ebola, anyone else mildly terrified?

ebola, anyone else mildly terrified?

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B17NNS

18,506 posts

246 months

Thursday 16th October 2014
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marked1 said:
Interesting video of how the ambulance workers have to deal with Ebola in Monrovia. Looks terrible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBbsnyqlihs
Heartbreaking frown

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Thursday 16th October 2014
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plasticpig said:
That was me. One possible explanation apart from the fruit idea is that they eat infected bats. If cooking doesn't kill the virus totally it must surely degrade it quite a bit?

Might be a stupid idea as I don't know enough to know how a degraded RNA virus would behave.
I do wonder whether they are actually immune or just test positive - Reston tests positive for Ebola Zaire in immunofluorescent assay against the Mayinga antibodies, but apparently monkeys which survive Reston aren't immune to Zaire. I Say apparently because the claim isn't referenced, but I'm sure it must have been investigated as a possibility. Maybe these people have been exposed to another strain which leaves them testing positive (like the Reston monkey handlers and Filipino pig farmers). Whether it makes them immune...

superlightr

12,842 posts

262 months

Thursday 16th October 2014
quotequote all
B17NNS said:
marked1 said:
Interesting video of how the ambulance workers have to deal with Ebola in Monrovia. Looks terrible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBbsnyqlihs
Heartbreaking frown
Humbling.

geeeman

1,310 posts

254 months

Friday 17th October 2014
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that brave nurse must have some great inherent immunity


so sad that they dont get more help from the west..


a colleague of mine is going to S.L to offer help, hes a US doctor, all through funding he has raised himself.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Friday 17th October 2014
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Or just very, very good at being careful.

geeeman

1,310 posts

254 months

Friday 17th October 2014
quotequote all
otolith said:
Or just very, very good at being careful.
doesnt seem likely, when elsewhere nurses with full barrier protection and only one patient to deal with contract the virus. Hes been doing that job for months..

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Friday 17th October 2014
quotequote all
The infection rate per case for western nurses is pretty poor compared to Africa, although maybe all the careless African nurses are dead. We should maybe get him to come and train our lot!




ecain63

10,588 posts

174 months

Friday 17th October 2014
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Glad I've left the Marines. No way would i be agreeing to go to Sierra Leone to get involved in this ebola st. Knock off some ISIS scum: Yes! Contract ebola with no thanks for doing it: Jog on boss. You can keep that.

Bill

52,485 posts

254 months

Friday 17th October 2014
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otolith said:
The infection rate per case for western nurses is pretty poor compared to Africa, although maybe all the careless African nurses are dead. We should maybe get him to come and train our lot!
There haven't been enough cases to draw conclusions imo, particularly as they weren't using PPE initially in Dallas.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Friday 17th October 2014
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I had the impression that both of the people who got infected were treating the patient after diagnosis and had PPE - though the CDC has criticised the way they used it. I would classify handling a patient without PPE or without wearing it correctly as insufficiently careful, though!

plasticpig

12,932 posts

224 months

Friday 17th October 2014
quotequote all
otolith said:
The infection rate per case for western nurses is pretty poor compared to Africa, although maybe all the careless African nurses are dead. We should maybe get him to come and train our lot!
It's only MSF who have a good reputation with regards to infection rates. The government health systems in Afirca have a dire reputation. Hardly surprising since MSF are more experienced at treating ebola than anyone else. Using MSF's procedures wouldn't be a bad idea. They are after all proven and they are using level 2 PPE. It's the main thing which suggests to me that ebola is not airborne.

bosshog

1,574 posts

275 months

Friday 17th October 2014
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plasticpig said:
It's only MSF who have a good reputation with regards to infection rates. The government health systems in Afirca have a dire reputation. Hardly surprising since MSF are more experienced at treating ebola than anyone else. Using MSF's procedures wouldn't be a bad idea. They are after all proven and they are using level 2 PPE. It's the main thing which suggests to me that ebola is not airborne.
I read a couple of days ago (can;t remember where) that MSF headquarters (in Brussels?) phone has been going 'off the hook' from governments calling them asking how to deal with it. They are/have an information pack/solution .

