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"Ebola on Ice"

This isn't good.

http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-health-workers-strike-monday-could-hurt-ebola-185038300--business.html

Here's the thing, though....

How would the healthcare workers strike actually *encourage* the spread of Ebola?

It's not curable.

It's *barely* treatable.

The care that the healthcare workers are providing is to treat the *symptoms* of ebola, not the actual disease....and considering the mortality rate is (supposedly, according to the CDC) 50%**....you have a heads-or-tails chance of living.

I, for one, wonder if letting it "cull the weak" and run its course is preferable than exposing more people to it needlessly.....?

I guess what I'm saying is that once it kills enough people, because it won't have any more people being exposed to it (because they aren't taking the risk to treat/interact with infected people) that it will "die out" (no pun intended).

Just my thoughts....

** The disease has a high risk of death, killing between 25% and 90% of those infected with the virus (average is 50%)

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Guess what, kids....

The government is lying to you!

Texas nurse tests positive for Ebola, would be 1st Ebola transmission in U.S.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/12/health/ebola/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

http://www.khou.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/12/texas-health-care-worker-ebola/17147449/

They *claim* that it's "transmitted like AIDS". But guess what......if you happen to touch the spit/saliva of an AIDS patient, you don't get AIDS.

If you touch the spit/saliva of an Ebola patient.....well....good luck.

Just issue workers a Level 4 Hazmat suit? Hahahaha!

99% of healthcare workers in the US have *ZERO* experience donning or removing these things...and I can guarantee that the majority of hospitals (ESPECIALLY the rural/small market) don't even HAVE a level 4 Hazmat suit in their inventory!




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And you know DAMN well that they're going to blame the healthcare worker for "improper procedures" because if they don't.....well....then it shows that Ebola is more contagious than they have led the people to believe...

I'm not sure if you're joking but either way this is beyond ridiculous.

I totally support the nuking of Dallas, especially since the Cowboys beat my Seahawks today.

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Here's the thing, though....

How would the healthcare workers strike actually *encourage* the spread of Ebola?

It's not curable.

It's *barely* treatable.

The care that the healthcare workers are providing is to treat the *symptoms* of ebola, not the actual disease....and considering the mortality rate is (supposedly, according to the CDC) 50%**....you have a heads-or-tails chance of living.

I, for one, wonder if letting it "cull the weak" and run its course is preferable than exposing more people to it needlessly.....?

I guess what I'm saying is that once it kills enough people, because it won't have any more people being exposed to it (because they aren't taking the risk to treat/interact with infected people) that it will "die out" (no pun intended).

Just my thoughts....

** The disease has a high risk of death, killing between 25% and 90% of those infected with the virus (average is 50%)

With reasonable precautions, something resembling an effective quarantine and a remotely localized outbreak, yes this would work, and has essentially worked in the past. This one is well past the point that cutting the infected off could stop it. Removing the few trained professionals from the care in the region doesn't mean the sick won't be tended- just that they will be tended by medicine men, family members, and kindhearted, human beings. these human beings will promptly catch the virus, and in turn be cared for by other well intentioned, but poorly equipped and even more ignorant individuals. Those individuals spread it, and so on and so forth. Although it is a deadly virus, it is a lengthy, pitiful death.

And very few among us would have the strength to walk away from a spouse or child who has a 50% chance of living if you just keep them hydrated to stop the spread and save the rest of your family. Maybe we could make the choice once- but this is making the choice day after day, hour after hour for a week or more. And even if you do all that... you have the great opportunity of literally running from the house the infected is in because you can't sterilize it, and leaving them to be defiled by whatever beasts happen by in defiance of common decency and whatever religious beliefs and taboos hold strongest in the area.

What you suggest is the most logical solution- but humans, especially poorly educated humans, aren't logical beings. If we can help, we will, even if it means we are imperiling ourselves, other towns and other villages down the road.

Heck, even us educated folk aren't being too logical about all of this. How much did the US pay to bring those poor infected citizens back and treat them at the expense of dramatically increasing the risk of transmission of the virus to the US? I mean no disrespect to our hospital protocols or aid workers, but bringing an infected individual to the country exponentially increases the chance of infection from having the nearest case happening on the other side of the ocean.

I know it's a waste of time at this point since Poe's Law is in full force, but still...

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Here's the thing, though....

How would the healthcare workers strike actually *encourage* the spread of Ebola?

- People who are not getting treatment will leave the hospital, infecting others.
- People with no or minimal training will provide care during the strike, infecting others.

It's not curable.

It's *barely* treatable.

It's very treatable.

The care that the healthcare workers are providing is to treat the *symptoms* of ebola, not the actual disease....

The tratitional treatment focused on healthcare workers are supporting the body so that the body has more strength to fight Ebola. If we want to follow your train of thought then "Ebola" doesn't kill people, Ebola makes your organs shut down and then you die from "organ failure". So treating the "sympsoms" actually means treating the disease. If your kidneys are shutting down we wil support them so that the rest of your body can continue to fight the disease. If your lungs shut down we will put you on a ventilator or bypass to support them so that the rest of your body can continue to fight the disease.

