Has Ebola gone airborne? re the US doctor & nurse who have caught it & possible case in Hong Kong

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:More importantly, why are American doctors doing charity work abroad when there are so many needy people in the US. We should not have doctors overseas.

Oh I don't know where to start on this one either.
Let me just say this one thing:
Needy people in the US are not comparable to some of the needy people you find overseas. You have no idea!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of peoples' lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola's spread.

Epidemiologists and virus experts believe the original case in that instance to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea and then returned, unwell, to her home village in neighbouring northern Liberia.

The woman's sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the Ebola virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.

Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband - an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.

She took a communal taxi via Liberia's capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola. In Monrovia, she switched to a motorcycle, riding pillion with a young man who agreed to take her to the plantation and whom health authorities were subsequently desperate to trace.

"It's an analogous situation to the man in the airplane" who flew into Lagos and died there, said Derek Gatherer of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the West Africa outbreak closely."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-health-ebola-transport-idUSKBN0G011O20140731

How do you think she transmitted the virus to five other people? Puked all over them? pooped on them? They would have let her off the bus if she did that. Had wild sex with all five? I think it is very interesting how they are trying to say this very contagious disease is hard to get. In what way? By being 6000 miles away?

If it can be transmitted by sweat...couldn't touching the same door handle immediately after someone who has just begun to show symptoms, and then wiping one's nose or eyes cause transmission?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of peoples' lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola's spread.

Epidemiologists and virus experts believe the original case in that instance to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea and then returned, unwell, to her home village in neighbouring northern Liberia.

The woman's sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the Ebola virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.

Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband - an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.

She took a communal taxi via Liberia's capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola. In Monrovia, she switched to a motorcycle, riding pillion with a young man who agreed to take her to the plantation and whom health authorities were subsequently desperate to trace.

"It's an analogous situation to the man in the airplane" who flew into Lagos and died there, said Derek Gatherer of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the West Africa outbreak closely."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-health-ebola-transport-idUSKBN0G011O20140731

How do you think she transmitted the virus to five other people? Puked all over them? pooped on them? They would have let her off the bus if she did that. Had wild sex with all five? I think it is very interesting how they are trying to say this very contagious disease is hard to get. In what way? By being 6000 miles away?

I think what is hard to realize for many is that; when something is wiped away (with water for example) that area is NOT CLEAN afterwards.
And any sweat from your hands on a surface is not necessarily visible on that surface and can easily be touched by another person who then wipes their eye...

And on another note: do you know how many threads there are on dcum alone about people who don't wash their hands after pooping - you won't see any poop on their hands but could easily still have traces - even if they wiped their hands with toilet paper for example. It is not so difficult to imagine how the people in the taxi, in the motorcycle etc got sick.

You don't have to SEE the bodily fluids (and the bacteria/viruses they contain) for them to be there, is basically what I'm saying.
Only disinfectant will get rid of it.

And it also depends on the "hardiness" of the agent: HIV very quickly dies on a surface, influenza can live for an average of 24 hours+, hepatitis B can live for 2 days on a toothbrush....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of peoples' lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola's spread.

Epidemiologists and virus experts believe the original case in that instance to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea and then returned, unwell, to her home village in neighbouring northern Liberia.

The woman's sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the Ebola virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.

Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband - an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.

She took a communal taxi via Liberia's capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola. In Monrovia, she switched to a motorcycle, riding pillion with a young man who agreed to take her to the plantation and whom health authorities were subsequently desperate to trace.

"It's an analogous situation to the man in the airplane" who flew into Lagos and died there, said Derek Gatherer of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the West Africa outbreak closely."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-health-ebola-transport-idUSKBN0G011O20140731

How do you think she transmitted the virus to five other people? Puked all over them? pooped on them? They would have let her off the bus if she did that. Had wild sex with all five? I think it is very interesting how they are trying to say this very contagious disease is hard to get. In what way? By being 6000 miles away?

If it can be transmitted by sweat...couldn't touching the same door handle immediately after someone who has just begun to show symptoms, and then wiping one's nose or eyes cause transmission?

Yes, that would do it.
It's a good idea not to touch "high frequency public door handles" with your palms/fingertips.

[Anonymous]

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:We shouldn't be too concerned about Ebola spreading to the US or other wealthy countries. It's transmitted entirely through exposure to bodily fluids. In settings with Ebola, there's bleeding in a variety of places and the virus is present in those excretions, and people need to come into contact with that to get the virus. The people at risk are the family members who are taking care of sick people, those who are preparing bodies for burial, and health-care workers.

