After Dallas Ebola Diagnosis, CDC Raises Estimate of Patient's Possible Contacts 258
As reported by Bloomberg News, The Washington Post, and other outlets, the Liberian patient whose diagnosis of Ebola infection marks him as the first such case to have been first diagnosed within the United States may have had contact with more people than previously estimated, and 80 people in the Dallas area are now
believed to have come into contact with him. While Bloomberg reports that this larger group of potential contacts is "being monitored for symptoms," the Washington Post's slightly later story says that, in keeping with the best current knowledge about Ebola's spread,
"Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson said that these [newly identified contacts] are not being watched or monitored and are not showing any symptoms of the illness. Only the immediate family members of the victim are being regularly monitored for Ebola symptoms; they've been ordered to stay at home and avoid contact with others."
I feel like we are living in an 'outbreak' movie (Score:4, Informative)
Yes yes, you only get it if you come in contact with feces, vomit, etc, but that perception is there now that it is in the US.
Re:I feel like we are living in an 'outbreak' movi (Score:5, Interesting)
H1N1 was also a "real virus", whatever that means. The media is equally blowing American risk of Ebola out of proportion like they did H1N1, which actually managed to infect a largish number of Americans.
There were 14,000 worldwide deaths from H1N1 2k9, 3,500 of which were in North America. This ebola breakout doesn't currently represent nearly that much risk to Americans, but it could be a lot worse if the epidemic continues to grow in western Africa.
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Re:I feel like we are living in an 'outbreak' movi (Score:4, Insightful)
Informing the public isn't the same as creating panic.
People like you would have the whole world burning before deciding to tell people there is a fire.
Re:I feel like we are living in an 'outbreak' movi (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe blown out of proportion but Ebola is far more lethal virus than H1N1. Also, deaths were mostly people who were ill already or had other issues. Ebola doesn't discriminate. On the other hand, the dumb nurse/doctor who was told that the patient was in Liberia and had Ebola like symptoms and still sent the dude back home needs to get fired. Today. Now. Maybe he/she/it thought that Liberia was a town in Missouri.
Re:I feel like we are living in an 'outbreak' movi (Score:4, Insightful)
Total mortality=lethality*infection rate
There's no serious reason to believe that second variable has any hope of getting anywhere near thousands in the US.
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Heaven help me, I'm defending the US's healthcare system.
Health care systems have very little to do with influenza infection rates. I like that you don't tell me which third world country.
Re:I feel like we are living in an 'outbreak' movi (Score:4, Insightful)
Talk about a retard. The flu is a virus and as such is not something that even responds to current forms of medical treatment. You might be able to stop the spread of it with vaccines and extreme isolation but that's about it.
The flu is transmissible BEFORE you manifest symptoms. You can be wandering around infecting friends and coworkers before you even know you are sick.
Ebola is not like that.
The flu also spreads much more easily from person to person.
Two entirely different situations.
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WHAT? You're claiming that one quarter of the US population caught the H1N1 virus?
That's TOTAL AND UTTER BULLSHIT.
Unless you're considering people who received a live vaccine to be "infected"...
Do some research first please? (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe blown out of proportion but Ebola is far more lethal virus than H1N1.
Variants of H1N1 have killed tens of millions of people [wikipedia.org]. You should probably spend 30 seconds researching the issue before spouting off nonsense publicly.
Also, deaths were mostly people who were ill already or had other issues.
Again, demonstrably not true [wikipedia.org] in previous H1N1 pandemics.
Re:Do some research first please? (Score:5, Informative)
Saying that something is more lethal doesn't mean the same as saying it kills more people. What it means is that it is more "sufficient to cause death". So, while it's very true that more people have died from H1N1 than from EBOV, EBOV is still far more lethal.
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/est... [cdc.gov] says that between April 2009 and April 2010 there were 61M cases of H1N1 resulting in 12.5K deaths. WHO says that, so far, there are 7192 cases of EBOV in the West African outbreak, and 3286 deaths.
I'll let you do the math.
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Saying that something is more lethal doesn't mean the same as saying it kills more people. What it means is that it is more "sufficient to cause death". So, while it's very true that more people have died from H1N1 than from EBOV, EBOV is still far more lethal.