Of coures your statement also ignores the fact that we are developing medications to fight the virus itself.

and considering the mortality rate is (supposedly, according to the CDC) 50%**....you have a heads-or-tails chance of living.

Mortality rate has been as low a 10% depending on where in Africa an outbreak occured. Better medical care has resulted in better mortality rates. That's because we are not "just treating symptoms", we are giving supportive care to give the body an opportunity to fight the disease.

For what it's worth the current mortality rate in the US is 20%, and the spread has been very slow with only 1 new person getting infected for every 5 people that have been diagnosed with the disease.

** The disease has a high risk of death, killing between 25% and 90% of those infected with the virus (average is 50%)

That's a useless junk statistic.

d-usa wrote:

That's a useless junk statistic.

Look again at where this "useless junk statistic" has come from....

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/

So either you think that the WHO is full of crap....and don't know what they're talking about....or....you believe them when they give statistics.


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World Health Organization wrote:The average EVD case fatality rate is around 50%. Case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks.

At the very least, the sick need to be quarantined. Medical treatment or not.

the medical strike is a bad thing because it will result in the patients being spread back among the healthy population.

That's assuming that the "healthy" population haven't already been taking care of them, or...perhaps...that this current "crop" of ebola patients aren't the "healthy" population that took care of the already dead ones....

 TheMeanDM wrote:

d-usa wrote:

That's a useless junk statistic.

Look again at where this "useless junk statistic" has come from....

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/

So either you think that the WHO is full of crap....and don't know what they're talking about....or....you believe them when they give statistics.

It's junk because of how you use it and what you think it means.

Saying "50% of all Ebola patients have died in the past" is an okay statistic if all you are using it for is to make a generalized statement about the average mortaliy of all past outbreaks so far.

It's a crap statistics if you want to try and use it to somehow argue that "50% of all Ebola patients are going to die". It's meaningless and neither the WHO nor the CDC are using it that way because it's junk for that purpose.

How is it junk?

If the average fatality rate is 50%....if you contract the disease...your average chance of living is 50%. Your average chance of dying is 50%.

adjective
1.
constituting the result obtained by adding together several quantities and then dividing this total by the number of quantities.

Again....how is that not a true statement given the statistics and statement by the WHO?

Could you be lucky and only have a 25% chance of dying? Certainly.

You could also be a poor schmo that has a 90% chance of dying.

However.....the *average* mortality rate of 100 people that contract ebola is going to be 50%...based upon past experience with the ebola virus outbreaks.

@TheMeanDM...

Do you know how I "object" when folks use the WHO statistics to say that Cuban healthcare is better than the US?

Same thing here.

In Western Africa, they unfortunately don't have the training/expertise/supplies to handle an outbreak. It's why they need the Red Cross/UN/Enternal Nations to help.

Say you have 100 people in an area with healthcare, and 100 people in an area with no healthcare.

All are infected with a hypothetical disease, all die in the non-healthcare area, all live in the healthcare area.

Technically, 50% mortality rate in those infected.

Yet if you were in the healthcare, what were your chances of dying?

What I'd like to see is the mortality rate of people in developed countries versus those in non-developed countries.

 TheMeanDM wrote:
How is it junk?

Because of how you are using it and because of what you think it means:

To use your quote:

World Health Organization wrote:The average EVD case fatality rate is around 50%. Case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks.

The way you are using it, the orange portion of the quote is useless. It's junk. It doesn't mean gak and has zero application to Ebola in the US and doesn't have any use towards predicting the mortality of future outbreaks.

The green portion is the only thing that's useful, and it doesn't really tell us all that much either. What it does do is tell us the exact opposite of what you think it tells us: that it's not a coin-toss if you are going to survive and that Ebola DOESN'T automatically kill half the people it infects. It tells us that there is a wide variability in the mortality rate and that we should look at each outbreak to see what treatments and strategies were utilized and what resources were available during the outbreak so that we can determine what effect certain actions had on the mortality rate so that we can look at each area that is infected to see what options are available for treating and containing the outbreak and then make an educated guess of what the mortality rate of that particular outbreak in that particular region might be based on past outbreaks under similar circumstances with similar resources available.

If the average fatality rate is 50%....if you contract the disease...your average chance of living is 50%. Your average chance of dying is 50%.

See above.

Again....how is that not a true statement given the statistics and statement by the WHO?

See above.

Could you be lucky and only have a 25% chance of dying? Certainly.

You could also be a poor schmo that has a 90% chance of dying.

See above.

Again...the *average* mortality rate of 100 people that contract ebola is going to be 50%...based upon past experience with the ebola virus outbreaks.

100% false.

The average of ALL cases in the PAST is that 50% of them died.

