Dreadwinter wrote:
It's a good thing we know where she has been and we can all keep track of her movements in the news! So much better than quarantine, right?

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Well, since she just got back to the U.S. and out of a 3 day quarantine in New Jersey, I would say taking a small vacation.

I never read where she works, is it a healthcare place that receives state or federal funding?

The term usually refers to the transmission of microorganisms directly from one person to another by one or more of the following means: droplet contact – coughing or sneezing on another person. direct physical contact – touching an infected person, including sexual contact.

An aerosol transmissible disease (ATD) is a disease that is transmitted by aerosols (a gaseous suspension of fine, solid or liquid particles).

 Jihadin wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Well, since she just got back to the U.S. and out of a 3 day quarantine in New Jersey, I would say taking a small vacation.

I never read where she works, is it a healthcare place that receives state or federal funding?

It wouldn't matter being its States official that order her quarantine. She was still covered with her place of employment, who missed time would be considered "official" and her place of employment more likely went to a staffing agency to get a traveler to fill her spot while she was gone and extended for the additional 21 days (Contract, Traveler) or she might be a traveler herself.

Either or she should have obeyed and follow through on the quarantine and then raise Hell about it AFTER.

Also IIRC correctly there are 20ish some odd people under quarantine orders as of today. Yet she making bones about it.

Also for Dr Spencer we do not know how he contracted it. Either he broke procedure and self contaminate or the buddy assist de-gowning contamination.
Or failure of proper decontam cleaning of PPE because of all the video's seen of medical peeps handling Ebola in West Africa it seems they are re-using the same PPE

Edit

Also before we go down this PATH AGAIN!

Droplet Contamination

The term usually refers to the transmission of microorganisms directly from one person to another by one or more of the following means: droplet contact – coughing or sneezing on another person. direct physical contact – touching an infected person, including sexual contact.

Aerosol Contamination

An aerosol transmissible disease (ATD) is a disease that is transmitted by aerosols (a gaseous suspension of fine, solid or liquid particles).

 Dreadwinter wrote:
It seems you have gone off the deep end a little there, whembly.

But, to answer your question, let's prove she has the disease before we confine her.

 TheMeanDM wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
It seems you have gone off the deep end a little there, whembly.

But, to answer your question, let's prove she has the disease before we confine her.

Here's the deal...straight from the CDC (google: when is ebola detected):

Ebola is only detected in blood AFTER the patient is symptomatic.

However...even then...the CDC study said that sometimes the "virus RNA levels at the time of fever and symptoms onset are typically low (near the detection threshold limits) and in some patients may not be reliably detectable during the first 3 days of illness."

The study also stated "The risk of EVD transmission from direct skin contact with an EVD patient is lower than the risk from exposure to blood or body fluids and may be more likely in severe illness (when the Ebola virus RNA levels are highest)."

So....in my opinion...yet more reasons to play it safe with a quarantine as opposed to not.

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 TheMeanDM wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
It seems you have gone off the deep end a little there, whembly.

But, to answer your question, let's prove she has the disease before we confine her.

Here's the deal...straight from the CDC (google: when is ebola detected):

Ebola is only detected in blood AFTER the patient is symptomatic.

However...even then...the CDC study said that sometimes the "virus RNA levels at the time of fever and symptoms onset are typically low (near the detection threshold limits) and in some patients may not be reliably detectable during the first 3 days of illness."

The study also stated "The risk of EVD transmission from direct skin contact with an EVD patient is lower than the risk from exposure to blood or body fluids and may be more likely in severe illness (when the Ebola virus RNA levels are highest)."

So....in my opinion...yet more reasons to play it safe with a quarantine as opposed to not.

Since we know this particular person has gone to Africa to help fight Ebola, as soon as she were to start showing signs of illness she should be quarantined. She should be closely watched by health care providers as well as her loved ones. But she should not be confined just because we are scared she MAY have a disease that she probably does not have. Your "better safe than sorry" argument is absurd considering how hard it is to contract the disease. Blood or Body Fuilds, it says in your post. If she sneezes, don't open your mouth. If she is bleeding, vomiting, or crapping herself to death, do not play in it, call an ambulance.

Why are we trying to quarantine a person who is not sick?

Poll Indicates Majority Favor Quarantine for AIDS Victims
AP
Published: December 20, 1985

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 19— A majority of Americans favor the quarantine of AIDS patients, and some would embrace measures as drastic as using tattoos to mark those with the deadly disorder, according to a poll published today.