The virus is not transmitted through coughing and sneezing, or through sitting next to someone on a bus, plane or the like. The idea that the virus can somehow mutate and become more readily transmissible from person to person through coughing or sneezing—those are Hollywood scenarios. The idea that Ebola can become more readily transmissible through casual contact is unrealistic.

Yes, you could get ill from close contact: sweat is considered a bodily fluid. And it's not clear that aerosolized droplets are not a mode of transmission. As for the idea that a virus mutating is Hollywood fiction, viruses do mutate. How do you think swine flu and avian flu got to be called those names?

Yes , some viruses can mutate. not all. The Ebola virus is composed of ribonucleic acid (RNA). Such a structure unfortunately makes it prone to undergoing rapid genetic changes via one of three mechanisms:

1) nucleotide substitutions resulting from purportedly high error rates during RNA synthesis; 2) reassortment of the RNA segments of multipartite genomic viruses; or 3) RNA-RNA recombination between non-segmented RNAs...The Ebola virus can use only the first and the third mechanisms as it has only one segment of RNA by capsid" (the protective coating of proteins).

Thus, scientists have asserted that, with regards to concerns about the virus being airborne, the genome (RNA) would have to mutate to the point where the protein capsids are immune to adverse air qualities (i.e. dryness). Furthermore, the genome would have to mutate in a way that allows the virus to be transmittable via respiratory function. Scientists insist that the chances of the virus mutating to this degree are extremely small, despite speculations about the airborne transmission of Ebola Reston. It also would probably need to change structure to allow infection through the respiratory system. There are no exact measures of the rate of mutation in Ebola, but the probability of the required mutations happening is negligible

I appreciate the scientific explanation but given the many unknowns about this virus, I tend to put more stock in what has already happened than I do in what scientists think might or might not happen. That doesn't mean I believe the current Ebola strain will go airborne but, given the history, people are certainly justified in having fears that it could.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of peoples' lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola's spread.

Epidemiologists and virus experts believe the original case in that instance to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea and then returned, unwell, to her home village in neighbouring northern Liberia.

The woman's sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the Ebola virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.

Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband - an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.

She took a communal taxi via Liberia's capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola. In Monrovia, she switched to a motorcycle, riding pillion with a young man who agreed to take her to the plantation and whom health authorities were subsequently desperate to trace.

"It's an analogous situation to the man in the airplane" who flew into Lagos and died there, said Derek Gatherer of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the West Africa outbreak closely."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-health-ebola-transport-idUSKBN0G011O20140731

How do you think she transmitted the virus to five other people? Puked all over them? pooped on them? They would have let her off the bus if she did that. Had wild sex with all five? I think it is very interesting how they are trying to say this very contagious disease is hard to get. In what way? By being 6000 miles away?

I think what is hard to realize for many is that; when something is wiped away (with water for example) that area is NOT CLEAN afterwards.
And any sweat from your hands on a surface is not necessarily visible on that surface and can easily be touched by another person who then wipes their eye...

And on another note: do you know how many threads there are on dcum alone about people who don't wash their hands after pooping - you won't see any poop on their hands but could easily still have traces - even if they wiped their hands with toilet paper for example. It is not so difficult to imagine how the people in the taxi, in the motorcycle etc got sick.

You don't have to SEE the bodily fluids (and the bacteria/viruses they contain) for them to be there, is basically what I'm saying.
Only disinfectant will get rid of it.

And it also depends on the "hardiness" of the agent: HIV very quickly dies on a surface, influenza can live for an average of 24 hours+, hepatitis B can live for 2 days on a toothbrush....

NOT ALL VIRUSES LIVE OUTSIDE THE BODY. You need DIRECT CONTACT with infected bodily fluids.

Apparently there is no point in this thread, since the same posts keep being made again and again and again. If you want to believe we can all die from ebola we catch from sweat, go ahead. There is obviously no convincing you otherwise. (But I prefer to believe the experts instead.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of peoples' lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola's spread.

Epidemiologists and virus experts believe the original case in that instance to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea and then returned, unwell, to her home village in neighbouring northern Liberia.

The woman's sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the Ebola virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.

Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband - an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.

She took a communal taxi via Liberia's capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola. In Monrovia, she switched to a motorcycle, riding pillion with a young man who agreed to take her to the plantation and whom health authorities were subsequently desperate to trace.

"It's an analogous situation to the man in the airplane" who flew into Lagos and died there, said Derek Gatherer of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the West Africa outbreak closely."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-health-ebola-transport-idUSKBN0G011O20140731

How do you think she transmitted the virus to five other people? Puked all over them? pooped on them? They would have let her off the bus if she did that. Had wild sex with all five? I think it is very interesting how they are trying to say this very contagious disease is hard to get. In what way? By being 6000 miles away?

