The ebola panic

[Hyena Dandy]

I've always been mildly concerned about Ebola, but only in a "That sounds like it's awful," way. I'm not any more concerned now. From what I've heard from medical types, it's hard to catch. I'm less concerned about it than I am annoyed at all the people who are replacing their "LOL CANCER" with "LOL EBOLA" comments.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

This can't be helping the containment of Ebola - authorities accepting bribes to say that deceased victims died of something else so the family buries their relative according to their traditions, plus they do not have to deal with the social backlash of having a family member die from the disease.

http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-families...153423993.html

One of the biggest issues with Ebola isn't it's contagiousness, it's despite being incredibly deadly people do very stupid things that help spread it. It's not even an Ebola specific aspect, just one that gets magnified because the stakes can be high with this infection.

Right now from the Duncan case there are now two additional infections with one having taken a flight recently.

I'm just curious how hospitals are reacting behind closed doors. In public, we seem to have two very vocal camps which are "don't panic" and "we're all going to die." Hospitals say "don't panic" and the Presby incident indicates that in reality some hospitals are not prepared which certainly indicates a lax attitude. I'm just curious if this is the incident that kicks everyone into gear or if it's been so long since something like Polio that "don't worry, we'll be fine" is a systemic attitude.

You'd like to think if anyone was taking it seriously, it would be hospitals. It's why we pay them.

[Tama]

I'm shocked at what I've read. Some of the nurses are apparently saying that protocols were constantly changing and that they were often expected to treat Duncan without proper equipment sometimes.

[Sarah Valentine]

New warning to stay away from chocolate

My mom told me that one of her friends posted something about chocolate crops being infected, all the chocolate that's in the store right now is safe but NOT to buy anything after Halloween. Tomorrow I'm just going to get what I need to make some turtles and after that I'm not going near it for a good long while. Apparently over 85% of the chocolate crops have been infected, so after tomorrow I'm not going near ANYTHING chocolate or chocolate flavored just to be on the safe side. I haven't seen a link to a news source yet, but I'm not just going to ignore it.


Edit: I found this one http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-travel-b...--finance.html

[Teysa]

Actually, I saw nothing in that article about the cocoa crops themselves being infected. Officials from the Ivory Coast are concerned about their citizens traveling to one of the infected regions and bringing the disease back. They have had to cancel plans to count the pods because some of the counters come from Ebola stricken areas. The problem is that if the farmers do have to be quarantined, there will be no one to harvest the crops thus having an effect on their economy.

[lordlundar]

My mom told me that one of her friends posted something about chocolate crops being infected, all the chocolate that's in the store right now is safe but NOT to buy anything after Halloween. Tomorrow I'm just going to get what I need to make some turtles and after that I'm not going near it for a good long while. Apparently over 85% of the chocolate crops have been infected, so after tomorrow I'm not going near ANYTHING chocolate or chocolate flavored just to be on the safe side. I haven't seen a link to a news source yet, but I'm not just going to ignore it.


Edit: I found this one http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-travel-b...--finance.html

Speaking of paranoia...

No, I'm being serious. It's a load of bunk. Here, I'll run the list of how it's paranoid:

- Pod counters are being restricted because they come from infected areas, not the farmers who are from and grow their crops in areas not affected.
- pod counters rarely touch the pods so contact is low
- The pods are dried so even if the pods were touched (which is unlikely) then the bodily fluids (which is required for transmission) would have evaporated.
- The pods are shipped by boat which would kill any ebola cells alive
- The pods have to be quarantined by law before they can even be distributed further removing any risk
- The beans are extracted by automated methods, so there's no human contact.
- The beans are further dried before processing
- Cocoa and subsequent chocolate processing is done in food grade sterilization facilities which the virus cannot survive in.

And I'm sure I missed something or other in that list.

To put it simply even if (and that is an exceptionally large IF) the base pod had infected bodily fluids on it, the odds of even a single cell surviving are so infinitesimally small that it would require divine intervention to survive and you would not see those products on the shelves for several months.

I would add, a number of chocolate products (and other products) contain palm oil, some of which ARE in infected territories and there have been no reported infections through that.

[Panacea]

And good news:

Lamivudine,HIV drug, can cure patients in as little as 2 days if given before the 5th day of symptoms.

So a doctor in Africa alleges. The treatment has not been studied for effectiveness in humans as a treatment for Ebola; the reports are all anecdotal. If patients survived, we don't know if it was the medicine or chance.

The same is true of the American doctors who got ZMapp.

I have a problem with both sides honestly. No, Ebola probably won't smash through North America like a freight train, but it is legitimate to be concerned that world governments are capable of containing something this potentially fatal when they've been unwilling thus far to really get involved in the areas where this is a problem until recently. Because of that, Dallas and DC (potentially) were only a matter of time.

I'm more concerned about Enterovirus D68 than I am about Ebola. Why? Because it's been reported in every state. Though the number of confirmed cases is small and EV season is coming to an end, it is still more of a risk than Ebola.

And we're entering prime flu and norovirus season. Considering flu kills up to 50,000 people in the US every year, everyone should be running to get a flu shot but they're not.

The CDC and WHO have both made some mistakes. The WHO's were disastrous . . . for Africans. The CDCs created some confusion and raised some risks that shouldn't have happened. The Texas Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas made some major mistakes that made the situation with Duncan so much much worse.

