The Nigeria is not “more westernised” than either the Liberia or the Sierre Leone. It does have better government and better health care systems. Not even good ones only better than the extremely bad states of the Liberia and the Sierre Leone which have never recovered fully from the nearly twenty years of civil war.
If I wanted to wring my hands over something mutating and killing us all I’d be worried about swine or bird flu.
Conservatives have stronger fear responses compared to liberals, particularly due to differences in the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex. Except for where it butts heads with monied interests – global warming, corporate malfeasance – I think this explains their stance on a lot of issues in general.
No, that’s perfect. They’d love to rag on France again. Or make fun of Europe’s lax borders and socialized healthcare.
Is that a fetish or a hobby? Surely it’s not a job description, is it?
Do diseases become airborne very often? I always thought that was just a plot element from Outbreak (great film, BTW, Dale Dye is in it, playing the same character Dale Dye plays in every movie he’s in, which just so happens to be one of my favorite characters).
I think it’s just straight forward politics-- Ebola is pretty scary, and people are trying to pin that on the administration somehow. If they had done a full-on lockdown, we’d be hearing all about how Ebola is just an excuse for destroying civil liberties and they are keeping the people in quarantine hostage, etc.
Or better still, a globe. – It is the people in Maine who should really be worrying. 
Or, more likely, their amygdylas and anterior cingulate cortices are different because they are more fearful.
Conservative leaders love to scare the fucking shit out of their base, and their base fucking loves to be scared. It’s a perfect match. Beware the deadly disease from the Dark Continent carried by those dark foreigners. Your white American way of life, nay your very white American life is in danger! Danger, I say Danger, Danger, Will Robinson! See what happens when a black guy is in the White House? See? Between the Muslim beheading menace and these killer black African viruses, if you don’t vote Republican this year you’re going to die!
Answer per this virology blog:
Also pointed out there:
I can find the article discussing that Ebola has accumulated 395 mutations over 10 years and apparently 50 of them in the first month of that period, and the lede calling that “mutating rapidly” but does anyone have any knowledge of how that compares to other viruses such as influenza A or HIV?
See, the problem with answers that are “plain and simple” is that they’re pretty much always WRONG.* Could you show your work, please?
*The most famous exception being: Q: why are there so many worms on the sidewalk after it rains? A: because the worms crawl out of their holes to avoid drowning
Here’s my beef with the media/professionals regarding the risk of getting Ebola.
They are IMO making it sounds like its as hard to get as HIV. And its not.
So, they risk the chance that somebody in the US or Europe will get it from casual interaction they keep “poo pooing” as nothing to worry about.
After that their credibility will be shot, which will not be helpful in preventing undue panic.
Well, they’re backtracking the patient’s contacts, and they sterilized his home, so it’s wrong to say they aren’t taking it seriously.
It’s pretty obvious that they’re doing the best they can to make the public aware of the facts, at least as far as anyone actually knows.
What do you want them to say? What, exactly, would satisfy you in terms of a public service announcement from the CDC or the Surgeon General?
This is the trouble with criticism-based opposition: the establishment can never do anything right, because, no matter what they do, you can say, “They didn’t go far enough” or “They went too far.”
Put up or shut up: write a PSA text that would exactly satisfy you.
It’s also really easy for the government to do “too” much and then get flak for that. The moment a critical mass of “innocent” people start being inconvenienced by fever checks and quarantines, watch the critics go berserk about the government using Ebola as a ruse to take away civil liberties. The government can’t win in a situation like this.
So if it cannot be accurately boiled down to a 30 second PSA then what is the responsible approach?
So here’s my 30 second soundbite about ebola. I would have it voiced by a Médecins Sans Frontières doctor dressed in the modified (i.e. inadequate) protective equipment.
Doctor: Ebola is a deadly disease.
<Camera pans an ebola clinic ward>
Doctor: There is no cure for ebola but early supportive care can increase the chance of survival. Early symptoms commonly include fever, muscle pain, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, stomach pain, and/or unexplained bleeding. Most patients do not have all of these symptoms. If you experience any of these symptoms, seek medical attention. Be sure to tell the doctor if you have come into contact with any patients known to have ebola or if you have traveled to any of the affected areas of West Africa.
<Camera switches to scene of an ebola burial team>
Doctor: Ebola is known to be spread by contact with bodily fluids from an infected patient. Ebola virus is known to be present in blood, saliva, semen, stool, tears, and breast milk of infected patients. Further research is need to confirm if the ebola virus may be present in urine, vomit, sputum, and sweat of infected patients. It is safest to assume, for now, that any bodily fluids from an ebola patient may be infectious.