Really the leaders in the world for dealing with this are MSF, then I'd argue the Nigerian government. The West are still clueless IMO.

Lost soul

8,712 posts

181 months

Friday 17th October 2014
quotequote all
B17NNS said:
marked1 said:
Interesting video of how the ambulance workers have to deal with Ebola in Monrovia. Looks terrible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBbsnyqlihs
Heartbreaking frown
This shows how ignorant of the problem the locals are , if that were me you would not see me for dust yet they all crowd around the body shouting and protesting

B17NNS

18,506 posts

246 months

Friday 17th October 2014
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Lost soul said:
This shows how ignorant of the problem the locals are , if that were me you would not see me for dust yet they all crowd around the body shouting and protesting
yes Education needs to be a key weapon in this fight. When that poor young girl was taken home to die because there were no beds. A lad sat on the step just feet away. You just know he's got it now.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Friday 17th October 2014
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They know it's dangerous, nobody wants to get too close, but they are angry because they want it taken away and they are all (rightly) too scared to touch it. Wonder what the infection risk is from flies crawling on it?

Mr Whippy

28,946 posts

240 months

Friday 17th October 2014
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XJ Flyer said:
Mr Whippy said:
XJ Flyer said:
TTmonkey said:
Bill said:
TTmonkey said:
It's Monday morning.

So you're sat on the plane (transatlantic flight) next to some person that's acting just a little strange, Perhaps they have a cold. It's flu season, every other person in the northern hemisphere has a bit of a snuffle. Perhaps their just nervous flyers. You see them on every flight, very tense, especially on take off.

Later in the flight, They ask you to let them out of their window seat so that they can go to bathroom.

They're gone for a few minutes, but soon return, looking a bit refreshed.

As they pass you in your aisle seat they put their hand on your seat arm to steady themselves.

What you don't know is that they've got a bit of a dicky tum too. Never mind, they washed their hands, right?

You settle down for the rest of your long flight. The person next to you sleeps the whole way.


A week later the government announces that a nurse that reported sick has tested positive for Ebola. The nurse was on your flight. You feel ok though.


How confident do you feel now? In the cold light of day, do you still believe the authorities when they say its very hard to catch? And when there's a knock on the door, and there's a guy in a bio suit, who tells you you'll be just fine. You're going to believe what you've been told over the last few weeks, aren't you....? After all the person on the plane didn't puke on you..... There was no excrement anywhere, was there? They didn't show signs of dying from Ebola, did they?
I don't need to be reassured by the government, I can read and understand the research and ignore the scare mongering.

ETA if it was as easy to catch as people fear then it would already be vastly worse than it is.
So when I wrote that, the US authorities said the nurse didnt show any signs of being infected whilst she travelled and that no one need worry.

However, within hours, the authorities have confirmed that she was in fact sick before/during travel.

Do you not recognise that sometimes the things that you are told are true at the time they are told to you, but turn out not to be true sometime later?



I'm not saying people are lying, just that they are repeating 'known facts' which are nothing more than 'what we know now/what we knew at the time'. Things change, and I beleive we dont know enough about this virus to make some of the 'cast iron' statements that some people have been making.
What it does prove is that someone can be ill enough to transmit the virus but still well enough to travel.Whereas the open door travel supporters case seems to be based on the idea that someone would need to be collapsed and pouring out infected fluids to be threat.
Really they have no clues because it's never travelled so far or had so many cases.

Imagine such a passenger on a 24hr+ flight around the world. They could be quite ok and significantly symptomatic by the other end.


I agree though, they're playing with fire by taking the risk it poses so liberally.

