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Post by fauxmaha on Oct 1, 2014 20:20:12 GMT -5
PS. Any folks here want to assist with the monitoring of the exposed? If I worked in medicine, I would likely be less casual about this threat. You guys are going to be walking point on this, for sure. All the same, everything I've read suggests that transmission risk is pretty low, particularly if we are talking about trained people with the right protocols, right protective gear, etc. Doesn't mean I'm volunteering, although I'd be happy to sell you some binders for recording your patient interactions. ******** It does seem like this was all designed pretty well: The viruses that are really good at spreading are not so good at killing, and the viruses that are really good at killing are not so good at spreading. The two things...killing and spreading...being pretty much mutually exclusive and all. Plus, they protect us from Martian invasions. Cool planet we have.
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Post by Doug on Oct 1, 2014 20:47:24 GMT -5
It will be a political thing not a medical thing.
Doesn't matter which side, never let a crisis pass with out using it to attack the other guy. Oh it's not a real crisis well we'll talk as if it is.
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Post by Village Idiot on Oct 1, 2014 21:45:50 GMT -5
Interesting thread, and a prime example of why I come here.
Sometimes humans can get over things if they have the simplest things available to them which are not available in the part of Africa where this is occuring. Intravenous therapy (the IV) is a prime example of this. Keep fluids in the body, and many times the body can horse its way through something. I'm assuming that's the same with ebola, as severe diarrhea is part of it, which means loss of bodily fluid.
I remember my Dad stating during a cholera outbreak when we lived in Kenya, and he was an animal doctor not a human doctor, that if they simply had enough IVs, most people would have lived.
From what I'm hearing in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea that the hospitals there are lacking IVs. I wonder if people could just keep up the bodiliy fluids how many more would survive.
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Post by aquaduct on Oct 1, 2014 21:47:39 GMT -5
Seems the patient in Dallas was originally sent home with antibiotics before ebola was identified. Even after telling staff that he'd been to the affected countries.
I'm just a little skeptical that we here in the modern world are all that secure.
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Post by patrick on Oct 1, 2014 21:53:14 GMT -5
While the Great Flu is instructive in the power of infectious diseases, there are significant differences between influenza viruses and filoviruses like Ebola. Influenza viruses infect a wide variety of species, especially birds, that is where they mutate to produce a new version each year. Ebola apparently infects great apes and some others, e.g. duikers.
The Ebola outbreaks that have been traced usually lead back to hunters handling corpses of dead animals, gorillas or bats or duikers, etc. And human to human infection seems to involve contact with bodily fluids. Influenza is highly infectious as an aerosol (from sneezing) and the Plague was spread by rats and fleas. Ebola is a much harder disease to catch than those two.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2014 21:55:39 GMT -5
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Post by patrick on Oct 1, 2014 21:59:04 GMT -5
Seems the patient in Dallas was originally sent home with antibiotics before ebola was identified. Even after telling staff that he'd been to the affected countries. I'm just a little skeptical that we here in the modern world are all that secure. That's because no one is yet thinking that Ebola is here. They're starting to now. There are tests that can be done rapidly and easily in most hospitals if they have the reagents. Ebola can be detected by PCR on blood. That means PCR could potentially be used for mass screenings, if need be.
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Post by fauxmaha on Oct 1, 2014 22:01:02 GMT -5
Even after telling staff that he'd been to the affected countries. That is a fascinating part of this story. One can only guess that the staff simply wasn't aware of the connection. I assume (hope is perhaps a better word) that every hospital in the country is, right now, training their front-line people that "flu-like symptoms" + "Liberia/Sierra Leone/etc" = isolate immediately and run some tests. Well, we'll know soon enough. The Dallas guy was on an airplane with however many hundred people for quite a few hours. Then he was rattling around Dallas for over a week before being isolated. Presumably, the CDC people are tracking down everyone on the plane (nice thing is we know who they all are) and everyone he was in close contact with in Dallas. We know that he was un-isolated for a period of time during which according to the CDC he was contagious. Given the incubation period, we will either have new cases in a week or so, or we won't.
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Post by aquaduct on Oct 1, 2014 22:08:26 GMT -5
Seems the patient in Dallas was originally sent home with antibiotics before ebola was identified. Even after telling staff that he'd been to the affected countries. I'm just a little skeptical that we here in the modern world are all that secure. That's because no one is yet thinking that Ebola is here. They're starting to now. There are tests that can be done rapidly and easily in most hospitals if they have the reagents. Ebola can be detected by PCR on blood. That means PCR could potentially be used for mass screenings, if need be. Which assumes that we'll all be good soldiers and show up at the hospital when sick.
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Post by Cornflake on Oct 1, 2014 22:24:42 GMT -5
Courtesy of a nurse friend.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2014 22:38:14 GMT -5
Avoiding ill West Africans' bodily fluids is undoubtedly sensible. Taking low dose aspirin to fend off cardiac problems might also keep you from prematurely joining hundreds of thousands of other Americans in the choir invisible and is possibly more of a helpful tip to many.
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Post by aquaduct on Oct 2, 2014 6:07:29 GMT -5
Avoiding ill West Africans' bodily fluids is undoubtedly sensible. Taking low dose aspirin to fend off cardiac problems might also keep you from prematurely joining hundreds of thousands of other Americans in the choir invisible and is possibly more of a helpful tip to many. As is carrying a gun.
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Post by millring on Oct 2, 2014 6:41:09 GMT -5
Avoiding ill West Africans' bodily fluids is undoubtedly sensible. Taking low dose aspirin to fend off cardiac problems might also keep you from prematurely joining hundreds of thousands of other Americans in the choir invisible and is possibly more of a helpful tip to many. As is carrying a gun. ...or wearing a seatbelt. ::nods::
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Post by aquaduct on Oct 2, 2014 6:45:54 GMT -5
...or wearing a seatbelt. ::nods:: Very true. But since I really don't want to be immortal I don't wear them in order to offset the others.
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Post by Chesapeake on Oct 3, 2014 9:33:09 GMT -5
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Post by TKennedy on Oct 3, 2014 9:50:16 GMT -5
I have this image of two obese couples sitting in McDonalds eating Big Macs and fries talking about how scared they are of Ebola.
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Post by Chesapeake on Oct 3, 2014 11:39:32 GMT -5
Good one, TK.
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Post by Doug on Oct 3, 2014 12:42:45 GMT -5
I have this image of two obese couples sitting in McDonalds eating Big Macs and fries talking about how scared they are of Ebola. Now that's an image that sticks in my mind.
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