Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Yeah. I do want to be clear that I'm not accusing anyone in this thread of being a dumbass, but I've met plenty of dumbasses in the wide world of assembling, painting, and playing games with little metal/resin/plastic armymans.

Here's another reason why this is concerning. The stigma involved with people who are exposed to possible infection.

The family was driven away from the home in a police car, after officials failed to find shelter for them.

Hotels, flats and others had refused to offer them accommodation, before a private residence was offered.

"No one wants this family,''

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29481069

 RatBot wrote:


Worrying and planning? What the feth can anyone do about it? Run around screaming "ERMAGERD EBOLER WE'RE ALL GUNNA DIEEEEE!"? Wash your hands and don't touch other peoples' poop or the disease-infused blood leaking from their face. That's about it.

Alternatively you could stock up on non-perishable food and lock yourself in your house for a couple months til this all blows over.

Seriously, what do you want?

It's perfectly reasonable to critique how healthcare administrators have handled or reacted to the situation, which has been less than impressive--as that's how you improve processes. It is a good thing to reflect and criticize on that reaction where it's warranted--for example, if one isolated case is handled this poorly it should give us pause how well they would contain 50, 100, etc. There has been a tremendous amount of disorganization on display.

The point is, though, that it is not a reasonable critique, it's an unreasonable over reaction. The health workers are not expecting Ebola, when it was diagnosed they isolated the guy and there seems to have been no transmission. Yes, a guy with what in hindsight presented with Ebola symtoms from an Ebola region, but given that Dalles Is a major transport hub probably thousands of people go through there from East Africa with cold or flu like symtoms.

The treatment of one guy with probable flu is much diffrent to the way they would react if there was a clear risk. Health officials seem to have taken the view that Ebola is low enough risk that they do not need to take major action to prevent its spread at this time. I don't see that there was a failing in the system. The failure we are seeing is the paranoia spreading, and un needed biohazard checkpoints and paranoia about everyone with flu like symptoms from health workers would just make it worse. Given the way people have reacted to one case, with much the same fear as we have seen in East africa, the fear that has partly caused the spread, over reacting would make things much worse. For a start the health system would collapse as people flooded hospitals with every sniffle. Better off the health workers treated it as what it is, a nasty illness that is very difficult to spread. It seems this guy spread it to no one.

A more worrying issue is that he was given antibiotics for an unknown flu like virus. Antibiotic resident bacteria is far more frightening than Ebola, and the U.S. health care system handing them out like that is a risk to us all.

If this thing does become a clusterpuck and blows out of containment, Im not worried.

Is it because of the store of food and water I have?
No.

Is it because of the cache of arms and ammunition I have?
No.

Is it because of my medicines?
Again no.

Its because of the mountain of unpainted minis and skids worth of unfinished models I have to go through before I can die.

So while the rest of you scavenge and wrestle for that last crust of moldy bread, I'll be in my bunker sipping on tea whilst painting away.

Dammit! I forgot the glue..........

If you want to be concerned about something how about you get concerned about people who don't vaccinate their children.
That gak is basically child abuse and has helped keep diseases alive when they should be dead.

 Steve steveson wrote:
The point is, though, that it is not a reasonable critique, it's an unreasonable over reaction. The health workers are not expecting Ebola, when it was diagnosed they isolated the guy and there seems to have been no transmission. Yes, a guy with what in hindsight presented with Ebola symtoms from an Ebola region, but given that Dalles Is a major transport hub probably thousands of people go through there from East Africa with cold or flu like symtoms.

The treatment of one guy with probable flu is much diffrent to the way they would react if there was a clear risk. Health officials seem to have taken the view that Ebola is low enough risk that they do not need to take major action to prevent its spread at this time. I don't see that there was a failing in the system.

It's west Africa, not east. Flu is sporadic at best right now, as it's not flu season yet (and while flu/ebola share general symptoms of routine infection, they do have differences as well). As hospital administrators, we've received weekly (If not twice a week) reminders on how to treat ebola patients and reminders to drill our staff and/or adding documentation practices on travel from Africa. The hospital in question held a drill on ebola the week prior to this incident. Outside of the hospital, there was a comedy in errors in how they handled this--but there is no real reason to cut/paste it here as it's been all over the news.

 purplefood wrote:
If you want to be concerned about something how about you get concerned about people who don't vaccinate their children.
That gak is basically child abuse and has helped keep diseases alive when they should be dead.

We are concerned about this (and I agree with your comparison to child abuse)--but like most areas in life--sometimes you are forced to be concerned about more than one issue at a time.

 purplefood wrote:
If you want to be concerned about something how about you get concerned about people who don't vaccinate their children.
That gak is basically child abuse and has helped keep diseases alive when they should be dead.

Agreed. The biggest problem with THIS particular situation? Generally speaking, the worst offenders for the non-vaccinating crowd: rich white people.


Could you imagine the uproar that would occur if guys like Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck, or Sigourney Weaver had their kids taken??*



*I honestly have no idea of those people are in the "don't vaccinate" crowd or not, just using them as famous examples of rich white people.

 purplefood wrote:
If you want to be concerned about something how about you get concerned about people who don't vaccinate their children.
That gak is basically child abuse and has helped keep diseases alive when they should be dead.

