To everyone melting down about the Ebola patients being transferred to the US, heres a quick primer to help you calm the f#€k down. Ebola is very deadly but it is nothing like smallpox. It is perhaps more similar to HIV. It isnt airborne. It is only spread by direct contact between your bodily fluids and someone who is actively infecteds bodily fluids. However, it is unlike HIV in that someone who is infected manifests symptoms within three weeks and is only really contagious once they are sick - and when you get sick with Ebola you get very very sick very quickly. One patient on a plane to Lagos Nigeria last week for several hours didnt infect anyone around him despite being in the active infection stage. Ebola thrives in areas with poor sanitation and poor education about basic health precautions. It spreads in poor, largely rural areas of Africa where people get sick, others touch and care for them, and nobody has even hand sanitizers, let alone isolation wards. So how did these two trained westerners get sick? We dont know but we do know that they were in environments where they were surrounded night and day by hundreds of very sick people - those in the hospitals (if we can call them hospitals) and those who may be infected in the area pre diagnosis. The clinics are severely understaffed, have dreadfully little by way of modern technology, and have very few supplies. The care takers are overworked, under rested, and struggling to keep up. The place they are going to in the us has the best facility in the world for isolating infectious disease. A team of incredibly good, well rested, and well trained care takers with disposable single-use hazmat suits and very specific protocols operating in a negative pressure environment (one that ensures air only flows in) will be caring for two patients, at least one of whom may be getting better already (he was well enough to walk - though assisted - into the facility in a hazmat suit). All the materials and fluids that came in contact with the patient are destroyed and every person who is near them is monitored incredibly closely. Lastly, this isnt the first time Ebola has been brought to the us, there is already Ebola in the us in labs and used for study and testing. Bringing these two people to the us gives them their best chance of survival and gives us our best chance to study the disease in a controlled environment. So, to recap, calm down. This isnt the hot zone or the andromeda strain.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 01:42:17 +0000
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