Ebola, coming to a place near you soon!

If someone could make an antibody blood test which provided a quick result,
it might be more effective than Zmapp in preventing spread of the illness.
There is such a blood test for influenza, but it is a lab test.
See http://www.muschealth.com/lab/content.aspx?id=150364


Pregnancy testers use antibodies on a pad which is then soaked in the person's urine.

http://babyandbump.momtastic.com/pr...es-inside-clearblue-conception-indicator.html

 

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So anyone who says they are there for aid purposes can leave freely?

?? Uh, you do realize they do have an economy that is keeping them alive, no? I mean, it may not be up to US standards - but it's all they have. Remove it by removing transportation and shipping and they starve to death.

Sure, and that's up to them. We could do the same thing for Dallas, where dozens of people have been exposed. Should we? (And if we don't want to do it in our own country we are certainly hypocrites for demanding others do it.)

Where? Here? People are panicking due to ignorance. The solution to that is education.

Or do you mean in neighboring cities? If so, would you expect "you can't leave either" to IMPROVE problems?

Ebola is a serious threat and will remain so while there are a lot of carriers of it. We cannot just kill them all or leave them all to die for half a dozen reasons, chief among which is that it is NOT OUR COUNTRY. The problem will be solved when we can treat this disease and/or develop a vaccine - and when it is extended to the people who are ill.



Why are they leaving? Where are they going? Aren't they supposed to be in-country, fighting the disease? If they must go, 48-hour quarantine with PCR check before they leave. Same with aid organisations. Hell, same with private parties who wish to leave. Surely that would be a little more secure?



How about: known to be uninfected via blood sampling?[/QUOTE]

 

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Of course not, every one leaving would need to go through some kind of screening or quarantine. But by restricting those leaving to only those most needed, you substantially decrease the odds of spreading the disease.

Yeah, they do have an economy, a very small economy based mostly on oil exports. It isn’t an economy which requires a lot of travel. And they are in no danger of starvation. These people are not incapable on taking care of themselves. They have been feeding themselves for a very long time. And any material need they may have can be provided for while under a travel ban. The US is currently building a healthcare infrastructure. A travel ban would not impede that work. Liberia’s economy is something like 2 billion dollars with per capital GDP at about $270 per year.

There is a difference between Texas and Liberia or any of the affected countries in West Africa – a huge difference in infrastructure. So you are comparing apples to horses. So there is no hypocrisy.

And you have evidence of a panic in the US? I haven’t seen it. People in the afflicted countries in West Africa are definitely panicking and who can blame them. This needs to be contained quickly.

Yes Ebola is a very serious threat to not only human health but to the world economy as well. No one is advocating anything immoral. Quite the contrary, it is being argued that the moral thing to do is to minimize the loss of life and that is what quarantine would do. The United States is building healthcare infrastructure in the afflicted countries. HHS medical resources have been in those countries and will remain in those countries treating the outbreak until it is resolved. So you are creating a straw man here. No one is advocating stopping the medical aid work in the afflicted West African countries.

The bottom line here is that political correctness should not trump common sense, logic and reason.

 

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The US implements travel screenings to contain Ebola.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29541840

I think screening is silly. It is a placebo, a deception. They are going to be tagging a lot of folks who don't have Ebola. Just because someone from the afflicted region has a fever, it doesn't mean they have Ebola. And as previously noted, the use of medication could easily mask a fever. Thermal scans didn't keep Duncan out of the US.

 

Now the claims of racism come out. Duncan isn't even cold in his grave and we have the race bait ambulance chasers showing up to make a fast buck. Duncan's brother is saying white victims lived therefore his brother must have been neglected. I am sure some folks are going to make a fast buck on Duncan's demise.

 

The temperature scans are not completely useless.
They could pick up a small number of people,
who wish to travel because they know they have symptoms,
and think that being in the US will improve their chances of survival.

They need to be prevented from travelling rather than picked out at the other end,
after a long flight mingling with hundreds of other passengers.

 

A travel ban is the only reasonable and the most effective way to contain the epidemic. How many people have been infected in Spain? The nurses were not properly treated and may have infected many others.

 

I sense you're going to be end-running this discussion. Do you think I'm advocating that people who just say they're aid workers should have free run of the place?

