She got it, by... Touching her face? :|
I thought you could only catch Ebola after your bodily fluids come into contact with an infected patients bodily fluids. This is wild, we finna die.
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This is where people get confused, and the governments aren't helping in the slightest.
Ebola is highly -infectious-. It only takes 1-10 virus particles (they can't discern any fewer than 10) to trigger infection. You can become infected when those virus particles enter into a mucous membrane or direct contact with a break in the skin.
Ebola is not regarded as highly -contagious- because, thus far, it has not been quite as easy to spread from person to person. It also requires direct contact with a person or surface contaminated with Ebola, spare for aerosol transmission (tiny water droplets).
Basically - an invisible trace of it can remain and still infect you. Which is why decontamination procedures are so important.
Obviously, they wouldn't release the virus if they didn't have a cure yet.
Well, that assumes 'they' released it.
Ebola is overreacted to.
It's been around forever and now that it's in America people flip out.
It's not like your going to catch it unless you are taking care of an Ebola patient...
Ebola is a relatively new disease in terms of knowledge of it, first discovered in the 1970s.
Outbreaks of it have always been fairly small and limited to a few hundred cases. The first outbreak was almost insignificant because tribal leaders (where it broke out at) ordered a quarantine of affected family homes. Thus - the virus never really got a hold.
The teams that went into the region to help the patients noticed that nearby villages has begun laying down barricades along roads. This suggests that Ebola and other deadly diseases break into the human population with regularity on the sociological time scale - they have just avoided reporting. Africa has developed a sort of natural way of dealing with doom-cooties.
Similarly, in the second notable outbreak, the town/city was fairly small, with intermittent power, and limited travel. The virus was never able to spread as the hospitals, using poor sanitation procedures, essentially nuked themselves out of existence and people just stayed at home.
Now, things are different. People are traveling. Hospitals are not as suicidal. It's a more populated area that also has little leadership. Governments have been slow to react, and when they do, they are often met with violent protests (one of the quarantine zones by the government was broken by protesters a month or so back).
Ebola's epidemiology would suggest that it has plenty of potential to spread within all but the most 'primitive' of populations.
Think about it.
You trust that the bench you sit on in a restaurant is not infected with something hideous. Your main concern is whether or not there are food scraps left behind. You trust that most of the horrible bugs in the world don't happen, here, and don't spray down every surface you're about to sit on with bleach.
You trust that anyone with something 'that bad' will be in a hospital, somewhere.
You trust that the employee serving you food with a mild fever is just 'a bit too zealous' - but are confident in your flu shot and/or immune system.
Western societies have built up a huge amount of trust in strangers and have become accustomed to a world where we can 'shrug off' all but some of the most destructive pathogens known to man. "That which does not kill you makes you stronger." We take the risk of human contact without even realizing the risk we are taking.
As such - I suspect Ebola will spread in western nations faster than it will in Africa.
Sure - we'll be able to catch it and quarantine it, now, for a time. But it will eventually slip in. Someone will lie on those forms for "better screening" - someone will come from a country we don't recognize as being a 'hot zone' with it - and then we'll have it spreading for a few weeks, here, before we truly realize we have a problem.
And once it starts spreading through the general population, here, it will be nearly impossible to stop. How many hundreds of miles can I drive during a day on our highway system? I have been, in Missouri, to Kansas City, St. Louis, and Jefferson City (along with a few other minor towns) all within the same day. Granted - that is not the travel patterns of most people, and it's not typical of me - but it shows you how different the game gets, here.
Keep in mind - in Africa, they try to track down 12 people who may have had contact with each deceased (now that burial practices are starting to change - that method of spread is going away - but it's too late for that to stop it, it seems). Here, they identified a possible 100 for one man and limited it to 44 to be monitored for signs of symptoms.
A person contacted with ebola will spread it almost wherever he goes.
Containment is very difficult and impossible if it becomes widespread in a densly packed country.
Ignorance costs.There is no cure for love.Ebola chan will kiss you all.
Buy full face respirator and hazchem suites and a flame-thrower while they are available online.
That's a little extreme....
But, in a sense, yeah - people need to be paying more attention to this than they are, and they certainly need to learn more about decontamination procedures.
The nurse who got infected -should- have gone through a full decon shower. That means, at the least, someone comes along with a spray bottle full of disinfectant (usually bleach water) and sprays your suit and gloves down before you take it off.
That is to limit the possibility of stuff like this happening.
While I am not sure what procedures the hospital is using - the glove should not have been hot enough, by the point she had removed her face protection, to cause a problem. Though you still shouldn't touch yourself with parts of the suit/equipment exposed to the hot zone. Not wise.
I also read that her situation has deteriorated.
Which, it is likely she will die - 6 days following the onset of symptoms before she's receiving treatment - it will probably be within the next three to five days that she expires.
