Ebola in America

wollclark said:
I have a feeling that ebola is going to overwhelm the country in clusters and chaos will break out.
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I have a feeling that in three months, Ebola will be last year's news, and the media will be peddling something else to keep our adrenal glands on full alert.
 
theprestige said:
Wouldn't it suck if the Ebola thing got worse over the next three months, but the media moved on anyway?
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Doubt it. The news media is in the business of selling fear, and this is a ripe area for it.
 
superfreddy said:
I don't know if this has been answered before...

If an infected Ebola patient survives, would he become immune to the disease?
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So far yes; it's possible a mutant strain might evolve that can bypass such immunity.

theprestige said:
Wouldn't it suck if the Ebola thing got worse over the next three months, but the media moved on anyway?
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Give that in three months it's be next year, I agree.

Cl1mh4224rd said:
And only 1 has so far reported any signs of illness.
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Medical staff are typically exposed to a wide variety of diseases and have a relatively high illness rate. One from seventy is pretty good.
 
catsmate1 said:
One from seventy is pretty good.
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No, it's not. It's crap. You're looking at the wrong ratio. What we've got right now is one patient infects one medical provider. That is the ratio that matters for controlling the disease. If it stays that high, the disease cannot be stopped.

This isn't reason to panic yet, because we're dealing with the statistics of small numbers plus a potential learning curve so that ratio could improve considerably. But that ratio of infected providers (who then become patients) to patients needs to be much, much lower than 1 to 1.
 
But Ziggy, you are leaving several 'imported while sick' patients out of your stat. Plus a couple researchers with lab exposure. Total patients in America, have been about mmm 8? So, eight patients, one infected care giver, soo infected care givers per patient is only 1:8. Death rate of said care givers per patient 0:8. Death rate among patients treated in America, 1:8.

Seems all under control in my book.
 
Ziggurat said:
No, it's not. It's crap. You're looking at the wrong ratio. What we've got right now is one patient infects one medical provider. That is the ratio that matters for controlling the disease. If it stays that high, the disease cannot be stopped.

This isn't reason to panic yet, because we're dealing with the statistics of small numbers plus a potential learning curve so that ratio could improve considerably. But that ratio of infected providers (who then become patients) to patients needs to be much, much lower than 1 to 1.
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I'm not sure your math works out, unless nobody interacted with this guy aside from the provider.
 
Ziggurat said:
This isn't reason to panic yet, because we're dealing with the statistics of small numbers plus a potential learning curve so that ratio could improve considerably. But that ratio of infected providers (who then become patients) to patients needs to be much, much lower than 1 to 1.
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For the US, the birth rate is 3.9 million per year and the death rate is 2.5 million per year. That is a excess of 1.4 million each year or one excess birth every 22.5 seconds. I think we can survive the loss of one Ebola victim every fortnight.
 
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casebro said:
But Ziggy, you are leaving several 'imported while sick' patients out of your stat. Plus a couple researchers with lab exposure. Total patients in America, have been about mmm 8? So, eight patients, one infected care giver, soo infected care givers per patient is only 1:8. Death rate of said care givers per patient 0:8. Death rate among patients treated in America, 1:8.

Seems all under control in my book.
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True, although it is important to note that all the other Ebola patients were taken to one of the four dedicated bio-containment isolation wards that are specifically designed to handle Ebola patients. It's those wards that so far have zero cases of cross-contamination, infection of health care workers, or deaths. The only ordinary hospital thus far to see a confirmed case botched the initial diagnosis, sent a symptomatic Ebola infected man back into the community, the patient died, and an intensive care nurse was infected. That's not great but hopefully hospitals will learn and be better prepared to deal with diagnosis, care, and preventing contamination of workers. I think they will. If Nigeria can prevent a few imported infections and health care worker exposures from exploding into an epidemic with simple safety measures in ordinary hospitals, like they did a few months back, so can we. So far the only person infected in the US was an intensive care nurse who had been assisting with procedures that involve exposure to bodily fluids during the time when the patient was at his most contagious. I'm terribly sorry to all of the armageddon-porn lovers out there but the zombie apocalypse will probably have to wait another day.
 
casebro said:
But Ziggy, you are leaving several 'imported while sick' patients out of your stat. Plus a couple researchers with lab exposure. Total patients in America, have been about mmm 8? So, eight patients, one infected care giver, soo infected care givers per patient is only 1:8. Death rate of said care givers per patient 0:8. Death rate among patients treated in America, 1:8.
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Technically it's catsmate's stat. Ziggurat seems to be pointing out the same problem with that stat that you are. You're finding fault with the wrong argument.

Belz... said:
I'm not sure your math works out, unless nobody interacted with this guy aside from the provider.
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It doesn't matter how many people interacted with the patient. As long as each patient infects at least one other person, that's a horrible rate of infection to have. It doesn't matter if he infects 1 of 10 who interacted with him, or 1 of 100 who interacted with him.
 
theprestige said:
It doesn't matter how many people interacted with the patient. As long as each patient infects at least one other person, that's a horrible rate of infection to have. It doesn't matter if he infects 1 of 10 who interacted with him, or 1 of 100 who interacted with him.
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Ok, but it's damn early to draw statistics from a single data point.
 
I had a conversation with a couple of coworkers today. The main points were:
(1) What happens if ebola hits New Orleans or Detroit? (a couple of many American cities with large ghettos)
(2) What happens if ebola hits some of the poorer cities/towns in the south, particularly Mississippi and Alabama?
(3) What happens if ebola crosses the Mexican border?
(4) None of us were sure that American hospitals in those areas were capable of controlling and ending an ebola outbreak.
(5) None of us were sure that VA hospitals were capable of dealing with an ebola outbreak.

Are any of those areas capable of dealing with an ebola outbreak?

Cheers.
 
It's no problem. When someone gets sick they go to a clinic or hospital, get diagnosed and if it appears to be Ebola they get taken care of in proper isolation.

It's almost like we foresaw this when we as a country chose to implement universal health care. Just imagine how scary it would be right now if we hadn't.
 
manofthesea said:
I had a conversation with a couple of coworkers today. The main points were:
(1) What happens if ebola hits New Orleans or Detroit? (a couple of many American cities with large ghettos)
(2) What happens if ebola hits some of the poorer cities/towns in the south, particularly Mississippi and Alabama?
(3) What happens if ebola crosses the Mexican border?
(4) None of us were sure that American hospitals in those areas were capable of controlling and ending an ebola outbreak.
(5) None of us were sure that VA hospitals were capable of dealing with an ebola outbreak.

Are any of those areas capable of dealing with an ebola outbreak?

Cheers.
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^My humble opinion is that if any of these areas have an ebola outbreak - especially one of the poor, highly populated, underprepared countries, it will be out of control there as well. How we would stop that is not clear. I'm still waiting for all the talking heads who keep reassuring me that they "know how to control this, we can stop this" to put their money where their mouth is.
 
Funny how the annual outbreaks in Africa haven't ruined that slice of the world.
 
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