In the aftermath of yesterday's Ebola update, the following:
Q. I have a question about the contagiousness of this once it finds a new population group. Do the natives of central Africa have any advantages of having a higher immunity to Ebola?
Q. Does living with the amount of germs the typical African does daily give them an advantage over western populations? I would hope that western populations with better hygiene practices and avoiding the funeral body washing will be an advantage. However is there any studies that suggest western populations may be less immune or more susceptible to contracting contagious diseases from a lack of exposure to the environment that Africa has?Based on morbidity and mortality figures from the African continent, they are worse off than Western populations, mainly because they're debilitated and malnourished from dealing with living with a higher amount of germs daily. "Cleanliness is next to godliness" is the best medicine ever practiced, even by Poor Richard's Almanac.
Hoping for magical immunity based on geography is a forlorn expectation, counter-factual to all available evidence.
Q. My biggest concern is that there is an unknown reservoir species in Africa that keeps Ebola alive and available for reinfection.Mine too. GMTA.
Q. If it gets here, will it establish itself in a similar species, and Ebola becomes endemic in the US?Overwhelmingly likely that's also a "yes".
Q. Or Indonesia, Vietnam, China, India?Also "yes".
Q. The gift that keeps on giving.Precisely.
Q. Would you stick around if you were offered the vaccine?Yes. Long enough to get the vaccine.
Currently, of those who have received the experimental vaccine on an emergency basis, there have been zero Ebola infections, and no serious side effects noted.
Once I had gotten it, I would still GTFO of Dodge, and then hunker down somewhere behind concertina wire with clear fields of fire.
Q. What are the chances that vaccinated people could inadvertently infect a loved one by accidentally bringing the virus home through poor infectious control procedures?
Exactly the same as unvaccinated people doing that. If Ebola comes in, GTFO.
Period. If you can get vaccinated first, do that. Then GTFO.
Q. Is it even possible to ramp up vaccine production to one hundred million or a billion doses? We know Ebola can produce enough virus.No effing idea. That's a question for the bean counters at Merck, Glaxo-Smith-Klein, etc. It's mainly a question of time, resource allocation, and facilities available. Making Ebola vaccine probably means they're not making tetanus, measles, and flu shots, for example, which killed more people in the 20th century than Ebola has in all outbreaks combined. In any event, it's a months-long process, and depending on when you start, you may be too late to succeed, because you won't have enough until six months after everyone in the affected area is dead. Complicating things is that so far, the vaccine is still experimental, and only being used on humans in the affected hot zone(s), because so far, there's been no full clinical trials.
I hope President Trump takes this seriously. We may get past this outbreak, but what about the one in 2021, and 2024, and...
Q. I'm not following this biology math. If ebola was as contagious as you say, then the last time it was in the US with the sick nurse going to her wedding etc. then it should have taken off. That set of events was an experiment from which contagiousness in the US environment can be estimated. How does that estimate turn out?What sick nurse, going to what wedding??
Amber Vinson, not contagious at the time, tried on her wedding dress at a shop in Ohio. Being scrupulous, she noted an increase in her temperature while on that trip, and on her return to Dallas, checked in to hospital, where she was diagnosed with Ebola. (The dress shop, OTOH, a 20-year going business concern, closed permanently and went bankrupt as a direct result of just that one contact. Multiply that times a few hundred to a few thousand businesses, and tell me how you see that contagion experiment going here, anywhere.)
Both infected nurses (who had done everything they were told as far as PPE) were isolated nearly immediately after first showing signs of elevated body temperature, and were not wandering the streets for two weeks while fully contagious and coughing out virus. Unlike just about nearly every infected person in Africa.
In very short order, they were both moved to full BL-IV isolation, because clearly the CDC protocols were fatally flawed (as the infection of two nurses proved rather devastatingly in exactly 21 days), and no one else at THP wanted to play any more.
The entire ER and ICU staff there threatened to quit if the hospital didn't close.
Given that as Ebola Central, THP had a patient census now in the single digits, they shut their doors for several months, and barely avoided bankruptcy.
And at the height of the outbreak, we had exactly one open BL-IV bed left in all of North America.
So you were exactly two patients from Dallas becoming Monrovia, Liberia, at the height of the outbreak.
Followed by the entire country rapidly becoming West Africa.
Ebola, with no precautions, in the wild, doubles every 21 days, on average.
Ebola in the US, with full infectious disease precautions and hazmat gear, doubled in 21 days.
Then we stopped f**king around, and put all infectees into Level IV hazmat isolation.
That, and the fact that Duncan was the only contagious person to slip out of W. Africa and into the US, is the only reason the disease didn't take hold here and go all Black Death on us.
Pure, dumb luck.
Getting a grasp on how contagious it is now?
Q. So how many cases in the US before you would go into Lockdown mode?One.
Next question.
And by "Lockdown" *I* mean:
No flights into or out of the affected country(ies) for the duration of the outbreak plus 40 days, except military mercy flights. No entry of individuals from those countries directly nor indirectly, except after entering full 40-day absolute quarantine seclusion prior to being permitted to proceed. That incudes all healthcare and medical staff, without exception, even if totally asymptomatic on arrival.
No "home seclusion" bullshit, no "wandering outside the house at will", but rather being behind armed guards and barbed wire, sitting in a tent or locked room for 40 days, and showing not one single sign of illness for the duration.
On Day 41, they can walk out.
And the traveler pays the full cost of the personnel to monitor them, and 6 weeks' worth of MREs or equivalent.
If they don't like it, they can stay in the Hot Zone country and wait a few months until the outbreak is resolved.
Their choice.
And don't try any civil rights bullshit. Quarantine law is well-established, going back 600 years.
If anybody in the Do-Gooder Brigade doesn't like it, they should stay their ass in Ebola City over there, or stay their ass home here without going to Ebolaville in the first place.
Any country or air carrier not scrupulously implementing the exact same protocol will be barred from entering US airspace, and any persons arriving from them subject to the same quarantine and rules.
Or take a Sidewinder missile up their tailpipe, and uncontrolled descent at the coastal ADIZ. Flaming Jet A/Jet-A1 is a great sterilizer. So is 2000' of seawater over the wreckage.
