I’d like to point out that even the CDC says that Ebola can be transmitted by coughing and sneezing, just not as effectively as other diseases:
Isn’t that exactly what happened? Some dumb bastard broke the quarantine to go visit his family in Liberia and brought Ebola back with him?
Only one of those three posters made the kind of statement you were talking about. That being said, I probably shouldn’t have bothered because there’s no way to prove your hypothetical is wrong because it doesn’t take place in the real world. But Acsenray’s reasoning is solid. We’ve already had one poster who said we need to clamp down on immigration through Mexico to deal with a disease endemic to Africa, and another poster has already cited politicians making similar claims. Here’s another cite. The exact same kind of stuff was going around the House of Representatives before the latest Ebola outbreak. If you haven’t noticed this, you’re lucky or you haven’t been paying attention.
What the CDC described is not aerosol transmission, in which the virus particles travel through the air. What you’re describing is contact of body fluids- essentially spitting or getting nasal mucous on someone. While it sounds the same, in terms of transmission it’s really different. With aerosol transmission if I sneeze in a room, the virus can be breathed in by anyone around me. With Ebola I’d have to have a gob of mucous or spit hit me and enter.
I am no virology expert but I see other pathways to Ebola becoming more of threat than it suddenly becoming airborne (which I see as so improbable as to not worry about).
Right now individuals develop symptoms within 2 to 21 days after exposure, on average 8 to 10 days, and are infectious from time of illness onset (or who knows, maybe like some other viruses a day or so before symptoms appear). It then becomes clinically very severe quickly. If they survive they become noninfectious, except apparently via semen. If dead their blood and secretions are very infectious. The rapidity of progression limits its chance to spread, so long as the dead are handled with caution. Those exposed can be identified and isolated until past the risk window.
The mutations that would foster its spread and make it even more scary would be ones that slow down its rapidity. The current speed that it makes people sick and dead limits the opportunity for it to spread; evolve to kill fewer of those infected and to make them less sick but still infectious for longer, able to function and mingle unidentified, and you’ve got something that can really spread. A bit less deadly but many many more cases so a pretty damn high death count. That sort of mutation is not outrageous to expect once you have thousands of people infected.
Think what would be the result of that guy in Dallas under that circumstance. No one would have known he was out and spreading it until he got much sicker later and by then the damge would have been done, the chance to contain lost.
Investing BIG now in stopping this in it point of origin, in Africa, before it has a chance to possibly make such mutations in the future, is not just an altruistic thing to do. It is the best possible policy to protect ourselves. Sealing borders is impossible. Stopping its spread in its birthplace is difficult but achievable.
(Yeah that “liberal poo-pooing” comment was really dumb)
Just to return to this … be more worried about RSV and influena.
Entero 68 has been around since the beginning of August. That was when we pediatricians in the Chicago area started have an unseasonable number of preschoolers, mostly with a past history of wheezing, getting bad wheezing episodes and an uunseasonable number of admissions in that age group. We see this in January all the time, but August? Amongst ourselves; “Must be some new bug around.” By the time they named it the number of cases was already coming down. But of course then all media hell broke loose.
Those being officially identified are the smallest tip of an iceberg and it is remarkable that of all the cases across the country there have been only four kids who have died with Entero 68 identified in their system and none so far in which Entero 68 has clearly been able to been shown to be a major factor in their deaths. Compared to RSV this is nothing. Ebola it aint. It’s the other end: something that is extremely mild in almost all cases, severe in a relative few, and fatal virtually never. Problem for it is if it spreads widely enough by next season everyone will be immune. Bugs cause more problems when they are somewhere between Entero 68 and Ebola.
FWIW The coverage I was talking about was FOX News implying people sneaking in from Mexico would carry Ebola with them.
It can, if it has mutated to become seaborne.
Most of my doctor friends are still more worried about measles and whooping cough due to low rates of vaccination.
Me, I seem to be going through my own little cancer hot spot - over the past few years it seems like too many people I know have cancer - where it wasn’t a thing at all. Intellectually, I know most of that is age - and the ability of facebook to tell me someone I haven’t seen in 30 years but went to high school with is undergoing chemo. But emotionally, and therefore adding to worry, that’s a bigger deal.
