View Full Version : Ebola patient coming to the U.S.
This makes me a little nervous, considering the big lapse in security at the CDC recently.
How do you feel about this?
Miss Cellane
8-2-14, 8:55am
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?
How do you feel about this?
I feel too many people watch too many medical horror movies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Irise lily, sadly I agree.
Miss Cellane
8-3-14, 7:31am
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.
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.
Frankly, I would be more concerned about bacterial meningitis and flesh-eating bacteria and brain-eating amoebas, and a whole lot of other diseases that are much more likely to kill me than Ebola--which has proven to be somewhat amenable to treatment, and which isn't particularly contagious anyway. We've already had Lassa fever and other diseases arrive on our shores without much fallout. And we may learn something useful from this carefully contained case. Xenophobia is a distinctly unhelpful world view in general; the world is going to "intrude" on us, and a lot of us are OK with that.
Parenthetically, I read that some uninformed (or maybe just malicious) individuals are spreading the word that the Central American refugee children are bringing Ebola with them, which is patently ridiculous. Ebola has never occurred anywhere but West Africa. In case anyone asks.
Well, some of us DON'T want the world to intrude on us, but I guess we're looked down upon as ignorant by people who are OK with it.
I see nothing wrong with that, and it seems like simpler living would be more possible with a less global/intrusive world.
I hadn't heard about Ebola coming with the refugees from South America, and wouldn't believe it.
CathyA, I'm sure your viewpoint resonates with Native Americans and other indigenous peoples. :doh:
CathyA, I'm sure your viewpoint resonates with Native Americans and other indigenous peoples. :doh:
I'm sure it does. If Europeans hadn't introduced them to smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, etc., hundreds of years ago, what would we have to feel guilty about now?
Miss Cellane
8-5-14, 4:47pm
Worst case senario, bringing the two Ebola patients here would allow their families to get a chance to say good-bye, if their conditions worsen and they die. I doubt the families would be able to travel to Africa at this time.
And yes, it's a lot of money and resources being spent to bring two people here. I get that.
But I think the risk is relatively low for anyone to catch Ebola from them. This is not a disease that spreads easily. The current outbreak has been going on for months and roughly 1,400 people have been infected, about 750 have died. Compare this to the H1N1 epidemic in 2008, when 284,000 people died.
What I'm wondering is, what precautions were breached that these two people caught the disease? Surely they knew the correct procedures to follow when treating their patients. So what happened?
This is an incredibly intelligent, creative virus.
It is a virus - it is not intelligent, or particularly creative.
The Ebola virus is a pretty simple RNA virus - compare it to a more sophisticated one like Bluetongue for contrast.
As such, it is prone to errors when it reproduces, though there are more "successful" viruses with much much higher mutation rates.
And Ebola is such an unsuccessful virus that I'd rather have them bring these patients back for study and treatment than a flu victim...
Worst case senario, bringing the two Ebola patients here would allow their families to get a chance to say good-bye, if their conditions worsen and they die. I doubt the families would be able to travel to Africa at this time.
And yes, it's a lot of money and resources being spent to bring two people here. I get that.
But I think the risk is relatively low for anyone to catch Ebola from them. This is not a disease that spreads easily. The current outbreak has been going on for months and roughly 1,400 people have been infected, about 750 have died. Compare this to the H1N1 epidemic in 2008, when 284,000 people died.
What I'm wondering is, what precautions were breached that these two people caught the disease? Surely they knew the correct procedures to follow when treating their patients. So what happened?
Good question. Maybe they were treating some people at the start of the epidemic, and didn't realize they had Ebola?
The horse is out of the barn, in so many ways. I realize we can't go back. I like understanding why certain things are the way they are. I do think a lot of our various problems today are from people/plants/animals/bacteria, etc., moving out of their original homelands. We don't have to find that offensive or bigoted or small-minded.........just thinking in terms of etiologies.
Way more people did die in 2009 of H1N1 but it was more like 12,000 than hundreds of thousands see these CDC estimates (http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/estimates_2009_h1n1.htm)). I agree with Bae, Jane and Miss Cellane: other viruses are much more likely to become some huge pandemic; most likely influenza of some type or another. It *is* possible for Ebola to mutate into a highly communicable form as well as being a highly virulent form, but not more likely than, say, MERS or SARS or heck, probably HIV. This Ebola seems more communicable than previous outbreaks, which is a function of statistics. It has probably "jumped" from its host animal (monkeys of some sort I believe) into humans many times. Sometimes the person just died; other times the person died but infected a few others who also died; other times it became possible to transmit person-to-person. As for how the medical folks picked it up, it sounds like maybe one small mistake could have been the source of the breach. Imagine working to try to treat hysterical and very ill patients who are shedding different types of bodily fluid in potentially copious amounts. All this time you are dressed head-to-toe in something like a rain poncho, with gloves on and booties, goggles and a hood and a tight-fitting face mask. Now imagine it's 85-90F (30C) with 90% humidity. If you wipe the sweat out of your eyes, just forgetting for a moment, you could infect yourself. If you mess up taking off your protective gear, you could infect yourself. Maybe a desperate patient grabs you and somehow rips your suit a little, or your mask off partially, or whatever. I know people who have worked in BSL-3 and 4, with things in tiny vials in a cabinet who nevertheless had nightmares they may have had a pinprick breach of their protective gear. I can't imagine working with patients who have huge viral loads and are in the process of dying, and the instinct of health care professionals is not to back away from a desperate, dying patient but rather to help. I have to say, I would willingly train for and work in a BSL-4 facility (Ebola is level 4) doing research than even working in an ER in the United States or Europe, never mind treating known patients with BSL4 level diseases. Best to those docs, they do deserve whatever medicine can do. And it's possible/likely if they survive that they could donate plasma or something in order to possibly provide some beneficial treatment, because now they'd have antibodies to the disease. Theoretically, they would be immune entirely, though I doubt they'd take that risk.