The Los Angeles Times Poll found that 51 percent of the respondents supported a quarantine of acquired immune deficiency syndrome patients, 48 percent would approve of identity cards for those who have taken tests indicating the presence of AIDS antibodies and 15 percent supported tattooing those with AIDS.

The poll of 2,308 people was conducted by telephone Dec. 5 to 12. The margin of sampling error in the survey was three percentage points in either direction.

Seventy-seven percent of those responding said they would support a law making it a crime for homosexuals or others in groups at high risk for AIDS to donate blood, while 51 percent said they would support a law making it a crime for an AIDS patient to have sex with another person.

Although 51 percent of those polled said they favored laws to protect homosexuals against employment discrimination, AIDS notwithstanding, 45 percent said they would support testing job applicants for AIDS antibodies.

But 55 percent said they would not refuse to send their children to a classroom where another pupil had AIDS.

 Ouze wrote:
As long as our men and women going overseas don't engage in some of the typical local behavioirs that result in transmission of the virus, such as:

handling the bodies of the freshly dead - teeming with the virus - without gloves or face protection

kissing or touching the skin of the body at the wake

burying the bodies right next to where they are living

they'll probably be OK. I don't think they'll do any of that stuff.



There is some info you can read, if you like, here.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Well, since she just got back to the U.S. and out of a 3 day quarantine in New Jersey, I would say taking a small vacation.

I never read where she works, is it a healthcare place that receives state or federal funding?

 d-usa wrote:
Fun moments in history:

Poll Indicates Majority Favor Quarantine for AIDS Victims
AP
Published: December 20, 1985

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 19— A majority of Americans favor the quarantine of AIDS patients, and some would embrace measures as drastic as using tattoos to mark those with the deadly disorder, according to a poll published today.

The Los Angeles Times Poll found that 51 percent of the respondents supported a quarantine of acquired immune deficiency syndrome patients, 48 percent would approve of identity cards for those who have taken tests indicating the presence of AIDS antibodies and 15 percent supported tattooing those with AIDS.

The poll of 2,308 people was conducted by telephone Dec. 5 to 12. The margin of sampling error in the survey was three percentage points in either direction.

Seventy-seven percent of those responding said they would support a law making it a crime for homosexuals or others in groups at high risk for AIDS to donate blood, while 51 percent said they would support a law making it a crime for an AIDS patient to have sex with another person.

Although 51 percent of those polled said they favored laws to protect homosexuals against employment discrimination, AIDS notwithstanding, 45 percent said they would support testing job applicants for AIDS antibodies.

But 55 percent said they would not refuse to send their children to a classroom where another pupil had AIDS.

 Steve steveson wrote:
No you wouldn't, because unlike ebola, Aids/HIV is infectious way before (Sometimes many years) symptoms present. But don't let facts get in the way of you making a point.

 d-usa wrote:
EVD is spread by a virus. A virus that has to exit the host to infect anybody else. A virus that has to exit the host via body fluids. The virus does not spread via a fever, the virus does not spread via an elevated temperature below the cutoff for symptoms, and the virus is actually very hard to catch. You can repeat yourself as much as you want about instrument malfunctions and how it is pure luck that nobody was infected by the asymptomatic patient and pretend that EVD is highly infectious all while ignoring the fact that the people living with Duncan (a man with advanced EVD) didn't get infected because of the fact that EVD is actually not that easy to catch.

We can explain it to you, as we have over and over again, but we can't understand it for you.

 d-usa wrote:
Might want to get a new record, this one is broken.

 d-usa wrote:
Record still broken.

 d-usa wrote:
You restrict civil liberties (aka: quarantine) based on the risk to the public, which is what we have been trying to explain to you over and over again.

It doesn't matter if the person coming back from Africa was just on a business trip and never left the airport, it doesn't matter if they visited family, it doesn' t matter if they were aid workers, it doesn't matter if they came back from filming the West Africa version of "2 girls, 1 cup". Every single one of these people poses ZERO risk to the general public while asymptomatic, and we can monitor for symptoms in much less restrictive ways than a quarantine.

The point is not that medical staff in Africa are more likely to catch the disease, the point is that the general public is NOT likely to catch the disease because they don't do what medical staff do.

 d-usa wrote:

Common sense tells you that only non-essential travel would be effected, and that medical personnel would still be able to enter the hot zone. I can't source common sense for you.

