OT: Ebola – Global Pandemic?

[CA renter]

[quote=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.[/quote]

You have to admit, zk, that this doesn’t look good. How many people have come into contact with this person’s blood, saliva, feces, urine, semen, etc.? From there, nobody knows how it could play out. Did they get a hazmat team, experienced in handling this type of situation, to clean up the vomit? What about when he used the bathroom in the airport or this apartment, or in any restaurants, stores, etc. that he might have visited when he first got to the U.S.? Did a lot of friends/relatives come by to visit while he was sick?

Just too little info to know how this will play out, one way or another.

[outtamojo]

It was a disappointment that it even reached our shores;shocking that it was not even suspected by the health care providers given his travel history.

[zk]

[quote=CA renter]
You have to admit, zk, that this doesn’t look good. How many people have come into contact with this person’s blood, saliva, feces, urine, semen, etc.? From there, nobody knows how it could play out. Did they get a hazmat team, experienced in handling this type of situation, to clean up the vomit? What about when he used the bathroom in the airport or this apartment, or in any restaurants, stores, etc. that he might have visited when he first got to the U.S.? Did a lot of friends/relatives come by to visit while he was sick?

Just too little info to know how this will play out, one way or another.[/quote]

Depends what you mean by “doesn’t look good.” If you mean that it portends a possible widespread outbreak, then I do not agree. If you means that we should be afraid, I don’t agree.

[CA renter]

Let’s say the man was throwing up at the hospital the first time he went (pretty likely), or that someone might have come into contact with is blood, saliva, feces, or urine while he was there. It seems pretty likely that this might have happened.

Then this person (or people) go home to their loved ones, go to work, go to restaurants and other establishments, etc., and the disease is spread. Some of those people, or the people with whom they’ve had contact, might also have traveled to other cities or states, spreading it there.

It seems pretty contagious, based on what I’ve read. Even healthcare professionals who are taking extreme precautions are getting sick. Just the fact that someone made it here with the disease, even though they are trying to be vigilant about passengers who are traveling from the disease-riddled countries, is extremely frightening.

[The-Shoveler]

Confirmed, I am a complete paranoid whack Job, but anyway,
They are saying up to 80 people could have been exposed to this guy and his family.

Also a possible case in Hawaii.

[Doofrat]

[quote=The-Shoveler]Confirmed, I am a complete paranoid whack Job, but anyway,
They are saying up to 80 people could have been exposed to this guy and his family.

Also a possible case in Hawaii.[/quote]

And my quote was: “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. ”

I’m skipping lunch today, I’m stuffed from eating my words.

[outtamojo]

Do they have fruit bats in Texas?

[zk]

[quote=The-Shoveler]Confirmed, I am a complete paranoid whack Job, but anyway,
They are saying up to 80 people could have been exposed to this guy and his family.

Also a possible case in Hawaii.[/quote]

“They are saying” and “up to” don’t add up to much.

[zk]

[quote=CA renter]Let’s say the man was throwing up at the hospital the first time he went (pretty likely), or that someone might have come into contact with is blood, saliva, feces, or urine while he was there. It seems pretty likely that this might have happened.

Then this person (or people) go home to their loved ones, go to work, go to restaurants and other establishments, etc., and the disease is spread. Some of those people, or the people with whom they’ve had contact, might also have traveled to other cities or states, spreading it there.

It seems pretty contagious, based on what I’ve read. Even healthcare professionals who are taking extreme precautions are getting sick. Just the fact that someone made it here with the disease, even though they are trying to be vigilant about passengers who are traveling from the disease-riddled countries, is extremely frightening.[/quote]

It’s only extremely frightening if you don’t really understand or if you’re prone to scaring easily or if you’re always seeing storm clouds gathering or armageddon coming.

The virus isn’t transmittable until symptoms appear. And then only through contact with bodily fluids. I could continue with scientific facts, but people like to be scared, I guess. In the next year, a hundred times more people will die in the U.S. of diseases you never heard of and aren’t afraid of than will die from ebola that they caught in the U.S.

[outtamojo]

“Not transmittable until symptoms appear” reminds me of how in the space of 1 minute or seconds milk
can go from ok to sell to not ok to sell. The paranoids have earned their day imo.

[FlyerInHi]

I drink expired milk and eat expired yogurt. Never got sick.

Anyway the ebola case is near Dallas. A friend who lives there said he’s gotten text messages and emails from people telling him to be careful. Shows how people watch the news and get scared easily.

[zk]

[quote=outtamojo]”Not transmittable until symptoms appear” reminds me of how in the space of 1 minute or seconds milk
can go from ok to sell to not ok to sell. The paranoids have earned their day imo.[/quote]

Not sure how the paranoids have earned their day when not a single person in the U.S. has caught ebola here. That’s a long way from a widespread outbreak.

[outtamojo]

[quote=zk][quote=outtamojo]”Not transmittable until symptoms appear” reminds me of how in the space of 1 minute or seconds milk
can go from ok to sell to not ok to sell. The paranoids have earned their day imo.[/quote]

Not sure how the paranoids have earned their day when not a single person in the U.S. has caught ebola here. That’s a long way from a widespread outbreak.[/quote]

Signs of systemic failure do not bode well for not just Ebola. Faith in institutions is paramount to containment and lack of it contributed greatly to its spread in Africa.

[zk]

[quote=outtamojo]
Signs of systemic failure do not bode well for not just Ebola. Faith in institutions is paramount to containment and lack of it contributed greatly to its spread in Africa.[/quote]

I’m not sure what “signs of systemic failure” and “faith in institutions” mean. But what contributed greatly to the spread of ebola in Africa is rituals involving touching dead bodies in a way that subjects persons to that dead person’s bodily fluids. Those are rituals that Americans are educated enough to avoid (or maybe, in some cases, just lucky enough not to regularly participate in).

I don’t think I understand the desire to be afraid of ebola or of armageddon in general. I wonder if maybe there’s an excitement factor involved. I think a lot of people are excited to be afraid of ebola or nuclear war or the christian armageddon or the collapse of capitalism or whatever world-changing thing it is they’re afraid of.

If you want to be afraid of a germ, might I suggest you be afraid of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. That is ten thousand times more likely to kill you than ebola, and the threat is growing. Not as exciting as ebola. But way more dangerous.

There are people out there lounging in the sun or eating big macs or not exercising or driving like idiots or riding their bikes on the road and at the same time freaking out about ebola. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Any of those habits are thousands of times more likely to kill you than ebola.

Heck, not flossing is more likely to kill you than ebola.

[Aecetia]

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