There's plenty of blame to go around and yet . . . for us here in the US it could have been so, so much worse.

Instead of going apeshit, we need to learn from the mistakes and try to do better. The CDC is doing that. The hospital, well we don't know what they're doing. WHO hasn't said either; they have a major corruption problem that led to a breakdown and misapplied protocols.

There's been a lot of FUD going on about this disease. Beyond the few isolated cases we have, we're not likely to see much more. All the nonsense about travel bans is just going to make things worse for the people in Africa, who are suffering enough. It won't protect anyone here.

Honestly? If I were a resident of that complex where he *vomited* in the parking lot and it sat uncleaned up for several days, I would be walking into the nearest hotel, telling then I had been exposed to Ebola infected biowaste products, demanding internal to the hospital quarentine and charging the cost to both the hospital that neglected to hold onto the jackass, and the local health department for dropping the ball, and then for good measure I would charge the asshole and the co-residents of his apartment with assault. He is *worse* than Typhoid Mary, in her defense the germ theory hadn't caught up with common education and she was the first asymptomatic illness that was deadly and contagious and they had no real education in the issue, they currently KNOW that people are contagious even if they are not expressing the disease directly however the asshole VOMITED IN THE PARKING LOT, shall I repeat myself? HE VOMITED IN THE PARKING LOT AND IT WAS NOT CLEANED UP. How does one get exposed to ebola? Through contact with biowaste products. What is vomit? Biowaste product. So, hwo many people were actually exposed to VOMIT IN THE PARKING LOT?

That brings up another question: how long does a contaminated substance stay dangerous? For example, could someone pumping out a septic tank years later get ebola that way?

On the other hand, if you live in Texas, maybe you SHOULD panic. Seeing as everyone there that comes in contact with ebola loses 50 IQ points.

I've always been mildly concerned about Ebola, but only in a "That sounds like it's awful," way. I'm not any more concerned now. From what I've heard from medical types, it's hard to catch. I'm less concerned about it than I am annoyed at all the people who are replacing their "LOL CANCER" with "LOL EBOLA" comments.

I'm shocked at what I've read. Some of the nurses are apparently saying that protocols were constantly changing and that they were often expected to treat Duncan without proper equipment sometimes.

My mom told me that one of her friends posted something about chocolate crops being infected, all the chocolate that's in the store right now is safe but NOT to buy anything after Halloween. Tomorrow I'm just going to get what I need to make some turtles and after that I'm not going near it for a good long while. Apparently over 85% of the chocolate crops have been infected, so after tomorrow I'm not going near ANYTHING chocolate or chocolate flavored just to be on the safe side. I haven't seen a link to a news source yet, but I'm not just going to ignore it.


Edit: I found this one http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-travel-b...--finance.html

[Gravekeeper]

Its hard for the to learn from their mistakes when we're *still* finding out about how many they made.

Every day there's something new largely driven by someone's stupidity. Frankly, the US is lucky it's ebola. If it was something equally as deadly but airborne, Dallas would have killed thousands at this point -.-

[Hyena Dandy]

There's been a lot of FUD going on about this disease. Beyond the few isolated cases we have, we're not likely to see much more. All the nonsense about travel bans is just going to make things worse for the people in Africa, who are suffering enough. It won't protect anyone here.

Well, like I said, mildly concerned. In the same way that I'm mildly concerned about quicksand. I don't think it's a thing that's going to happen to me, I think it sucks and certainly hope it doesn't.

The point I was trying to get was, though, that if you were interpreting me as saying "OMG we must DO SOMETHING or it's the END," I was actually saying "Despite being someone who's always thought that would kind of suck, I'm not worried about any actual danger. I am, however, totally annoyed by the unoriginal jokes, which I don't think is a terrible thing of me to do.

Edited Post: I'm sorry, I responded in a needlesly aggressive fashion. An online friend commited suicide, recently, and I'm on edge.

[siead_lietrathua]

just a mini rant on the ebola thing, didn't feel like starting a new thread for it.

BUT OMFG IM GONNA KILL MY COWORKERS!!!

they're all so damn paranoid of ebola. despite us living in bumfuck hick town. the only "ebola" scare we had was some dude in a city half an hour away, and they quarantined him, and he ended up just having the flu.
i've had to tell them it's statictically improbable, and they they are more likely to die from flu, salmonella or ecoli (sp) than ebola.
i've had to explain to them it's an easily killable germ from bleach (standard counter cleaner) and hand sanatizer (available everywhere in our store for use) and cannot live long outside the host.
and the ones panicking the worst work regularly with medication! they should know how friggan germs work!

coworker got cut once (her own slipup, reached into a bag and didn't check first to see if it was sharps). so now she's freaking that she might have caught ebola. i wanted to yell at her "freak out over hepatitus, or HIV, or anything that's both more likely and more dangerous! but fucking ebola?!?"

jeeesus h christ.

[sophie]

So a doctor in Africa alleges. The treatment has not been studied for effectiveness in humans as a treatment for Ebola; the reports are all anecdotal. If patients survived, we don't know if it was the medicine or chance.

The same is true of the American doctors who got ZMapp.

I agree that it not a definite but it's a medication that's already available and doctors have stock of there. It's something at least.

I agree with you about Enterovirus 68 though, that is scary. I may or may not get the flu shot this year I'm pregnant(finally!) so I'll go with my doctor's suggestion on that.