Oh, please - I brought that up ages ago but hey, if you’re only reading for panic maybe you missed that.
But, you know, unlike HIV it’s pretty easy to know who has had Ebola - oh, excuse me, weren’t you the gent who last week was vomiting, shitting, and bleeding from his eyeballs? Unlike HIV where people remain asymptomatic for years and can spread the disease while symptomatic, with Ebola if you aren’t sick/symptomatic you aren’t contagious except for that post-infection sperm thing, in which case don’t have sex with anyone who has had Ebola in the past two months. That’s what, about 2-3 months max a person is going to be a concern? Unlike HIV where you would be contagious for years, even decades.
The Earth could get hit by a space rock the size of Mt. Everest tomorrow. The Yellowstone supervolcano could blow its stack. None of these are small problems either. You’re worried over something unlikely.
Yes, Ebola should be watched. But the world would be better served if people would stop being so damn worried about mutation and locking up the non-contagious and put some more effort and material into dealing where there actually IS an outbreak occurring!
People who are not exhibiting symptoms are not contagious.
Yes, but most people with flu haven’t been to Liberia recently. It’s the combination of high fever plus patient history that’s important here.
Not much of an issue in the US, is it? How many junkies travel to and from West Africa?
you’re repeating this after admitting it’s false. One does not have to show symptoms to spread the disease.
Yes, except people LIE. That’s why patient zero was sent home the first time. The world doesn’t revolve around your sense of social awareness and you can’t make policy based on it. Policy should be based on human factors and in the real world these diseases spread because people don’t behave as you would like them to.
How many people were junkies when AIDS came over? You’re just hand waving this away.
Hey, I know, I can take a tube of blood from a really sick person, store it in a freezer for two years, and then pull it out and inject someone with it. The patient is still “contagious” even though he might have been dead and cremated 23 months ago.
You’re the one who is playing dictionary games, and you aren’t doing it well.
Before you get sick no, you can’t spread the disease. AFTER you survive, IF you are male, you can potentially spread it through sex. Not before you get sick.
Given how many people who survive Ebola show residual effects - extreme fatigue, joint and muscle pain, visual problems like sensitivity to light - I’m not sure you can describe them as “symptom-free” either.
No, Thomas Duncan - you are allowed to use his real name rather than dehumanize him as “patient zero” - was sent home because an ER triage nurse dismissed some very vital bits of information. Namely, someone with a 103 degree fever had just come from Liberia. If that nurse had done her job properly, said, “Hey, guys, we might have Ebola here, this guy with a high fever is from a hotspot” he could have been admitted to isolation that night.
Duncan did not lie at the hospital. He was entirely honest about his travel history. Stop pinning the blame for a hospital staff screw up on the patient.
…just watched this video, seemed appropriate for this thread. (The difference between US and UK ebola coverage, mostly safe for work apart from a couple of mild swear words.)
You’re trying to wow me with Ron Klain’s resume, and it isn’t working. Klain would be a perfectly fine appointment to be Attorney General for the next few years. He has no background that qualifies him as Ebola czar.
I repeat, this has nothing to do with Obama per se. This is just business as usual in Washington. If Mitt Romney were President and he’d made Ted Cruz (who’s also a top notch Harvard law school grad) Ebola czar, I’d wonder what the hell HE was thinking, too.
In my experience, doctors tend not to be great managers and administrators, for the same reason that pitchers tend to be lousy hitters. It’s a completely different skill set.
We’ve had ten Secretaries of Health and Human Services since 1980, when the department was renamed, and exactly two of them were physicians. If there was any outcry about the other eight, I don’t remember it.
If Obama had really wanted to be a dick about it he could have appointed his Surgeon General nominee.
As I said earlier, if, after consulting with the CDC, Obama genuinely believed there was no serious risk of an Ebola explosion in the USA, he should simply have said so. He should have said, “We have this situation under control, we have the best possible people in charge, and there’s really no need for an Ebola czar. There are MANY more serious threats facing America right now.”
Sure, Hannity and O’eilly might have gripoed, but so what? If that statement was accurate, the whole thing would have blown over in due time.
By appointing a czar, ANY czar, Obama was folding. He was saying, in effect, “We DON’T actually have this under control- the situation IS serious enough to require a serious new position to oversee it.”
