Ebola virus outbreak

Canis Lupus

littlemac1980 wrote: »

That's not particularly scientific - which is what was requested in relation to the earlier response. But nevertheless you're entitled to your opinion and I think your comment is largely sensible despite its speculative rather that scientific nature.

The Duncans are no longer in quaratine. They lived with Mr Duncan for days after he was incorrectly diagnosed and seem to have been conveniently forgotten by all those who are..... speculating..... over how dangerous ten pin bowling playing ebola sufferers are.

WILL NEVER LOG OFF

Beano wrote: »

what are you basing this on?

be more specific. there are a number of statements there.

Beano

WILL NEVER LOG OFF wrote: »

be more specific. there are a number of statements there.

this one.

I am simply saying Oral-resp mucosal entry is likely the most common site of entry

Grayson

WILL NEVER LOG OFF wrote: »

aand after this statement, you completely contradicted yourself.

i am not making any claim about the scale of probability regarding OR transmission.

I am simply saying Oral-resp mucosal entry is likely the most common site of entry, unlike, say HIV, where this site is less implicated. HIV is probably less contagious on the whole (excluding direct blood-blood contact in both viruses).

And the article I posted said it's not. It's generally through cuts and scrapes. It also occurs from transmission of a fluid to a mucos gland, but not from mucous glands.
Remember that in the worst affected countries they have next to no equipment and that's why so many health workers have been infected. They were infected because they were wearing surgical masks and rubber gloves. A patient with ebola produces bodily fluid from many places. this fluid, blood excrement etc comes into contact with the health worker. They then get it into a cut or scrape or maybe ingest it so it gets in contact with their mucos glands.

That not to say that that the virus is coming from the mucos glands. It's just getting in that way. So lets say that you do come in contact with someone who is early symptomatic, the chances are that if you get it, it will probably be through a cut or scrape but it is also possible it could be through your mucosa gland. However it is extremely unlikely that the virus came from their mucous gland. It's unlikely that you could get it from them coughing on you or even kissing you.

Does that make sense?

littlemac1980

This is a pretty neat article from the perspective of a New Yorker with some uncertain level of proximity to the New York Doctor:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-its-like-to-go-bowling-with-someone-who-has-ebola

Beano

littlemac1980 wrote: »

This is a pretty neat article from the perspective of a New Yorker with some uncertain level of proximity to the New York Doctor:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-its-like-to-go-bowling-with-someone-who-has-ebola

the most telling paragraph in the article

I wonder if America— a nontrivial amount of which buys into conspiracy theories and goes to great lengths to remain ignorant and has already called for banning flights to America that don't even exist—is going to be able to keep calm and not buy into a nightmarish fairy tale about bleeding eyes and spewing blood, and I wonder what will happen if we are unable to keep our collective wits about us.

Grayson

littlemac1980 wrote: »

This is a pretty neat article from the perspective of a New Yorker with some uncertain level of proximity to the New York Doctor:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-its-like-to-go-bowling-with-someone-who-has-ebola

It had this link on it.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/23/can-you-get-ebola-from-a-bowling-ball/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&

that states you cannot get ebola from a bowling ball

Creative Juices

Grayson wrote: »

that states you cannot get ebola from a bowling ball

We're saved!!!

ceadaoin.

Nina Pham is now free of ebola.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/69ad8f41a3e24c688ba2e4eeab984e42/federal-officials-dallas-nurse-free-ebola

WASHINGTON (AP) — The first nurse diagnosed with Ebola after treating an infected man at a Dallas hospital is free of the virus.

The National Institutes of Health says in a statement that Nina Pham is being released Friday from its hospital near Washington.

NIH spokesman John Burklow says Pham will make a brief statement during a news conference late this morning.

wildefalcon

ceadaoin. wrote: »

Nina Pham is now free of ebola.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/69ad8f41a3e24c688ba2e4eeab984e42/federal-officials-dallas-nurse-free-ebola

Oh, good. That's great, another survivor - the more the better, means there's more data on which to work, and more chance of a cure/vaccine!

Lucy and Harry

I think they have a cure now anyhow and like swine flu we got over hyped about this being the end of the world.Well I did anyhow.

smash

wildefalcon wrote: »

Oh, good. That't a great, another survivor - the more the better

Why do I read this as being sarcastic? Almost as if you're pissed off that there's not going to be a zombie apocalypse

Grayson

Lucy and Harry wrote: »

I think they have a cure now anyhow and like swine flu we got over hyped about this being the end of the world.Well I did anyhow.

Even if they got a cure today thousands more would die in africa before enough could be made and distributed.

wildefalcon

smash wrote: »

Why do I read this as being sarcastic? Almost as if you're pissed off that there's not going to be a zombie apocalypse

Sorry, not intention at all. Should have put an exclamation mark there.

ceadaoin.

