Ebola in America

[catsmate]

I really like how, after seeing the horror of Ebola up close in Africa, medical professionals Dr. Spencer and Nurse Hickox, prefer not to play it safe and wait things out at home. Because, if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that Ebola should be taken lightly.

And people should be unnecessarily imprisoned to pander to fear-mongering politicians in an election season.

Why don't we just quarantine people who might have the flu, while we're at it?

Or those with guns...

The CDC says that asymptomatic people must self-monitor by taking their own temperature twice a day, staying within 4 hours of suitable hospital, and staying in contact with the CDC. The doctors and nurses are doing this, which means they're following the CDC guidelines. The only people calling for the quarantine of asymptomatic people are the bedwetters and opportunists who are either too dumb to read what the CDC is actually saying or see this as a way to score points for the upcoming elections. Just tonight I was watching Fox "News" and their chyron was something to the effect of:

THE "SCIENCE" OF WHITE HOUSE EBOLA POLICY

What a nifty trick. Don't say you mistrust those pointy headed nerds who read books and stuff, just put the word "science" in "scare quotes" so everyone knows that the "scientists" are dummies or liars.

Which is why I call it Fox "News".

I'm curious what'll happen next Wednesday.

You are willing to put restrictions on other people. But are you willing to put up what it takes to entice those people to voluntarily self quarantine? How about paying for something like 3 weeks paid vacation at a 5 star tropical resourt for all returning health care workers?

 

[catsmate]

There's a gaggle of press following her around as she dodges quarantine. Now there's a vector worth fearing.

Yeah, you'd think if they really believed there was a risk they wouldn't get so close...

 

[Meadmaker]

The CDC publishes the state authority to quarantine here:

http://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantineisolation.html

They make it clear that violating quarantine is a criminal offense. So to say that she is following CDC protocols is ludicrous. There isn't a protocol calling for committing crime.

Did you actually read the link?

Are you aware that it does not support your point in any way?

 

[Meadmaker]

In my mind, I keep coming back to the same thought.

Some have called for very strict quarantines on people like Spencer and Hickox as a way of controlling the spread of disease in America. I'm referring to quarantine measures such as the ones actually imposed by Governor Christie. Those measures are very severe, and beyond what are required by the federal government or recommended by the CDC, but many applaud those measures as a reasonable precaution.

Those sorts of quarantine measures are either unnecessary, or they are inadequate. There's really no middle ground for anyone willing to give it a moment's thought.

So, for those of you who are castigating Hickox for her actions, what else do you think ought to be done?

 

[marplots]

Yeah, you'd think if they really believed there was a risk they wouldn't get so close...

J-school is firmly ensconced in liberal arts and allergic to science.

 

[shuize]

You are willing to put restrictions on other people. But are you willing to put up what it takes to entice those people to voluntarily self quarantine? How about paying for something like 3 weeks paid vacation at a 5 star tropical resourt for all returning health care workers?

"Restrictions" ... I'm not telling people to go to Ebola hot spots. I'm asking those medical workers who feel the need go get hands on with Ebola and other dangerous and infectious diseases to have the common decency to wait a while before rushing out in public to go bowling. Especially if they're going to lie about it afterwards.

"Entice those people to voluntarily self-quarantine" ... If a medical professional who has seen the horror of Ebola up close does not understand that maybe, just maybe, they should stay off of subways, airplanes, and crowded restaurants for a while, then I'd say their "altruism," not to mention common sense, is more than a little suspect.

I also doubt US soldiers are getting 5 star treatment in their government ordered quarantine.

 

[marplots]

We could let them bowl online from home. Then, we could call those in quarantine, "e-bowlers."

Da-dumph TISH!

 

[PhantomWolf]

"Restrictions" ... I'm not telling people to go to Ebola hot spots. I'm asking those medical workers who feel the need go get hands on with Ebola and other dangerous and infectious diseases to have the common decency to wait a while before rushing out in public to go bowling. Especially if they're going to lie about it afterwards.

"Entice those people to voluntarily self-quarantine" ... If a medical professional who has seen the horror of Ebola up close does not understand that maybe, just maybe, they should stay off of subways, airplanes, and crowded restaurants for a while, then I'd say their "altruism," not to mention common sense, is more than a little suspect.

I also doubt US soldiers are getting 5 star treatment in their government ordered quarantine.

You are aware that the only way to catch this disease is to come in contact with the Blood, Faeces, or Vomit of an infected and obviously sick victim, and then have that contact enter you via your eye, nose, mouth, or a break in your skin? At the point they are really sick, way too sick to bowl, their salvia is also infectious. Casual contact with a non-symptomatic, and by that I mean someone who is obviously sick, not tired or with a mild fever, will not pass it on. Quarantining people who aren't showing serious shows of the illness achieves nothing other then being placebo to the public's ignorance.

