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Thread: Anyone else worried about Ebola?

  1. #151
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    Good news on Ebola front that the family of the original Texas victim has now received the all clear after their 21 day confinement and can go back to their everyday lives. They were probably the most vulnerable American group and they are good so it does speak to the degree of contagiousness of Ebola for someone who is demonstrating a high temperature and not much else.

  2. #152
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mel Fulks View Post
    I like the network shep smith is on ,but I think he is their weakest journalist. Just a sharp dresser with an unusual voice. His
    ridicule and implied accusations toward the meter reader who had seen the remains of a child ,notified police and later
    testified in the Casey Anthony case was outrageous and cruel. I hope to see a civil suit over it.
    If the other Fox people were more like Shepard Smith I might even watch that channel.

  3. #153
    Quote Originally Posted by Pat Barry View Post
    Good news on Ebola front that the family of the original Texas victim has now received the all clear after their 21 day confinement and can go back to their everyday lives. They were probably the most vulnerable American group and they are good so it does speak to the degree of contagiousness of Ebola for someone who is demonstrating a high temperature and not much else.
    Who knows what TED had in the apartment there. They know he was sweating profusely and vomiting outside of the apartment building, but whether or not he had diarrhea or any of the other very contagious symptoms, we probably won't know.

    Luckily it sounds like nobody came in contact with an appreciable amount of any of it.

    By the time the two nurses were exposed, his viral load was probably higher.

  4. #154
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Weaver View Post
    By the time the two nurses were exposed, [Duncan's] viral load was probably higher.
    Almost certainly.

    The tricky thing with viral illnesses (well, one of the tricky things) is that it's really not possible to be absolutely precise when a patient will begin shedding the virus in significant amounts; for some patients it will only be when symptoms such as fever reach certain levels, but for others the viral shedding might begin earlier.
    Last edited by Frank Drew; 10-20-2014 at 8:57 AM.

  5. #155
    There were two Ebola articles on the same page (I think about A5) in the WSJ this morning. Below the fold was an article about how travel bans would backfire. The reason: Nobody will take a chance on travelling to the ravaged areas to provide humanitarian relief if they can't get back home w/o being quarantined.

    Right above the fold on the same page is an article about how they have already been having difficulty getting doctors and nurses to come, not because of a possible travel ban but because of the risks of exposure.

    So it seems to me that we're going to have to kick in some do-re-mi as incentive. I'd also offer guaranteed medevac back to the states if a relief worker becomes ill. Maybe setup a hospital at a shuttered air force base?

    The key is, I think, to fight it there.
    Last edited by Phil Thien; 10-20-2014 at 10:01 AM.

  6. #156
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    Honest journalism in the mass medial died and was burried a very long time ago. The mass media became a business whose number one interest was making money so they dumped the old values concerning reporting the facts. The Internet has just made the situation worse with too many amateur journalists mudding the waters without experience nor concern for the truth IMO.

    Back in the 1970"s the media was reporting on Nuclear Power Plant Construction issues that they totally did not understand. They demonstrated a level of stupidity that was unbelievable, got all their stories mixed up with half truths and they never found out about the serious problems in the industry. Even today the media is still in the dark mostly because they don't have the knowledge or the expertise to understand the industry. The same thing happens in other situations when entertainment journalists put pen to paper and provide information on any number of complex industries.

    What the mass media can do consistently is ask a parent how they feel when they have just lost a child......in my mind its a question that only an intellectual midget would ask and its a discusting insult.
    .

  7. #157
    Quote Originally Posted by Phil Thien View Post
    So it seems to me that we're going to have to kick in some do-re-mi as incentive.
    That's my thought from the beginning, that the missing link is monetary incentive, and it would take a little bit of leadership to actually get something like that done. I guess congress is in recess right now? And they can't be bothered to actually fix real problems. The amount of money that it would cost to do what we're talking about is minuscule. Just pass legislation making it illegal to fire someone who is in quarantine for ebola and pay their back wages out of federal dollars in the interim. I'll bet a year of those dollars would be less than a day's cost of a lot of other expenditures.

    They could also very easily fly people back here on military transport instead of commercial (those coming from here actually going over there to do work). There's a million things they could do to make our odd better, and they don't require dynamic programming or something to figure out.

    It seems like answers to the contrary really don't come out of reason, but they come out of some leadership directive of "we're not stopping flights, so you come up with an excuse why we're not, no matter how dumb it sounds".
    Last edited by David Weaver; 10-20-2014 at 10:03 AM.

  8. #158
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    Again, you just don't allow them a visa until they demonstrate 21 days of residency outside of an outbreak region.
    What about those who already have a visa?

    Who is going to set up this quarantine/mechanism in every nation/airport outside of the outbreak region?

    We have a difficult time with our southern boarder. Shall we post guards every 10 feet with orders to shoot anyone who approaches?

    If we could get every nation on earth to cooperate, then travel bans might be a viable option. We can not even get Congress to cooperate. If this was as terrible a threat as it is being made in to do you think maybe Congress would come back from their two month vacation a little early and pass travel bans into law?

    As far as I know travel bans haven't been taken off the table.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  9. #159
    Concern that it wouldn't limit every single person aren't really valid. It would eliminate a large proportion of people who could possibly bring ebola.

    Functionally, that would mean that you can't come over here (because it would be up to someone else to set up a quarantine).

    Who really has a stake in trying to keep that from occurring, the airline industry? This isn't a situation where you need perfection, as we've seen, you can handle small infections in a given country (Nigeria was just declared free of Ebola after having a small outbreak or a couple of small outbreaks). Do you put a restriction in place now, or do you wait until you're nearly overwhelmed?

    We're not talking about restricting flying from the UK, from Germany, Canada or whatever else, just from the places that have a significant problem with Ebola.

