root wrote:GlockGirl, back me up here. People this is basic 101 biology.
Sorry, haven't been following this thread. So...yes, Ebola is vicious, yes, Ebola is terrifying, but it is
not airborne and requires direct patient contact with the transference of blood or body fluids directly from the infected and actively ill patient (read: not a patient in the incubation period) to a healthy individual
with contact with mucous membranes and/or open sores to successfully transmit itself from one individual to another. The physicians infected with Ebola who were flown to the States for treatment were
not treating known Ebola patients at the time of their infection and did
not have the PPE donned that would have prevented their being infected.
To address the current case in Texas: this is
ONE case, in
ONE individual. The CDC is all over this like the proverbial white on rice. Yes, several balls were dropped (among them, the patient being seen by a provider, given antibiotics despite having given the provider his travel history, and sent home two days before being transported by ambulance to the ED), but even so, I do not expect to see more than a handful (<5) of new cases spring up, if that. I would personally feel very comfortable providing known Ebola patient with direct patient care, if called upon to do so. Ebola kills via rapid dehydration and the onset of opportunistic infections; here in the United States, we have both the means to isolate the patient and to keep him or her hydrated and provide prophylactic treatment to ward off opportunistic infection(s) until the patient is able to muster an immune response strong enough to destroy the virus.
Ebola is not something that keeps me awake at night; EV-D68 and RSV are far more infectious (and in the case of RSV, far more lethal), and
those diseases are what I worry about.