As Gene Kranz would say Agatha, you'r not working the problem....
The thing is, Patrick, we all inhale and ingest small amounts of faecal material every day. Very few of us get ill from doing so. Flush toilets are a relatively new invention, as are antibacterial cleaners, and yet the human race has managed to survive for thousands of years.
There were no flush toilets on the Niña, the Pinta or the Santa Maria, and I can guarantee that several of the crew would have been suffering from infectious diseases. Below the decks in confined spaces the crew would have been at very high risk of inhaling and ingesting infective faecal material, and yet the voyage continued. Because as Loss Leader explains above, the rewards outweighed the risks.
I feel like a broken record, but since your side keeps raising the same objection Agatha, I shall continue to dose you with a bit of reality. That said, you may want to try a different tack next time. This one will not get you far as hopefully your side is coming to realize.
As opposed to the average guy or gal on the street, patient's with infectious diarrhea are viewed differently with regard to the harm their stool can do to those of us that may accidentally come in contact with it. As such, in a hospital, a man like Borman would be subjected to "strict stool precautions" as doctors endeavored to figure out why it was that the Apollo 8 commander was sick.
So in the context of being evaluated by real docs, Borman would be viewed as an individual with infected stool. And until proven otherwise, that stool would be perceived by medical personal as posing a major health risk to those that might come in contact with it. Grab any ol' medical text and read up on it a bit, acute infectious diarrhea. The subject is not difficult. Borman's being subjected to what we call "strict stool precautions" would mean that medical personal would do everything the could to keep the commander's stool away from other people. Borman would be isolated him in this sense. And were he to prove to have influenza(see below), we would enforce respiratory isolation precautions as well.
In the Borman Apollo 8 staged space illness case, there was/is this added "twist" with the diagnosis of influenza being a legitamate consideration given the time of year that the flight occurred and given the special circumstances one would need to consider given the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968/1969.
Diarrhea in adults with influenza is much less common than it is with children, but it does occur, and given the circumstances, real docs would be very worried about real astronauts in a space ship like Apollo 8, even if there was only a very very small chance that influenza was responsible for Borman's cislunar problem. The reason doctors would be so very worried is that the conditions are such that were Borman to have had influenza, all three astronauts may well have caught it. It is quite contagious, and under those circumstances, everyone crammed together in the command module, influenza would be exceedingly likely to be passed form one astronaut to the next.
One more point about influenza that is a bit tricky, if you get sick with influenza, not infrequently and counter intuitively, it tends to make young healthy people(like astronauts) sicker than older people. The reason for this is that on some level, what makes the person "sick" is their own immune respose, and so, the more vigorous the response, the sicker one gets. So three astronauts in a tin can like that would be a set up for a disaster that would make the Apolo 13 scenario look like a wine and cheese party.
Not to belabor the influenza point too much, but obviously the NASA perps were worried about guys like me even back then as if one goes through the old newspapers and what not covering the Borman illness, one keeps reading that Charles Berry, Borman's doctor, kept saying the astronauts definitely did not have influenza because they were vaccinated. Vaccinations do not guarantee immunity and can actually make people very sick. So right there that is a dead give away that Berry is a fraud. I say this because though a real doc would not discount the vaccination's ability to confer immunity, this consideration(HOPED FOR IMMUNITY) would not diminish the physician's vigilence one fraction of an iota with respect to the possibility that Borman and the others as well had contracted influenza.
The food supply is another thing docs would look at under these circumstances, regardless of how the food was allegedly "prepared". The fact that the food issue was not scrutinized immediately and big time, and the fact that food as a player here wasn't written about, is a give away as well. Docs would have been looking at that angle with a lot of interest, early on anyway.
Remember, all 3 crewman allegedly became ill to some degree at one point. Borman is the sickest and the only one with diarrhea, and the only one vomiting, but the other two are not well either early on either. Read the references I mentioned above.
What is most incriminating about all of this is not the woefully inadequate attention the problem received while the "astronauts" were allegedly in space, but rather, upon return, there is no meaningful medical report discussing the significance of all of this and how the issue would be better addressed in the future. Keep in mind Borman's stool and vomitus is aerosiolized. No doctor had EVER dealt with a situation like that before DEADLY AND NOVEL AND IT WOULD CONTINUE TO BE UNTIL ADDRESSED. Borman's stool and vomitus was alleged to have been in the air, aerosolized in a zero G environment, and were this thing real, the presumably infected material would be all over most surfaces in microscopic but nevertheless dangerous quantities.
But in the context of this phony Apollo 8 scenario, there was no effort to recover the pathogen/infectious agent upon Borman's return(culture his stool, or if it was cultured, report the results?, culture/study the space ship's surfaces upon return? examine the potable water? the air filtering system? the food?) and on and on and on.
So the thing is 10 plus fake, and of all the places to get caught with one's pants down, Armstrong and all of his buddies are NAILED big time thanks to this one little strangely embarrassing NASA gaffe.
The problem with your analysis of the situation Agatha is that you are conveniently forgetting Borman's stool is presumed even by Charles Berry to be infected, and that the official story is that this infected material, as well as Borman's vomitus, has been aerosolized. Additionally, you are ignoring Berry's con with respect to the claim that his astronauts are guaranteed influenza immunity by virtue of their having been vaccinated. As such you are "cheating" Agatha. You are not dealing with the real facts as a physician would.
With respect to assessing a man with acute onset nausea, vomiting and diarrhea that is presumed infectious in etiology, this is all very simple medicine by the way. That said, the zero G consideration is an aspect which renders this problem extremely exotic and DANGEROUS to say the least, that is, were any of this real.
Most docs once they looked at this would recognize it as "weird"/fake. The problem with it all is how many docs know what Charles Berry had to say about all of this phony business? Not many......