Lucy and Harry wrote: »

I think they have a cure now anyhow and like swine flu we got over hyped about this being the end of the world.Well I did anyhow.

Tell that to the people infected in West Africa. Official numbers are over 10,000 infected now with it estimated to be 2.5 times that number in reality.

The US system, and probably any developed country, can easily handle a handful of isolated cases. I'm not sure it would have such good results if the cases were in the hundreds.

Creative Juices

It will be a long fight but there are signs of progress even within the 3 affected countries...

23 October
The latest WHO Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report from 22 October states that Ebola transmission remains high and Liberia remains the most affected country. Transmission remains intense in Monrovia, and high in the districts of Bong, Margibi and Nimba. The sustained decrease in the number of new cases in Lofa has been attributed by observers to control measures taken there.

Media sources have reported that doctors and nurses from Cuba have arrived in the country to join the fight against Ebola. The medical team are expected to work in the newly constructed Ebola Treatment Unit in Congo Town, Montserrado County.

In other news, two organizations have handed over a 100 bedded ETU to the Liberian Government in Brewervile, Montserrado.

littlemac1980

Lucy and Harry wrote: »

I think they have a cure now anyhow and like swine flu we got over hyped about this being the end of the world.Well I did anyhow.

There's no cure yet - there's just been ramped-up the effort to develop a vaccine.

Hopefully there will be a vaccine soon, but as yet, there's no certainty.

Even if there is a vaccine developed/tested which produces good results it will still take a long time to actually impact on the rates of people dying.

Here's a recent article by the BBC regarding the issue of Vaccine and the WHO's statements regarding how it is hoped the development of the Vaccine will go:

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29756301

Millions of doses of experimental Ebola vaccines will be produced by the end of 2015, the World Health Organization has announced.

It said "several hundred thousand" would be produced in the first half of the year.

And vaccines could be offered to health workers on the frontline in West Africa as soon as December 2014.

However, the WHO cautioned that vaccines would not be a "magic bullet" for ending the outbreak.

There is no proven cure or vaccine for Ebola.

In response to the largest epidemic of the disease in history, the WHO is accelerating the process of vaccine development

It normally takes years to produce and test a vaccine, but drug manufacturers are now working on a scale of weeks.

Strange you would suggest you had over-reacted given you've only posted 5 messages on this forum previously, each of which really added very little to the discussion, but might be said to have been provocative. Your last statement is somewhat similar.

ceadaoin.

Creative Juices wrote: »

It will be a long fight but there are signs of progress even within the 3 affected countries...

23 October
The latest WHO Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report from 22 October states that Ebola transmission remains high and Liberia remains the most affected country. Transmission remains intense in Monrovia, and high in the districts of Bong, Margibi and Nimba. The sustained decrease in the number of new cases in Lofa has been attributed by observers to control measures taken there.

Media sources have reported that doctors and nurses from Cuba have arrived in the country to join the fight against Ebola. The medical team are expected to work in the newly constructed Ebola Treatment Unit in Congo Town, Montserrado County.

In other news, two organizations have handed over a 100 bedded ETU to the Liberian Government in Brewervile, Montserrado.

The progress seen so far is nowhere near enough to make any impact on the spread of the disease. The fact that it has now spread into Mali, an unstable country with less than 1 doctor per 10,000 people is worrying.

Without an immediate and substantial increase of international aid, Yale researchers say that the Ebola virus will probably get far worse, resulting in tens of thousands of new cases and deaths by Dec. 15.

A mathematical transmission model of the viral disease developed by a team of seven scientists from Yale's School of Public Health and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in Liberia was applied to Liberia's most populous county, Montserrado. The country's hard-hit capital, Monrovia, is in Montserrado.

The researchers projected as many as 170,996 cases of the disease with 90,122 deaths in Montserrado alone by Dec. 15. Those figures include cases that are reported and cases that are not. Of those figures, researchers expect that only 42,669 cases and 27,175 deaths will be officially reported by Dec. 15

"These figures are what we'd estimate if there were to be no improvements in public health responses," said Joseph Lewnard, the lead author of the study and a Ph.D. candidate at Yale's School of Public Health. "While new interventions have been underway … which may dampen the severity of the epidemic, our findings suggest that the scale must be increased greatly to maximally avert new cases and deaths." The researchers' article is published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.

Grayson

ceadaoin. wrote: »

Tell that to the people infected in West Africa. Official numbers are over 10,000 infected now with it estimated to be 2.5 times that number in reality.

The US system, and probably any developed country, can easily handle a handful of isolated cases. I'm not sure it would have such good results if the cases were in the hundreds.

Technically your right but tell that to Thomas Eric Duncan and the two nurses who got infected. Hopefully that was a wakeup call and hospitals will be more alert and more careful.

