CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

Post by Bud » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 10:06 PM UTC

santosha wrote: post #37

jonrimmer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it mutates and becomes airborne, it might be. That's why containment is so important, even if it doesn't seem so threatening in its current form. Viruses constantly mutate, and every extra person they infect gives them a million more opportunities to do so. All it takes is one of those mutations to make the virus airborne, and we're in big trouble.

You can make the exact same statement about every other deadly virus, though. Why is ebola any different?

Post by FollowSteph3 » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 10:06 PM UTC

giarc wrote: post #48

FollowSteph3 wrote: post #40

What's going to be a real struggle is how do you differentiate between symptoms of the stomach flu, influenza, Ebola, and so on...

Well someone that hasn't been to an affected country, or been in contact with the current case won't have Ebola.

Post by Someone » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 10:07 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #30

Someone1234 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or phasing that another way: It depends how willing you are to ignore the facts and invent unsupported "worst case scenario" scenarios. There is no factual reason why we should expect the transmission mechanism to suddenly evolve before our eyes. That's raw fear mongering. While Ebola is more deadly than Bird Flu, that kind of wild unsupported speculation is why so many people thought Bird Flu was far more dangerous…

"The more time you give a virus to mutate and the more human-to-human transmission you see," she says, "the more opportunities you give it to fall upon some [mutation] that could make it more easily transmissible or more pathogenic." - Pardis Sabeti, computational biologist at Harvard University Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/08/28/343734184/e...

Post by nmjohn » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 10:10 PM UTC

Post by giarc » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 10:11 PM UTC

aroch wrote: post #50

giarc wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All hospitals can contain Ebola. This is not an airborne disease and therefore negative pressure isolation is not needed (unless performing aerosol generating procedures). All you need is a private room and proper PPE use and infection control procedures.

Most modern / renovated hospitals (last ~10-15 years) have designed their isolation rooms to be negative pressure anyway and standard patient rooms also operate under negative pressure because of how airhandling is setup (albeit a very light negative pressure)