It is important that deceased patients be considered infectious and their bodies must be handled by specially equipped teams. Families must not wash the deceased in preparation for burial.
<Camera switches to view of research lab>
Doctor: Researchers are working hard to better understand the ebola virus. This is important to ensure we can accurately test for the presence of ebola. We hope research will lead to better treatments. Some experimental treatments are in development. The virus is known to be mutating quickly. Several of my colleagues died in the process of gathering the data to understand how ebola is changing.
<Camera fades to doctor walking back into ebola clinic. He lays down in a patient bed.>
Is that 30 seconds? Too detailed for a sound bite?
I think what the OP is hitting on is the idea of hubris.
In terms of case numbers and deaths ebola, we have collectively about as much experience as we had with AIDS by mid 1984. That was pre-Ryan White. Just a year after the LAV (later caller HTLV-IIII and eventually HIV) virus was isolated and around the time researchers had confidence that this virus caused the various maladies that would later be dubbed AIDS.
That was how it was announced. There was a confidence to that statement that still left open the possibility of being wrong.
And at a similar point in our patient care experience we were still wrong about some aspects of AIDS transmission. It was not yet confirmed that the virus that would later be called HIV could be spread from mother to child by breastfeeding, for example. But no one was out there saying it couldn’t be spread that way.
And when the same CDC director spoke of the future of AIDS research, she spoke in terms of hope. But not in terms of certainty.
Is there something on the CDC site now that you think speaks with more certainty than is indicated?
No, certainly not. But…well, you provided a 30 second ad script, and I don’t think you would have written up a full-length newspaper or magazine article!
Actually, thank you for taking the time and effort to do this. That’s admirable.
That’s actually pretty darn good. I think it is a little too alarmist, but that’s kind of what this debate is about. What is the right tone? Your example isn’t what I would recommend, but it’s certainly not panicky. If I saw it on TV, I wouldn’t jump up and down in outrage.
My primary objection would be that such a spot serves no purpose, at least not now. There’s one (count him, one!) case in the U.S. right now (and there were two others previously, when health workers were transported here.)
Sure, we don’t want to wait till all the cattle have fled before we shut the barn door – but broadcasting that PSA now seems to risk too much of a false alarm.
I think the OP was trying to make a health issue into a partisan issue, and that’s bad science and bad politics.
I’ve looked for actual studies backing up statementssuch as:
“Recovers” is a bit of an ambiguous term in this regard. There is science backing up the notion that ebola has been found in semen after a patient is asymptomatic. But, as far as I can tell, there is little study about how viral loads and/or infectiousness drop as a patient recovers. I could find data from precisely one study that looked at one patient and how his viral loads changed during the course of his disease. (He recovered).
-OR-
We actually don’t know if the virus is present in sweat. I linked to a study previously where sweat was tested for viral particles. That sample tested negative. One sample in one study. But not enough to say with certainty. It is certainly safer to assume that the virus could be present in sweat.
Why don’t we have more details so we can say more definitively? The rarity of outbreaks and poor capabilities to safely gather samples in the field are likely factors contributing. And the niggling detail that medical professionals and researchers have been dying in the course of gathering the needed data has probably slowed things down a bit.
So we are sometimes left to make inferences based upon animal studies. Such studies have been carried out under conditions much safer for the human researchers. And we’ve seen things that are worrisome, but again not definitive, such as likely infection via droplets expelled by a sneezing pig. And even if such transmission is confirmed in animals, that is no guarantee that it does (or does not) take place in humans.
But in the Kikwit outbreak of Ebola in 1995 a rather concerning incident occurred. A surgical team performed an exploratory laparotomy on a patient who was subsequently determined to be ill with ebola. The entire surgical team fell ill suggestingspread of infectious agent via aerosolized blood entering unprotected respiratory systems of the medical team.
Snerk, got me!
FWIW I’ve seen that same typo made on the front page of a widely-distributed-to-healthcare-providers publication…
As an aside, we don’t have a Surgeon General right now. The nominee said something about guns being dangerous to public health, the NRA went all gun-crazy, and the confirmation process has stalled.
In any case, real life is not a disaster movie. I have enough humility and respect for learning that if the experts aren’t concerned that we’re all gonna die then I’m not either.