And so it begins.....EBOLA is here

[handinpocket]

Confirmed case in Texas.

 

[pigletgirl]

Doesn't the virus have a two week incubation period? That means there could be MANY more cases....

I just hope hospital staff are ready to treat patients!

 

[Happy Snowman]

Up to 21 days for incubation. I just saw that article as well. That person traveled to Africa and is now back in the US....

 

[OurBigTrip]

Up to 21 days for incubation. I just saw that article as well. That person traveled to Africa and is not back in the US....

The patient is in Texas.

 

[Hrhpd]

Doesn't the virus have a two week incubation period? That means there could be MANY more cases....

I just hope hospital staff are ready to treat patients!

Actually, the incubation is 21 days.

However....

The guy arrived here from Liberia on September 19, so has only been in the country for 11 days since his trip to Africa.

He did not have any symptoms when he arrived, so was not contagious. Ebola cannot be transferred unless the victim has symptoms, for instance fever.

It is only in the past few days that he showed symptoms. So the window for him to infect others was very, very small. And it is actually a bit difficult to catch Ebola. You have to come in contact with bodily fluids. It is not airborne like the cold or flu.

No need for panic or hysteria.

 

[Happy Snowman]

The patient is in Texas.

opps---meant "NOW"...sorry

 

[Scornelius]

Actually, the incubation is 21 days.

However....

The guy arrived here from Liberia on September 19, so has only been in the country for 11 days since his trip to Africa.

He did not have any symptoms when he arrived, so was not contagious. Ebola cannot be transferred unless the victim has symptoms, for instance fever.

It is only in the past few days that he showed symptoms. So the window for him to infect others was very, very small. And it is actually a bit difficult to catch Ebola. You have to come in contact with bodily fluids. It is not airborne like the cold or flu.

No need for panic or hysteria.

Ebola isn't airborne, but it is certainly not hard to catch. It is quite virulent. Someone coughing or sneezing in your face can transmit. Blood, sweat, saliva, even through indirect contact, can transmit. There's no need for panic or hysteria, but this is quite possibly a very big deal.

 

[penn19]

Actually, the incubation is 21 days.

However....

The guy arrived here from Liberia on September 19, so has only been in the country for 11 days since his trip to Africa.

He did not have any symptoms when he arrived, so was not contagious. Ebola cannot be transferred unless the victim has symptoms, for instance fever.

It is only in the past few days that he showed symptoms. So the window for him to infect others was very, very small. And it is actually a bit difficult to catch Ebola. You have to come in contact with bodily fluids. It is not airborne like the cold or flu.

No need for panic or hysteria.

But it can spread as witnessed over in Africa. I worry about the people the patient came in contact with in the last few days. I don't know what the living conditions are of the patient.
I understand the CDC not wanting to panic the public. I just don't feel totally reassured. And I live in the area, so yea, Im a little concerned.

 

[amg35]

One wonders why it took so long from presenting with fever to be put in isolation.
What were the healthcare workers thinking?
A person traveling from Liberia presents with fever, so they send him home?? Any physician/healthcare worker should have asked travel history and taken the necessary precautions - especially with what's going on.

Hopefully the patient was just at home those few days and the CDC can contact everyone he came in contact with.

 

[Deb in IA]

But it can spread as witnessed over in Africa. I worry about the people the patient came in contact with in the last few days. I don't know what the living conditions are of the patient.
I understand the CDC not wanting to panic the public. I just don't feel totally reassured. And I live in the area, so yea, Im a little concerned.

The reasons it spread so much in Africa include:
- overcrowded living conditions
- lack of sanitation
- lack of resources for rapid identification and isolation
- lack of supportive medical care
- cultural customs, such as close physical contact with the sick and deceased

These are not factors in this country, where we have a sophisticated public health system and advanced medical care.

 

[Hrhpd]

But it can spread as witnessed over in Africa. I worry about the people the patient came in contact with in the last few days. I don't know what the living conditions are of the patient.
I understand the CDC not wanting to panic the public. I just don't feel totally reassured. And I live in the area, so yea, Im a little concerned.

It is spreading in Africa. But part of that is because of several things. One, the fear of western medicine and doctors. Custom and culture has a lot to do with the spread in Africa.

If it was as virulent as the previous poster claims, it would have spread much faster and much farther.

The only people that should be worried are the people he had direct contact with the past couple of days. The people on the plane he flew over on are safe as he did not have symptoms, so no fears of it spreading with a planeful of people.

Naturally, precautions should be taken. But panicking over a single person with Ebola, who has only been here for 11 days, is not warrented.

 

[Hercules10]

Zombie apocolypse has begun!!!!!

 

[handinpocket]

It is spreading in Africa. But part of that is because of several things. One, the fear of western medicine and doctors. Custom and culture has a lot to do with the spread in Africa.

If it was as virulent as the previous poster claims, it would have spread much faster and much farther.

The only people that should be worried are the people he had direct contact with the past couple of days. The people on the plane he flew over on are safe as he did not have symptoms, so no fears of it spreading with a planeful of people.

Naturally, precautions should be taken. But panicking over a single person with Ebola, who has only been here for 11 days, is not warrented.

You absolutely can not say he was not contagious on that plane! You can say it with conviction, but that does not make it true.

