That's two...

bravenrace wrote:

aircooled wrote:

tuna55 wrote: ...Each time they swear up and down that it's all good, and it obviously isn't. When someone does that, you can't help but wonder how much "isn't" there is.

One reason why absolutes are generally a bad idea. Of course if they would have said "I can't say they it won't get in, there is always a possibility..." people would have flipped their E36 M3 also. You can't really win in these situations. The "news freak" that is going on is not all bad of course, at least it makes people more aware / careful. I am a bit worried about some unintended consequences though. BTW - I am not sure the CDC had anything to "do" with the Dallas situation. That seemed like more of a series of bone head moves by the hospital. Should the CDC be demanding more appropriate behavior from hospitals. I would certainly say yes. I have no idea if they have that authority though.

My wife, who is a NICU nurse, just emailed me the Ebola protocol that her hospital just sent her. It's proprietary, so I'm not going to post it here, but will say that they have taken pretty drastic and pro-active steps in regards to Ebola. The CDC on the other hand hasn't given them any guidelines. And this is the closest Childrens hospital to Tallmadge, where Amber Vinson was visiting. I agree with Tuna on this one. They had one case. ONE CASE, in the entire country, and they couldn't keep it contained. Pathetic.

Why would an effective protocol be proprietary??

Must be something about the hypocritical oath.

In reply to SVreX:

Nurse #1 is Asian.

Nurse #2 is black.

Edit; Just FYI, not that it matters, they're both Americans.

In the time since ebolamania has hit our shores and killed fewer people than could comfortably fit in a Kia Rondo, how many people have died of heart disease?

Of smoking-related illnesses?

By a drunk driver?

By someone with a firearm they obtained illegally?

By a crazy ex who the cops never enforced the restraining order against?

Or by any one of literally a million other things that if these jagoffs who are running their mouths and posturing about ebola put the same effort into they could actually save a few berkeleying lives.

Nick_Comstock wrote: In reply to SVreX: Nurse #1 is Asian. Nurse #2 is black. Edit; Just FYI, not that it matters, they're both Americans.

What, no white people!?!

I'm with you, JG.

In reply to JG Pasterjak:

Hey now no trying to introduce logic into everyone's panic situation. The talking heads are telling us it is the apocalypse so it must be true.

SVreX wrote:

Nick_Comstock wrote: In reply to SVreX: Nurse #1 is Asian. Nurse #2 is black. Edit; Just FYI, not that it matters, they're both Americans.

What, no white people!?!

In reply to JG Pasterjak:

I understand what you're saying. But when the county school system that my son goes to closes three schools because of kids being in close proximity to someone who has the Ebola, well that is very concerning to me.

Crazy people are still going to kill people, car accidents are still going to kill way more people than Ebola will in this country. Ebola should be a million times easier to prevent than any of that. We should not have one more single case of Ebola in this country. I'm less than confident that is going to happen.

SVreX wrote:

bravenrace wrote:

aircooled wrote:

tuna55 wrote: ...Each time they swear up and down that it's all good, and it obviously isn't. When someone does that, you can't help but wonder how much "isn't" there is.

One reason why absolutes are generally a bad idea. Of course if they would have said "I can't say they it won't get in, there is always a possibility..." people would have flipped their E36 M3 also. You can't really win in these situations. The "news freak" that is going on is not all bad of course, at least it makes people more aware / careful. I am a bit worried about some unintended consequences though. BTW - I am not sure the CDC had anything to "do" with the Dallas situation. That seemed like more of a series of bone head moves by the hospital. Should the CDC be demanding more appropriate behavior from hospitals. I would certainly say yes. I have no idea if they have that authority though.

My wife, who is a NICU nurse, just emailed me the Ebola protocol that her hospital just sent her. It's proprietary, so I'm not going to post it here, but will say that they have taken pretty drastic and pro-active steps in regards to Ebola. The CDC on the other hand hasn't given them any guidelines. And this is the closest Childrens hospital to Tallmadge, where Amber Vinson was visiting. I agree with Tuna on this one. They had one case. ONE CASE, in the entire country, and they couldn't keep it contained. Pathetic.

Why would an effective protocol be proprietary?? Must be something about the hypocritical oath.

I would imagine its for the same reason we do.

A lot of our internal information about anti terror, health and biological issues are marked proprietary. Its easier to declare everything internal than to keep some to ourselves and put some out there. Any info that does come out instantly leads to an editorial or local radio host going on about how we gave terrorists the blueprints to attack is so we limit what gets out. We share with other agencies but not the general public. A determined terrorist could probably guess at what we do and try to circumvent it but we won't put the info out there for them.

