4 ms·

Ebola has an incubation period of about three weeks before symptoms start to show. Asymptomatic people are not contagious. Ergo, for any Ebola patient admitted

Ebola has an incubation period of about three weeks before symptoms start to show. Asymptomatic people are not contagious. Ergo, for any Ebola patient admitted to hospital with symptoms there is a three-week window to identify anyone they might have exchanged bodily fluids with. Doing this is not that difficult in the typical case, although obviously anyone with an active imagination can come up with atypical cases, but there is a technical term for people who base their reasoning on imaginary atypical cases. I don't know about you, but I personally am not in the habit of exchanging bodily fluids with random strangers in crowded places, and I have been on buses where people have thrown up--amongst other things--and never once worried that I was getting splashed by anything untoward. Based on that experience I judge the odds of random-stranger transmission to be low. Not zero, but low enough to not be a significant factor in the spread of the disease. With regard to your "simple game theory", you are assuming that people in charge of quarantine and triage are idiots. They are not. They have thought this through. In quarantine patients will be sufficiently isolated from each other to prevent transmission. This is just basic, dumb-as-rocks first order protocol, which you didn't even bother to look up before posting: http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/hcp/infection-prevention-and-control-recommendations.html http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/hcp/infection-prevention-and-co... Read the very first item in the table: "single patient room".

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> I don't know about you, but I personally am not in the habit of exchanging bodily fluids with random strangers in crowded places Are you sure? What about touching the same doorknobs or handles in trains as other person? Are you always wearing sterile gloves and always wash your hands (with a foot-operated faucet) before scratching your face when it itches? If not, you are exchanging bodily fluids with random strangers much more often than you think.
steven2012 12y ago
Incorrect. It has an incubation period of 8-10 days, and as little as 2 and up to 21 days. There is about a 1 week window to identify anyone they might have exchanged bodily fluids with. Bodily fluids include sweat in this case, as well as tear drops, urine, etc. Any clothing or bedsheets, for example, that came in contact with these bodily fluids can also transmit the disease. And as to the quarantine protocol, you have missed my point. My point is people with symptoms will be scared to be admitted into a hospital because they don't want to be quarantined next to someone who has Ebola, single patient room be damned. Instead they'll take all this nonsense about how it's hard to get Ebola and rationalize to themselves that they don't actually have it, so why bother getting locked up with people who actually have it.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

> I don't know about you, but I personally am not in the habit of exchanging bodily fluids with random strangers in crowded places Are you sure? What about touching the same doorknobs or handles in trains as other person? Are you always wearing sterile gloves and always wash your hands (with a foot-operated faucet) before scratching your face when it itches? If not, you are exchanging bodily fluids with random strangers much more often than you think.

steven2012 12y ago

Incorrect. It has an incubation period of 8-10 days, and as little as 2 and up to 21 days. There is about a 1 week window to identify anyone they might have exchanged bodily fluids with. Bodily fluids include sweat in this case, as well as tear drops, urine, etc. Any clothing or bedsheets, for example, that came in contact with these bodily fluids can also transmit the disease. And as to the quarantine protocol, you have missed my point. My point is people with symptoms will be scared to be admitted into a hospital because they don't want to be quarantined next to someone who has Ebola, single patient room be damned. Instead they'll take all this nonsense about how it's hard to get Ebola and rationalize to themselves that they don't actually have it, so why bother getting locked up with people who actually have it.