The CDC predicts EBOLA will infect over 1.3 million in January, you don't call that virulent?!

This is bad, very bad and just the beginning.

 

[penn19]

The reasons it spread so much in Africa include:
- overcrowded living conditions
- lack of sanitation
- lack of resources for rapid identification and isolation
- lack of supportive medical care
- cultural customs, such as close physical contact with the sick and deceased

These are not factors in this country, where we have a sophisticated public health system and advanced medical care.

But thats why I mentioned the patients living conditions. We don't know what they are. And SOME citizens of Dallas, as in other large cities, live in close quarters and not always the most sanitary conditions.

 

[OurBigTrip]

You absolutely can not say he was not contagious on that plane! You can say it with conviction, but that does not make it true.

I'll go with what the WHO says, and per the WHO, this patient was not contagious while on the plane.

The incubation period, or the time interval from infection to onset of symptoms, is from 2 to 21 days. The patients become contagious once they begin to show symptoms. They are not contagious during the incubation period.

The CDC predicts EBOLA will infect over 1.3 million in January, you don't call that virulent?!

Not, the CDC did not say that.

Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization agree that the epidemic is speeding up. But the CDC's worst-case scenario is a jaw-dropper: If interventions don't start working soon, as many as 1.4 million people could be infected by Jan. 20, the agency reported in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Precaution is called for, panic is not.

 

[livie1205]

I think they are doing panic control.He may not have been able to spread it on his way back ( hopefully) but this was his 2nd trip back to the hospital before he was tested so I am sure there are people that have been exposed. I will not be shocked to see more people test POS and I am sure they are trying not to panic the public but it is also not ok to make people think there is almost no chance he infected anyone else.. Of course there will be panic because this is the very first case found here.I wont lie , if I lived in the area it would scare me.

 

[penn19]

I think they are doing panic control.He may not have been able to spread it on his way back ( hopefully) but this was his 2nd trip back to the hospital before he was tested so I am sure there are people that have been exposed. I will not be shocked to see more people test POS and I am sure they are trying not to panic the public but it is also not ok to make people think there is almost no chance he infected anyone else.. Of course there will be panic because this is the very first case found here.I wont lie , if I lived in the area it would scare me.

Thank you. I know a health care worker who works at that hospital. I don't know if in her job description if she came in contact with the patient. And if she was exposed, and didn't know it and then came in contact with other people and possibly exposed those people…….

So I understand the not panicking but the unknowns are worrisome.

 

[amg35]

Thank you. I know a health care worker who works at that hospital. I don't know if in her job description if she came in contact with the patient. And if she was exposed, and didn't know it and then came in contact with other people and possibly exposed those people…….

So I understand the not panicking but the unknowns are worrisome.

If a person isn't showing symptoms, having active disease, they can't spread it. That's a fact. It's not like people are walking around giving it to each other without knowing it.

This isn't the first time the CDC has had to trace all the potential contacts of a sick patient. All those contacts are going to be quarantined.

 

[m&m's mom]

Remember every person who has had Ebola in the US (already diagnosed as the medical workers a couple months ago or the guy diagnosed today) have been completely cured.
I think the hysteria in the US is widely overrated as AIDS/HIV was at the beginning. As the Infectious Dr just said here in Dallas, "This not a war torn 3rd world country" and listed the reasons- very similar to Deb in IA has as well- why the US situation is completely different to the one in Liberia.

 

[Hrhpd]

You absolutely can not say he was not contagious on that plane! You can say it with conviction, but that does not make it true.

The CDC predicts EBOLA will infect over 1.3 million in January, you don't call that virulent?!

This is bad, very bad and just the beginning.

Deep breath.

Yes you can say he was not contagious on the plane. He was not showing symptoms. Ebola is not contagious at all until the patient is showing symptoms.


Great Article:

Stay Calm And Carry On

• Ebola’s not airborne. It can only be spread through bodily fluids. The virus spreads when blood, semen, urine, vomit, feces, or other bodily fluids of an infected person come into contact with someone else’s mucus membranes.
  
• And it’s not just any infected person—it’s a symptomatic infected person. People can only catch ebola from someone actually exhibiting symptoms. Those include vomiting, diarrhea, and, in some cases, hemorrhaging of mucus membranes, such as nose, nail beds and eyes—in other words, pretty hard to miss.
  
• It isn’t curable, but people survive it. In fact, this outbreak has a 57% mortality rate—much lower than that oft-cited 90%. Victims die of organ failure, not blood loss.
  
• That pig study doesn’t mean anything. Some people are citing a 2008 study showing airborne Ebola transmission from pigs to rhesus monkeys (they were never in direct contact with each other). However, as Aetiology explains, this experiment showed merely that pigs seem unusually good at spritzing the air with coughed-up viruses. Avoid Ebola-infected pigs and you’re fine.
  
• Nearly every hospital in the US is equipped to treat Ebola patients and keep them in isolation. And the symptoms, once they set in, are so aggressive that it’s hard to do much of anything except head to the hospital.
  
• Another reason for all the worry is that the media has tended to zero in on this outbreak’s rapid spread and its being the “deadliest in history.” While both are true, that says way more about the quality of medical care in war-torn, poverty-stricken pockets of West Africa than it does about Ebola’s virulence.