    If the two nurses get past their cases and we don't have anyone currently infected in the US, the whole thing will become yesterday's news, and we probably won't learn anything until more people come back infected, and then it will be hyteria again.

  10. #160
    Quote Originally Posted by Keith Outten View Post
    What the mass media can do consistently is ask a parent how they feel when they have just lost a child......in my mind its a question that only an intellectual midget would ask and its a discusting insult.
    .
    I never watch the local news just because of questions like that. they find the person who is at their lowest and then stick a camera in their face and try to get them to talk as much as possible. It's between that and the toothless type who follows the cameras around at each scene in a ripped dirty T-shirt (if your local news is like mine, you know what I mean - there must be people in each neighborhood who search out the camera and try to get an interview when something is going on in their area of the city).

    I don't know if the local news was always like that, we used to watch it pretty intently when I was a kid, and then the national news, but the internet brings more thorough news and faster if you're enough of a skeptic to be able to filter out the garbage. And nobody holds your time hostage putting you through 10 minutes of trash news to get to something relevant to you. It's also, I think, moved the bar higher for newscasters to actually be correct at a high news level (like network news), because if you're not, it will be found out quickly.

    When I was a kid, when we went to my grandmother's house, when the national news was on, you were not allowed to do anything to interrupt it. The personalities providing it were almost regarded as infallible. I guess that was a carry-over from the depression era when people listened to the radio after dinner. In most cases, the national news anchor could inject opinion or twist the news a little bit and nobody knew different because there was no source to know different.

  11. #161
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    It seems like answers to the contrary really don't come out of reason, but they come out of some leadership directive of "we're not stopping flights, so you come up with an excuse why we're not, no matter how dumb it sounds".
    For a bit of reason on this topic, try the Mayo Clinic:

    Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers are difficult to diagnose because early signs and symptoms resemble those of other diseases, such as typhoid and malaria. If doctors suspect you have Ebola or Marburg viruses, they use blood tests to quickly identify the virus, including:

    Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)
    Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention monitors the United States for conditions such as Ebola infection, and its labs can test for the Ebola virus.


    http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-c...n/con-20031241

    With care, knowledge and proper procedures we should be able to avoid epidemic outbreaks in the developed world.

    Fear and hysteria will not protect anyone.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  12. #162
    That's fine, but stopping flights from infected areas is not hysteria, it's just bad for the airline business and creates some additional work.

    It literally would have stopped the only person who has infected anyone in the united states so far.

  13. #163
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Weaver View Post
    That's fine, but stopping flights from infected areas is not hysteria, it's just bad for the airline business and creates some additional work.

    It literally would have stopped the only person who has infected anyone in the united states so far.
    Maybe I missed something. Was there talk of travel bans before he arrived? How would he have been prevented from traveling to another country before coming to the U.S.?

    How would a travel ban be imposed? Would it be a Presidential edict or would it have to be an act of Congress?

    A travel ban will only work if it is applied by every nation on the face of the earth. In fact I agree that anyone showing symptoms of any contagious disease should be denied from any form of public transit. I do not even care if it is a case of the sniffles, I do not want to catch it from someone who thinks, "it is not a big deal."

    If this is so important, why is Congress still out of session? I see a lot of politicians on TV telling us something needs to be done. So if Congress doesn't think it is important enough to cut their vacation short, who is supposed to be doing the doing? The President who catches flack every time he issues and Executive Order? The non-Surgeon General who they blocked from being confirmed?

    Proper procedures would have also prevented the infections in Dallas. Unfortunately there weren't any procedures followed or properly in place at that time.

    Hindsight is usually 20/20. Hopefully our medical providers have learned a lesson from this mishap and we will have better handling of this from now on.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  14. #164
    Yes, there was talk of travel bans before TED arrived, and they happened at company levels where folks were not allowed to travel to certain areas. The early focus was on the economic impact that travel bans might have.

    It's hard to find much on google because there's been so much talk about travel bans in the last month that it dominates results, but you can fairly easily find articles from august.

    I think you're missing the point about travel bans, and deciding that if it can't work 100%, that even if it's 95%, that it's not worth doing it (my percentages and not yours). You don't fail to limit exposure just because you can't eliminate it, that's irrational. If you're making the argument that you don't want the travel ban because you don't want the ban itself, that's one thing, but to claim that it would make the outbreak worse in liberia or not prevent anything in the US is false.

    The travel ban should come through congress, as a law, or whatever means necessary. It doesn't have to be political - that's a waste of time. I'm not interested in who gets what blame or the politics, this is a mechanical issue.

  15. #165
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    I think you're missing the point about travel bans, and deciding that if it can't work 100%, that even if it's 95%, that it's not worth doing it (my percentages and not yours).
    In my opinion a travel ban would be even less than 50% effective. Most likely people trying to evade a travel ban would spread the infection over a wider area.

    The travel ban should come through congress
    Good luck with that. Besides for them their two month vacation seems to be more important than creating legislation of any kind at the moment. My guess is they know it is mostly hysteria and are using it for their own advantage politically.

    From the New Yorker magazine:

    Tracy Klugian, thirty-one, briefly came into contact with alarmist Ebola hearsay during a visit to the Akron-Canton airport, where a CNN report about Ebola was showing on one of the televisions in the airport bar. “Mr. Klugian is believed to have been exposed to cable news for no more than ten minutes, but long enough to become infected,” a spokesman for the C.D.C. said. “Within an hour, he was showing signs of believing that an Ebola outbreak in the United States was inevitable and unstoppable.”

    Once Klugian’s condition was apparent, the Ohio man was rushed to a public library and given a seventh-grade biology textbook, at which point he “started to stabilize,” the spokesman said.
    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

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