What's really nasty about the Us system is that Thomas Eric Duncan's family can't sue.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/22/strict-texas-law-ebola-lawsuits-unlikely

ceadaoin.

Grayson wrote: »

Technically your right but tell that to Thomas Eric Duncan and the two nurses who got infected. Hopefully that was a wakeup call and hospitals will be more alert and more careful.

What's really nasty about the Us system is that Thomas Eric Duncan's family can't sue.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/22/strict-texas-law-ebola-lawsuits-unlikely

I posted on here a few weeks ago about the cap on damages and was told it couldn't be true. Even worse is if you do recover, you could be handed medical bill in the hundreds of thousands, even with insurance. Duncans bill was $500,000. Luckily his family won't be held liable for that.

Turtwig

The fearbola in the US is quite disconcerting. That said, if Ebola got into a poverty stricken area of New York it could do major damage.

Lucy and Harry

littlemac1980 wrote: »

provocative. Your last statement is somewhat similar.

WTF.
How is my last post provocative?

gozunda

Beano wrote: »

If there is no virus present in saliva early on then how be it be transmitted? Somebody with an advanced enough case for their saliva to be a significant carrier of the virus is not going out to spend the evening bowling.

You don't think so?

From a report on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa

http://news.yahoo.com/...-zero-152143370.html

The first case of Ebola in Nigeria started in Liberia. A man who had a fever and was under observation for the illness at a hospital in Monrovia decided to leave, even though doctors asked him to stay. On July 20, he flew by commercial airline from Liberia to Ghana, from Ghana to Togo and finally from Togo to Nigeria, according toan Oct. 3 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The man potentially exposed 72 people at the Nigerian airport and hospital, and died five days later, the report found. But Nigerian officials were largely able to contain the virus, by establishing an Ebola Incident Management Center supported by the state and federal Nigerian government in coordination with international partners. The center helped rapidly coordinate the response and take actions such as contacting people who had interacted with the man, isolating people with viral symptoms and decontaminating places the man had visited, the report found. As of Oct. 8, Nigeria had 20 cases of Ebola and eight deaths, the CDC reported.

Human behaviour in the light of a potentially deadly pathogen is beset with too multiple variables to be able to make ANY definitive statement about how an infected / carrier will/might behave.

For an account of human behaviour during an epidemic I recommend you read A Journal of a Plague Year by Daniel Defoe.

ceadaoin.

This isn't good. If ebola gets a hold in another West African country it will make it all the harder to stop it at the source.

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — The World Health Organization says a toddler who brought Ebola to Mali was bleeding from her nose during her journey on public transport and may have infected many people.

WHO said it is treating the situation in Mali as an emergency.

The 2-year-old girl, who traveled from Guinea with her grandmother, tested positive for Ebola on Thursday. That makes Mali the sixth West African country to record a case of the disease.

WHO said Friday that the girl and her grandmother passed through several towns in Mali on their trip from Guinea and spent two hours in the Malian capital of Bamako before ending up in the western city of Kayes.

ProfessorPlum

gozunda wrote: »

You don't think so?

From a report on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa

http://news.yahoo.com/...-zero-152143370.html



Human behaviour in the light of a potentially deadly pathogen is beset with too multiple variables to be able to make ANY definitive statement about how an infected / carrier will/might behave.

For an account of human behaviour during an epidemic I recommend you read A Journal of a Plague Year by Daniel Defoe.

That case is hardly comparable to a NY doc playing bowling though is it?

WakeUp

so this doctor in New York. returns from the hot zone and treating patients and not into quarantine. nope out and about as is his want. common sense would dictate he be placed into quarantine and monitored. but no. at what point are the powers that be going to start using their god damn brains. proactive over reactive every single time. though it appears to be the other way around to me. and that doesnt make sense. people working in these countries if they return to their own countries they go into quarantine no ifs or buts. anything less is placing the wider population in danger. this keeps going the way it is in western Africa then the only way to try attempt to contain it will be through cordon sanitaire. draw a circle around an infected area and enforce it. no one gets in no one gets out. if people dont start engaging their brains not only in Africa but other places it might actually come to that. some god damn common sense please. it isnt much to ask for.
______________________________________________________________________

The Obama administration is considering the possibility of quarantining healthcare workers returning to the United States from the Ebola hot zone of West Africa, after a New York doctor who treated Ebola patients there tested positive for the virus.

Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters on Friday that quarantine is among a number of options being discussed by officials from across the administration

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/health/sns-rt-us-health-ebola-usa-quarantine-20141024-story.html

this should have been in place a long time ago there really isnt anything to consider. so get it done and put the protocol in place.
_______________________________________________________________________

WEST AFRICA’S Ebola epidemic is likely to explode by the middle of December with the loss of tens of thousands more lives unless international control efforts are substantially increased, researchers have warned.

