How Nigeria Stopped Ebola 381
HughPickens.com writes Pamela Engel writes that Americans need only look to Nigeria to calm their fears about an Ebola outbreak in the US. Nigeria is much closer to the West Africa outbreak than the US is, yet even after Ebola entered the country in the most terrifying way possible — via a visibly sick passenger on a commercial flight — officials successfully shut down the disease and prevented widespread transmission. If there are still no new cases on October 20, the World Health Organization will officially declare the country "Ebola-free." Here's how Nigeria did it.
The first person to bring Ebola to Nigeria was Patrick Sawyer, who left a hospital in Liberia against the wishes of the medical staff and flew to Nigeria. Once Sawyer arrived, it became obvious that he was ill when he passed out in the Lagos airport, and he was taken to a hospital in the densely packed city of 20 million. Once the country's first Ebola case was confirmed, Port Health Services in Nigeria started a process called contact tracing to limit the spread of the disease and created an emergency operations center to coordinate and oversee the national response. Health officials used a variety of resources, including phone records and flight manifests, to track down nearly 900 people who might have been exposed to the virus via Sawyer or the people he infected. As soon as people developed symptoms suggestive of Ebola, they were isolated in Ebola treatment facilities. Without waiting to see whether a "suspected" case tested positive, Nigeria's contact tracing team tracked down everyone who had had contact with that patient since the onset of symptoms making a staggering 18,500 face-to-face visits.
The US has many of these same procedures in place for containing Ebola, making the risk of an outbreak here very low. Contact tracing is exactly what is happening in Dallas right now; if any one of Thomas Eric Duncan's contacts shows symptoms, that person will be immediately isolated and tested. "That experience shows us that even in the case in Nigeria, when we found out later in the timeline that this patient had Ebola, that Nigeria was able to identify contacts, institute strict infection control procedures and basically bring their outbreak to a close," says Dr. Tom Inglesby. "They did a good job in and of themselves. They worked closely with the U.S. CDC. If we can succeed in Nigeria I do believe we will stop it here."
The first person to bring Ebola to Nigeria was Patrick Sawyer, who left a hospital in Liberia against the wishes of the medical staff and flew to Nigeria. Once Sawyer arrived, it became obvious that he was ill when he passed out in the Lagos airport, and he was taken to a hospital in the densely packed city of 20 million. Once the country's first Ebola case was confirmed, Port Health Services in Nigeria started a process called contact tracing to limit the spread of the disease and created an emergency operations center to coordinate and oversee the national response. Health officials used a variety of resources, including phone records and flight manifests, to track down nearly 900 people who might have been exposed to the virus via Sawyer or the people he infected. As soon as people developed symptoms suggestive of Ebola, they were isolated in Ebola treatment facilities. Without waiting to see whether a "suspected" case tested positive, Nigeria's contact tracing team tracked down everyone who had had contact with that patient since the onset of symptoms making a staggering 18,500 face-to-face visits.
The US has many of these same procedures in place for containing Ebola, making the risk of an outbreak here very low. Contact tracing is exactly what is happening in Dallas right now; if any one of Thomas Eric Duncan's contacts shows symptoms, that person will be immediately isolated and tested. "That experience shows us that even in the case in Nigeria, when we found out later in the timeline that this patient had Ebola, that Nigeria was able to identify contacts, institute strict infection control procedures and basically bring their outbreak to a close," says Dr. Tom Inglesby. "They did a good job in and of themselves. They worked closely with the U.S. CDC. If we can succeed in Nigeria I do believe we will stop it here."
That works fine if you manage to nip it in the bud (Score:4, Insightful)
Once you have a couple dozen actual cases on your hands, this method is quickly overwhelmed. All it takes is for a few infected people to slip through and infect several people before they can be found and isolated. Nigeria did the right thing and was lucky.
Re:That works fine if you manage to nip it in the (Score:5, Insightful)
The Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital seems to have been overwhelmed with one case. That one case did not "slip through". he was turned away and sent home. Training was non-existent, proper supplies were not available. It's a fiasco.