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/est... [cdc.gov] says that between April 2009 and April 2010 there were 61M cases of H1N1 resulting in 12.5K deaths. WHO says that, so far, there are 7192 cases of EBOV in the West African outbreak, and 3286 deaths.
I'll let you do the math.
Exactly. Tens of millions of people get the flu (of many variants) each year, and many thousands die from it - but in general it is mostly the very young or elderly who don't have the immune systems to fight it off (or of any age those with other serious medical conditions, AIDS, going through cancer therapy, etc, with compromised immune systems).
Ebola is different, even people with otherwise healthy immune systems are vulnerable. The flu kills a tiny fraction (less than 1%) of those who contract it... Eb
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Saying that something is more lethal doesn't mean the same as saying it kills more people.
Who are you to say which is more lethal? It seems to me that H1N1's better transmission methods make it the more effective, if less efficient, killer than Ebola. So far H1N1 has thus proven itself to be more lethal, though of course Ebola might catch up.
Lethal - "sufficient to cause death" or "capable of causing death" is a word with enough ambiguity in the definition to apply to either case. It does not exclusively mean "efficient at causing death once afflicted on someone" as you imply.
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You're introducing ambiguity where there is none. "Lethal" has a well understood meaning, which is why we have measurements like LD50 [wikipedia.org] values for toxic substances. Unless otherwise specified, "lethality" assumes that the item in which we're interested (e.g. virus, chemical, radiation, etc.) has already been introduced into the organism's environment, rather than that it needs to introduce itself in some way. All we do then is measure how likely death is to occur.
Of course, we can still measure things like "l
Re:Do some research first please? (Score:5, Informative)
"if it goes airborne"
Just the other day, I thought to myself "How many viruses have we ever seen mutate to become airborne?"
So I checked. Now, its a little tough to google right now, because the top million or so results are news articles screaming that ebola will go airborne and kill us all, but I did manage to find some solid articles on the subject stemming from a more scientific standpoint, and a less "WE ALL GONNA DIE" clickbait standpoint.
What I learned is this:
In the 100 or so years we have been really studying viruses, we have seen a virus mutate and change its infection vector exactly ZERO times.
As it turns out, viruses are pretty specialized at what they do. Some, like the influenza virus, have nailed down the trait of surviving for long periods in aerosolized droplets of mucus that are so small that local air currents are more powerful than gravity, and have adapted to surviving in lung tissue very well. (airborne)
Others, like say, ebola, are adapted to surviving in the liver and blood, and can survive for a bit of time outside the body, in much larger volumes of bodily fluids. (not airborne) The ebola virus does build up in the lung tissue the way influenza does, nor does it have the specialized structures that allow it to move into the mucosal secretions of the lungs, the way influenza does. (all of which are needed to be a successful airborne virus)
Another thing influenza has going for it is that multiple variants of influenza can infect a single cell, and spawn forth a new variant of influenza. Apparently, this is not something ebola is capable of *at all* meaning it mutates at a much slower rate than influenza.
The net takeaway from all this is, while the chances of ebola mutating and becoming airborne are non zero, the actual odds of its occurrence are vanishingly small.
Long story short, viruses come in a lot of forms, and people are expecting the behavior of one to match up with the behavior of another, when in reality they are entirely different creatures. One article I read likened it to saying Cars fly, and Airplanes drive on the ground, where Ebola is a car, and Influenza is an Airplane. While the statement is not entirely false, because cars can fly short distances in special circumstances, and planes do taxi to the terminal, your not going to fly your Volkswagen to Paris from NY, and your not going to drive a boing 747 from Detroit to Houston on the highway. Specialized structures for specific purposes.
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Lethality is only half the story (Score:2)
Risk = Consequences X Likelihood X Prob of Detect (Score:2)
Saying that something is more lethal doesn't mean the same as saying it kills more people.
It's pretty clueless to worry only about lethality without considering the likelihood of transmission. Of course ebola is scary if you contract it or have a significant risk of contracting it. But frankly being worried about ebola is kind of like being worried about a shark attack. Scary as hell and you'll probably die if it happens but not something you should worry about much because the odds are so absurdly low.
between April 2009 and April 2010 there were 61M cases of H1N1 resulting in 12.5K deaths. WHO says that, so far, there are 7192 cases of EBOV in the West African outbreak, and 3286 deaths.