Are you claiming that it is now common sense that restricting movement and imposing non-science based quarantines will not result in a decrease of volunteers?

 whembly wrote:

The Science is NOT Settled™

Christie's controversial Ebola quarantine now embraced by Nobel Prize-winning doctor

TRENTON — After days of blistering criticism from the ACLU, the CDC and even the United Nations secretary general over Gov. Chris Christie’s new, 21-day mandatory quarantine policy for all healthcare workers exposed to Ebola, the New Jersey governor has gotten a much-needed vote of support from a heavyweight name in the medical community: Nobel Prize-winning doctor and medical researcher, Dr. Bruce Beutler.

Dr. Beutler, an American medical doctor and researcher, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2011 for his work researching the cellular subsystem of the body’s overall immune system — the part of it that defends the body from infection by other organisms, like Ebola.

He is currently the Director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas — the first U.S. city to treat an Ebola patient and also the first to watch one die from the virus. In an exclusive interview with NJ Advance Media, Beutler reviewed Christie’s new policy of mandatory quarantine for all health care workers exposed to Ebola, and declared: “I favor it.”

Unfortunately, while the doctor’s support might provide much-needed credibility for Christie as he threatens to quarantine ever more healthcare workers returning from the Ebola fight in West Africa, it also comes with some chilling words.

“I favor it, because it’s not entirely clear that they can’t transmit the disease,” Beutler said, referring to asymptomatic healthcare workers like Kaci Hickox, a Doctors Without Borders nurse returning from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone who was quarantined in New Jersey for 65 hours before being transported to her home state of Maine on Monday afternoon.

“It may not be absolutely true that those without symptoms can’t transmit the disease, because we don’t have the numbers to back that up,” said Beutler, “It could be people develop significant viremia [where viruses enter the bloodstream and gain access to the rest of the body], and become able to transmit the disease before they have a fever, even. People may have said that without symptoms you can’t transmit Ebola. I’m not sure about that being 100 percent true. There’s a lot of variation with viruses.”

In fact, in a study published online in late September by the New England Journal of Medicine and backed by the World Health Organization, 3,343 confirmed and 667 probable cases of Ebola were analyzed, and nearly 13 percent of the time, those infected with Ebola exhibited no fever at all.

Why, then, does he think the CDC would so emphasize Ebola is not communicable in patients without symptoms?

“There’s some imperative to prevent panic among the public,” says Dr. Beutler, “But to be honest, people have not examined that with transmissibility in mind. I don’t completely trust people who’d say that as dogma.”

As such, allowing home confinement for medical workers exposed to Ebola but currently without symptoms was, as Beutler put it, “a move away from goodness,’ as an engineer might say.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday changed direction and called for voluntary home quarantine for workers with the highest risk for Ebola infection. However, it also specified that most medical personnel returning from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea would not need to be kept in isolation, as Hickox had been ever since she arrived at Newark International Airport on Friday up until her release and transfer to home quarantine in Maine early Monday afternoon.

“Even if someone is asymptomatic you cannot rely on people to report themselves if they get a fever,” said Dr. Beutler, adding, “You can’t just depend on the goodwill of people to confine the disease like that – even healthcare workers. They behave very irresponsibly.”

Christie has repeatedly pointed to the fact that NBC’s chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, after returning from Ebola besieged West Africa, was spotted violating her voluntary quarantine to get takeout from a Princeton eatery last week.

Despite her forced detainment by the New Jersey health department, Hickox insisted hat she was “feeling physically healthy” and except for a single, non-contact thermometer reading that registered her as having a 101 Fahrenheit fever, has had normal 98.6 F temperatures ever since her quarantine began.

“These are no arguments at all,” said Beutler. “Anyone could say that about any disease. It doesn’t matter that she was afebrile – she should be quarantined for 21 days.”

Hickox has complained that “her basic human rights were violated” and has since retained a civil rights attorney, but Beutner says he is puzzled by the argument.

“These people act like they are returning as conquering heroes — and they should be treated as conquering heroes, but part of being a conquering hero means making sure no one gets infected by you. Just look at the the foolish quarantine where astronauts came back from the moon [where there were no germs] and in this case, we know there is an infection.”

From a global perspective, it’s unlikely that the virus will take hold as an epidemic in the U.S., but in Africa, Beutler says it already “has gone ballistic – way, way beyond the past epidemics. One could project that maybe millions could be infected. It may be that it won’t spread like wildfire in the United States but even if one or two more people die, it will be too many.”