Nigeria was more than lucky; they were prepared. Texas Health Presbyterian was not.
Re:That works fine if you manage to nip it in the (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, wait ...
Re:That works fine if you manage to nip it in the (Score:4, Insightful)
The basic problem with Ebola in the US is that everybody in the US who knows what to do about Ebola is over in Africa right now trying to stop it at the source. The folks still stateside are the B team.
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I'm pretty sure they're not actually on the team.
Re:That works fine if you manage to nip it in the (Score:5, Informative)
The Texas case just exposes (again) the fallacy that the US has the best healthcare in the world.
This hospital made too many amateur mistakes to count:
- Sent the guy home with antibiotics when he presented with a fever after travel to Ebola infected area.
- Did not institute full isolation protocol until three days after he was admitted (thus exposing nurses and other patients to the disease).
- Did not follow CDC protocol even after confirmed Ebola.
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Sent the guy home with antibiotics when he presented with a fever after travel to Ebola infected area.
THAT mistake I can understand. They've seen SO many cases of Ebola after all. But permitting scores of people to be in the room with the guy *after* they decided to test for Ebola was a preventable error. And failing to tell the folks involved in his treatment to stay away from public transportation for a safety period following their contact with a confirmed Ebola patient was total amateur hour. Seriously, WTF do we have a no-fly list for anyway?
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Nigeria was more than lucky; they were prepared. Texas Health Presbyterian was not.
This is the strange thing. It isn't like no one knew of the ebola threat, unless you didn't watch television, listen to the news, or use the internet. In addition, terrorist issues include biological warfare, a situation where similar isolation and contamination issues exist. Why didn't a hospital in Dallas Texas have materials on hand to provide a proper response - if it didn't have them.
Maybe we should spend a little less time and money militarizing our police forces, and more time and money getting ho
Re:That works fine if you manage to nip it in the (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the strange thing. It isn't like no one knew of the ebola threat, unless you didn't watch television, listen to the news, or use the internet.
It isn't that strange. Because if you did listen to the news or watch television, then no, you didn't know about the 'threat', because what has been repeated time after time is 'there is no threat, relax, we can deal with this, we're prepared'. Nigeria probably had a quite different message running through both media and government knowing that they have one single chance to stop this and that's at the source. Screw up a single thing and the preview of what happens was available next door.
Some like to think our health care standards make a difference, that the West is more civilized and it can't happen here. But the thing is, after a few ICU places and a few quarantine beds, modern medicine is left with aspirin and electrolytes as far as 'treatment' goes which doesn't give us much edge on African medicine. This needs to be taken as seriously in the developed world as it does in Nigeria, and we need to get useful treatments available _now_.
Re:That works fine if you manage to nip it in the (Score:4, Insightful)
Nigeria was more than lucky; they were prepared. Texas Health Presbyterian was not.
This is the strange thing. It isn't like no one knew of the ebola threat, unless you didn't watch television, listen to the news, or use the internet. In addition, terrorist issues include biological warfare, a situation where similar isolation and contamination issues exist. Why didn't a hospital in Dallas Texas have materials on hand to provide a proper response - if it didn't have them.
Materials and preparation cost money. Hospitals that don't have them make more money than hospitals that don't, unless they actually have an Ebola outbreak. Hospitals figure they never will, so they don't prepare.
That is what happens when you don't mandate preparation by regulation and audit compliance, and combine that with a competitive market-based healthcare system. Nobody has incentive to prepare for anything unlikely to occur. If anything does go wrong they just throw their hands in the air and say that nobody could have seen this coming and beg for help from the (CDC/Federal Reserve/FEMA/whatever).
Re:That works fine if you manage to nip it in the (Score:4, Funny)
That is if the nurse(s) knew anything about Liberia. My experience is that people of the United States do not know the difference between Liberia and Belgium.