SVreX wrote:

Nick_Comstock wrote: In reply to SVreX: Nurse #1 is Asian. Nurse #2 is black. Edit; Just FYI, not that it matters, they're both Americans.

What, no white people!?!

They cured them all.

I think most of you are missing the obvious.

The Ebola news is not designed to report or reduce the pubic health risk.

It is designed to impact the stock market.

Working perfectly.

I'm just going to leave this here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qj4X0MsQjM

Very well said. ^^

Maybe we'll have a real outbreak someday but it isn't today.

JG Pasterjak wrote: In the time since ebolamania has hit our shores and killed fewer people than could comfortably fit in a Kia Rondo, how many people have died of heart disease? Of smoking-related illnesses? By a drunk driver? By someone with a firearm they obtained illegally? You a By a crazy ex who the cops never enforced the restraining order against? Or by any one of literally a million other things that if these jagoffs who are running their mouths and posturing about ebola put the same effort into they could actually save a few berkeleying lives.

So because more people die in many other ways, this isn't important? You are missing the point entirely. It's the potential that Ebola has that warrants the actions taken to prevent it.

bravenrace hits it right on the head. The time to hit this thing and shut it down is now, before it really DOES get loose. The potential for that has just been demonstrated, although I do believe containment method updates will slam the door on further spread.

FWIW, the US started research into Ebola vaccines and cures right after 9/11. There's also the question of, what is the threshold below which no research will be done? Who's gonna say 'okay, since less than ___ die of this thing each year we are going to let you die?' Particularly with the knowledge that it could become the next big bad thing?

Has the news media overblown things? Hell, yeah. That's our infotainment system for ya.

bravenrace wrote: So because more people die in many other ways, this isn't important? You are missing the point entirely. It's the potential that Ebola has that warrants the actions taken to prevent it.

It doesn't sound like he's saying it's "not important"? As with most anything, it's not an on/off black/white thing. It's a sliding scale in the grey. As noted before, the response for these sort of things has to be measured considering the risks and the downside of that response. It always easy to criticize a response because you can always complain if it was too much or not enough (depending on how things go).

I think a general consensus here would say: The Feds seem to be going a bit slow on this (probably for political / economic reasons), the media is WAY over blowing it (ratings people!), the populace is a bit over concerned (mostly because of the media), and the hospitals seem to be unprepared in some cases (learning opportunity).

Anyway, there this to add a bit of perspective:

(The level of contagiousness of these of course varies)

In reply to aircooled:

I think the concern I have about your graph is of all those, Ebola is by far the quickest from first symptoms to death. Although I'm not sure about malaria. Most of them are treatable, or at least manageable.

Yeah, Ebola tends to blow itself out quickly due to the short incubation period and high mortality. The bad thing is, if you look at the chart, just about everything on there has some sort of treatment or cure available. Ebola doesn't, that means the Africans are running on luck only right now.

Keep in mind also: this single outbreak has killed more so far as all the other known Ebola outbreaks combined. That to me is worrisome enough to get some people cured and vaccinated, regardless of their color.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks

Doesn't it make sense to be proactive with something as potentially deadly as this?

Nick_Comstock wrote: In reply to aircooled: I think the concern I have about your graph is of all those, Ebola is by far the quickest from first symptoms to death. Although I'm not sure about malaria. Most of them are treatable, or at least manageable.

Being quickest from contraction to death is why Ebola is less of a threat than those others. Especially when you add in that it is only transmissible when you show outward symptoms, and even then is not especially so. It is not airborne or delivered by an intermediary vector.

As for treatment and cures, the best one we have so far is whole blood from a survivor. That is an inherently limited supply and does not transport well.

Even without that, basic medical care actually makes a big difference. The ability to supply and properly administer fluids to avoid dehydration is a BIG deal. That basic medical care just does not exist in the third world. Improving that would save a whole lot more lives, and not just from Ebola.

Short answer: In the grand scheme of things, Ebola is not all that deadly. It has a very high mortality rate but is not particularly virulent.

Hippos and wildebeasts should be on that graph.

Mosquitoes kill between 600,000 and 1,000,000 people per year.

Yes. the "perfect" disease would be 100% fatal (like AIDS in the old days), easily transmittable (Flue, cold), very hard to spot when contagious (AIDS), and take a long time to kill someone (AIDS). Of course, no vaccine is very useful.

So, if AIDS was more easily transmitted, it would have been BAD NEWS.

As noted, I have played Pandemic. I recently played it an created a nice little bug that managed to infect a VERY large percentage of the population (lots of vectors, low visibility), I even got Madagascar infected! But I did not mutate it to be deadly enough in time... so no one died... bummer (from a successful pandemic perspective)