Also, these hemorrhagic fevers kill people so quickly and in such a blatant manner, the patients rarely get the chance to interact with other people. Ebola is also only transmissible when the infected individual is symptomatic.
Y'all should read The Hot Zone.
Actually, that's exactly the problem. If you read any news article comment section it's all too evident that many people have read
The Hot Zone and consider themselves instant Ebola experts. That book is the main reason everyone is freaking out. "It'll make you bleed from every orifice!!!!! It's gonna kill us all!!!!"
That said I do think the authorities and the media are downplaying the risk. No, it's not as contagious as influenza or measles but it's a heck of a lot easier to spread around than HIV.
Apparently the guy was vomiting all over the sidewalk in his apartment complex as he was being taken to that hospital. Did someone clean up that vomit? If so, are they being monitored? Or worse yet, what if it didn't get cleaned up and there was a pile of ebola vomit sitting on a sidewalk for a few hours near where kids were playing, etc. The patients family is still out home with his used sheets and his used towels, presumably using the toilet he used??
He went to the ED once symptoms began... and was sent home with antibiotics???? Really??? His girlfriend took him there and told the nurse twice that he had just come from Liberia. The hospital is saying that that info 'wasn't fully relayed to the whole team.' Seriously? A guy walks in to the hospital with a thick African accent and says, "I've just come from Liberia and I'm sick," and the nurse
forgot to relay that? And the doctor [/forgot] to ask him? Several people really screwed that one up.
I heard the ambulance he was transported to the hospital the 2nd time continued in service for
two days. But officials are saying it's ok because the paramedics disinfected it using the same standard procedures they use after every patient? Ha! So we're wasting money testing this virus in BSL-4 facilities and putting patients in special isolation chambers on planes and so on? Just spray down the bed with Lysol and you're good, right?
The good news is that it appears Ebola is quite survivable given timely care and a good ICU.
He're in good ol' 'Murica it's easy to control, you just have to follow basic safety protocols.
Except apparently we're incapable of not dropping the ball on that.
Do I think there is going to be a nationwide epidemic of Ebola on the scale we see in Africa? Of course not. But I do think there is a very real possibility of several more cases popping up around this patient and his family, and there's a possibility of people dying and it could have been prevented.
And since the world's response to the epidemic in west Africa has been woefully too little much too late, it's inevitable that more cases will pop up anywhere in the US among people just having traveled from the Ebola zone. I can only hope that our public health system learns from this situation and doesn't bungle it again.