As to humanity as a whole - boy it would suck to have my friends and family cut down by ebola - but philosophically we survived the Black Plague. It won’t be the end of humanity even if it would be really bad.
I suppose no one there has looked at a map.
Agree with DSeid, ISTM the main concern with this type virus is a mutation that would extend and maybe reduce a little the severity of the critical phase and thus lengthen the period of viable contagiousness. Not some farfetched near-scifi scenario where it somehow becomes spread by miasma while remaining just as devastating.
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If* Alien*-type xenomorphs were suspected to really exist, FOX News would imply there’s a risk people are going to be sneaking in from Mexico with those in their stomachs and the government’s not doing anything about that. It’s gotten to the point where decrying that the SW border does not look like the freakin’ DMZ is an end in itself.
[/side comment]
Well, yes, that is exactly what is happening. One of the major factors is funerals, which locally involve touching the body. It’s been very hard to stop this tradition, which people are clinging to even harder in a time of uncertainty and crisis.
The other factor is that there aren’t enough hospitals or healthcare staff, so most sick people are being cared for by family members- in houses that may have only one bed, no power and no running water or bleach. The options are to run the risk of infection, or watch your loved ones for alone.
The answer is plain and simple. Protecting the public is not top priority for them.
Honestly, I think that given there are people saying they have no idea how they got it because they were not in contact with the obviously ill, there’s a bigger threat than it suddenly becoming airborne - we learn that people are in fact infectious before they’re symptomatic, unlike what the CDC now claims. If it turns out that you can feel well and still infect people (say in addition to having Ebola you’ve got seasonal allergies and do a lot of coughing and sneezing due to that), international travel will be a valid concern after all. Are there many diseases that aren’t at all infectious until you’re symptomatic, anyway?
You may be able to locate a cancer epidemiology map for your hometown, Dangerosa. I found one for the area my mother grew up in, where my grandmother, two of my grandmother’s sisters and one of their brothers (a third sister died of ovarian cancer, so five out of eight siblings have had cancer so far), their mother, both of their grandmothers etc lived all their lives before they developed breast cancer, and all but my great-uncle died of it. Turns out that there is a much higher than average rate of reported breast cancer in that city and several adjacent ones.
Well, maybe he’s thinking of Africanada. 
We know they look at maps, especially on election nights. The question is, are they capable of understanding them? Evidence for an affirmative answer to that is slim.
Yes, liberals are well known for hating the public and even the private. Which of course, included them. :dubious:
Personally, I think I have a better chance of coming down with HIV than Ebola, despite the fact I was in Dallas earlier this week and have been celibate for the last 20 years.
Isn’t that a case of us being wrong about how the virus spread, rather than case of the virus itself evolving an entirely new medium of transmission?
Fox News is the television equivalent of the goofy tabloids that are at the supermarket. They sell on fear, prejudice and freak curiosity. If all you put in your mind is garbage, expect garbage to dominate your thoughts. Ebola is a rare disease that is really nasty in a country with poor sanitation practices it can spread but kills people so fast the spread will burn itself out. It is less transmittable than the influenza because it isn’t airborne.
The largest modern plague was the 1918 Swine Flu that killed more people in a few months than WWI in four years. Yet people don’t bother to get flu shots.
Useful graphic from NPR today: No, Seriously, How Contagious Is Ebola? : Shots - Health News : NPR
It is far more likely that rather than people sneaking in from Mexico with this virus that it will infect people in France - which has a large African population and fairly open travel. And that the secondary vector would be Europe - because lots of Africans visit Europe - lots live in Europe - and lots of Europeans visit Africa. (Particularly France, which held a lot of the region in question as colonies at one time). But that doesn’t fit the “close the boarders” narrative Fox wants.
I guess I should point out by Africa I should specify Liberia and the countries directly around them since Nigeria, which is apparently more westernized and better developed, was able to handle their outbreak with minimal issues. Teaches me to paint with a broad brush