Unless you were actually in West Africa your chances of contracting ebola were and remain
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You sir, are a fucking retard.
H1N1, like all influenza variants is of mild lethality. While thousands die from influenza every year, the percentage that die of those who contract the virus is extremely low. The percentage of those who contract ebola that die, is extremely high. The people that die from influenza are people that have other, MORE SERIOUS health issues.
You are the one spouting off nonsense publicly, and by doing so you are doing serious damage to those around you. If you still insist that you'
Re:Do some research first please? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe blown out of proportion but Ebola is far more lethal virus than H1N1.
Variants of H1N1 have killed tens of millions of people [wikipedia.org]. You should probably spend 30 seconds researching the issue before spouting off nonsense publicly.
And you should probably spend 30 seconds before you choose to deliberately mislead people or else spout off out of ignorance on the subject.
1) The fact that other H1N1 strains have killed millions of people has little bearing on how lethal the particular, modern-day H1N1 strain they were referring to happens to be. "H1N1" is merely a subtype expressed using a classification technique [wikipedia.org] that makes it easier to refer to flu strains, but we've had numerous H1N1-subtype strains over the years, some quite lethal, some not so much, and as the link I just shared indicates, many of the strains we're familiar with have gone extinct, even though the subtype that it belonged to still exists. Your implication is clearly that "H1N1" has killed millions of people, and it has...in much the same way that "white person" has killed millions of people. You can't just leave it at that; you have to be more specific, and once you are, you realize that the particular H1N1 strain they're talking about in this thread (the 2009 strain) wasn't actually that lethal in comparison to Ebola.
2) You're clearly confused about what "lethal" means. Something is "more lethal" if it is more capable of causing death, not because it has actually caused more deaths, and it's a fact that Ebola is significantly more lethal than even the 1918 Spanish Flu, which is widely regarded as being one of the worst (50-90% mortality rate for Ebola vs. 10-20% mortality rate for Spanish Flu). Surely if you're on Slashdot you've heard about the LD50 [wikipedia.org] for various substances and whatnot? The "L" stands for "lethal". It doesn't mean that that substance has killed more people than another substance. It just means that it is capable of doing so.
Also, deaths were mostly people who were ill already or had other issues.
Again, demonstrably not true [wikipedia.org] in previous H1N1 pandemics.
Again, you're linking to an entirely different strain that just happens to belong to the same subtype as a modern-day strain. The reason people panic about H1N1 strains today is because we know that because they belong to the same subtype, they are potentially very similar to the dangerous strains we've seen in the past and thus could very easily mutate into something that is as deadly as those strains...but that does not mean that they are dangerous strains like the Spanish Flu, nor that they are as lethal as it, nor that they exhibit the same characteristics as it, nor that your links to the Spanish Flu are in any way relevant or indicative of the 2009 H1N1 strain's traits. Pointing out that the Spanish Flu was indiscriminate in whom it killed in no way takes away from his claim that the 2009 H1N1 strain's deaths were primarily those who "were already ill or had other issues."
Even so, in a cursory search, I couldn't find any evidence to support his claim either.
Worrying about the wrong things (Score:3)
1) The fact that other H1N1 strains have killed millions of people has little bearing on how lethal the particular, modern-day H1N1 strain they were referring to happens to be
H1N1 family viruses are constantly mutating and there is more than one. The notion that I should be more worried about ebola than H1N1 is frankly absurd because the odds of me contracting ebola is almost nil.
you realize that the particular H1N1 strain they're talking about in this thread (the 2009 strain) wasn't actually that lethal in comparison to Ebola.
Perhaps I'm not being clear. I don't really care much about a disease with 50%-80% mortality rates when the chance of infection is almost zero. I care a lot of about a disease with 1% mortality rates when the chance of infection is quite substantial.
2) You're clearly confused about what "lethal" means.