So, does Gov. Chris Christie have it right?

“I’d be a little bit more strict than he is being,” said Beutner, “I realize this would be inconvenient, but I don’t think it would prevent treating the disease.”

Christie has not been willing to publicly explain how home quarantine would work in cases like, for example, where a healthcare worker also had children at home.

“You’re in your home,” Christie deadpanned to the question when asked it was asked of him in Groton, Connecticut Monday night, “and you’re quarantined.”

“I know at times that you all would like to make things a heck of a lot more complicated than they are,” said Christie, “In home quarantine means: In-home. Quarantine. If they are asymptomatic, they can be quarantined in their home.”

Beutler disagrees with this, saying “the ideal scenario is where a patient is isolated from all family members,” preferably in an specialized hospital ward, not in a home.

The thought of an afebrile parent passing Ebola on to a child – as ostensibly can happen 13 percent of the time, “would disturb me. The point of quarantine of is to make sure they [Ebola viruses] are not carried elsewhere. It’s a little bit frustrating. Some of the things that are being done are not completely motivated by safety. For some reason, there’s an imperative to maintain open borders no matter what – to err on the side of total individual freedom rather than on the side of public health,” he said, adding, “If you really want to isolate a disease, then you have to isolate the people who carry it.”

Dr. Beutler warned that quarantining and monitoring is a sound policy, not because it is clear that the potentially exposed are clearly infectious, but because their data is inconclusive and there are too few observed cases to know exactly how this disease transmits from host to host.

He goes on to say...
“It may not be absolutely true that those without symptoms can’t transmit the disease, because we don’t have the numbers to back that up,” Beutler said. “It could be people develop significant viremia [where viruses enter the bloodstream and gain access to the rest of the body], and become able to transmit the disease before they have a fever, even. People may have said that without symptoms you can’t transmit Ebola. I’m not sure about that being 100 percent true. There’s a lot of variation with viruses.”

This is having a "safe than sorry" mindset.

 d-usa wrote:
If you want to be in the same group as the anti-vaxxers regarding science, then please go ahead.

 Frazzled wrote:
Maine 1 Nurse 0
http://news.yahoo.com/life-goes-nurse-standoff-over-ebola-053514854.html

The court order, issued late Thursday, leaves room for Hickox to go outside but instructs her to stay away from public transit and workplaces, and not to leave the town of Fort Kent, where she has mostly been holed up in a house, without consulting with public health authorities.

The order applies “until further order of this court” on Friday. The order said that Hickox’s lawyers had agreed that she would follow the instructions until the court weighs in again.

The restrictions, signed by a Maine state judge, appear to follow guidelines issued this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for health workers who have had contact with Ebola patients and show no symptoms themselves.

The state said that Hickox fell into that category because she treated critically ill Ebola patients while she was working in West Africa. She flew home a week ago and spent last weekend in an isolation tent near Newark airport in New Jersey, triggering a fight with Gov. Chris Christie.

 Frazzled wrote:
You missed this part:
"A judge granted the order Thursday limiting Hickox's travel, requiring a three-foot buffer if she encounters people, and banning her from public places until there's a further decision Friday."

 Frazzled wrote:
You missed this part:
"A judge granted the order Thursday limiting Hickox's travel, requiring a three-foot buffer if she encounters people, and banning her from public places until there's a further decision Friday."

The ongoing controversy over quarantine between those calling for quarantine and those who see it as violation of rights demands a compromise. Quarantine is harsh, as people are deprived of their liberty for no fault of their own. Aside from the inherent burden of confinement, those quarantined may also face financial losses from not being able to work.

Nonetheless, when faced with the risk of a destructive epidemic, quarantine is justified. The potential costs to society in loss of life, panic and disruption can far exceed the individual costs of quarantine. But that does not mean the burden should fall entirely on the unfortunate individuals subject to isolation. A better policy would be to quarantine when necessary – but partially compensate those who bear the burden on behalf of society.

In other words, quarantined people should be paid. New York State has apparently adopted this policy to a limited extent, but other states imposing quarantines have yet to follow suit.

