"But the truth is that Ebola, murderous though it is, doesn’t have what it takes to produce a pandemic, a worldwide outbreak of infectious disease. It spreads only through intimate contact with infected body fluids; to avoid Ebola, just refrain from touching sweat, blood or the bodies of the sick or dead."
Oh, is that all? Just refrain from touching people? Because last time I checked, we touch people all the damned time, usually without being very aware of it. Easy experiment that will warp your perspective: try to go through an entire day without touching someone, or (harder still) touching something that someone has recently touched. Then track the number of times you accidentally touch something or someone, and later touch your face.
There's a somewhat alarming bit of Comforting Conventional Wisdom floating around the western media that we're totally safe from this because our hospitals are better than in western Africa (true, and yet hospital-acquired infections are incredibly common), or because we have better public health infrastructure (true, and yet we routinely have large outbreaks of rare diseases for which vaccines exist) -- but it's absolutely delusional to think that we're safe because a virus can only be contracted via human contact. The flu is mostly spread by human contact, and it gets around just fine.
The way this doesn't become a global plague is by stopping it before it breaks out of the isolated corner of the world it's flourishing in right now.
According to TFA, "The next pandemic will erupt, not from the jungle, but from the disease factories of hospitals, refugee camps and cities"
The problem, as I see it, is that we have entire swaths of cities in Monrovia, Liberia being sealed off and turned into disease reservoirs [1]. These are precisely the conditions that we are supposed to be worried about!
I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence - stopping transmission in West Africa and improving health systems is key.
I don't agree with your other points though. Ebola patients are only infectious while symptomatic, so accidentally bumping into someone on the subway is not the kind of direct contact needed for transmission. And although the virus can be present in sweat, it's mostly blood, fecal matter, etc. that transmit.
If there were a case introduced in the United States, it's not entirely out of the question that there would be a secondary case or two. Not probable, but not impossible, either. However, I truly believe there would be no more than one secondary generation (two at the absolute max). Western countries can mobilize effective isolation, quarantine, and contact tracing in ways that overburdened West African countries cannot.
[+] [-] timr|11 years ago|reply
Oh, is that all? Just refrain from touching people? Because last time I checked, we touch people all the damned time, usually without being very aware of it. Easy experiment that will warp your perspective: try to go through an entire day without touching someone, or (harder still) touching something that someone has recently touched. Then track the number of times you accidentally touch something or someone, and later touch your face.
There's a somewhat alarming bit of Comforting Conventional Wisdom floating around the western media that we're totally safe from this because our hospitals are better than in western Africa (true, and yet hospital-acquired infections are incredibly common), or because we have better public health infrastructure (true, and yet we routinely have large outbreaks of rare diseases for which vaccines exist) -- but it's absolutely delusional to think that we're safe because a virus can only be contracted via human contact. The flu is mostly spread by human contact, and it gets around just fine.
The way this doesn't become a global plague is by stopping it before it breaks out of the isolated corner of the world it's flourishing in right now.
[+] [-] 1053r|11 years ago|reply
The problem, as I see it, is that we have entire swaths of cities in Monrovia, Liberia being sealed off and turned into disease reservoirs [1]. These are precisely the conditions that we are supposed to be worried about!
[1] http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/08/22/West-Point-Slu...
[+] [-] cmrivers|11 years ago|reply
I don't agree with your other points though. Ebola patients are only infectious while symptomatic, so accidentally bumping into someone on the subway is not the kind of direct contact needed for transmission. And although the virus can be present in sweat, it's mostly blood, fecal matter, etc. that transmit.
If there were a case introduced in the United States, it's not entirely out of the question that there would be a secondary case or two. Not probable, but not impossible, either. However, I truly believe there would be no more than one secondary generation (two at the absolute max). Western countries can mobilize effective isolation, quarantine, and contact tracing in ways that overburdened West African countries cannot.
[+] [-] legulere|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tycho|11 years ago|reply