 

[rwguinn]

J-school is firmly ensconced in liberal arts and allergic to science.

Show me the science behind the quarantine measures people seem to find "necessary"..

 

[marplots]

Show me the science behind the quarantine measures people seem to find "necessary"..

I found it surprisingly hard to find actual scientific papers addressing the germ theory of disease and why we might want to avoid exposure. However, if you'd like to see what the experts think about quarantine, here's a place to start: http://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/

The general idea, as I understand it, is to keep the germs (microscopically small animals of a sort) from reaching healthy people. So what they do is separate people who might have the germs in or on them from people they don't think have the germs. Then, they erect barricades of a sort. Now, since these germs are so small, the kind of barricade you set up can be something as simple as distance, or it can be some impermeable barrier - like a plastic or rubber sheet. Anyhow, the essential principle of a quarantine is to just keep the possibly infected person away from everyone else.

 

[Ziggurat]

Sigh. The CDC guidelines are the actual result of thought and planning, as opposed to political posturing.

You say that as if there could only be one "actual result of thought and planning". That is of course simply not true. Other people, people who know quite a bit about infectious diseases, support a quarantine.

Your claim to singular scientific authority in the CDC is unfounded. Your disregard for legitimate legal authority is childish.

No it's not. Opposing pointless and unnecessary waste of resources and politically motivated grandstanding is a good idea.

Breaking quarantine is grandstanding. If all she wanted to do was oppose bad policy, she could have done so through her lawyers. But she chose not to. Why? You have no answer.

I find it fascinating that you're so much in favour of this pointless "quarantine" given you usually seem to oppose government intervention.

You keep saying it's pointless as if there was no debate on that issue, as if all right-thinking people agree with you and anyone who doesn't is a drooling half-wit. But that's simply not true (see above link). And because it's not true, basically nothing else in your argument actually follows.

Would you be so in favour of intervention were the issue the confiscation of firearms due to the perceived danger from them?

And here we see your pretense to intellectual superiority crumble. The courts have already ruled on this matter. Confiscation of firearms, even during a crisis like Hurricane Katrina, is illegal and unconstitutional. Limited quarantines for people exposed to deadly disease is not.

There's a mechanism for challenging bad laws, and it doesn't require simply ignoring them.

 

[Giz]

You are aware that the only way to catch this disease is to come in contact with the Blood, Faeces, or Vomit of an infected and obviously sick victim, and then have that contact enter you via your eye, nose, mouth, or a break in your skin? At the point they are really sick, way too sick to bowl, their salvia is also infectious. Casual contact with a non-symptomatic, and by that I mean someone who is obviously sick, not tired or with a mild fever, will not pass it on. Quarantining people who aren't showing serious shows of the illness achieves nothing other then being placebo to the public's ignorance.

Actually, from the CDC page:
---
When an infection does occur in humans, the virus can be spread in several ways to others. Ebola is spread through direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes in, for example, the eyes, nose, or mouth) with

blood or body fluids (including but not limited to urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, breast milk, and semen) of a person who is sick with Ebola
objects (like needles and syringes) that have been contaminated with the virus
infected fruit bats or primates (apes and monkeys)

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html?s_cid=cs_3923
---

So simple sweat and a little scratch or abrasion would do it.

 

[marplots]

Actually, from the CDC page:
---
When an infection does occur in humans, the virus can be spread in several ways to others. Ebola is spread through direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes in, for example, the eyes, nose, or mouth) with

blood or body fluids (including but not limited to urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, breast milk, and semen) of a person who is sick with Ebola
objects (like needles and syringes) that have been contaminated with the virus
infected fruit bats or primates (apes and monkeys)

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html?s_cid=cs_3923
---

So simple sweat and a little scratch or abrasion would do it.

It also says, "not limited to." So, we might want to quit having our pet monkeys suck out our pimples. (Now there's an unexpected consequence.)

 

[Monketi Ghost]

Yes, the EVD is so hard to catch, people in hazmat suits who've been meticulous in their protocol catch it without knowing where they went wrong.
Safe!

 

[rwguinn]

I found it surprisingly hard to find actual scientific papers addressing the germ theory of disease and why we might want to avoid exposure. However, if you'd like to see what the experts think about quarantine, here's a place to start: http://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/

The general idea, as I understand it, is to keep the germs (microscopically small animals of a sort) from reaching healthy people. So what they do is separate people who might have the germs in or on them from people they don't think have the germs. Then, they erect barricades of a sort. Now, since these germs are so small, the kind of barricade you set up can be something as simple as distance, or it can be some impermeable barrier - like a plastic or rubber sheet. Anyhow, the essential principle of a quarantine is to just keep the possibly infected person away from everyone else.

