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Am I correct in assuming that cultural differences concerning death and the dead along with our healthcare system mean Ebola in America would be relatively cont
by comrh 12y ago
Am I correct in assuming that cultural differences concerning death and the dead along with our healthcare system mean Ebola in America would be relatively containable?
- gtaylor 12y agoProbably. Ebola spreads through bodily fluids. This isn't the major, world-ending epidemic that the apocalypse chasers are looking for.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y agoYou're also not infectious until you're symptomatic which makes it easier to identify and contain. Ultimately it should be manageable so long as people follow instructions.
- Karunamon 12y agoI was about ready to ask that. The guy who's being treated wasn't symptomatic until days after he left the airport, which is encouraging to hear.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y agoApparently though he was symptomatic for a few days before going to hospital which is significantly not good.
- jonrimmer 12y agoIf it mutates and becomes airborne, it might be. That's why containment is so important, even if it doesn't seem so threatening in its current form. Viruses constantly mutate, and every extra person they infect gives them a million more opportunities to do so. All it takes is one of those mutations to make the virus airborne, and we're in big trouble.
- santosha 12y agoYou can make the exact same statement about every other deadly virus, though. Why is ebola any different?
- chc 12y agoIf AIDS mutates and becomes airborne, that would also be threatening. Ditto for hantavirus, hepatitis and millions of other diseases. Heck, imagine if black widow venom become airborne and victims started producing more airborne venom themselves! If you're willing to dip into the pool of things that are vanishingly unlikely, there are lots of extremely bad things that could happen.
- waterlesscloud 12y agoHantavirus is sorta airborne. http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/technical/hanta/airborne-transmission.html http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/technical/hanta/airborne-trans...
- noir_lord 12y ago> All it takes is one of those mutations to make the virus airborne, and we're in big trouble. Except that the mutation to go from a fluid to airborne virus isn't one mutation it's lots of mutations and that is simple not what we see happening in general. The common cold could mutate into a super deadly virus but it doesn't, Flu usually doesn't either but rarely does (you want to see a genuinely terrifying virus at work read the accounts of the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak, that thing took down the young and strong in days). Containment is important to prevent the spread via fluid contact. This "if X then if Y then if C then if D then Global Collapse" scaremongering helps absolutely no one.
- lhnz 12y agoDepends on whether you listen to your government or the nurses [0] that work in your hospitals. You'll probably be alright as long as the virus is exposed to a small enough group of people that health workers are able to do contact tracing and secure those that may have the virus. Edit: Something quite worrying is the number of people infected in Liberia that have resulted in this. What happens if the estimates are right and 100s of thousands of people die - do we expect a percentage of these to arrive on US soils? [0] http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/24/6731509/nurses-to-march-on-vegas-strip.html http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/24/6731509/nurses-to-march-on-...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- idlewords 12y agoIt depends in part on how willing you are to assume that the transmission mechanism won't evolve.
- ZanyProgrammer 12y agoI vaguely remember reading recently that that had actually never happened to any virus that wasn't airborne transmitted to begin with.
- callahad 12y agoWell, there is this: "While all Ebola virus species have displayed the ability to be spread through airborne particles (aerosols) under research conditions, this type of spread has not been documented among humans in a real-world setting, such as a hospital or household." Cite: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/Fact_Sheets/Ebola_Fact_Booklet.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/Fact_She... I could've sworn that Ebola-Reston was airborne-transmissible in real-world settings (albeit amongst non-human primates and swine), but I can't find a cite for that; I could just be misremembering things from Richard Preston's The Hot Zone.
- etimberg 12y agoEbola has been theorized to be airborne by scientists at the National Microbiology laboratory in Winnipeg. Cite from 2012: http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00811/full/srep00811.html http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00811/full/srep00...
- davesque 12y agoTheorized but not conclusively shown, as the "Discussion" section in that study indicates. Transmission may have occurred due to large droplets or fomites contacting the mucosal membranes of the monkeys.
- ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
- georgemcbay 12y agoYes. Theoretically this is correct. However (though I don't think this will be an issue for Ebola) before we get on any high cultural horse, let us stop to consider how many modern Americans have been perfectly willing to allow serious diseases like whooping cough to make a strong comeback because some Playboy model made lots of public claims which are demonstrably false.
- ceejayoz 12y agoPart of the problem there is the perception that those diseases aren't serious (and in cases like chicken pox, this can even be somewhat true). No such perception exists with Ebola, I'd say.
- georgemcbay 12y agoI agree mostly, which is why I mentioned I don't think that would play out with Ebola. OTOH pancreatic cancer is pretty serious (though not communicable) and we still live in a culture where someone widely lauded as a once-in-an-era genius (and who had ample monetary resources to seek the absolute best medical health care in spite of how bad the economics of our health care system are) thought new age-y solutions were the way to go during the critical early stages. I guess my basic point is that you don't have to be poverty stricken and living in the third world to make really poor decisions on health issues with severe consequences to yourself and sometimes others. EDIT: I don't mind the multiple downvotes this post has got, I have plenty of karma to burn and it isn't worth anything, but please respond as well with some sort of rebuttal. No amount of undefended downvotes are going to change the fact that Steve Jobs made a really bad decision that any unbiased oncologist will tell you statistically killed him while he would otherwise still likely be alive (or at the very least, not dead from his cancer) today.