I think what is hard to realize for many is that; when something is wiped away (with water for example) that area is NOT CLEAN afterwards.
And any sweat from your hands on a surface is not necessarily visible on that surface and can easily be touched by another person who then wipes their eye...

And on another note: do you know how many threads there are on dcum alone about people who don't wash their hands after pooping - you won't see any poop on their hands but could easily still have traces - even if they wiped their hands with toilet paper for example. It is not so difficult to imagine how the people in the taxi, in the motorcycle etc got sick.

You don't have to SEE the bodily fluids (and the bacteria/viruses they contain) for them to be there, is basically what I'm saying.
Only disinfectant will get rid of it.

And it also depends on the "hardiness" of the agent: HIV very quickly dies on a surface, influenza can live for an average of 24 hours+, hepatitis B can live for 2 days on a toothbrush....

NOT ALL VIRUSES LIVE OUTSIDE THE BODY. You need DIRECT CONTACT with infected bodily fluids.

Apparently there is no point in this thread, since the same posts keep being made again and again and again. If you want to believe we can all die from ebola we catch from sweat, go ahead. There is obviously no convincing you otherwise. (But I prefer to believe the experts instead.)

Could you please explain where you are finding hard facts that Ebola cannot live on any surface for even a fraction of a second?

[Anonymous]

The CDC says it "lives for a short time" on surfaces.
I did not see specifics - it could be minutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of peoples' lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola's spread.

Epidemiologists and virus experts believe the original case in that instance to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea and then returned, unwell, to her home village in neighbouring northern Liberia.

The woman's sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the Ebola virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.

Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband - an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.

She took a communal taxi via Liberia's capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola. In Monrovia, she switched to a motorcycle, riding pillion with a young man who agreed to take her to the plantation and whom health authorities were subsequently desperate to trace.

"It's an analogous situation to the man in the airplane" who flew into Lagos and died there, said Derek Gatherer of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the West Africa outbreak closely."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-health-ebola-transport-idUSKBN0G011O20140731

How do you think she transmitted the virus to five other people? Puked all over them? pooped on them? They would have let her off the bus if she did that. Had wild sex with all five? I think it is very interesting how they are trying to say this very contagious disease is hard to get. In what way? By being 6000 miles away?

I think what is hard to realize for many is that; when something is wiped away (with water for example) that area is NOT CLEAN afterwards.
And any sweat from your hands on a surface is not necessarily visible on that surface and can easily be touched by another person who then wipes their eye...

And on another note: do you know how many threads there are on dcum alone about people who don't wash their hands after pooping - you won't see any poop on their hands but could easily still have traces - even if they wiped their hands with toilet paper for example. It is not so difficult to imagine how the people in the taxi, in the motorcycle etc got sick.

You don't have to SEE the bodily fluids (and the bacteria/viruses they contain) for them to be there, is basically what I'm saying.
Only disinfectant will get rid of it.

And it also depends on the "hardiness" of the agent: HIV very quickly dies on a surface, influenza can live for an average of 24 hours+, hepatitis B can live for 2 days on a toothbrush....

NOT ALL VIRUSES LIVE OUTSIDE THE BODY. You need DIRECT CONTACT with infected bodily fluids.

Apparently there is no point in this thread, since the same posts keep being made again and again and again. If you want to believe we can all die from ebola we catch from sweat, go ahead. There is obviously no convincing you otherwise. (But I prefer to believe the experts instead.)

+1

These posters are mostly just too stupid to be reasoned with.

Now I see how the anti-vaccine movement got its start. "Why listen to experts when I can panic and hyperbolically misinterpret everything I 'know' about this topic!?"

[Anonymous]

I question to the veracity of the statement that the woman infected 5 people on the communal taxi, all of whom later died of of Ebola.

I have only seen one reference to that fact and have not been able to find any authoritative source to back it up, nor a description of what type of contact those people had with her.

I don't think it happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The CDC says it "lives for a short time" on surfaces.
I did not see specifics - it could be minutes.

All literature I have read says it can "live for days" in liquid or on surfaces.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The CDC says it "lives for a short time" on surfaces.
I did not see specifics - it could be minutes.

All literature I have read says it can "live for days" in liquid or on surfaces.

Please provide links. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of peoples' lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola's spread.

Epidemiologists and virus experts believe the original case in that instance to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea and then returned, unwell, to her home village in neighbouring northern Liberia.