I'm not confused at all. I'm merely point out that
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A lot of people are directing outrage at the healthcare worker who dropped the ball, but what about the patient? He reportedly didn't tell the nurse/doctor "I just came here from Liberia a few days ago and was recently in contact with people who died of Ebola." which is what any sane person would have done. I'm guessing he did the opposite, and downplayed it like "Have you been to Africa? / Yes I used to live in Africa."
Re:I feel like we are living in an 'outbreak' movi (Score:5, Insightful)
But "regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full team," said Dr. Mark Lester, executive vice president of Texas Health Resources. ... The CDC has been vigorously emphasizing the need for a travel history."
Duncan was sent home with painkillers and antibiotics, only to return in worse condition on September 28. That's when he was isolated.
"It was a mistake. They dropped the ball," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said of the miscommunication at the hospital.
"You don't want to pile on them, but hopefully this will never happen again.
Gupta said this mishap doesn't make sense.
"A nurse did ask the question, and he did respond that he was in Liberia, and that wasn't transmitted to people who were in charge of his care," he said. "There's no excuse for this."
And one of Duncan's friends said he was the one who contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with concerns that the hospital wasn't moving quickly enough after Duncan's second hospital visit.
But the hospital said the patient's condition "did not warrant admission" last week.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/02/... [cnn.com]
"Didn't warrant admission" AKA "He wasnt sick enough for anyone to care, and we were to stupid to realize just how dangerous the situation could be." Heads need to roll for this.
Re:I feel like we are living in an 'outbreak' movi (Score:5, Insightful)
'But "regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full team," '
My experience from working in ICU and ER years ago:
Can't know, but when I hear phrases like "full team", that's what I am reminded of. Very very unfortunate. Beyond all of the additional exposure, the guy didn't get the care he likely needed to have a chance at survival.
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Re:I feel like we are living in an 'outbreak' movi (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ah but Ebola is easier to contain. You need clean water supply. And separate waste water processing. You need to physically isolate potential carriers and monitor them for two weeks.
Africa struggles with providing clean water, proper watste water processing and physical isolation. When you drinking water comes from the same river as the one you shit in. You have issues.
Over the next month you have to worry. If no more cases break out you are good.
So have food delivered. Sit down and binge watch you tube cat
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Gee, you have the facts from the media, and you are ready to fire someone?
You are either an ass, or someone who thinks the media has all the facts.
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Maybe blown out of proportion but Ebola is far more lethal virus than H1N1.
Amen. I like my chances of surviving H1N1 a lot better than my chances of surviving Ebola.
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From what I heard on the news (presumably this is correct), the nurse on station had determined the person had ebola like symptoms and noted it on his chart? well, s/he noted it on something. That fact was ignored and he was discharged.
Also, the person bears some responsibility. He goes to Liberia, works with a known Ebola patient (another thing I read and presumably true), comes back and fails to tell his doctors this. He claims they didn't ask, which does not relieve him of the responsibility to tell them
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haha, no.
" an estimated range of deaths from between 151,700 and 575,400 people who perished worldwide from 2009 H1N1 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated"
" 80% of 2009 H1N1 deaths were in people younger than 65 years of age which differs from typical seasonal influenza epidemics during which 80-90% of deaths are estimated to occur in people 65 years of age and older"
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlig... [cdc.gov]
http://www.thelancet.com/journ... [thelancet.com]
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Oh, I was citing the lab confirmed deaths, which estimates greatly exceed. You're right. Sorry for the massive understatement.
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That flues are almost always seasonal, people develop immunities, and it goes into remission(not the proper medical term) until a new strain evolves(or an old strain like H1N1 has enough unexposed members of a population to spread again).
Influenza is a serious risk (Score:3)
Amazing how the government freaked out over H1N1 years ago and simply nothing happened. Yet, a real virus is on the move and "everything is a-ok" is the word from everyone.
H1N1 is a "real virus" which has variants that have killed millions of people. Influenza has killed and has the potential to kill FAR more people than ebola is ever likely to. Read up on influenza pandemics [wikipedia.org] of the past.
The current ebola outbreak is a serious issue but it isn't what keeps epidemiologists awake at night.
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The last panic justified flu outbreak was 100 years ago.
