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Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

nytimes.com

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Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#51

Post by adventured »

blergh123 wrote: post #26
rustyconover wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To borrow an idea from math, "doing good" isn't a commutative, infections and diseases are. Have some respect for others and slow your roll before going out during the 21 day post exposure window. It's a bit like saying, "Hey I've saved lives over here so I have earned the right to be irresponsible over here". Because you know, karma balances out. No, the world doesn't work like that. And you aren't doing any good pr…

I thought it was well known that ebola can be spread through any bodily fluids and that this includes droplets from coughing and sneezing. What they don't yet know is whether ebola is 'airborne' - i.e. dried droplets that can float in air as is the case with measles for example.

These credible professionals certainly seem to think ebola can infect via aerosol, and perhaps remain in the air for up to an hour:

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/09/commentar...

I have to believe the US Government already knows that ebola is capable of this, they've been studying it for decades. If it can spread by aerosol, they're lying to prevent substantially more panic.

Downvoters should start by refuting the linked article - it's a pretty important article. The authors are guaranteed to know a lot more about ebola than anyone here.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#52

Post by thret »

stevewepay wrote: post #38
msie wrote: post #2

The doctor should have known better than to go to a bowling alley soon after he returned. Whether or not he was contagious now they have to perform contact tracing and disinfect the place.

Everything I've read suggests that this doctor is conscientious, selfless and kind. I don't believe he would have exposed others to Ebola if he had any inclination that he was infected. He measured his temperature twice a day as was required and didn't feel sick until today. It could be the case that he was infected 2-3 weeks ago, but since the average time of symptoms showing up is 8-10 days because he was symptom-f…

"Symptoms may appear anywhere from 2 to 21 days after exposure to Ebola, but the average is 8 to 10 days."

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/symptoms/index.html

"A 21 day period for quarantine may result in the release of individuals with a 0.2 – 12% risk of release prior to full opportunity for the incubation to proceed."

http://currents.plos.org/outbreaks/article/on-the-quarantine...

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#53

Post by Bud »

tsotha wrote: post #47
westward wrote: post #24

Based on the timeline, he had to have contracted Ebola pretty much the day he left. That seems pretty unusual, isn't it? How long was he there, a couple months? "Symptoms usually occur within eight to 10 days of infection and Dr. Spencer had been home nine days when he reported feeling ill." That's not including travel time local and international. That's a tight schedule!

That's just the average. It can be over 42 days.

Maximum observed incubation period for Ebola is 21 days.

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/declaration-ebola-end/e...

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#55

Post by knappador »

Houshalter wrote: post #45
knappador wrote: post #28

How about "Doctor Returning From Guinea..." to more accurately reflect the geographic relationship instead of creating a bomb of a headline as if some random, yet-unknown vector resulted in Ebola in New York.

Why does it matter who he was? The title is pretty accurate.

Where they just returned from makes the news highly generic, unsurprising, and it drops off the main page rapidly instead of being an attention grabber. Even the article that is linked to says "Doctor..." which at least leads me to believe that the just returned from treating someone. This is not incredibly surprising news, but if someone who just happened to be in New York with no obvious connection to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa caught Ebola, that would be pretty obviously significant since there might be someone who was unidentified and contagious in New York recently, suggesting that an outbreak could flare up in New York. News that misleads wastes time and makes money, but not my money.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#56

Post by jeffdavis »

I'm not afraid of Ebola as much as the "experts" who keep intentionally misleading us about Ebola. I don't know why they do it, and that scares me. But it's very obvious that it's intentional.

See the first three sources I found about Ebola transmission in sweat: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/ebola-ask-well-spre... (claims that sweat doesn't contain Ebola) http://www.afro.who.int/en/clusters-a-programmes/dpc/epidemi... (claims that Ebola can be transmitted through sweat) http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/qas.html (hard to tell whether they think sweat is a transmission mechanism or not... they define "body fluids" twice, once including sweat and another excluding it)

I also heard on NPR that sweat contained a lot of the virus (don't have a reference handy).

Real experts don't shoot their mouth off with false assurances about a disease we don't know much about. The "hard to catch Ebola" mantra was going on long after that was discredited[1]. These aren't experts, they have some kind of agenda, and I'm not sure what it is. For some, it's probably just being on TV. For others, it's to feel smug about how the ignorant masses under them are panicking irrationally. As for the rest, probably political.

Again, I'm not panicking about Ebola. We'll have a few isolated cases in the West. It will remain in Africa in all of the hot zone countries until we have a vaccine. And hopefully that happens before it spreads to Nigeria, India, Brazil, or other areas where it might be hard to control.

I am not panicking. I am just mad at the irresponsibility of these "experts" we keep hearing from.

[1] No references here, but I think everyone remembers that the first story was that, unless you were engaging in some unsanitary funeral practices deep in an African village, it was impossible to catch. After doctors began to catch it, the story changed to be that they don't have enough resources to protect themselves. Then several Western doctors got infected while in hospitals in Western countries (Spain and the US at least), and the story changed into something about how the protocols will protect us, but were just not followed properly these few times (despite not knowing the specific protocol violations that lead to infection).

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#57

Post by jeffdavis »

bjz_ wrote: post #15
georgemcbay wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. In my experience with experts I'd say especially someone who "knows better" can end up thinking that the bad thing can't happen to them right up until they, in a fit of being human, have an oops and it does.

Yeah. I hate this 'holier than thou' attitude that some folks on this thread are displaying. We are all human, and we all do stupid things based on our psychology. The best we can do is create systems to help guard against our own mistakes.

"The best we can do is create systems to help guard against our own mistakes."

Like enforced isolation of some kind? The thing that people have been asking for since the beginning, but is a bad idea for some reason that nobody can explain?

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#58

Post by 001sky »

fourstar wrote: post #50
tsotha wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just the average. It can be over 42 days.

Got a source for that?

"Background: 21 days has been regarded as the appropriate quarantine period for holding individuals potentially exposed to Ebola Virus (EV) to reduce risk of contagion. There does not appear to be a systematic discussion of the basis for this period.

Methods: The prior estimates for incubation time to EV were examined, along with data on the first 9 months of the current outbreak. These provided estimates of the distribution of incubation times.

Results: A 21 day period for quarantine may result in the release of individuals with a 0.2 – 12% risk of release prior to full opportunity for the incubation to proceed. It is suggested that a detailed cost-benefit assessment, including considering full transmission risks, needs to occur in order to determine the appropriate quarantine period for potentially exposed individuals."

http://currents.plos.org/outbreaks/article/on-the-quarantine...

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#59

Post by jeffdavis »

TrevorJ wrote: post #48
malandrew wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can fight the deleterious effects on support of quarantining by making the quarantining fun/enjoyable/pleasant. Choose a remote resort location, rent it out for the duration of the crisis, send everyone there to sit out their quarantine in comfort. I wouldn't mind a 21 day quarantine on a beach or camping

You can't send everybody to the same quarantine, they would all end up infected.

But you can send them to NYC instead?!

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#60

Post by santaclaus »

shirro wrote: post #42

The smart thing would be for aid agencies that send workers to these hot spots to pay for their employees to stay in a nice quite "resort" somewhere for a month on their return for them to relax and as a thankyou for their efforts. And to deflect growing negative public opinion about the risks returning aid workers pose. Needless to say the "resort" could have daily health checks and minimal contact between people bu…

That strategy certainly worked for the Venetians. Merchant ships had to chill off shore for 40 days before unloading their cargo to make sure no one harbored deadly diseases. Hence the quarter in quarantine.
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