It doesn't say anything about what the mortailty rate might be if 100 people contract Ebola in the US.
It doesn't say anything about what the mortailty rate might be if 100 people contract Ebola in the UK.
It doesn't say anything about what the mortailty rate might be if 100 people contract Ebola in Japan.
It doesn't say anything about what the mortality rate might be if 100 people contract Ebola in India.
It doesn't say anything about what the mortailty rate might be if 100 people contract Ebola in Russia.
It doesn't say anything about what the mortailty rate might be if everybody on the International Space Station contracts Ebola.

"All past cases of all outbreaks had a 50% mortality rate" is junk for determining what future mortality rates might be. It's a great statistic for looking at past cases as a whole, it doesn't mean jack for looking at individual cases and it means even less than jack when you try to use it to look at future cases.

 MrDwhitey wrote:

What I'd like to see is the mortality rate of people in developed countries versus those in non-developed countries.

Let's see...

One doc that was treated and survived (Kent Brantley)
One worker that was treated and survived (Nancy Writebol)
One civilian that was treated and died (Thomas Eric Duncan)

So far, that's a 33% mortality rate for the "developed" countries.

There are 2 other confirmed and known patients (one in Spain, another in Dallas) that are getting treatment. So...they will either survive, or die, and we'll adjust the statistics accordingly.

dusa wrote:Kent Brantly - survived
Nancy Writebol - surived
Rick Sacra - survived
Duncan - died.

So revise the figure to be 25%

 TheMeanDM wrote:

 MrDwhitey wrote:

What I'd like to see is the mortality rate of people in developed countries versus those in non-developed countries.

Let's see...

One doc that was treated and survived (Kent Brantley)
One worker that was treated and survived (Nancy Writebol)
One civilian that was treated and died (Thomas Eric Duncan)

So far, that's a 33% mortality rate for the "developed" countries.

There are 2 other confirmed and known patients (one in Spain, another in Dallas) that are getting treatment. So...they will either survive, or die, and we'll adjust the statistics accordingly.

Let's fix this:

Kent Brantly - survived
Nancy Writebol - surived
Rick Sacra - survived
WHO doctor (identity not released) - survived
Duncan - died.

So 20% mortality rate for the US.

In treatment:

Cameraman, another doctor from Africa, nurse.

Thanks for adding Sacra, I wasn't aware of him, nor of the camera man in Nebraska.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/12/health/ebola-up-to-speed/index.html

I'm going to say that I haven't found anything yet on the mysterious WHO doctor (and I do usually have good google-fu skills).


Kent Brantly - survived
Nancy Writebol - surived
Rick Sacra - survived
Duncan - died.

So we're at that 25% mark now.

 TheMeanDM wrote:

I'm going to say that I haven't found anything yet on the mysterious WHO doctor (and I do usually have good google-fu skills).

http://ktla.com/2014/09/09/4th-us-ebola-patient-arrives-from-sierra-leone-for-treatment-in-atlanta/

Thanks again for the info!

I won't add him to the survived part, yet, as he hasn't been released nor confirmed as healthy....correct?

 MrDwhitey wrote:
What I'd like to see is the mortality rate of people in developed countries versus those in non-developed countries.

Yeah, that is the intriguing part - most of the mortality comes from places with poor healthcare to begin with.

This thread has yet to stop delivering. We are now keeping track of who has and has not died from Ebola in the US?

 Dreadwinter wrote:
This thread has yet to stop delivering. We are now keeping track of who has and has not died from Ebola in the US?

You know its a real global epidemic when you know the names of everyone that was involved in this "outbreak".

You know, this Ebola thing couldn't have happened at a better time.

You really can't celebrate Colombus Day without having a disease from another continent spreading across the natives.

Just think......Black Friday shopping mayhem turns into a Ebola Scare when people with the common cold

 Jihadin wrote:
Just think......Black Friday shopping mayhem turns into a Ebola Scare when people with the common cold

Actually, you think there'll be less crowds because of an Ebola Scare?

Shhweeet! Less people to fight LOL

 d-usa wrote:
You know, this Ebola thing couldn't have happened at a better time.

You really can't celebrate Colombus Day without having a disease from another continent spreading across the natives.

Exalted!


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 Jihadin wrote:
Just think......Black Friday shopping mayhem turns into a Ebola Scare when people with the common cold

It becomes Black Death shopping.

 Spacemanvic wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:
Just think......Black Friday shopping mayhem turns into a Ebola Scare when people with the common cold

Actually, you think there'll be less crowds because of an Ebola Scare?

Shhweeet! Less people to fight LOL

Maybe we would even get through the day without a trampling death or stabbing/shooting. Naaaah, who am I kidding? It ain't the start of the holiday season without death at Walmart or Best Buy.

Did any of the previous medical scares have an effect on Black Friday sales? Honest question as I don't know. If Bird Flu or Swine Flu didn't keep people away from malls Ebola won't either.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

Maybe we would even get through the day without a trampling death or stabbing/shooting. Naaaah, who am I kidding? It ain't the start of the holiday season without death at Walmart or Best Buy.

Nah... this year it'll be Dollar General or some place equally "trashy"

Think of the saving though.....like saving your own life.....stay in