Dave
I think we can logically make the link that someone had symptoms but was still well enough to travel,the disease is capable of being transmitted from the point when symptoms of whatever type appear.Which probably explains why all those who were potentially in contact with that situation are now in the process of being traced and obviously then quarantined.Meanwhile the WHO are saying no problem and no need for travel restrictions to/from the infected areas in Africa wether that be 'aid workers' or the population of those areas.We wouldn't allow such movement in the case of foot and mouth hotspots in farm livestock so why is it ok in the case of Ebola in people .Perceived financial issues seems to be the driving force in either case.
The FMD is an interesting compare.

Many moons ago I ended up putting a map together with appropriate data for that one, with the appropriate zone sizes etc, and from the initial case to the last, the spread and count didn't seem impeded until it'd covered Cumbria and a bit further. It looked just like that scary map in 'Outbreak' where it just arithmetically expands and covers North America.

Individually we're smart, but politicians and groups are tremendously thick and it seems like it's safer logic to respond to what you see, not what could be and most likely will be expected a few weeks or months down the line.

OK it's risky to jump the gun, but conversely if you don't get ahead when you have the chance you'll never have control of it.


Tough decisions all round, but if it does start to get out and about then there won't be much we'll do to really stop it. Maybe slow the rate it does it, but it'll get around.

bosshog

1,574 posts

275 months

Friday 17th October 2014
quotequote all
Mr Whippy said:
Maybe slow the rate it does it, but it'll get around.
This. I think people miss this point completely - it is slow to move about , but it very hard to stop and given the death rate.. People compare it to flu saying its less contagious - but it doesn;t matter - the end result will be the same - the same amount of people will get it (over a longer period) but way more people will die.

Watch this through to the end. You see its slow to progress but the end result is it has the most deaths

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/healt...


Mermaid

21,492 posts

170 months

Friday 17th October 2014
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Follow the money - early in the week, US stocks dropped on worries about Ebola (amongst other things)

US stocks have rebounded 5% last 2 days. It seems, for the moment, that Ebola has been factored in.

TransverseTight

753 posts

144 months

Friday 17th October 2014
quotequote all
The thing that worries me is the area now covered. This is in poor areas of Africa where people don't commute 30 miles by train / car every day. I.e. spreading to a new group. Most people walk a mile or 2 at most or get a 15 seater local mini bus to somewhere within the same town. All it's taken is a few people here and there going somewhere else, and you have a whole new village/subdistrict infected.

I think the real thing that will stop it is when locals start paying attention to the authorities and taking basic precautions. My other half is from West Africa and I've been watching some of the attitudes to Ebola on Facebook groups. I've got to the point where I'm replying to posts with "STFU if you don't know what you are talking about". Rather than thinking it's staying away from people and hand washing, they think it's a conspiracy by the west to kill reduce the black population and its the nurses and doctors injecting them with poisons. rolleyesvomit

I was arguing it's a bit of a risky way to go about it considering it can spread back home, especially when we have nuclear weapons that could do the same job in a few seconds. But I've given up. Just tell them to stop eating bats and to use toilet paper instead of bowls of water to wash their arse that some one else used earlier. That was in response to someone saying all white people have skidmarks in their pants. LOL. Racism goes both ways.

Snoggledog

6,948 posts

216 months

Friday 17th October 2014
quotequote all
TransverseTight said:
The thing that worries me is the area now covered. This is in poor areas of Africa where people don't commute 30 miles by train / car every day. I.e. spreading to a new group. Most people walk a mile or 2 at most or get a 15 seater local mini bus to somewhere within the same town. All it's taken is a few people here and there going somewhere else, and you have a whole new village/subdistrict infected.

I think the real thing that will stop it is when locals start paying attention to the authorities and taking basic precautions. My other half is from West Africa and I've been watching some of the attitudes to Ebola on Facebook groups. I've got to the point where I'm replying to posts with "STFU if you don't know what you are talking about". Rather than thinking it's staying away from people and hand washing, they think it's a conspiracy by the west to kill reduce the black population and its the nurses and doctors injecting them with poisons. rolleyesvomit
Rather sad if that's what the West Africans are really thinking. Are we really disliked that much in that part of the world?