Ebola patient coming to the U.S.

[CathyA]

This makes me a little nervous, considering the big lapse in security at the CDC recently.
How do you feel about this?

[Miss Cellane]

The patients aren't going to the CDC, they are going to a specialized medical facility at Emory University Hospital. It is designed to deal with deadly, infectious diseases and to keep them from spreading.

Ebola is spread by direct contact with an infected person's blood or other bodily fluids. It is not spread by one person sneezing and their germs flying through the air, as a cold is. So other than the medical personnel treating the sick patients, there is very, very little risk of someone catching Ebola from the two people being brought to the US.

My opinion is that these two people caught the disease while trying to help others who had it. While there is no cure, the symptoms can be treated, and they can be treated better here in the US than in the situation in Africa, unfortunately. Don't they deserve the chance?

In a perfect world (once they make me boss), everyone would have an equal chance at the appropriate, perfect medical care for this disease. Please don't get me wrong--I don't think the health care workers deserve better treatment because they are Americans or anything like that. But if there is the possibility that we can save two lives, shouldn't we try?

[bae]

How do you feel about this?

I feel too many people watch too many medical horror movies.

[JaneV2.0]

I feel perfectly comfortable with it--the coverage assures me that it takes physical contact to spread.

Other reports suggest the reason there's no vaccine for Ebola is that mostly poor people get it, so there is no profit in manufacturing one.

[CathyA]

I don't watch any medical shows......they're too unreal (after having worked in E.R. and ICU).

I think we're fairly naive in this country about some things, since we've been so isolated from some of the problems in other countries.
As far as mentioning the CDC........that's who would be in control of an epidemic.
I'm sure the family members of the 2 people being brought to Atlanta are very relieved and grateful.

[creaker]

I was much more concerned about the unsecured vials of smallpox they found recently in an NIH lab. Dealing with 2 known cases of Ebola with 1st world equipment is not that big a deal.

[iris lily]

This doesn't bother me in the least.

When the Ebola virus comes to the U.S. in a way that causes harm, it will not come with a patient who is tented and surrounded by medical personnel while being photographed by scores of news media persons. It will slip in here, sneaking past the hysterical news media showing once again that they are pretty much useless in providing news of value.

[jody]

Irise lily, sadly I agree.

[Miss Cellane]

I feel perfectly comfortable with it--the coverage assures me that it takes physical contact to spread.

Other reports suggest the reason there's no vaccine for Ebola is that mostly poor people get it, so there is no profit in manufacturing one.

Or because "only people in Africa" get it, and most pharmaceutical companies are not based in Africa. By extension, you could also say that "only black people" get Ebola. Similar to how AIDS didn't get much funding while it was seen as a "gay disease." It wasn't until it was clear that AIDS affected the general population that funding for a cure appeared.

And the bottom line for the pharma companies might just be that not enough people catch Ebola to make creating a vaccine worth the effort. There are many "orphan" diseases out there, where the cost of manufacturing drugs just doesn't make business sense, as the cost outweighs the profit that could be made. The figures I've seen are that about 3,159 people have died from the various strains of Ebola since 1970.

While the disease has a high fatality rate and no cure, for a big business that has to spend millions of dollars researching, testing and running trials on every new drug before submitting it for FDA approval, there might simply not be enough patients with Ebola to warrant that level of investment. Hard to justify spending millions and millions of dollars with little chance of a big return on investment to the shareholders, when that money could be put towards a new heartburn pill or erectile dysfunction cure that will be purchased by millions of people.

So the research for a cure is going on in small, underfunded labs.

[CathyA]

Well, I'm still not convinced this was a good thing to do, and I'm not alone. I've been hearing some things on the news (by knowledgeable people), and I'm still concerned. Like one medical person said, we could have taken what was needed over there, and treated these 2 people.
This is an incredibly intelligent, creative virus.
Plus.......think of all the things that have been brought to the U.S. that caused problems.......like plants, animals, etc. I truly believe that globalization is not the best thing, in terms of health, ecosystems, etc.
But globalization is here to stay...........until a plague wipes us out.
I know this sounds like doom and gloom, but can't we just talk about it without saying we're watching too many horror medical shows?

On a local level, I'm struggling with all sorts of plants from foreign countries. It's not that they're inherently bad, but our ecosystem wasn't made for them, and they are taking advantage of that and multiplying exponentially. Why would this not apply to biological things too?

Yes, I know we are far advanced in various ways from Africa, but I would prefer to not take chances.
Like I said, we are pretty naive in this country. We really haven't been exposed to much of anything in order to instill concern.
I think our allowing anyone and anything under the sun into this country is going to be our demise. Time will tell.
And just to repeat myself..........please, no thinly veiled insults.