OT: Ebola – Global Pandemic?

[kev374]

I would be worried about planes as people are in very close proximity to each other there… a sneeze or cough onto another person could transmit the virus as it takes only a microscopic amount to infect another person…although they say it isn’t possible to spread it through aerosol i’m not entirely convinced it’s impossible..unlikely perhaps, impossible not sure.

The virus is supposed to be very hardy and can survive outside the body for many days.

[zk]

[quote=paramount]Fear Factor?

CDC Raises Response to Highest Alert Amid Ebola Outbreak

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday ramped up its response to the expanding Ebola outbreak, a move that frees up hundreds of employees and signals the agency sees the health emergency as a potentially long and serious one.

The CDC’s “level 1 activation” is reserved for the most serious public health emergencies, and the agency said the move was appropriate considering the outbreak’s “potential to affect many lives.” The CDC took a similar move in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and again in 2009 during the bird-flu threat.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/cdc-raises-response-highest-alert-amid-ebola-outbreak-n174496%5B/quote%5D

“Many lives” doesn’t necessarily mean “many lives in the U.S.” The CDC is sending staff to the four affected African countries. In Africa, where this disease is actually a problem, they frequently perform rituals after people die. Rituals that involve exposing themselves to the bodily fluids of the dead. That’s the main reason it spreads so much there. And that’s the reason there isn’t a realistic chance that it’ll be widespread anywhere else (at least anywhere else where they don’t regularly subject themselves to sick/dead people’s bodily fluids).

If you’re the type who always sees storm clouds gathering or an apocalypse coming, this is a perfect opportunity for you to panic. But nothing is going to happen to you. There will be no pandemic.

[UCGal]

[quote=paramount]Fear Factor?

CDC Raises Response to Highest Alert Amid Ebola Outbreak

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday ramped up its response to the expanding Ebola outbreak, a move that frees up hundreds of employees and signals the agency sees the health emergency as a potentially long and serious one.

The CDC’s “level 1 activation” is reserved for the most serious public health emergencies, and the agency said the move was appropriate considering the outbreak’s “potential to affect many lives.” The CDC took a similar move in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and again in 2009 during the bird-flu threat.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/cdc-raises-response-highest-alert-amid-ebola-outbreak-n174496%5B/quote%5D

I presume you get a flu shot each year. You realize influenza kills WAY more people each year than ebola. Try to put things in perspective.

[Doofrat]

[quote=zk]

“Many lives” doesn’t necessarily mean “many lives in the U.S.” The CDC is sending staff to the four affected African countries. In Africa, where this disease is actually a problem, they frequently perform rituals after people die. Rituals that involve exposing themselves to the bodily fluids of the dead. That’s the main reason it spreads so much there. And that’s the reason there isn’t a realistic chance that it’ll be widespread anywhere else (at least anywhere else where they don’t regularly subject themselves to sick/dead people’s bodily fluids).

If you’re the type who always sees storm clouds gathering or an apocalypse coming, this is a perfect opportunity for you to panic. But nothing is going to happen to you. There will be no pandemic.[/quote]

When Swine Flu was killing everybody in Mexico City, a guy I work with (who’s from Mexico City) was totally unworried. He said that because the people generally aren’t the healthiest there and the air is so bad, any time there’s a Flu, it kills a lot of people there. I think it’s the same thing with Africa.
The one advantage to Ebola is in how fast it kills.
Sure, there’s the off chance that you end up on a plane with an Ebola victim who’s travelling on holiday from Sierra Leone to Maui, but that’s pretty remote. Then there’s the scenario that every body’s worried about of the contagion spreading. While in Maui, you come across a traveller that has contacted the Ebola patient from Sierra Leone and the Sierra Leone patient coughed up infected blood all over said traveller and the second person got ingested it through an open wound or inhaled droplets. A person who is at the point of hemorraging Ebola virus is going to already be in bad shape, and your fellow traveller is going to take a while to build up enough virus to start hemorraging it and at that point will probably be too sick to contact you in a way to make you sick. Then they only have a small number of days left to infect fellow people. I just don’t think it’s that contagious.
Also, Ebola’s been around a while and despite the poor sanitation and post mortem practices in Africa, it still hasn’t exploded into a huge outbreak there.

[zk]

.

[Aecetia]

The Stand in 3 minutes…..

[The-Shoveler]

Bump
It’s here!!

[outtamojo]

yeah, just goes to show if there ever was a zombie virus we are all dead er walking meat.

[CA renter]

It always starts with one case…

[Just kidding, kinda-sorta.]

[zk]

[quote=The-Shoveler]Bump
It’s here!![/quote]

It’s here. But not for long. And not really in a way that’s worthy of two exclamation points.

[The-Shoveler]

OK sure or maybe that’s what they want you to believe.

Just kidding sort of.

[zk]

[quote=The-Shoveler]OK sure or maybe that’s what they want you to believe.

Just kidding sort of.[/quote]

You’re paranoid.

Just kidding sort of.

[The-Shoveler]

Yep most likely I am paranoid,

After he was sent home from the emergency room the first time

DALLAS (Reuters) – Two days after he was sent home from a Dallas hospital, the man who is the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States was seen vomiting on the ground outside an apartment complex as he was bundled into an ambulance.

“His whole family was screaming. He got outside and he was throwing up all over the place,” resident Mesud Osmanovic, 21, said on Wednesday, describing the chaotic scene before the man was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday where he is in serious condition.

[flyer]

Don’t know if they will be able to live up to this promise. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/09/30/cdc-confirms-first-case-of-ebola-in-the-u-s/

[zk]

[quote=The-Shoveler]Yep most likely I am paranoid,

After he was sent home from the emergency room the first time

DALLAS (Reuters) – Two days after he was sent home from a Dallas hospital, the man who is the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States was seen vomiting on the ground outside an apartment complex as he was bundled into an ambulance.

“His whole family was screaming. He got outside and he was throwing up all over the place,” resident Mesud Osmanovic, 21, said on Wednesday, describing the chaotic scene before the man was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday where he is in serious condition.[/quote]

If anything in that article makes you fear a widespread outbreak (or believe that “that’s what they want you to believe”), then you are paranoid.

Not kidding at all.

[Author]

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