A team of US scientists used mathematical modelling to predict infection rates in Liberia’s most populated area, Montserrado.

They calculated that without extra help, as many as 170,996 people could succumb to Ebola by December 15, representing 12% of an overall population of some 1.38 million.

In Montserrado alone, there could be 90,122 deaths by that time, many of them unreported.

Lead researcher Professor Alison Galvani, from the School of Public Health at Yale University, said: “Our predictions highlight the rapidly closing window of opportunity for controlling the outbreak and averting a catastrophic toll of new Ebola cases and deaths in the coming months.

“Although we might still be within the midst of what will ultimately be viewed as the early phase of the current outbreak, the possibility of averting calamitous repercussions from an initially delayed and insufficient response is quickly eroding.”

Co-author Professor Frederick Altice, also from Yale University, said: “The current global health strategy is woefully inadequate to stop the current volatile Ebola epidemic. At a minimum, capable logisticians are needed to construct a sufficient number of Ebola treatment units in order to avoid the unnecessary deaths of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people.”

The researchers estimated that the average number of infections caused by a single infected individual in Montserrado was 2.49.
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/main-topics/general-news/scientists-ebola-may-explode-in-middle-of-december-1-6914139

gozunda

ProfessorPlum wrote: »

That case is hardly comparable to a NY doc playing bowling though is it?

Christ on a bike. Did you even read the post in context? And before you start making petty comments again - just don't bother even going there. I'm not interested ok!

The poster stated that

Somebody with an advanced enough case for their saliva to be a significant carrier of the virus is not going out to spend the evening bowling.

The point quite clearly is that "someone with an advanced enough case" can and will move about potentially infecting others as exemplified by the gentleman who flew to Nigeria. I believe there is doubt as to exactly how far the disease had progressed in the case of the individual in New York. But yes he could have been infectious and also out and about.

PucaMama

gozunda wrote: »

Christ on a bike. Did you even read the post in context? And before you start making petty comments again - just don't bother even going there. I'm not interested ok!

The poster stated that



The point quite clearly is that "someone with an advanced enough case" can and will move about potentially infecting others as exemplified by the gentleman who flew to Nigeria. I believe there is doubt as to exactly how far the disease had progressed in the case of the individual in New York. But yes he could have been infectious and also out and about.

A person desperate enough to survive will do anything to get help. Like the person travelling to get help at the risk of infecting others. Then others will be in denial about it. They are also a public health risk.

ProfessorPlum

gozunda wrote: »

Christ on a bike. Did you even read the post in context? And before you start making petty comments again - just don't bother even going there. I'm not interested ok!

The poster stated that



The point quite clearly is that "someone with an advanced enough case" can and will move about potentially infecting others as exemplified by the gentleman who flew to Nigeria. I believe there is doubt as to exactly how far the disease had progressed in the case of the individual in New York. But yes he could have been infectious and also out and about.

Gosh, sorry I forgot that I'm not allowed comment on this thread I. Case you disagree with me. The point is, a Liberian diat with the means to leave an area with poor medical facilities to travel to a better health care setting will do it, despite the fact that he is gravely ill. It's simply not comparable to a NY Doc with vague low grade symptoms heading out for a game of bowling. You don't have to agree with me, but no need to bite my head off.

gozunda

ProfessorPlum wrote: »

Gosh, sorry I forgot that I'm not allowed comment on this thread I. Case you disagree with me. The point is, a Liberian diat with the means to leave an area with poor medical facilities to travel to a better health care setting will do it, despite the fact that he is gravely ill. It's simply not comparable to a NY Doc with vague low grade symptoms heading out for a game of bowling. You don't have to agree with me, but no need to bite my head off.

Golly Gosh right back at ya - what's a 'diat' btw?

The point IS humans are the same the world over. In the instance in Africa one individual left a health facility in Liberia knowing he was likley infected after being advised not to by medical staff and travelled by plane to Nigeria where he infected others.

In the instance in New York the doctor working with Ebola patients (with a very high risk for potential infection) left Africa to return by plane to the US, did not follow basic self quarantine procedures and has potentially now put others at risk from the disease by a lack of professional behaviour. It is very obvious that it's not even in the same ballpark as your less than complete scenario that a "NY Doc with vague low grade symptoms heading out for a game of bowling".

According to WHO the incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms is 2 to 21 days. The doctor in question had arrived in NY some 10 days previous and was reported as having experienced some indications of infection prior to Going bowling. He also went for a jog, may have gone to a restaurant and traveled the city's vast subway system. As a professional medic the guy was either in denial or was unbelievably lax. At least the African gentleman had some excusability in that was not a trained medical professional.