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Here's the thing: most people get the flu by contact via "bodily fluids". You cough, sneeze, drool, wipe your nose, and so on, then touch something. Someone l

by timr 12y ago

Here's the thing: most people get the flu by contact via "bodily fluids". You cough, sneeze, drool, wipe your nose, and so on, then touch something. Someone later touches the same thing (or you), then touches their face, and the transmission has occurred. There have been papers on this. It's easy to get fixated on aerosol transmission because it's fancy, but "bodily fluids" are a damned effective vector for the everyday transmission of a virus. (Also, HIV is a pretty poor model for this. As viruses go, HIV is pretty hard to transfer -- even heterosexual sex has a low rate of seroconversion.)

kijin 12y ago
The flu virus is very good at getting you to spread your bodily fluids all over the place: it makes you cough violently. The droplets are also invisible, so it's easy for others to touch them without knowing. Ebola has many symptoms, but coughing isn't one of them. By the time you start coughing up blood, most people in the developed world will know better than to touch that blood.
- timr 12y ago
  You don't need blood. It's transmitted in sweat, saliva, tears...everything.
  - kijin 12y ago
    The point I was trying to make is that Ebola patients don't spray their bodily fluids the way flu patients spray saliva.
snowwrestler 12y ago
> Ebola is not like the flu. You're not going to catch the disease from simply being across the room from someone who has it. > Basically every health agency in the world agrees on this point. In order to catch Ebola, you have to come in contact with bodily fluids — such as sweat, saliva, vomit, or diarrhea — of someone who already has Ebola and is exhibiting symptoms. (A person who is infected but not yet showing symptoms generally isn't infectious.) > And yet, remarkably, many readers have been unconvinced by this point. http://www.vox.com/2014/8/10/5980553/ebola-outbreak-virus-aerosol-airborne-pigs-monkeys/in/5712456 http://www.vox.com/2014/8/10/5980553/ebola-outbreak-virus-ae... This was the first of many available sources in a quick Google search. I don't understand why there seems to be so much interest in hyping the threat of ebola to the U.S. Maybe it has to do with the many doomsday virus stories in our culture? An analogy: a friend of mine worked at a "Wild West" type museum. He got a call from someone who wanted to know if there were any black cowboys. My friend told the caller that yes, there had been many black cowboys. The caller said "that can't be true. How come I never saw any in western movies??"

by timr 12y ago

kijin 12y ago

The flu virus is very good at getting you to spread your bodily fluids all over the place: it makes you cough violently. The droplets are also invisible, so it's easy for others to touch them without knowing. Ebola has many symptoms, but coughing isn't one of them. By the time you start coughing up blood, most people in the developed world will know better than to touch that blood.

timr 12y ago
You don't need blood. It's transmitted in sweat, saliva, tears...everything.
- kijin 12y ago
  The point I was trying to make is that Ebola patients don't spray their bodily fluids the way flu patients spray saliva.

snowwrestler 12y ago

> Ebola is not like the flu. You're not going to catch the disease from simply being across the room from someone who has it. > Basically every health agency in the world agrees on this point. In order to catch Ebola, you have to come in contact with bodily fluids — such as sweat, saliva, vomit, or diarrhea — of someone who already has Ebola and is exhibiting symptoms. (A person who is infected but not yet showing symptoms generally isn't infectious.) > And yet, remarkably, many readers have been unconvinced by this point. http://www.vox.com/2014/8/10/5980553/ebola-outbreak-virus-aerosol-airborne-pigs-monkeys/in/5712456 http://www.vox.com/2014/8/10/5980553/ebola-outbreak-virus-ae... This was the first of many available sources in a quick Google search. I don't understand why there seems to be so much interest in hyping the threat of ebola to the U.S. Maybe it has to do with the many doomsday virus stories in our culture? An analogy: a friend of mine worked at a "Wild West" type museum. He got a call from someone who wanted to know if there were any black cowboys. My friend told the caller that yes, there had been many black cowboys. The caller said "that can't be true. How come I never saw any in western movies??"