That's silly. Liberia is where they get books, and Belgium is the place to go for waffles.
But seriously, even Fox news watchers seem to know it's in that country where "Those colored people live" and that it's Obama's fault.
Re:That works fine if you manage to nip it in the (Score:5, Interesting)
The hospital also waited until they got a positive Ebola test result back before taking any safety precautions. Staff were exposed for something like two days and administration resisted isolating the patient. The sample was sent through the normal channels for testing which potentially contaminated their tube system. High-risk individuals who treated Duncan were not placed in quarantine and they allowed something like 70 different people to come into contact with him. Then there's the issue of them initially prescribing antibiotics for a viral infection.
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Once you have a couple dozen actual cases on your hands, this method is quickly overwhelmed. All it takes is for a few infected people to slip through and infect several people before they can be found and isolated. Nigeria did the right thing and was lucky.
So you watched "The Stand" last night I take it? In real life it doesn't work that way. They are still using this method even in the hot spots where the potential contacts include just about the entire population. It lets them narrow down who to test and who to quarantine.
It only takes one ... (Score:5, Interesting)
It only takes one stupid uncooperative idiot ( maybe from a certain news station) to spread the disease.
And I wouldn't compare USA (or for that matter EU ) citizens to Nigerian citizens, Nigeria is known for it scare tactics, I don't see our governments try the same tactics without getting trouble back.
Let alone that no lower class person will stay home from their job for 3 weeks without pay, they will lose their job and get evicted.
Or is the government finally going to pay for those kind of expenses?
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Re: It only takes one ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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A non-issue. She called the CDC, which is the apex organization in dealing with this sort of thing, and they cleared her. It's called due diligence, and she exercised it, and the CDC is the one at fault.
If I were her, anybody filing against me would get an instantaneous counter suit for mental anguish as well for putting me through the legal process and not going after the CDC directly.
Re: It only takes one ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The experts only screwed up if it turns out that a low grade fever of less than 100.4 F actually indicates the Ebola patient has entered the contagious stage. (Her fever reached 99.5 F, less than a degree above normal.). What reasonable people here are debating is whether the current standard rules are enough or if we should adjust them further to 'err on the side of caution'. Personally, I would go with more caution by the CDC, AND more caution by the airline, but carry that far enough, and we take a flamethrower to a perfectly good airplane. Constant calls for more caution have associated costs, and need to come from people who generally think about consequences.
Unfortunately, some people in the discussion are neither reasonable nor unbiased. Bill O'Riley for example, is calling for mass firings and resignations at the CDC, going all the way to the top, but has been unwilling to even criticise the fact that his own party has blocked selecting a new surgeon general for seven months. If America does end up with Tens of Thousands dead, it will be because of people who are so political that they want immediate reprisals against people of the other party they think may have made mistakes that may contribute to deaths in the future, but no action taken when we already have at least one actual death and clear indications of actual negligence, unless there's political capital to be made and it doesn't step on anyone in their own party's toes.
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Wouldn't a person holed up in a bunker be in an very effective self quarantine? If they had the disease whether or not they recovered it would be contained which is a lot different than an Ebola contact nurse who jumps on a commercial airliner despite symptoms. Both are crazy but one is at risk of infecting no one, one just put thousands of people at two airports and on a tightly confined aircraft at risk. So which is more dangerous?
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Burn down the compound.
Both problems solved.
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This ain't no zombie apocalypse, son. Until the epidemic somehow makes the victim want to infect other people, e.g. people like you becoming cold-hearted enough to refuse food or health care to the infected, your scenario is pretty silly.
No, maybe not directly want to infect everyone but if everyone around you is dying, you're going to want to go somewhere that they're not.