Normally, the flu only kills that many people because you give it a long enough timeline. It's the proverbial turtle. It's nothing like Ebola or even more interesting strains of flu that can kill millions of people in a single outbreak.
You're simply trying to distort the numbers to create a false sense of panic.
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If Ebola ever becomes airborne transmissible, or even worse, is airborne transmissible before symptoms appear, then it will be entirely correct to freak out. As in "Make peace with whatever heathen Gods you worship, for your doom is upon you." One small ray of hope - 40% survival rate, and the survivors are immune from re-infection.
Re:Influenza is a serious risk (Score:5, Funny)
The current ebola outbreak is a serious issue but it isn't what keeps epidemiologists awake at night.
Yes, this, however should Ebola ever mutate into an airborne variant, watch them freak out :)
You're talking the virus evolving (mutating) into a new variant.
This is Texas, evolution doesn't happen there.
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You're talking the virus evolving (mutating) into a new variant. This is Texas, evolution doesn't happen there.
That's ok, they can just call it intelligent design and claim it's God's wrath upon the wicked.
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Not as amazing as you ignorance about what happened with H1N1.
Hospitals around the country were filled to capacity, a lot of people died. It wold have been a lot worse without the H1N1 precautions that were taken.
8.4% of ALL deaths in 2009 were from H1N1. It was an epidemic.It's considered an epidemic if more then 7.3% of deaths are caused by a disease.
Bear in mnd that several state do not track death from influenza, so the number is actually higher.
No, no one is saying everything is ok. The two things tran
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Someone with H1N1 on the plane is contagious to everyone there.
Someone with Ebola not showing symptoms is a danger to no one.
Yes or No
Would you fly to Liberia today, and shake hands with everyone not showing symptoms?
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Injectable C http://injectablevitaminc.com/... [injectablevitaminc.com]
Cathcart http://orthomolecular.org/libr... [orthomolecular.org]
and Klenner. http://www.doctoryourself.com/... [doctoryourself.com]
The more severe the virus, higher and more frequent doses used. As support for nasty viral illnesses overseas that have no vaccine, we also take zinc, 50,000 iu of vitam
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So if the mass vaccination of people stopped the spread of an infection then 'nothing happened', and obviously the vaccinations and precautions were a waste of time. That's some fine reasoning there.
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I live in Mexico City.
The initial fear and reaction was not because it was a known-deadly virus, but because it had not yet been established how contagious it would be, which vectors would it be dangerous on. The city was really weird, almost dead, for the first week of the outbreak — People feared overall to get out of their houses, there was a shortage of mouth-covers (that were later found to be basically useless). It took several weeks to get back to normal.
Of course, with AH1N1 people started say
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H1N1 was the flu - flu makes a lot of money through flu shots, "treatments", symptom alleviation meds. By alerting the population, the sales of related product go through the roof. How many big pharma lobbyists do you think pushed the government to scare the population as much as possible in order to drive up sales?
Ebola, on the other hand, does not have a wide array of products from big pharma that the population would be *likely* to go out and panic buy/stock up on. So no-one is telling the head honchos i
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H1N1 is a "real virus".
And even though the case mortality rate of H1N1 is FAR lower than Ebola - the reason H1N1 is so scary is because it is FAR more contagious than Ebola.
e.g. it is MUCH easier to keep an Ebola outbreak contained if your healthcare system is even remotely decent than it is to keep flu contained. It's pretty much a given that each year, 1-2 different strains of flu WILL spread globally, and even with vaccinations, that spread is inevitable because it's so damn contagious. Also, I BELIEVE
Re:I feel like we are living in an 'outbreak' movi (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you give us a cite?
If I understand correctly, while there have been about 150 doctors and nurses who have died from the disease, none of them were wearing protective suits. In fact, all of them were working in 2nd tier clinics. All of these clinics had poor to no infection controls in place. Nobody has died in a major hospital which had infection controls in place. This strain of Ebola is not airborne – yet.
Re:I feel like we are living in an 'outbreak' movi (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you give us a cite?