The woman's sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the Ebola virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.

Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband - an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.

She took a communal taxi via Liberia's capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola. In Monrovia, she switched to a motorcycle, riding pillion with a young man who agreed to take her to the plantation and whom health authorities were subsequently desperate to trace.

"It's an analogous situation to the man in the airplane" who flew into Lagos and died there, said Derek Gatherer of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the West Africa outbreak closely."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-health-ebola-transport-idUSKBN0G011O20140731

How do you think she transmitted the virus to five other people? Puked all over them? pooped on them? They would have let her off the bus if she did that. Had wild sex with all five? I think it is very interesting how they are trying to say this very contagious disease is hard to get. In what way? By being 6000 miles away?

I think what is hard to realize for many is that; when something is wiped away (with water for example) that area is NOT CLEAN afterwards.
And any sweat from your hands on a surface is not necessarily visible on that surface and can easily be touched by another person who then wipes their eye...

And on another note: do you know how many threads there are on dcum alone about people who don't wash their hands after pooping - you won't see any poop on their hands but could easily still have traces - even if they wiped their hands with toilet paper for example. It is not so difficult to imagine how the people in the taxi, in the motorcycle etc got sick.

You don't have to SEE the bodily fluids (and the bacteria/viruses they contain) for them to be there, is basically what I'm saying.
Only disinfectant will get rid of it.

And it also depends on the "hardiness" of the agent: HIV very quickly dies on a surface, influenza can live for an average of 24 hours+, hepatitis B can live for 2 days on a toothbrush....

NOT ALL VIRUSES LIVE OUTSIDE THE BODY. You need DIRECT CONTACT with infected bodily fluids.

Apparently there is no point in this thread, since the same posts keep being made again and again and again. If you want to believe we can all die from ebola we catch from sweat, go ahead. There is obviously no convincing you otherwise. (But I prefer to believe the experts instead.)

Possibly because they are valid points (for people in the Ebola region)

[Anonymous]

If Ebola can live for a "short time" or " days" outside of human fluids why does the CDC seem to imply that someone with Ebola needs to bleed/vomit/defecate all over you before there is any chance of transmission?

The conflicting information is what is causing all the panic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of peoples' lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola's spread.

Epidemiologists and virus experts believe the original case in that instance to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea and then returned, unwell, to her home village in neighbouring northern Liberia.

The woman's sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the Ebola virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.

Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband - an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.

She took a communal taxi via Liberia's capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola. In Monrovia, she switched to a motorcycle, riding pillion with a young man who agreed to take her to the plantation and whom health authorities were subsequently desperate to trace.

"It's an analogous situation to the man in the airplane" who flew into Lagos and died there, said Derek Gatherer of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the West Africa outbreak closely."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-health-ebola-transport-idUSKBN0G011O20140731

How do you think she transmitted the virus to five other people? Puked all over them? pooped on them? They would have let her off the bus if she did that. Had wild sex with all five? I think it is very interesting how they are trying to say this very contagious disease is hard to get. In what way? By being 6000 miles away?

I think what is hard to realize for many is that; when something is wiped away (with water for example) that area is NOT CLEAN afterwards.
And any sweat from your hands on a surface is not necessarily visible on that surface and can easily be touched by another person who then wipes their eye...

And on another note: do you know how many threads there are on dcum alone about people who don't wash their hands after pooping - you won't see any poop on their hands but could easily still have traces - even if they wiped their hands with toilet paper for example. It is not so difficult to imagine how the people in the taxi, in the motorcycle etc got sick.

You don't have to SEE the bodily fluids (and the bacteria/viruses they contain) for them to be there, is basically what I'm saying.
Only disinfectant will get rid of it.

And it also depends on the "hardiness" of the agent: HIV very quickly dies on a surface, influenza can live for an average of 24 hours+, hepatitis B can live for 2 days on a toothbrush....

NOT ALL VIRUSES LIVE OUTSIDE THE BODY. You need DIRECT CONTACT with infected bodily fluids.

Apparently there is no point in this thread, since the same posts keep being made again and again and again. If you want to believe we can all die from ebola we catch from sweat, go ahead. There is obviously no convincing you otherwise. (But I prefer to believe the experts instead.)

+1

These posters are mostly just too stupid to be reasoned with.

Now I see how the anti-vaccine movement got its start. "Why listen to experts when I can panic and hyperbolically misinterpret everything I 'know' about this topic!?"

...and you seem unable to process information or reason for yourself. Intelligent people don't blindly follow the recommendations of others. They do sir own research and draw their own conclusions.