- gwillen 12y agoYou are being downvoted because the 5-year survival rate of pancreatic cancer is 5%. In all probability Jobs was going to die no matter what he did.
- atom-morgan 12y agoTo a certain extent, yes. We obviously have much better equipment but I say this only extends to handling a few "single" cases of Ebola in specific hospitals across the nation. However, now that Ebola is actually in the US, what precautionary measures do hospitals and healthcare workers take? If I show up to a hospital in Texas right now with symptoms such as a high fever, sore throat, and diarrhea, do you treat me as as a normal patient or assume Ebola since it's now appeared within the US? These are extremely commons symptoms and once Ebola is here, which it is, handling patients is going to be much different which affects its likelihood to be contained.
- giarc 12y agoYou will see that the CDC defines a case as someone showing symptoms but also has epidemiological link to an EVD case or EVD suspect case. Just being in Texas is not a epi link as there has been no confirmed transmission. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/hcp/case-definition.html http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/hcp/case-definition.html
- cvanlaw 12y agoThere's also the issue of waste disposal. After a patient is identified can most US hospitals handle the extra waste? I saw this (http://www.cnbc.com/id/102027557 http://www.cnbc.com/id/102027557) earlier, and it sounds like the hospital in Atlanta that treated those two cases had trouble with waste disposal initially.
- snowwrestler 12y agoThe typical precautions in a U.S. hospital will prevent most transmission of Ebola. Doctors and nurses already wear gloves, wash their hands frequently, and avoid contact with bodily fluids to the greatest extent possible.
- Alex3917 12y ago> Am I correct in assuming that cultural differences concerning death and the dead along with our healthcare system mean Ebola in America would be relatively containable? Maybe, but in the US we also have all sorts of people who purposely spread HIV and other deadly diseases, so if that starts happening with ebola then all bets are off. Especially if it gets into the prison system, into the sex worker population, etc.
- DasIch 12y agoDepends on how fast you are able to identify and isolate the patients. Unless there is reason to suspect ebola it's not exactly the first diagnosis that will come to mind. Most hospitals probably also don't have the necessary isolation facilities or at least not on standby. Ultimately though ebola is relatively easy to combat, collect the patients, put a fence around them, wait long enough and clean up what's left. The problem is finding and securely containing the patients.
- noir_lord 12y ago> don't have the necessary isolation facilities or at least not on standby. What like a quiet room away from other patients? That is the only "isolation facilities" you actually require alongside making the medical staff use gloves and face mask which I suspect when dealing with an Ebola patient they will remember to do..., it's fluid borne not airborne, you don't even need a negative pressure setup.
- venomsnake 12y agoAnd specially trained staff. And extra careful staff.
- joe_the_user 12y agoGuinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are some of the most poorest countries on earth. Liberia especially is haunted by its brutal, child-soldier fueled civil war and the entire society is rather rickety. Nigeria, not even the most advanced nation in Africa, seems to have been able to contain Ebola, according to the CDC [1]. There have been isolated cases in European nations that didn't lead to an outbreak. So I think the US can contain (but don't think I'm not nervous about this still, the disease is distinctly disturbing). [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/health/ebola-outbreak-in-nigeria-appears-to-be-over.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/health/ebola-outbreak-in-n...
- NearAP 12y agoI think one of the reasons why Nigeria was able to contain it compared to Liberia and other countries was an awareness of the disease and the enlightenment campaign from the Government. From initial reports that I read, folks in Liberia didn't really believe it was a 'sickness' till it started killing people. Some of them also first tried 'traditional medicine' and only started going to hospitals when things became really bad. There were also reports that folks were not keeping away from people who were under quarantine believing it wasn't really a disease. On the other hand, by the time the disease arrived Nigeria, the media was already awash with the number of people who had died and so folks were already aware that this was a deadly disease and started taking the necessary precautions. This coupled with a massive enlightenment campaign by the Government helped tremendously. If you apply the same principle to the US (awareness and if necessary enlightenment campaign), I think your nervousness will be further reduced.
- hga 12y agoThe actions by the doctor in the oil hub of Port Harcourt are a sobering counterpoint to the above. He secretly treated another Liberian diplomat, presumably infected by the index case, in a hotel room. The diplomat recovered, the doctor died, but not before infecting others because he did not take the necessary precautions when he become symptomatic. People can know which end is up and still act very irresponsibly in the face of such a lethal threat.
- DanBC 12y agoYour expensive health care system may cause people to delay seeing a doctor, which means they might be symptomatic and spreading disease for a few days before being quarantined. A patient zero on a new york subway could infect a few people and they would be hard to trace. Although it's not probible it is scarier than "can't happen"
- polemic 12y agoThis is a great point. A free (or heavily socialised) health care system is probably better equipped to handle an outbreak than a fully privatised one, even if it has fewer total resources.
- thenmar 12y agoWhy would a socialized healthcare system have fewer resources?
- oofabz 12y agoThe USA spends more on health care than socialized healthcare countries do. Therefore, socialized healthcare systems have less money, and money is an important resource.
- wstrange 12y agoThe USA may spend more on health care, but how much of that money is wasted on overhead? Insurance company execs are not likely to be treating Ebola :-)
- DanBC 12y agoThat money is targetted to older people in the US. Diseases of older people include dementia, cancer, respiratory stuff, orthopedic stuff after falls, etc. It's unlikely that either system is particularly set up for Ebola style infectious illness.
- candu 12y ago