So you get out any way possible. You might even see that you have a slight fever but you think, maybe it's not ebola, and anyways,
it's better to get to someplace that still has hospital beds available. For instance if mexico had a 30% infection rate of ebola, there is no
way you could stop the flood of people crossing the border (short of shooting them)
Our best bet at th
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For instance if mexico had a 30% infection rate of ebola, there is no way you could stop the flood of people crossing the border (short of shooting them)
Shooting then becomes an option doesn't it? When self preservation gives in to Political Correctness, we deserve the outcome.
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If you can't eat because no one will give you food, that's close enough to wanting to infect other people.
I don't see how that's silly at all.
Put 50 people with fake Ebola symptoms in 50 supermarkets in one (largish) city. See how quickly things escalate.
Re:It only takes one ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The math says there are at least fifty infected traveling around the country right this minute, two and a half weeks after his arrival.
And the real world evidence says none of them have come down with the disease yet, which is a strong indication that they aren't actually infected. Math isn't much use when your assumptions are wrong.
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You practically volunteered yourself, so please go to Dallas and let them know you'll be happy to help with containment.
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Wait, it's more safer to allow commercial airlines to fly back anyone back and forth from Libera to the United States
There are no flights from Liberia to the US.
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Re:It only takes one ... (Score:5, Interesting)
When my wife came back from Asia with a heavy fever in the swine flue days, she warned the officials and had to spend 24h in isolation for tests. She had to pay 1500€ for this as she was not a national. This don't motivate to declare anything, she had just graduated and was without money. Apply this to a bunch of people and many will skip warning about signs.
Re:It only takes one ... (Score:5, Funny)
Can't tell here if your chimney was built by pigs, or had a pig stuck in it.
Please clarify.
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Not by the hair of my chinney chin chin.
Re:It only takes one ... (Score:5, Interesting)
When H1N1 was spreading around Melbourne, people wouldn't go to the doctor if they thought they had caught it, because if you did and they diagnosed you with it you were legally required to take time off work and isolate yourself. People just didn't want the inconvenience, and taking your chances with swine flu didn't usually kill you. Ebola's a bit more risky to play with.
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Re:It only takes one ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I just heard that Obama wants SWAT teams to react to diagnosed Ebola cases. Talk about discouraging good behavior. I guess that is a more aggressive stance. If the host is dead, the disease will die too.
As much as I dislike Obama, I must respect the office. Obama wasn't talking SWAT teams with guns and other weapons, he was talking about rapid response teams specially trained in Ebola and other diseases. I want to believe you already knew that and just wanted to stir the pot.
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If only 'the people' were a government agency.
Re:It only takes one ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It only takes one stupid uncooperative idiot ( maybe from a certain news station) to spread the disease.
Oh, you mean when the CDC themselves clears a caregiver known to be in direct contact with Eric Duncan to fly on a commercial airline with a low-grade fever?
Yeah, you're right, it only takes one. Too bad that "one" is the CDC fucking up in the worst way possible.
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Perhaps like a nurse who traveled right after caring for an ebola patient?
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Have you missed the part where she asked the CDC for permission first?
The CDC is screwing this up big time.
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Yes, the non-ebola expert should not have listened to the ebola experts.
It's all her fault!
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It only takes one stupid uncooperative idiot ( maybe from a certain news station) to spread the disease.
And when that stupid idiot is thrown into jail for manslaughter the other stupid idiots will think about it.
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Just wait. W. African countries have been dealing with it for many months and only recently has the number risen high enough to make significance. Chances are Nigeria will be stricken too, the infection rate isn't slowing down in the other countries . The number of infections doubles every 16 days in Guinea, every 24 days in Liberia, and every 30 days in Sierra Leone.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2014/10/13/ebola-trends/
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Ebola vs HIV (Score:2, Insightful)
Ebola is not a smart virus, killing its host so soon. It can be handled quite easily -- just isolate the people and you have your results within a month. ... I don't get the comparison the CDC drew. HIV can spread easier and stays in the body for such a long time, giving the virus many years to contaminate more hosts before becoming problematic. It's a bigger problem by magnitudes.