I have to say, I would willingly train for and work in a BSL-4 facility (Ebola is level 4) doing research than even working in an ER in the United States or Europe,...
Every week I come into contact with patients that have fluid-borne diseases for which there is no vaccine available, often when they are not having a good day, it can get kind of scary at times. And we're pretty careful about wearing protective gear, but if the patient is noncooperative it is Not Good.
It takes about an hour to put the ambulance back into service if we have to put a patient of any sort inside it - we basically have to sterilize the thing with gallons of Cavicide while wearing HAZMAT suits.
I'd rather have a nice safe burning building to run into than handle some of these folks :-)
Well, some of us DON'T want the world to intrude on us.
I hadn't heard about Ebola coming with the refugees from South America, and wouldn't believe it.Unfortunately it has always intruded and continues to do so. Even years ago infectious diseases from multiple countries have entered this country via illegal immigration. Many of the people we picked up had origins in Africa and China - and possible disease carriers of things like Ebola or H1Ni, etc... There are many "gateways" illegal immigrants pass thru that is far from their home country. Chinese coming thru western South America, Africans coming thru Haiti, the Caribbean and eastern South and Central America, and so on. We would repatriate those we could, and take precautions against disease, but for every 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 that were picked up by our various patrols, I'm sure triple that number got thru - or more - got into the USA or some other adjacent country - including Canada. Bringing whatever diseases they have with them. I'm sure the same is true fro Border Patrol.
From a CG Migrant Interdiction document:
"In addition to the migrant threat from these Caribbean countries, there has been an alarming increase in the number of migrants from Asia, most of whom are from the People's Republic of China. Very often Chinese migrants rely on well-organized, extremely violent, alien smugglers to gain entry into the United States. The living conditions on the vessels used to smuggle migrants are appalling, with overcrowded holds and unsafe sanitary conditions with the potential for unknown virulent diseases and their rapid spread. In many cases, migrants are transferred to smaller pick up vessels offshore for the final ride to the U.S., or they're taken to Central American countries and smuggled across the U.S. land border. Beginning in 1998, more Chinese migrants began making trips from China attempting to enter the US via Guam, which continues to be a significant problem.
Coast Guard cutters on Counterdrug patrol in the Eastern Pacific have encountered increasing numbers of migrants being smuggled from Ecuador to points in Central America and Mexico. Most of these vessels do not have the proper conditions to transport these migrants and lack the safety equipment in the event of an emergency. The Coast Guard works with the flag state of the vessels and other countries to escort the vessels to the closest safe port.
Undocumented migrants continue to pose a threat to the U.S. today. While the primary threat comes from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the People's Republic of China, and Cuba, the Coast Guard has interdicted migrants of various nationalities throughout the world."
I get vaccinated and tested for an incredible array of nasty diseases through the fire/rescue agency here. You'd think on this remote fleaspeck of an island we wouldn't have to worry about this stuff, but tourists come through here from all over, and they've gone through major airports along the way.
You'd be amazed what some folks end up with, even out here. We put on PPE before we come into contact with *anyone* these days on calls.
I get vaccinated and tested for an incredible array of nasty diseases through the fire/rescue agency here. You'd think on this remote fleaspeck of an island we wouldn't have to worry about this stuff, but tourists come through here from all over, and they've gone through major airports along the way.
You'd be amazed what some folks end up with, even out here. We put on PPE before we come into contact with *anyone* these days on calls.Same with us. But, to my knowledge, I've never heard of one person getting any kind of rare virus from an illegal immigrant in this country - or a fire, LE, or rescue worker who was exposed to large numbers of illegal migrant getting sick with an exotic virus. We did take precautions but still were in fairly long term direct physical contact with them, and their various body fluids, for many days on end (and often weeks or even months). Never heard of anyone getting anything so while it's possible, it's probably improbable at this stage. But the world grows smaller and we have limited control over these kinds of things. Like you, I was more worried about being exposed to deadly infections that are more common. And I always remember the Spanish Flu outbreak back 100 years ago. Common can be deadly.
Far more likely to get TB from contact with large numbers of poorly fed and impoverished immigrants coming into the country. Would also beware of multi drug resistant TB.
Far more likely to get TB from contact with large numbers of poorly fed and impoverished immigrants coming into the country. Would also beware of multi drug resistant TB.So true. Some have drug resistant types and have to be quarantined but most kinds are treatable I believe.
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