Aside from being fair – spreading the costs across taxpayers rather than letting them fall entirely on innocent individuals – compensation offers several practical advantages. First, it reduces avoidance and hiding from quarantines. Given that those needing to be quarantined have the best knowledge of whether they fit the profile, promoting voluntary compliance is a major, life-saving benefit. Second, decreasing the hardship of quarantine should reduce the political reluctance to impose such measures at the appropriate time – early, before things have gotten out of hand.

Typically, when the government needs someone property for a public use, it must compensate them. But if the government needs someone’s time, or personal services, it can only take it with their consent. That is because liberty is different from property, both more valuable and harder to price.

There are a few special contexts where the government can take a person’s liberty because of particular social need. The major cases are military conscription, jury service – and quarantines. As a constitutional matter, it is clear the government can quarantine people, as surely as it can draft them; and while this is a massive suspension of rights, it is not a violation of them.

However, in the rare cases when the government is allowed to “take” a person’s liberty, it can do so even more freely than with property. That is, while property taken for public use requires paying compensation, taking peoples’ freedom and time, does not.

To put it it academic terms, liberty is typically protected under the Constitution by a “property rule,” and property with a liability rule. However, when the property rule protection of liberty is taken away, what is left is not a liability rule, but rather a zero compensation rule. In my academic work, I’ve examined this puzzle and suggested situations where a liability rule for liberty would be preferable.

The government has wisely always chosen, voluntarily, to pay conscripts and jurors, albeit an under-compensatory amount. One reason is to discourage avoidance, such as draft-dodging. Policing against avoidance can cost more than modest payments, and be less effective (consider the guard detail posted on the Maine nurse). Of course, the jury service example shows that low levels of payment will both lead to massive avoidance, as well as affecting the composition of those who show up.

For an Ebola quarantine, both these problems are unacceptable. Unlike with juror service, some people avoiding quarantine can entirely eliminate the public benefit from quarantining other people. That is to say, if some people spread the virus by avoiding quarantine, and it becomes even a local epidemic, it will not make anyone feel better than another 100 were successfully quarantined.

Moreover, the grossly inadequate compensation is particularly inappropriate for quarantine. In jury service and the draft, individuals are more or less fungible above a certain qualification threshold. With quarantine, on the other hand, one needs to get the right particular people – those who may have been exposed. Substitution won’t do. And many of those who have to be quarantined are health care workers, earning above-average salaries. To be effective, compensation for them must take into account their greater financial losses.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 whembly wrote:

The Science is NOT Settled™

Christie's controversial Ebola quarantine now embraced by Nobel Prize-winning doctor

TRENTON — After days of blistering criticism from the ACLU, the CDC and even the United Nations secretary general over Gov. Chris Christie’s new, 21-day mandatory quarantine policy for all healthcare workers exposed to Ebola, the New Jersey governor has gotten a much-needed vote of support from a heavyweight name in the medical community: Nobel Prize-winning doctor and medical researcher, Dr. Bruce Beutler.

Dr. Beutler, an American medical doctor and researcher, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2011 for his work researching the cellular subsystem of the body’s overall immune system — the part of it that defends the body from infection by other organisms, like Ebola.

He is currently the Director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas — the first U.S. city to treat an Ebola patient and also the first to watch one die from the virus. In an exclusive interview with NJ Advance Media, Beutler reviewed Christie’s new policy of mandatory quarantine for all health care workers exposed to Ebola, and declared: “I favor it.”

Unfortunately, while the doctor’s support might provide much-needed credibility for Christie as he threatens to quarantine ever more healthcare workers returning from the Ebola fight in West Africa, it also comes with some chilling words.

“I favor it, because it’s not entirely clear that they can’t transmit the disease,” Beutler said, referring to asymptomatic healthcare workers like Kaci Hickox, a Doctors Without Borders nurse returning from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone who was quarantined in New Jersey for 65 hours before being transported to her home state of Maine on Monday afternoon.

“It may not be absolutely true that those without symptoms can’t transmit the disease, because we don’t have the numbers to back that up,” said Beutler, “It could be people develop significant viremia [where viruses enter the bloodstream and gain access to the rest of the body], and become able to transmit the disease before they have a fever, even. People may have said that without symptoms you can’t transmit Ebola. I’m not sure about that being 100 percent true. There’s a lot of variation with viruses.”

In fact, in a study published online in late September by the New England Journal of Medicine and backed by the World Health Organization, 3,343 confirmed and 667 probable cases of Ebola were analyzed, and nearly 13 percent of the time, those infected with Ebola exhibited no fever at all.

