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I've been following this for a while and I thought it was kind of scary even before it entered the U.S. While I'd like to believe our government that it isn't matter for public concern, I'm not sure I do. If the virus has a kill rate of something like 70%, and an incubation period of 21 days, there could be any number of carriers who will inadvertently spread the disease before they know what hits them. While they say that it spreads less easily than the common cold, I question how confident we can actually be about the virus.Obama perhaps should have closed all travel from Africa by now, but last I heard the administration was not even considering it.
The saving grace right now is that it is relatively difficult to transmit the disease. If the virus mutates and goes airborne all bets are off. In that case expect a repeat of the black death.
It makes one think that as the Black Death spread north from the Mediterranean, the people of Europe must have heard reports and been struck with great anxiety as the disease made geographic advances over the course of months. Ebola will spread somewhat differently. [img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Bubonic_plague_map.PNG/512px-Bubonic_plague_map.PNG[/img]Bubonic plague map [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], by Original by Roger Zenner (de-WP)Enlarging & readability editing by user Jaybear, from Wikimedia Commons
The fact that there's a second nurse who contracted Ebola in the U.S. makes some kind of travel stoppage between Africa and other parts of the world seem all the more sensible.
Ebola, just like that Black Dath, will spread along transport lines. The difference is that now that is Air Travel instead of caravan and sea lanes.
Did you hear about how this second nurse flew from Cleveland to Dallas soon before getting Ebola symptoms? You have to wonder what the person was thinking by traveling within the incubation period after treating an Ebola patient. The airline was apparently trying to contact the people who flew on that plane. How would you like to be the person who finds out you were sitting right next to the Ebola carrier?
When I was in Vietnam, I remember how some people panicked about SARS: some tried to run away and infected more people than if they had stayed for medical care there.TMO Panic and transportation lines are both the main vectors for that kind of spread.Uncertainty and Risk
Do you happen to know the death rate of people infected with SARS? I didn't think it was quite as high as Ebola.
You're right but when it started it was all new and a wave of panic ensued caused by a fear of bird transmission. Fortunately it was not lethal. Modification not as lethal as ebola
I still say the biggest worry is a mutation that sends it airborne. THe Black Death did not spread fast until the majority of cases were the pneumonic kind. Fluid transmission is just too iffy for a true catastrophic pandemic. We really could isolate ourselves and avoid a fluid transmitted disease.
I think you're right about the risks with it becoming airborne. I did hear yesterday that while they don't have proof it has spread this way, it can survive in dry form for some time (e.g. on a door handle). Still, I think it will be relatively easy to contain the virus simply by washing knobs and surfaces, and by people washing their hands more frequently.The thing that concerns me is how the two nurses got sick. I wonder if they really know for sure how the virus is transmitted, or if there are some things they don't know about it. If there is confirmation that it is airborne, imagine the panic that will ensue.
If it is confirmed that it can be transmitted through the air it will be full on Outbreak style panic. I have already heard rumblings about that in the prepper world. There are plenty of folks tossing around I told you sos right now. I think it is way too early to panic yet.
Well, it appears that panic is subsiding a bit now that some people have been passed through the waiting period unharmed. I still don't think we're anywhere out of the woods just yet, though. If Ebola starts spreading to parts of the world less equipped to handle it than the U.S. or European nations, it could still spread exponentially.
![[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Bubonic_plague_map.PNG/512px-Bubonic_plague_map.PNG[/img]](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABubonic_plague_map.PNG){kind=link}