You realize you're basically suggesting that people should be compelled to be vaccinated against anything "deemed necessary" for the good of society.

Thats a very very dangerous position to take dude.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 purplefood wrote:
If you want to be concerned about something how about you get concerned about people who don't vaccinate their children.
That gak is basically child abuse and has helped keep diseases alive when they should be dead.

You realize you're basically suggesting that people should be compelled to be vaccinated against anything "deemed necessary" for the good of society.

Thats a very very dangerous position to take dude.

Vaccinations should be made mandatory.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 purplefood wrote:
If you want to be concerned about something how about you get concerned about people who don't vaccinate their children.
That gak is basically child abuse and has helped keep diseases alive when they should be dead.

You realize you're basically suggesting that people should be compelled to be vaccinated against anything "deemed necessary" for the good of society.

Thats a very very dangerous position to take dude.

No, actually it isn't.

It's the reason we've eradicated smallpox and rinderpest globally, how we are on the verge of eradicating polio globally, and how we eliminated endemic measles (and a handful of other diseases) in North America. We could and should eliminate pertussis; it's the leading cause of vaccine-preventable deaths world wide.

 Soladrin wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 purplefood wrote:
If you want to be concerned about something how about you get concerned about people who don't vaccinate their children.
That gak is basically child abuse and has helped keep diseases alive when they should be dead.

You realize you're basically suggesting that people should be compelled to be vaccinated against anything "deemed necessary" for the good of society.

Thats a very very dangerous position to take dude.

Vaccinations should be made mandatory.

And mandatory vaccinations are also legal:

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS21414.pdf

But hey, why worry about idiots not vaccinating their children and creating a real (and well known and well documented) public health risk resulting in multiple outbreaks in many places in the US when we have a guy with Ebola in Texas.

Look, my personal freedom to allow my children to infect immunosuppressed people with deadly diseases is paramount, okay? If you didn't want to get measles, maybe you should've thought of that before you decided to get cancer and chemotherapy.

In actual Ebola news:

- no news from Hawaii
- Ebola ruled out in DC
- No symptoms in anyone exposed in Texas so far.

It should be noted that since the end of July, one hundred consultations between state health officials and the CDC have taken place in regards to people suspected of a potential case of Ebola virus disease. Fifteen of those people required testing by the CDC because their travel profile and symptoms were consistent with the disease.

Of all those people, only one has actually had it.


Interestingly enough, no gave a gak about any of those people until a couple days ago.

 d-usa wrote:
In actual Ebola news:

- no news from Hawaii
- Ebola ruled out in DC
- No symptoms in anyone exposed in Texas so far.

I'm going to be forced to put you on ignore if you won't stop with the personal attacks, D.

 AgeOfEgos wrote:
It's perfectly reasonable to critique how healthcare administrators have handled or reacted to the situation, which has been less than impressive--as that's how you improve processes. It is a good thing to reflect and criticize on that reaction where it's warranted--for example, if one isolated case is handled this poorly it should give us pause how well they would contain 50, 100, etc. There has been a tremendous amount of disorganization on display.

Yes, I agree with you on that end. The hospital that let the guy go, that was ridiculous. The fact it took so long to get his apartment cleaned, that too.

So I'm curious, do you think it's right to send troops to Africa to build some emergency healthcare infrastructure?

My coworker is adamant that the DC case is legit (because we're working in DC today and tomorrow). Glad to hear it was a false sense of alarm. I'll let her know right away.

The 100 contacts in Dallas have been revised back down to 50 as well:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/04/health/ebola-us/index.html?c=homepage-t

I'm still of the opinion that Ebola will probably stick around, but that 10+ years from now our panic and responses in the population (their kid was in the same school as my kid, my kid could have died!) will look as crazy and paranoid as the public reaction to HIV.

 d-usa wrote:
In actual Ebola news:

- no news from Hawaii

No news from Hawaii??!! Holy crap! Everyone in Hawaii has been wiped out by Ebola!

Well, I think Ebola is probably a bigger concern than HIV. HIV is insanely difficult to transmit through casual contact. Ebola, while still difficult, is a little easier.

People who are HIV positive aren't super contagious. Transmission of bodily fluids is still very risky, but some are less likely than others.

Basically kissing isn't all that likely to transmit HIV, but kissing sure as heck seems to pass along Ebola.

I could be wrong, not super knowledgeable about HIV but from what I recall the above is correct.

So Ebola is probably a bigger deal than HIV in this instance.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, I think Ebola is probably a bigger concern than HIV. HIV is insanely difficult to transmit through casual contact. Ebola, while still difficult, is a little easier.

People who are HIV positive aren't super contagious. Transmission of bodily fluids is still very risky, but some are less likely than others.

Basically kissing isn't all that likely to transmit HIV, but kissing sure as heck seems to pass along Ebola.

I could be wrong, not super knowledgeable about HIV but from what I recall the above is correct.