Why, then, does he think the CDC would so emphasize Ebola is not communicable in patients without symptoms?

“There’s some imperative to prevent panic among the public,” says Dr. Beutler, “But to be honest, people have not examined that with transmissibility in mind. I don’t completely trust people who’d say that as dogma.”

As such, allowing home confinement for medical workers exposed to Ebola but currently without symptoms was, as Beutler put it, “a move away from goodness,’ as an engineer might say.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday changed direction and called for voluntary home quarantine for workers with the highest risk for Ebola infection. However, it also specified that most medical personnel returning from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea would not need to be kept in isolation, as Hickox had been ever since she arrived at Newark International Airport on Friday up until her release and transfer to home quarantine in Maine early Monday afternoon.

“Even if someone is asymptomatic you cannot rely on people to report themselves if they get a fever,” said Dr. Beutler, adding, “You can’t just depend on the goodwill of people to confine the disease like that – even healthcare workers. They behave very irresponsibly.”

Christie has repeatedly pointed to the fact that NBC’s chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, after returning from Ebola besieged West Africa, was spotted violating her voluntary quarantine to get takeout from a Princeton eatery last week.

Despite her forced detainment by the New Jersey health department, Hickox insisted hat she was “feeling physically healthy” and except for a single, non-contact thermometer reading that registered her as having a 101 Fahrenheit fever, has had normal 98.6 F temperatures ever since her quarantine began.

“These are no arguments at all,” said Beutler. “Anyone could say that about any disease. It doesn’t matter that she was afebrile – she should be quarantined for 21 days.”

Hickox has complained that “her basic human rights were violated” and has since retained a civil rights attorney, but Beutner says he is puzzled by the argument.

“These people act like they are returning as conquering heroes — and they should be treated as conquering heroes, but part of being a conquering hero means making sure no one gets infected by you. Just look at the the foolish quarantine where astronauts came back from the moon [where there were no germs] and in this case, we know there is an infection.”

From a global perspective, it’s unlikely that the virus will take hold as an epidemic in the U.S., but in Africa, Beutler says it already “has gone ballistic – way, way beyond the past epidemics. One could project that maybe millions could be infected. It may be that it won’t spread like wildfire in the United States but even if one or two more people die, it will be too many.”

So, does Gov. Chris Christie have it right?

“I’d be a little bit more strict than he is being,” said Beutner, “I realize this would be inconvenient, but I don’t think it would prevent treating the disease.”

Christie has not been willing to publicly explain how home quarantine would work in cases like, for example, where a healthcare worker also had children at home.

“You’re in your home,” Christie deadpanned to the question when asked it was asked of him in Groton, Connecticut Monday night, “and you’re quarantined.”

“I know at times that you all would like to make things a heck of a lot more complicated than they are,” said Christie, “In home quarantine means: In-home. Quarantine. If they are asymptomatic, they can be quarantined in their home.”

Beutler disagrees with this, saying “the ideal scenario is where a patient is isolated from all family members,” preferably in an specialized hospital ward, not in a home.

The thought of an afebrile parent passing Ebola on to a child – as ostensibly can happen 13 percent of the time, “would disturb me. The point of quarantine of is to make sure they [Ebola viruses] are not carried elsewhere. It’s a little bit frustrating. Some of the things that are being done are not completely motivated by safety. For some reason, there’s an imperative to maintain open borders no matter what – to err on the side of total individual freedom rather than on the side of public health,” he said, adding, “If you really want to isolate a disease, then you have to isolate the people who carry it.”

Dr. Beutler warned that quarantining and monitoring is a sound policy, not because it is clear that the potentially exposed are clearly infectious, but because their data is inconclusive and there are too few observed cases to know exactly how this disease transmits from host to host.

He goes on to say...
“It may not be absolutely true that those without symptoms can’t transmit the disease, because we don’t have the numbers to back that up,” Beutler said. “It could be people develop significant viremia [where viruses enter the bloodstream and gain access to the rest of the body], and become able to transmit the disease before they have a fever, even. People may have said that without symptoms you can’t transmit Ebola. I’m not sure about that being 100 percent true. There’s a lot of variation with viruses.”

This is having a "safe than sorry" mindset.

So who is letting "fear and panic supersede science and knowledge" if those of us urging caution are supported by a Nobel Prize winning scientist?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
If you want to be in the same group as the anti-vaxxers regarding science, then please go ahead.

That is a terrible analogy.