If I understand correctly, while there have been about 150 doctors and nurses who have died from the disease, none of them were wearing protective suits. In fact, all of them were working in 2nd tier clinics. All of these clinics had poor to no infection controls in place. Nobody has died in a major hospital which had infection controls in place. This strain of Ebola is not airborne – yet.
Actually I think some of those were wearing some protective gear... but Africa is a hot climate. I was reading an article recently from a doctor there who commented how hot it gets in that gear, and you struggle even after an hour or two not to be wanting to 'wipe your brow' because of all the sweating you're doing in the suit (eyes, nose, mouth are vulnerable spots for contamination). And that was someone in the full-on "bunny suit" (totally sealed) - you can imagine the people who we've seen pictures of with only a 'riot helmet' face protection with a N95 mask under it and a Tyvek gown. And of course every time you walk out of the containment area you have to be disinfected...
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It is not so much that it is hot - which is a facotr - but that the system was not set up to handle something like this. Most of the reports I have heard have talked about nurses not being trained in infection control, hospitals running out of gloves, masks, disinfectant, etc.
Freak out! (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok everyone! Time to freakout!
Please ignore the fact that the majority of Africa has this under control, and the hardest hit areas are those with virtually no sanitation. This could be us!!! Did we mention Plagues are a harbinger of the apocalypse? Worry about your souls as well!
Syria? ... nothing to see there, move along sheeple. Please remain distracted, it's for your own safety.
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No one is ignoring Syria. Jesus. Syria is continuing to make headline news even on our shitty-as-fuck over-sensationalized 24 hour news networks.
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But they are continuing to ignore Benghazi. Clinton really muffed that one up.
(In some totally unspecified way, that you promise implicates her personal negligence, but none of the several politically forced official investigations have had any semblance of showing.)
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Everything has been about not freaking out an awareness.
What the hell is your problem? Syria is in the news everyday.
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Hmmm....I think most Americans not living under a rock know about Syria. Now, for the big question: What would you have us do about Syria? Think carefully now, no re-expression of existing proposed solutions, we all know those as well. The government is waiting breathlessly for your answer.
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Have us do? Why do we have to "do" anything? It's not our country. Those are not our people. Us "doing" things is precisely what got the middle east into the mess it's in now.
Freely available info on wikipedia should give you an idea of how we go about "helping" in the middle east:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
The majority of the horrible dictators, totalitarian governments and theological insanity that exists in that area of the world is
Kinda torn on this one (Score:2)
On the other, we have three (known) pharmaceutical companies busting their butts to bring a cure to market, and I'd expect quite a few more putting huge resources into "fling everything at the wall and see what sticks" R&D. So in six months, we might actually have a high-success rate tre
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Name one scare? Why are you banning flights for something that is this hard to spread? Why don't you want people with expertise and resource to fly in and help them?
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We keep getting this scares, and still, no ban on flights. It seems they want to infect US and Europe in purpose.
Oh please... Banning all flights? How's that going to help unless you totally ban travel to affected countries and how on earth are you going to enforce that?
As this virus currently works, it is unlikely to be a serious problem here. I remember when AIDS was all the rage back in the 80's. Everybody was up in arms and freaked out. How did that turn out? Well, some died, but nothing close to the dire predictions happened. Ebola has even a lower risk profile (in it's current form).
More people die in cars
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Just use bigger bullets. Like nukes.
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Re:Kinda torn on this one (Score:5, Interesting)
... The 'cures' being worked are anti-retrovirals that inhibit the viral replication,.
Your spot on except its plain anti-virals; ebola is not a retrovirus
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"As with all virii,"
nothing you say about this virus, or other viruses is worth reading once you use 'Virii'
" are anti-retrovirals"
see?
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You're forgetting that anyone who gets it now is an idiot.
Really? So a health worker that comes into contact with an Ebola patient that is undiagnosed and gets ill is an idiot?
Even though the virus is very dangerous . . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Ebola is normally infectious Only through bodily fluids. This puts health workers more at risk. 2. It is also very sensitive to light, especially ultraviolet rays from direct sunlight, This relates back to #1 and is one reason it doesn't spread well once it gets in the atmosphere. This is stuff I learned from when I worked at the Centers for Disease control.
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You mean *this strain* of ebola ....