So Ebola is probably a bigger deal than HIV in this instance.

Nope.

When Ebola starts to affect you (and make you contagious), kissing people isn't likely to be something you run around doing. Ebola virus disease begins suddenly and escalates quickly, beginning with flu-like symptoms and then the "bleeding phase" typically five to seven days after the first symptoms appear. I don't know about you, but when my wife gets the flu or even a cold, making relations isn't one of the things that is on our priority list.

Besides, how Ebola spreads is not considered "casual contact." I have plenty of friends and I wouldn't be in contact with their urine, sweat, semen, breast milk, vomit, or feces in a normal every day situation, let alone when they are home sick. I can't stress this enough though: this is not a new disease. We have known about, studied, and contained this disease for almost 40 years; our understanding of it is pretty thorough.

For a frame of reference: as of 2012, 35.3 million people have HIV/AIDS with some 2 million more being diagnosed every year. There has been less than 10,000 human cases of Ebola virus disease since it was first identified in 1976.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
I have plenty of friends and I wouldn't be in contact with their urine, sweat, semen, breast milk, vomit, or feces in a normal every day situation

Your idea of friendship, sir, is a lot different than mine.

Remember when you couldn't even use the same cup as someone with HIV no matter how often you washed it? Like I said, public hysteria.

The Basic Reproduction Number (how many people will get sick from one person that is sick, as has been explained a few times in this thread) for Ebola varies since it depends on a variety or circumstances since not every place has the same ability to track and isolate and take precautions. But for Ebola it has been between 1.51 to 2.53 in Africa. It's worth noting that it currently sits at 0 in the US.

The Basic Reproduction Number for HIV is between 2-5, and measles is 12-18.

So again, Ebola is not easily transmitted and the infection spread is slower than diseases we deal with every day.

The survival rate in the current outbreak is 50%. But different outbreaks in different parts of Africa have had a survival rate between 25% and 90%. So places in Africa have managed to save 9 out of 10 people with Ebola. There is absolutely zero reason to assume that our survival rates in the US would be worse. If Texas guy dies, then Ebola will have an 80% survival rate in the US. Take a shot at how many people survive HIV.

So like I said. We are going to look pretty silly when people look back at this outbreak.

 d-usa wrote:
So like I said. We are going to look pretty silly when people look back at this outbreak.

For the record, in relation to the "outbreak" of one case in Texas, I think these people look silly now.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So like I said. We are going to look pretty silly when people look back at this outbreak.

For the record, in relation to the "outbreak" of one case in Texas, I think these people look silly now.

To be fair, I do think there will be more at some point.

But yeah, people in Texas should be more worried about West Nile Virus than Ebola.

 Ouze wrote:


Yes, I agree with you on that end. The hospital that let the guy go, that was ridiculous. The fact it took so long to get his apartment cleaned, that too.

So I'm curious, do you think it's right to send troops to Africa to build some emergency healthcare infrastructure?

The entire fiasco was pretty embarrassing. Before they finally gave the quarantine order, I remember reading an article from an exasperated physician--who was to do the fever checks twice a day on the close contacts---going to the apartment and finding the family had left...which is why the number initially jumped...which is why they finally got around to getting a court order. Just mind boggling.

Yes, I think it's humane to send aid in any form. There are a great many individuals dying in Liberia right now--from other diseases besides Ebola--simply because of the trickle down effect it has had on their healthcare system.

Yeah, the usual diseases in the area (tuberculosis, malaria, etc) are killing more people because the systems are overwhelmed with the Ebola effect.

 AgeOfEgos wrote:
The entire fiasco was pretty embarrassing. Before they finally gave the quarantine order, I remember reading an article from an exasperated physician--who was to do the fever checks twice a day on the close contacts---going to the apartment and finding the family had left...which is why the number initially jumped...which is why they finally got around to getting a court order. Just mind boggling.

No, it isn't embarrassing. It was a mistake and it happens even in a healthcare system as robust as ours. And guess what? It was fixed very easily.

Trying to paint the entire healthcare infrastructure with this broad of brush is asinine. Granted, no healthcare apparatus is bulletproof, but to take a minor mistake by a hospital in Texas and try to act like it is emblematic of the entire healthcare system is ridiculous. It should be stated again (and again, and again, and again...) the severity of this disease in a society with a robust healthcare apparatus is very low, and if you look past these insane fear-mongering stories on the news, the experts have heavily, heavily, heavily stressed this. Did I mention they've heavily stressed it? So you read an article from an exasperated physician? Big deal. For that one article there is dozens more that explain the same things that have been repeated in this thread over and over again. No gives a gak about those articles though, because they aren't terrifying.

For the umpteenth time, Nigeria stopped an outbreak. Nigeria... a country spends 4.6% of its GDP on health care compared to our 17.2%.

GET YOUR FLU SHOTS PEOPLE.....or it will spread

 Jihadin wrote:
GET YOUR FLU SHOTS PEOPLE.....or it will spread

Yeah, no thanks... When I get the flu shot, I get the freaking flu, guaranteed. It's a family quirk, my dad's the same way, as are all of his direct relatives.