Well, if the situation IS serious, Ron Klain is all wrong for the job. But if the situation is NOT that serious, why appoint a czar? Just to signal the public that “We care, and we’re doing SOMETHING”?
The role of Ebola czar is, IMHO, as much to soothe the nerves of the huddles masses as it is to actually tackle the problem at hand. And in that view, Klain isn’t the right person for the job. He doesn’t have the gravitas nor medical experience that the public want in someone who can soothe their concerns.
To put it in pop culture terms:
The Ebola Czar need not be a great organizer. He/she needs to be a great communicator with sufficient experience so that the panicky public will believe his message.
This is simplistic nonsense. 6am no fever, noon, fever/infectious. According to you the person is not infectious at 6am. In reality someone could go jogging and work up a sweat and pass off the virus prior to outward signs.
I got a long list of friends who suffer from fatique, joint and muscle pain. It’s called getting older.
According to the nurse who dealt with him he lied about his contacts. Quote: “I explained to him, ‘We are under the impression that you may have been exposed to Ebola.’ And I said, ‘Where are you from?’ And he told me Liberia,” she said.
“And I asked ‘Have you been in contact with anyone who’s been sick?’ ”
“No. He said no,” Rose said.
Liberiasaid he lied on his exit documents and threatened to arrest him. He did just exactly what people do, he lied about his situation. Again, people don’t act according to your standards of behavior.
In the age of the internet all of this information is available. You were wrong about children not getting it. they have the same rate of infection as the men. you were wrong about it only be infectious when people show symptoms. It can be in semen or sweat. You were wrong about Duncan lying. He lied to board the plane and he lied in the hospital.
It’s not about the Duncan. As patient zero his actions infected 2 other people. Luckily they were in the medical field yet one of them traveled after following the directions of the CDC. A doctor who was suppose to be self monitoring traveled all over the place. These are responsible people in the medical field.
We can’t control people if they lie to screeners. Once it transitions beyond likely carriers to people who can’t pinpoint how they got it then there is no system in place to track it.
You keep thinking in terms of well intentioned people traveling from point A to point B based on your standards of behavior. In the real world 7 billion people travel where they want, when they want and interact with who they want, how they want. They go to World soccer tournaments, Religious events, Vacations, or work related travels to overseas operations.
Er, no. Firstly, someone at the infectious stage of Ebola isn’t going to be jogging anywhere. And secondly, “working up a sweat” doesn’t somehow create magical airborne Ebola that will kill passers-by.
Ebola is really, really hard to catch. That’s why only a few thousand people have ever caught it.
Do you have a cite for this? The doctors who work with Ebola say that you aren’t infectious until you already have started to show outward signs. What is the basis for your claim that contradicts theirs?
Well, largely, yeah. But we go through the motions, because ignorance and combating it go together like Ebola and intensive care.
(Ignorance can be acquired by casual contact with persons who have it. There are few outward symptoms of ignorance. Occasional epidemics of ignorance have swept across entire countries. Fortunately, there is a cure.)
The 4000 people who died from it did so in a short period of time. Thus the concern. If it was really really hard to catch they’d still be alive. And yes, someone carrying the virus can go jogging or bowling and work up a sweat. And people who sweat touch other objects or people who can then contract the disease by rubbing their eyes.
to say it’s not infectious unless someone exhibits symptoms is nothing but a soundbite. It doesn’t hide in a little pocket in the body and suddenly spring forth at 101 deg of body temperature.
I’ll ask: if anyone thinks the situation is REALLY all that serious, then is the US the wrong country for you???
Remember, your tax dollars (going forward) might be spendable on any country on the planet. Get Thee Shoppin’…!
(I hear that Price-Line gives great deals on flights too.)
Do you really think a virus lays dormant until body temperature rises like some kind of jack-in-the-box? Where is it hiding during this transition? Do you think everybody reacts the same?
What’s going out for public consumption doesn’t even match policy. A single nurse publicly complains about being quarantined and the President asks the states to release her yet the US soldiers under his command are under [del]quarantine[/del] “controlled monitoring”.
It’s clearly a very dangerous virus capable of rapidly infecting a population and it’s being treated as such when someone has it.