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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

#61

Post by jeffdavis »

bjz_ wrote: post #14
googler_314 wrote: post #12

Before judging this man for going bowling etc., we should bear in mind that he caught Ebola working for Doctors without Borders in Guinea. I would guess that without workers like him, the risk to Americans and others outside Africa, would be much higher, since the disease would be spreading much faster within Africa. Hopefully he recovers and we can improve travel policies if necessary.

Agreed. He might have been silly for being out in public right after having come back from Africa, but I'm sure he did more good over there in preventing the spread of the disease (which helps us), than he might have done when coming home. Lets hope future doctors learn from this.

"I'm sure he did more good over there in preventing the spread of the disease"

Why are you sure?

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#62

Post by jeffdavis »

joe_the_user wrote: post #19

"Many signs point to the viral load not being highly infectious at the beginning. Duncan was sent back to his home by the hospital and lived with his fiance who was taking care of him for two days before being readmitted. She wore no PPE yet appears to be uninfected. If sitting next to someone infected on a bus or subway is enough to pass it on, there would be a million cases in West Africa by now, not 10K. It appear…

People move through the stages at different rates with a high variance. That's still pretty scary.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#63

Post by ASneakyFox »

knappador wrote: post #55
Houshalter wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 out…

Of course it's being spread from a region with an ev outbreak. That's how it works. The news is that it has now officially spread to the US and there is potential of more cases popping up soon since he wasn't quarintined.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#64

Post by EliRivers »

jeffdavis wrote: post #57
bjz_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Perhaps it's illegal to imprison people who have committed no crime, on the guess that because they were interacting with people who had a disease, they might have it too.

Also, in this case and many like it, imprisoning this man would have been much more expensive than simply testing him for the disease.

There you go; one reason it's a bad idea to imprison someone you think might be carrying ebola is that you can just test their blood and know for sure if they are. Seems a lot cheaper and better all round than imprisoning people.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#65

Post by kamaal »

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.

>>now they have to perform contact tracing and disinfect the place.

I wonder how feasible this is. Its not just the bowling alley, using public rest rooms, subway, or utensils at a restaurant. Its almost impossible to find every thing he came in contact with and disinfect it. Plus in case of stuff like utensils, whats to guarantee that they were not mixed with each other and used by other people already.

If some one has been infected due to this by now. It will become impossible to get a realistic perspective of how far this thing would have spread.

In short you are dealing with a exponential growth scenario.Which is why these sort of things are so dangerous.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#67

Post by kamaal »

wfjackson wrote: post #9
001sky wrote: post #6

"People infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they begin to display symptoms, and it cannot be spread through the air. As people become sicker, the viral load in the body builds, and they become more and more contagious." This is sort of misleading in this context, unfortunately. The WHO considers (sustained presence) within 1 meter of EBV carrier to be ~physical exposure. The young doctor appears to ha…

Many signs point to the viral load not being highly infectious at the beginning. Duncan was sent back to his home by the hospital and lived with his fiance who was taking care of him for two days before being readmitted. She wore no PPE yet appears to be uninfected. If sitting next to someone infected on a bus or subway is enough to pass it on, there would be a million cases in West Africa by now, not 10K. It appears…

Ebola can spread only after a person begins to show symptoms. And that takes ~21 days. Or putting it straight, for it to spread from one person to another it would take 21 days of period in between getting infected and spreading it to others.

Though the growth of number of patients with Ebola is definitely exponential. Please note it takes 21 days for the each multiplication to happen. It started in March and has been been spreading since, 10K is pretty large for a 7 month period.

>>but the sky isn't falling just yet.

In things like this you won't know when the sky will start falling apart. And generally when that happens its already too late, and you would be staring at a pretty big damage.

No body knows how many people have been infected, or will be infected in the next multiplication.

Which is why WHO suspects ~1.4 million could get infected by January. By then it would be too late.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#68

Post by uptown »

malandrew wrote: post #34
uptown wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the underground tunnels. Some of the stations have service, but not most.

But you should be able to infer location from the gaps. If someone was at station A, then disappears and 2 minutes later is recorded at station be, it should be possible to know they took the train between those two stations.

Yup. There's ample data from metrocards and security cameras to follow his route. The more difficult challenge would be finding everyone he had come in contact with on those trains since data granularity of which cars he took would likely be unspecific.

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#69

Post by rurban »

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.

Please read up on Ebola. It is only contagious when the patient is experiencing symptoms, not earlier. He got fever Thursday morning. So he knew better, just hackers have no idea. "Since returning, he had been taking his temperature twice a day". Or maybe they just cannot read. So no, they don't have to disinfect the bowling area. But people are hysterical, so they did.

Even the NY Times got it right this time: "People infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they begin to display symptoms, and it cannot be spread through the air."

Re: Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

#70

Post by dhimes »

EliRivers wrote: post #64
jeffdavis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Perhaps it's illegal to imprison people who have committed no crime, on the guess that because they were interacting with people who had a disease, they might have it too. Also, in this case and many like it, imprisoning this man would have been much more expensive than simply testing him for the disease. There you go; one reason it's a bad idea to imprison someone you think might be carrying ebola is that you can ju…

Quarantine is not imprisonment, and is certainly not illegal. In fact, it is customary if you, for example, sail a boat from one country to another.

The point here is that it's not clear that there's a reason to enforce a quarantine- yet. But if it becomes clear, then we need to have the balls to do it.

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