Do you think that I believe food and domestic supplies carry Ebola? Do you suppose that I believe it's actually kind of a malevolent infector of everything? Clearly, we're talking about the movement of large numbers of people. That is air travel. Air transport is probably much less of a threat.

The need depends entirely on need. Does Dallas require a ban on travel? What's the infection rate? How many people carry it? How many have died? I'd argue that several countries in W Africa have rather a serious problem right now; Cameroon certainly seems to think so. So the gravity of the charge of hypocrisy depends on circumstance. I can bloody well say that if Texas had the same problem I'd have no compunction about limiting travel and testing travelers. Is it hypocritical that Cameroon ended air travel with Nigeria? If so, why? If not, why not? Hypocrisy has nothing to do with the situation, nor with its solution. It is an emotional sensation.

Why will education as to the nature of the threat work here and not there? In short, though, I don't think the suspicion of panic is reason enough to dismiss the idea of quarantine.

Do you expect it to make problems worse? How would reducing communicability do that, exactly?

... I don't recall stating anything along the line of "kill them all or leave them all to die", billvon. Perhaps we have very different understandings of the concept of "quarantine". Or perhaps you could explain what it is you mean by trying to put this phrase in my mouth.

 

This is the CDC advice for Airlines:
http://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/air/managing-sick-travelers/ebola-guidance-airlines.html

This is the Universal care kit for an aeroplane:

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If you were an air steward, would you feel confident donning this kit and dealing with vomit?

 

NYC airport workers are apparently intending action over the issue.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/airline-cabin-cleaners-strike-ebola-exposure-fears/story?id=26066160

They're not the most at-risk category, I think.

 

Imagine you are an air hostess.
A passenger with suspected Ebola has just vomited over the front of his seat
and over the head of the passenger in front of him.
Do you
A. Don the kit. Clean up the seats, and the passenger head. Calm everyone down. Then clean yourself up and prepare the drinks trolley.
B. Lock yourself in the lavatory until the plane lands.

 

It's absurd.

 

The Stewardess may well cause more harm than good by trying to clear up the mess.
I don't know what the answer is to my question, but it isn't that stupid $21 kit.

 

We are truely not prepared as evidenced by the cases in Spain and The United States.

 

I wonder if ebola is based on some kind of superiority cult, that's made a mess and it's getting around somehow with somethingorother effecting innocent beings.

 

Probably not.

1) He probably doesn't have Ebola.
2) If he does, then cleaning it up will reduce risk to other passengers.

In any case, it's her job, thus locking herself in the lavatory isn't going to be an option for most flight attendants (and there will be plenty of passengers in those lavatories already.)

 

If the kit came with a shitload of powdered bleach, that might be effective. But this a virus. When I was a grad, I found I got hyper-careful about what my gloves touched - and we were just working with DNA. We had a slightly rogue tech and we wondered how widely she might have contaminated the lab with ethidium bromide. We killed the lights, hit the UV - and found fingerprints all over the fucking place. I wonder how much worse a person for all intents and purposes completely untrained might make things. He or she sure as shit couldn't deal with anything else after that. She'd have to sit in isolation.

Say for a second that it is Ebola. She cleans up the puke and puts it in a baggie - but in course of doing so she contaminates the seats, spreads it more widely over the floor, contaminates the bag seals (not hard at all to do unless you know safe procedure) and unless she takes her puke-contaminated gloves off ve-ery carefully (they like to 'snap', BTW), herself and maybe adjacent seats and/or people. If the captain is a cunt and insists that people be seated for the landing - oh, how we like our procedures - even if the people leave that area they can't be standing up. What if she drops the bag? After cleaning up theoretical Ebola-yack, she can't possibly have any contact with any passengers. And what about the adjacent passengers themselves? Did one of them get spattered? Is this really what her job entails? I bet it isn't in the contract.

By keeping casual travel lines open we expose people to inordinate risk, as others have already been exposed. It isn't about appearances. It's about safety. I can't look on such a risk with equanimity.

 

The primary job of any flight attendant is passenger safety - and that includes staying on a burning airplane to get passengers off. So yes, risking your life for passenger safety is not only in the contract, it's what they train for.

 

Just so that I understand what is going on, America is sending over 2000 troops to help out with this dilemma but no other nation on Earth is doing anything at all. I wonder why that is, do they have an idea that there troops will become infected and bring the virus back home with them or what?

 

I get what you're saying, but against a fatal, communicable disease? Just seems wrong.