HIV on the other hand
Re:Ebola vs HIV (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is that you can live with an HIV infection nowadays provided you are treated early and continuously, whereas there is a 50-90% chance of dying from Ebola.
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Tell that to the millions of people that die from it every year.
Ebola is like an airline crash. It's horrible to hear about and shocking... but likely to happen to you? No...
You are far more likely to get killed by HIV, The Flu, Heart Disease than Ebola. Even if we have a major outbreak here.
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You are far more likely to get killed by syphilis than Ebola.
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Prevent HIV -- put condom on penis.
Prevent ebola -- put condom on city.
Re:Ebola vs HIV (Score:5, Insightful)
One single case is meaningless (Score:2)
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But it's not just one case, it's 19, all of whom appear to have been prevented from spreading the disease to the wider population.
Not the same thing at all. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but Nigeria went "Isolate THEN test", the US is doing "Test (and by the time they test possible other people may be infected) then isolate" i.e. Nigeria took this seriously, the US isn't.
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To be fair, I think this is the problem with general population more than anything. With success of vaccines people forgot that there are actually crippling and lethal infectious diseases. They may intellectually understand it, but there's very little understanding on everyday life level. The current panic underscores it as well - first people underreact and now they are overreacting.
CDC is supposed to be professionals trained for this kind of a situation, but they're not immune to being well off for last h
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The current panic underscores it as well - first people underreact and now they are overreacting.
The shwinesflu scare a couple of years ago may also be an explanation for the initial under-reaction...
How to tell if you live in a 3rd World country (Score:5, Insightful)
Nigeria does it better.
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You cannot prevent an American citizen from returning home. However, a mandatory, no exceptions 60 day quarantine would have worked (60 days from departure of affected country).
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You cannot prevent an American citizen from returning home. However, a mandatory, no exceptions 60 day quarantine would have worked (60 days from departure of affected country).
Who is going to pay for that, the traveler? And do you realize that the absolute longest it would take to diagnose someone with Ebola is only 20 days from exposure? So why keep them quarantined for an additional 40 days? Perhaps you should do some research on the illnesses in question before you start suggesting solutions to prevent its spread?
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So people will go to another country, and then enter from there.
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Re:Contact tracing the second nurse (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, good luck with that. The last thing I saw on TV was people from her plane made hops to at least four states.
The President should have just ordered people with passports and travel stamps from these countries to not be allowed to enter the US.
A travel ban would kill more people than Ebola ever would.
Due to western workers refusing to travel to certain countries in Africa because of Ebola, the Cocoa crop has already been threatened:
http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
There are also travel bans between those countries. Because of that, the migrant workers that harvest them will have no work for the year. No income. Many will starve to death. MORE than would have been killed by Ebola. As bad as dieing from Ebola is, Starvation is worse.
Panic will always kill more people than the disease. Think critically before you demand action. The cable news networks are reveling in the profit they are making off of your panic.
Cultural attitudes (Score:5, Insightful)
It's one thing to have the official protocols in place. However the biggest problem is with cultural attitudes. If you have a huge portion of the population who are highly superstitious, and suspicious of the government, scientists, and modern medicine, as well as a lack of basic social safety nets, then you have a recipe for disaster. So what may have worked well in Nigeria is not guaranteed to be so effective in USA.
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It will never work here (Score:3, Insightful)
Obama's response to Ebola is driven by politics and media not science or health. Doing this here would of course be condemned as being racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, immigrantophobic, and anyway, we're way passed the point where it's even practical to conduct face to face visits. So much time has gone by that we're in the millions of visits needed. No I'm afraid the best approach is Obama's approach which is to do nothing and blame it on someone else until it burns itself out.
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NIH's budget was reduced by $446m from 2010 to 2014, and subjected to inappropriate politically motivated interference in its decision-making. The CDC's discretionary funding was cut by $585m during this same period. Shockingly, annual funding for the CDC's public health preparedness and response efforts were $1b lower for 2013 fiscal year than for 2002. These funding decreases have resulted in more than 45,700 job losses at state and local health departments since 2008.
