar delivering some reassuring words about how, in her words, quite difficult it is to catch Ebola. She says, quote: It is close contact. It is skin-to-skin contact, contact with body fluids. So its sweat, urine, vomiting, diarrhea, its those fluids that you have to touch to catch this virus. Having listened to her words, let me make my first deduction: Number 1. You can catch Ebola by touching sweat. I have heard this umpteen times, that touching the sweat of a contagious person can indeed put you at risk of contracting Ebola. The person must be in the symptomatic period of the infection, showing symptoms such as a high fever, in order to be contagious. What is then said about contagion in this video? At minute 1:09 President of the Spanish Association of Public Health Ildefonso Hernandez-Aguado says, quote: The virus is difficult to detect during the incubation period and the test that we have for viral level are used, we use them when they begin, people begin with symptoms. Having listened to his words, let me make my second deduction: Number 2. The virus is seemingly more accurately detected when symptoms are showing. Taking number 1 and number 2 into account, I pose my question: How would anybody at a restaurant located a journey of one full hour in travel time from home even know that they were infectious, until possibly the very time at which their hands suddenly began to sweat in fever while lifting a dinner plate off the restaurant table infront of them and handing it to the waiter? This period of time is what I call The Portal Phase of Ebola, the period between not showing symptoms, and suddenly showing them. It seems to me that, during this time of The Portal Phase, anyone might be located anywhere at all, even on a train.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 17:21:23 +0000
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