Let’s hope not… the closest Walgreens to Presbyterian is the one closest to my house. (the hospital’s not far either).
I’ve read in several places that the strain of ebola ravaging west Africa is not as deadly as others. I think the death rate is only about 40% while the disease is typically deadly in 60-90% of people who get it.
Could this be a factor in why it’s so hard to contain this time? Is the fact that more people are living longer with the disease allowing them to infect more people (versus dying earlier and reducing the number of others exposed to them)?
Also, I asked a question about whether survivors of ebola go on to live normal lives. There weren’t many responses to that thread, but now that we have a very large number of survivors, how much permanent damage will they have? And are they now immune to the disease?
The type of medical care they can get is a HUGE variable in survival. If you get sick in a remote village with no medical care you are far more likely to die than if you’re at a quality hospital in a major urban center, even the strain in question is the same in both locations.
I think it has more to do with the infection breaking out in a more densely populated area than it has in the past.
Based on what limited information is out there, survivors are anticipated to fully recover BUT long term effects like joint pains, muscle pains, light sensitivity, skin conditions, and the like have been observed. In some cases these symptoms have persisted for years after the infection.
There is also the possibility of long-term organ damage from severe but survivable cases, of course, but most people can live with some organ damage given the redundancy and resilience of the human body. That doesn’t mean everything is wonderful, that sort of thing can still be debilitating and leave someone weaker and more susceptible to other health problems.
If I read this bit from the New England Journal of Medicine correctly yes, survivors are immune and this immunity has been seen to last up to 12 years after infection.
Please it is ravaging three countries , the Guinea Conakry, the Sierre Leone and the Liberia, which as you can see in this map of the economic region, are a small part of the West Africa region.
Thanks.
For me, the most notable thing about this outbreak is just how many people I know who were born or had babies there: they all mentioned it in the last 2 days. It’s apparently a universal urge.
I had my son up the street at Medical City. I don’t even know why I am mentioning it, except that clearly I suffer from the same strange urge.
It is nothing. But I thought it can be useful for people to see how compact this geographical expression is, as I see articles that are talking of Africa of West Africa even and it is absent any context that can tell people that this is like saying the USA is suffering a measles outbreak and in reality it is, for example, only the New York that is suffering it. Or saying the East of the USA is, when it is the New York.
I had knee surgery at Presby back in January as a matter of fact, and went in through the ER. From my perspective, it was pretty professional, very clean and nice as emergency rooms and hospitals go. My guess about this whole communication thing is that they just don’t see that many actual critical illness or injury cases there; I think most of those end up at Baylor or Parkland, and Presby mostly sees broken legs and busted knees (like me).
And for baby-birthing, Presby is pretty much right up there with Baylor as far as Dallas-area hospitals go in terms of quality. Parkland and JPS deliver more, but only someone indigent or nearly so would willingly go to either of those to have their babies.
There is at least one person, in isolation and, being tested for Ebola at a hospital in Toronto.
Toronto is as likely as anywhere outside of Africa to be ground zero for an Ebola outbreak. Hopefully the SARS outbreak of a decade ago taught us enough about dealing with dangerous, infectious diseases.
If I have a dream that an old woman is telling me to come to Nebraska, I’ll be worried.
I made Devil’s Tower National Monument out of my mashed potatoes. Does that mean anything?
Only a person showing symptoms would be contagious , and not via coughing or sneezing ??
Well, what if the conditions on the airplane ( perhaps the air conditioning is turned down? ) , or conditions in the tropics - warm and high humidity, means that air born route is possible in some circumstances ?
And well now we know europeans seem to have that gene for avoiding viral infections ? some are HIV resistant ?
So. .what if same or similar resistance in Caucasians (the crucible, the meeting point of the world … ) means some Caucasians don’t show serious symptoms but are able to spread the contagion. What if the symptomless carrier donates blood ?
Yes, only those showing actual symptoms are contagious. As for coughing/sneezing - no, not normally, unless they coughed right in your face from an inch away and covered you with snot and mucus, MAYBE. Now, if they’re at the bleeding-out stage and cough actual blood onto you, yeah, that would be a Bad Thing.
My god, you are determined to make this worse than it is, aren’t you? No, that would not make it airborne. Ebola is not airborne.
And what has that got to do with it?
First, the genes you are referring to are believed to have spread in response to the black death, which is a bacterial infection, and just coincidentally provide resistance to HIV.
Second, HIV and ebola are two entirely different types of viruses. It’s like saying lizards and pigs both have four legs so they’re the same thing. No, they’re not. Are there human genes that confer some resistance to ebola? Maybe. If there are they haven’t been identified as such and it would be a bizarre thing if they turned out to be the European anti-plague gene.
There are African genes that provide resistance to HIV as well, but they’re different than the European ones, and may or may not provide resistance to any other disease.
In any case, these genes do not provide protection against all viral diseases, only ones using certain mechanisms to infect cells. I do not know enough about either ebola, HIV, or the black plague to know if they’re all using the same tricks or not.
Good lord, here we go again - first of all, if anywhere is a place I’d describe as the “meeting place of the world” it’s the Middle East, not anywhere in Europe.
It’s the symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea, and bleeding that spread it because the virus lives in body fluids. If you aren’t spreading body fluids around you aren’t spreading the virus around. If you aren’t showing symptoms, most of which spread body fluids, you aren’t spreading virus.
My research on the topics via internet at reputable sites does indicate that men can spread it via semen for around a month after recovery, but remember, ejaculation is spewing of a bodily fluid. Unless you’re having sex with an ebola patient, or someone who has recently had ebola, that’s not a concern. Don’t have sex with ebola patients until several months after recovery, it’s a rule to live by, m’kay?
As for “symptomless carrier donating blood” - you mean, someone like Mr. Duncan between the time he contacted the virus and the time he fell ill? That’s being exposed to a bodily fluid, isn’t it? Yes, that could spread the disease but blood donors are a small portion of the world population and I think we can add “have you been in an area with active ebola in the past XX days/months?” to the screening. There are already questions about “have you traveled out of the country” in blood donation questionnaires. End of that problem.
Now, someone who has recovered from ebola has blood full of antibodies to the virus. Those people’s blood can actually help fight off an infection. In fact, some of the recovered doctors have given blood specifically so their antibodies can be extracted and used to treat others. In that case, blood donation doesn’t spread the disease, it helps fight it.