- Judy Stone, infectious disease specialist
That doesn't seem like a very good October Surprise...
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Only a Liberal would equate getting incompetent people out of office as "people are dying", People are dying because of incompetency in the highest levels of government. Typical Liberal putting carts before horses.
Does Nigeria have subways? (Score:3)
This disease can spread from surface contact with contaminated fluids (which Ebola victims tend to leak profusely). Indoors, even dried fluids can remain infectious for hours. All it takes is to touch the fluids and then touch your eyes or mouth (which you do all the time) Something like the NYC subway provides very good conditions for spread, once the first sick people take a few trips
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This disease can spread from surface contact with contaminated fluids (which Ebola victims tend to leak profusely). Indoors, even dried fluids can remain infectious for hours. All it takes is to touch the fluids and then touch your eyes or mouth (which you do all the time) Something like the NYC subway provides very good conditions for spread, once the first sick people take a few trips
Stop spreading FUD.
You cannot get it that way.
Saliva does not count. You need to ingest Blood/Vomit to catch it.
By the time they are sick enough to be leaking that stuff, they would be in the hospital in this country.
In Africa they are much more used to going about their day while deathly ill. That's the problem.
The only people truly at risk in this country are Healthcare workers.
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You're a fucking liar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
"Human-to-human transmission occurs only via direct contact with blood or body fluid from an infected person (including embalming of an infected dead body), or by contact with objects contaminated by the virus, particularly needles and syringes.[24][25] Other body fluids that may transmit ebolaviruses include saliva, mucus, vomit, feces, sweat, tears, breast milk, urine, and semen. Entry points include the nose, mouth, eyes, or open wounds, cuts and abr
Wrong. Please read up. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, you absolutely can get it that way.
From the CDC: [cdc.gov]
"blood or body fluids (including but not limited to urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, breast milk, and semen) of a person who is sick with Ebola
objects (like needles and syringes) that have been contaminated with the virus
infected animals
Ebola is not spread through the air or by water, or in general, by food. However, in Africa, Ebola may be spread as a result of handling bushmeat (wild animals hunted for food) and contact with infected bats. There is no evidence that mosquitos or other insects can transmit Ebola virus. Only mammals (for example, humans, bats, monkeys, and apes) have shown the ability to become infected with and spread Ebola virus"
The problem in Africa is any fold. People lying and saying the people their to help are causing it. People spreading rumors that the people their to help are harvesting organs, The tradition of kissing the dead, the habit of not going to the doctor. Africans being target by peddlers of SCAMSs(Supplement, Complementary, Alternative Medicines). All of that is possible with exceedingly high levels of illiteracy, and a high belief in woo.
Problem with CDC guidlines (Score:3)
From the NYT today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10... [nytimes.com]
Federal health officials effectively acknowledged the problems with their procedures for protecting health care workers by abruptly changing them. At 8 p.m. Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued stricter guidelines for American hospitals with Ebola patients.
They are now closer to the procedures of Doctors Without Borders, which has decades of experience in fighting Ebola in Africa. In issuing the new guidelines, the C.D.C. acknowledged that its experts had learned by working alongside that medical charity.
But...
The Doctors Without Borders guidelines are even stricter than the new C.D.C. directives
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Just so you know.
The CDC guidelines for America are different then their guidelines for Africa.
The DWB guidelines are for moving around high level of infection rates.
tl;dr really? it's three line.
Yeah, we got this! (Score:2)
So glad we were [dallasnews.com]able to stop the spread of ebola here. [nypost.com]
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New York Post? I wouldn't even trust them to print the data without it being alarmist FUD.
Use better sources.
missing content = slanted story (Score:2, Interesting)
on a side note Nigeria also banned flights to/from these hotspots - Arik Air (Nigeria), Gambia Bird and Kenya Airways have suspended services to Liberia and Sierra Leone. source: https://www.internationalsos.com/ebola/index.cfm?content_id=435&language_id=ENG
Re:US,Nigeria (Score:4, Insightful)
So, USA is following safety standards equivalent to those in Nigeria?
