Ebola

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I'd say Ebola is airborne within a few feet of a symptomatic person coughing/vomiting near you in an enclosed room -- the droplets would also be infectious (and the virus can live on said surface they fall on for a day or so), so if you touched the surface and then touched a mucus membrane, you'd then be infected.

It's pretty much caught the same way as influenza (but with some added ways), it's just that the person has to be symptomatic, so they're usually too sick by that time to go out and about other than being around family and medical personnel.

In the worst case, it does have the ability to really mess up society.

Honestly, that's my opinion too. The authorities have been telling a big lie to prevent panic. I think it is already airborne capable.

There may be a persistence difference between it and other flu-type viruses. Recent studies have shown, to the researchers surprise, that some viruses easily can last a week on surfaces (ie, doorknobs, counters) and a few even several weeks. Ebola might be less dangerous in that way, if it only can survive a short time outside a body.

I recall reading that Ebola can stay on a clean surface for about a day before dying (at best; outside in the sun would probably kill it in minutes), so obviously far less than things like the common cold and Influenza, which as you said, can go for weeks on a clean surface indoors.

Excalibur was euthanized. The F*****g Bastard(s). It made no sense, was needless and took away the sick nurses and husbands encouragement and a chance to study the dogs condition and transmitability. And most of all an innocent dog was killed. Alls they had to do was keep it quarantined for a month. They had to beat their way thru protesters to take the animal. I want to know who made this call. Yes, it is just one dog, but a half million people came forward to save it. Any cost could have been crowd sourced in a few hours. Respect for the scores who physical tried to stop it. Someone screwed with the wrong people. Animal people never forget.

Ooooh, possible first case in Oz now; nurse brought back from Leone.

Should have just left her there. It's not like she'll get any better treatment here.

Ebola is a virus. Viruses infect cells and use them to reproduce inside which then makes the cell burst spreading the infection.

The reason why you are much less likely to get infected by a person with no symptoms is because symptoms in ANY virus only show when the body has reached a saturation level of the virus to a point where it either overwhelms the many different body systems and gives you symptoms (inflamed intestines = pain in the belly, lungs/respiratory system causes significant mucus infection, etc) or the body's immune system goes into Pyrrhic victory mode and fires up a fever in a last ditch effort to kill the infection.

When the symptoms show the infected person has so much of the virus inside them that it basically gets into the fluids the body excretes in a concentration that makes it a certainty that every drop has the virus.

But when the person is not symptomatic...and im not saying 'the day after he gets infected' but more like the 2 weeks before symptoms show when the virus is spreading in the body... you still have that virus in your body. So yes, if you kiss, exchange sexual fluids, have contact with that person's blood ,etc there is a decent chance that it has the virus. Once it enters your body it only takes ONE virus strand to infect ONE of your cells for you to get infected.

Just think of the common cold/flu. You may have noticed a kid can come from first day of school and a week later everyone in the family including the kid show symptoms of the flu. The virus spread before the family's 'patient zero' was symptomatic. Ebola is different only in that it is not airborne (yet) and requires close physical contact.

So yes, you CAN get infected from a non-symptomatic person. This lie the gov. and media are spreading is merely to keep a population calm.... instead of educating.

Poor Excalibur. He could have cleared the virus and been no risk at all per that study upthread that found no virus (but did find evidence of previous infection) in dogs in epidemic areas. How long would it have taken him to clear the virus? They missed their chance to find out.

Like you say, animal people never forget. And now I wouldn't be surprised if they create an underground railroad for exposed pets. This will happen again since exposed health care workers are popping up all over the globe.

Numbers show we're nowhere near containing the ebola outbreak, with some cases even popping up in the U.S.:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the ... ar-BB8lB50

Let us hope that no strain of the ebola virus evolves to become transmittable by air. That could create a pandemic of global proportions.

That's one of the things we have been discussing here. Some believe (including some here) that it already is transmittable by air and claims to the contrary have been wishful thinking if not outright lies. But its short lifespan out of a body makes it less virulent in that method of transmission then other flus and viruses. Even some of the most experienced researchers in the field are openly questioning it.

For better or worse we'll have more information by November. Come November, the incubation period for everybody who was near Mr. Duncan from the time he got on a plane to the time he died in Dallas will have passed. If nobody gets it by then- hallelujia-the containment worked. Although I hope that doesn't mean that anyone gets sloppy and scales back on containment. If anybody else gets it, the nature of the contact should be identifiable- a level of epidemiological accuracy that hasn't been possible in Africa.


The scary stories in the media have gotten flak for being scary (in the comments of these stories there are always a bunch of people who rail against the scare). The upside to that is that these stories have scared the people who need to be scared: emergency room staff. In both Dallas and Madrid, doctors charged with assessing somebody in a risk group who had a low fever decided regrettably that this was an ordinary respiratory virus. If the media coverage scares emergency doctors into being hypervigilant about identifying risk, then that is the only way it can be contained. In both cases, people in risk groups with low fevers were shooed away, instantly widening the group of people that they themselves exposed.

One basic cause and effect is that as long as the disease expands in Africa, infected persons will continually reach other parts of the world. Each one of these poses a risk of starting a new epidemic center, particularly if they reach a dense population with limited professional medical resources... which is about half the world still.

A U.S. health care worker who treated Duncan, the man from Liberia who died from ebola, has contracted the disease. Officials are blaming it on a breach of protocol, but exactly when and how that breach occurred is not clear.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/second ... ar-BB8UFz0

This is probably the first time in world history that anyone has contracted ebola in the United States.

"In Spain, a nursing assistant diagnosed with the virus after caring for an Ebola patient recalled touching her gloved hand to her face while removing equipment and health authorities there are looking at that as a possible cause of infection."

This is how easy it is to get infected. Now imagine an almost-to-symptomatic (who IS capable of infecting others through more 'direct' contact) or a just-starting symptomatic person walking down a crowded street, taking a subway, having drinks with friends, etc. There is a reason why these things are in reality impossible to contain: in large, concentrated population centers its exponential and impossible to track down. Only an informed and cautious general public can take effective measures to prevent the spread of it.

The gov. and media should stop this discourse of lying and 'calm the crowd' down stupidity and begin educating the public. A public broadcast on all radio and tv channels done twice a day...even if its just a 10 minute thing, would have such an enormous impact on public health safety against this thing.

It is still not casual contact, she touched her face with a glove that probably came in direct contact with infected bodily fluid. Healthcare workers are at the most risk since they deal with the blood, vomit, urine, s**t, and dead bodies. If it were contagious as you think it is, there would already by hundreds of thousands or millions dead.

I'm surprised that the nurse in Dallas contracted the disease while the paramedics and Duncan's girlfriend appear (so far) to be healthy. I'm concerned, however, that no journalists are now in touch via telephone with the gf and children in quarantine. They could be dead, for all we know.

I'm just wondering why they aren't banning flights to and fro the infected countries. That just makes perfect sense.

Send aid workers if they want, but leave them over there if they get it.

Seriously, are we all that dumb?