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CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

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Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#131

Post by heurist »

tomelders wrote: post #95

I'm having a hard time accepting the "everyone should stop being stupid and stop panicking about Ebola" argument. To me, an uneducated observer, the problem only appears to be getting worse. And it has gotten significantly worse in spite of all the reassurances that it would not get worse. i think a lot of the vitriol aimed at people who are worried and a little freaked out by Ebola is unfair. People have lost their…

Same here. There have been seemingly credible sources saying it will go nowhere and other seemingly credible sources saying we're too late to stop it from spreading. It's hard to figure out where to fall on this as an uneducated, relatively detached observer.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#132

Post by zo1 »

guscost wrote: post #119
001sky wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is missing the point. Ebola is a far more dangerous pathogen. I dont think this needs further explanation.

The death toll from malaria throughout history is orders and orders of magnitude beyond that of Ebola. I don't see how there is any way you can accurately describe it as "a far more dangerous pathogen."

I think people find ebola more frightening. Even if it's caused a tiny amount of deaths compared to other, less frightening diseases.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#133

Post by HillRat »

sjm-lbm wrote: post #11
MrZongle2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but was this person intercepted at a point of entry into the United States, or did they go to a healthcare facility voluntarily once they started noticing symptoms, after they were already in the country? The former implies that there may be sufficient mechanisms in place to prevent a repeat incident. The latter does not.

FWIW, though DFW is a very big airport, there are no direct flights from Africa that land there. If they ended up in Dallas, they at least stopped somewhere outside Africa before they got there.

I've always traveled through De Gaulle on my way to and from West Africa (used to take Air Afrique, but these days Air France, Ethiopian and Air Maroc all go to Bamako). However, since the patient wasn't symptomatic until they were in Dallas, transits and port-of-entry don't have to worry. There's a large, fairly dense immigrant neighborhood just east of the hospital in question (the IRC does a lot of refugee relocations there), so there may have been exposure in that area.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#134

Post by k-mcgrady »

nikolaj wrote: post #103

The headline variations are quite interesting: CNBC: First confirmed case of Ebola confirmed in the United States: CDC NYT: Airline Passenger With Ebola Is Under Treatment in Dallas BBC: First Ebola case diagnosed on US soil CNN: Ebola case is the first diagnosed in the U.S. FOX: EBOLA HITS AMERICA CDC identifies first case on US soil Obviously Fox takes the FUD crown, but I thought the NYT actually misrepresented it…

>> "Obviously Fox takes the FUD crown, but I thought the NYT actually misrepresented it a bit.."

I actually think they were closest to accurate. The other headlines all make it sound like this man caught ebola in the US. They are the only one to indicate he was abroad. I think they've undersold it a bit as he spent several days in the US before being isolated but everyone else has sensationalised to an extent imo (or written the headline in a way that allows us, the reader, to accidentally sensationalise it).

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#136

Post by timr »

marcelsalathe wrote: post #111
timr wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the current media frenzy "sensationalism"? Yes. Is there a risk here? Yes, a small one. I understand, but am frustrated by, the number of people who keep repeating "it's not airborne", as if this is some kind of definitive argument that a virus cannot spread here. Something like 80% of cold/flu infections happen via "bodily fluids" -- people snot on a surface, someone else touches the surface, then touch their fac…

Your 80% number is misleading. There is no good data on that. Flu has long been thought to be mainly transmitted through droplets, which fall to the ground quickly, rather than being dispensed in the air, being able to travel large distances (which would be truly airborne). If anything, the latest data suggest that we have actually underestimated the airborne route (relative to the droplet route). Yes, a pandemic can…

I'm basing that number on a paper I read a while ago that estimated the infection channels from a variety of experimental and epidemiological data. I can't find the original article with a quick search, but there are plenty of other papers that show how efficient the hand-contact mechanism is. For example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/205151

In that study, 11 of 15 hand-contact exposures to a rhinovirus led to infection, which is not 80%, but it's within the margin of error. Notably, it was almost as good as large-particle aerosol exposure at spreading the virus.

But yes, the important point is that you don't need an airborne virus for a pandemic. Every virus is different, but there's this public fixation on "airborne" transmission that is a bit of a red herring. Ebola is doing just fine without it.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#137

Post by induscreep »

lee wrote: post #75

Am I one of the minorities who believe that this hype about Ebola is more sensationalism and news than an actual pandemic we should be fearful for? Let's take a lot at what we can agree on: * The number of cases of infected patients is fairly small. * The vector of transmission is fluid exchange, so that reduces its ability to spread. * The virus doesn't appear to lie dormant, and is only contagious when the patient…

Also, there were patients with Lhasa fever and Marburg in the USA before - and nothing happened. Ebola is hyped up because there's an outbreak in Africa.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#138

Post by jerryhuang100 »

nikolaj wrote: post #103

The headline variations are quite interesting: CNBC: First confirmed case of Ebola confirmed in the United States: CDC NYT: Airline Passenger With Ebola Is Under Treatment in Dallas BBC: First Ebola case diagnosed on US soil CNN: Ebola case is the first diagnosed in the U.S. FOX: EBOLA HITS AMERICA CDC identifies first case on US soil Obviously Fox takes the FUD crown, but I thought the NYT actually misrepresented it…

FOX: EBOLA WAR ON US SOIL

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#139

Post by dreamweapon »

"It is certainly possible that someone who had contact with this individual...could develop Ebola in the coming weeks," Frieden said, but added that "there is no doubt in my mind that we will stop it here," Frieden said.

General rule of thumb:

Anytime someone says "there is no doubt in my mind about X", you can be pretty sure that yeah, they do have a lot of doubt in their mind about X.

Re: CDC confirms first Ebola case diagnosed in US

#140

Post by DanBC »

comrh wrote: post #4

Am I correct in assuming that cultural differences concerning death and the dead along with our healthcare system mean Ebola in America would be relatively containable?

Your expensive health care system may cause people to delay seeing a doctor, which means they might be symptomatic and spreading disease for a few days before being quarantined.

A patient zero on a new york subway could infect a few people and they would be hard to trace.

Although it's not probible it is scarier than "can't happen"

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