Amazingly enough, that is about the most willfully ignorant response I have seen in a long time. Why? Because you refused to read and answer the question. The pertinent part was "deem to be "necessary". No one, including me, doubts that germs exist (at least among the folks here) nor that they can be spread by contact with the infected.
My question was the science demanding 21 day [bold] isolation [/bold] of anyone who has been around anybody/ anywhere that with Ebola in the vacinity seems to be the demand ..

 

[epepke]

Look at the Doctor too who lied about self-quarantining in NYC. It was only discovered where he travelled because the police obtained his credit card and subway pass info by subpoena.

This defiance of legal authority and lying ought to sober people up about what kind of risks we are facing here. This is not a large population of people coming back from Ebola treatment centers, so just these two cases we know about is way too high a proportion for me to trust sending thousands over there.

When you are in the third world you are treated like a rock star just being an ordinary middle class American. But a Doctor - that's a Demigod. So sure, when returning home as a Demigod and you are actually expected to follow laws and tell the truth to authorities like the rest of us mortals... this really impinges on your Demigod status.

It's proof of Narcissism, not Altruism.

Here's what I saw:

Funny, I thought a Time Lord would be immune, and he could just regenerate.

But seriously, that's a good point. rwguinn makes a good point by saying that many of the people criticizing the nurse are the same ones who masturbate with the Constitution, and that's true. But many of those phonily standing up for the rights of the nurse are masturbating to medical authority. Being careful and getting checked up regularly is quite sufficient for a disease like Ebola, that is, if they do it. However, anybody who hasn't figured out that medical "professionals," as a regular part of their culture, consistently flaunt their disregard of medical advice seriously needs a Haldol drip, stat. Most ordinary people can be trusted to do the right thing and take precautions, but not doctors and nurses, not ever. This kind of sucks, but it's embedded in the culture.

 

[Dan O.]

Ummm, no. You realise that Ebola has been known about since 1976, but has been around a lot longer than that. Since then there have been multiple outbreaks, though previously it has tended to burn itself out quickly because the victims didn't travel far and so didn't spread it. However, if it was going to mutate into a version that is transmittable any other way, it would have done so years and decades ago.

Do you realize that in the short time that we have been aware of the Ebola family there have been over 300 mutated strains identified. Yet that number is insignificant compared to the number of possible variations. The rate at which new mutations are created is proportional to the number of human hosts infected. The number of infected humans in the current outbreak is orders of magnitude greater than the total number of infections from all previous outbreaks combined. Each human to human transmission offers a selective force to guide the virus to becomming easier to transmit.

Becoming airborne is only one worst case scenario. But not necessarily the very worst. A mutation that makes the virus transmittable but asymptomatic would make humans the resurvoir host allowing new outbreaks to pop up randomly anywhere in the world with just a mutation back to the deadly strain.

 

[marplots]

Amazingly enough, that is about the most willfully ignorant response I have seen in a long time. Why? Because you refused to read and answer the question. The pertinent part was "deem to be "necessary". No one, including me, doubts that germs exist (at least among the folks here) nor that they can be spread by contact with the infected.
My question was the science demanding 21 day [bold] isolation [/bold] of anyone who has been around anybody/ anywhere that with Ebola in the vacinity seems to be the demand ..

How does the phrase, "abundance of caution" sit with you?

 

[PhantomWolf]

Actually, from the CDC page:
---
When an infection does occur in humans, the virus can be spread in several ways to others. Ebola is spread through direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes in, for example, the eyes, nose, or mouth) with

blood or body fluids (including but not limited to urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, breast milk, and semen) of a person who is sick with Ebola
objects (like needles and syringes) that have been contaminated with the virus
infected fruit bats or primates (apes and monkeys)

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html?s_cid=cs_3923
---

So simple sweat and a little scratch or abrasion would do it.

Not according to WHO. They state that "[the] whole virus has never been found in sweat.". Without the entire virus appearing in sweat, you can't contract it from it.

While you can get it via Breast Milk and Semen, I was assuming that most people here worrying about quarantine were not planning to have sex or drink the breast milk of those that were wanting quarantined. I was also assuming they didn't plan to share needles, though I'd note that sharing needles is a blood transfer, so comes under being a contact with their blood entering your body.

Finally, I don't think that anyone is planning to eat uncooked meat from infected bats or primates, so we don't need to worry about that either. That leaves the big three. Blood, faeces, and vomit, and I doubt many people would actually touch those in public places, let alone then sticking their finger in an eye, nose, or mouth before washing it.

So short of having an extremely sick patient actually cough directly in your mouth, there isn't a risk, and if that happened, and you caught it, you'd be the first person on the planet to do so via that method.

 

[DavidJames]

How disappointing it must be to the hysterical that the only people who've contracted Ebola here are those who provided direct care to a patient with severe symptoms. Science trumps Internet hysteria again.