How could hospital miss the obvious? (Score:2)
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Because it is TX. No insurance, no treatment. And they saw fit to reject the Affordable Care Act which would have expanded coverage. Smart move there....
Even before the ACA, if you showed up at the emergency room, they treated you with regard to your ability to pay. The ACA didn't change that one bit. Anybody gets treatment, insurance or not, even in Texas.
What TX rejected was taking the money from the Fed for implementation of parts of the ACA. So the only real difference is where you go to sign up for the ACA. Instead of going to a Texas website, you go to HealthCare.gov if you live in Texas.
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Hence, the "take two of these and come back if it gets worse" treatment.
My point exactly. If there is no insurance you get no detailed medical history taken, no thorough exam, no review by experienced clinicians, etc. It becomes a "do the bare minimum you can to comply with the law and move on" sort of health care.
Blindfolded, but can't see anything wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
How the fuck can the latter be stated with any kind of confidence in the same sentence as the former?
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This is what I came to ask. It seems to defy all logic, but it is an official statement - so what did I really expect?
Actually, it's not an official statement. It's something a reporter, Abby Phillip, wrote about something that was allegedly said. What the actual statement by Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson to the reporter was, is unknown.
Thirteen...year olds (Score:3, Funny)
House: Or, you're an idiot. (To patient) Are you a Slashdot user?
Patient: What?
House: Slashdot dot org. Do you read and post messages there?
Patient: Yes?
House: No human contact. The US is safe once again. Cameron, stop picking cases based on the bozos at the CDC.
Don't worry (Score:4, Insightful)
I keep hearing that the reason it's so bad in Africa is that they are incompetent in handling it. Surely we're more competent at such things.
Oh crap, now I'm worried!
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Admittedly they have seen Ebola before, but they seem to have a more modernized health care "infrastructure" (facilities) than the regions where Ebola is out of control. I would be willing to bet that the US has a much higher density of health care facilities with supplies and personnel.
Government breeds panic by saying not to panic (Score:2)
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Yeah, you are right. The Office of Total Information Control is in charge of doling out information to control the people, a conspiracy like no other. Is it a coincidence no information showing U.S. Government involvement in WTC planning or execution has been leaked? I think not.
well, that makes sense! (Score:2)
Brilliant! We can make a lot of problems go away by simply not looking for them.
How does that work? (Score:4, Insightful)
these [newly identified contacts] are not being watched or monitored and are not showing any symptoms of the illness
How does that work? If you are not watching or monitoring them how do you know they aren't showing any symptoms?
Stop treating it lightly. (Score:2)
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No, it's really not. It's like something out of CDC planning materials. They're taking exactly the precautions that make sense to take.
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With jazz hands?
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I don't have a bunker, but I do have a solid supply of food and water and a generator with gasoline. If I have to, I can avoid most human contact for a month or more. I never actually believed it would come to this, though - it's like something out of a movie.
See you in a month....
BTW, I think they have essentially contained the problem for now. We will know for sure in 21 days.
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Modding this down? Really? Parent is not coming off as nutty at all. If ebola becomes established in the USA, figuring out how to avoid human contact for the incubation period is a perfectly sane thing to do.
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Oh look, stereotypes. If there's one thing the ebola virus needs, it's more blame for its existance being laid on stereotypes. Definetly doesn't have enough of that in Africa. Nope.
This patient is a (presumably black) Texas resident who was born and partially raised in Africa. They have about as much chance of conforming to the stereotypes you describe as feces does of being pink and sparkly.
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They did reject the AFA after all. Which would extend treatment to many people instead of turning them away for reasons of no insurance.
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> They have about as much chance of conforming to the stereotypes you describe as feces does of being pink and sparkly.
Ooohh, I had that, it wasn't fun.
Re:Texas, land of the derp. (Score:5, Interesting)
The (1st) missionary doctor that contracted Ebola because he was treating people in Africa is from Texas. Although he's feeling much better now.
He's been giving blood so that serum can be made from it.
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oh, one more question (Score:3)
Of those 80 people, how many do you think work at the lochal grocery store, or a fast food restaurant? How many would be permitted to take time off for minor cold symptoms? How many could afford to do so?