American exceptionalism at its finest. We know everything, the rest of world doesn't know jack shit.
Keep having that attitude and Ebola from an insignificant problem in the US will become a great problem.
Re:US,Nigeria (Score:5, Insightful)
Countries do some things well, and other things badly. Apparently Nigeria has done a good job at stopping Ebola. We should respect that, and learn lessons from them on how to stop it here in the US.
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Re: US,Nigeria (Score:2)
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No, it learned them from the Ugandans.
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No, the US is hoping that it will be able to handle the situation as well as Nigeria did.
So far it isn't.
Re:US,Nigeria (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, interesting theory, that.
Both Nigeria and the USA began their ebola problems with one (1) Liberian man entering their country with ebola.
Nigeria ended up with ~20 ebola cases, of which 9 died.
So far, the USA has had ~3 cases, of which one has died.
Now, the USA isn't done yet. Probably. Maybe. We'll see.
But so far, our situation is essentially identical with Nigeria's, and our outcome is the same as or better than their outcome. Note the "so far" - it's important.
Re:US,Nigeria (Score:4, Insightful)
The performance so far does not inspire confidence. Mistake after mistake and being reactive instead of proactive.
So far neither the CDC (nor WHO) has explained exactly how more cases of Ebola in more locations leads to eventual control. Texas is an informative example of what to expect when Ebola shows up in a new location that has no experience with such an unusual and deadly disease.
[And the flu trolls have to stop. Flu is already endemic. Meanwhile Ebola must be prevented from becoming endemic. There is a very rational reason to be agitated by the apparent lack of competent response. Ebola has never before been contained after an outbreak this large. This outbreak is already twenty times larger than the largest successfully contained outbreak.]
Re:US,Nigeria (Score:5, Funny)
No, the US is hoping that it will be able to handle the situation as well as Nigeria did.
So far it isn't.
If we would only learn to allow the free market to decide.
Re:US,Nigeria (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. Typical Obama nanny state government thinks it's their business to protect us from ebola.
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So, USA is following safety standards equivalent to those in Nigeria?
Ever been to Africa? I have. They know a hell of a lot more about infectious disease than we do. They deal with it every day.
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They're Nigerians, not Americans.
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The single most informative bit of wisdom from the Bible is Ecclesiastes, this to address your sig.
If you have written me off as a religious nut, think again, it's fast and easy to read and will tell you everything you need to know about human life.
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My first script idea is a planeload of weaponized Ebola patients blasted to smithereens over New York City, raining bodily fluids down on the terrified populace. I'm sure a real creative type could come up with something better.
Tom Clancy did, and the number of deaths wasn't very high.
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They are assuming their audience isn't full of idiots.
But you managed to prove them wrong.
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It's not technology, it's money.
Also, improper application and removal of the gear. This is why hospitals are putting people in charge with the sole duty of being sure people put on and take off the gear properly.
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Burning Man.
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Not sure if you're delusional or trying too hard to be funny.
Re:Much Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, there is an incubation period of about a week (the time between infection and transmissibility). You can still have geometric progression and not really know it for a couple of months before it becomes a crisis.
That said, Ebola has been around for years in Africa, where people don't have some basic sanitary practices. Even with a long incubation period, we'd have already seen a global outbreak if this virus were really as bad as the fear-mongerers are making it out to be.
Keep in mind that there's a difference between an exposure from one viral particle (as you might get from being handed a beverage cup) and a mass of them (handling the bodily fluids of the exposed as a nurse would). With one particle, your immune system has time to detect and react. It is those exposed to the mass particulates who will likely die.
I'll do what I can to avoid being exposed. I'll wash my hands, cook my food, and stay away from obviously sick people. Since I'd have done that anyway, my life hasn't changed much...