Ebola: CDC Head Thomas Frieden sounds the alarm!

[armadillo]

(CNN) -- A nurse's assistant in Spain is the first person known to have contracted Ebola outside of Africa in the current outbreak.

 

Spanish Health Minister Ana Mato announced Monday that a test confirmed the assistant has the virus.

 

The woman helped treat a Spanish missionary and a Spanish priest, both of whom had contracted Ebola in West Africa. Both died after returning to Spain.

 

 

more: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/06/health/ebola-us/index.html

 

 

 

Missionaries seem to spreading other things besides the gospel.

[+ Chris Eisenhower]

NOW they are reporting that Thomas Eric Duncan has died.

 

Texas Presbyterian Ebola Patient Update

[Steven_Draker]

Missionaries seem to spreading other things besides the gospel.

 

Those priests and missionaries risked their lives to help patients affected by the virus in West Africa.

 

Your comment is as insensitive as it's ignorant.

[bigvalboy]

NOW they are reporting that Thomas Eric Duncan has died.

 

Texas Presbyterian Ebola Patient Update

 

One has to wonder how liable the hospital will become, since the fact that he had traveled from West Africa was not related to the doctors and mistakenly sent home the first time. Those few days, it would seem to me, while his condition greatly worsened could have made a difference in life and death. And why did it take so long for him to receive the experimental drug Brincidofovir. Far too early to know, but I would think that at the very least they bear some of the responsibility. It is a little frightening that they just don't know what works.

[armadillo]

Are you referring to the development that the patient is alive and receiving experimental drugs to treat ebola?

 

Rest In Peace Thomas Eric Duncan, and Excalibur.

[bigvalboy]

Rest In Peace Thomas Eric Duncan, and Excalibur.

 

Nice post Armadillo....

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/08/ebola-dog-excalibur-euthanized_n_5956026.html

 

Rest In Peace

[rvwnsd]

NOW they are reporting that Thomas Eric Duncan has died.

 

Texas Presbyterian Ebola Patient Update

 

In a blog post regarding Sunday's "report" of Thomas Eric Duncan's death, someone speculated that the web site might have written the story in advance and accidentally published it. That seems like a plausible explanation of what might have happened.

[armadillo]

Remember, Ebola is not a joke!

 

http://www.tmz.com/2014/10/09/ebola-scare-us-airways-flight-punta-cana-dominican-republic/

[MFLV]

I remember reading the book, The Hot Zone , which was about an Ebola outbreak and monkeys in a lab in Reston Virginia. I remember a quote in the book that mentioned that the real concern would be if Ebola ever mutated to be airborne how devastating that would be. The biggest concern is that if this outbreak continues and the virus keeps mutating if could become airborne. It's a scary thought

[+ deej]

I remember reading the book, The Hot Zone , which was about an Ebola outbreak and monkeys in a lab in Reston Virginia. I remember a quote in the book that mentioned that the real concern would be if Ebola ever mutated to be airborne how devastating that would be. The biggest concern is that if this outbreak continues and the virus keeps mutating if could become airborne. It's a scary thought

 

Yes, and HIV might become airborne too. It could happen! Really! Just read those emails forwarded by your crazy uncle! Or, wow, there were those 10 ISIS fighters who crossed the Mexican border! (Didn't happen.)

 

Thinking people deal with the threat we have *now*, not some paranoid fantasy that might happen.

[rvwnsd]

... The biggest concern is that if this outbreak continues and the virus keeps mutating if could become airborne. It's a scary thought

 

I haven't heard that concern articulated by any health officials or workers. However, here are some concerns I have heard:

 

 

• Although the virus itself cannot be transmitted through the air, water droplets from a sneeze are airborne. If an infected person sneezes in close enough proximity for you to come in contact with the water droplets they just emitted, you are at risk of becoming infected
  
• There is a misconception that people who have died from Ebola are no longer infectious. That is not the case.
  
• Nurses from the Spanish hospital at which the nurse became infected stated that their suits were not impermeable. They accused the hospital of using tape to secure gloves and of failing to provide respirators in the suits
  
• Taking temperatures of random people, such as air passengers, is not an effective means of determining whether someone has been infected. However, it is an effective means of portraying to the public that "something is being done"
  

[MFLV]

Yes, and HIV might become airborne too. It could happen! Really! Just read those emails forwarded by your crazy uncle! Or, wow, there were those 10 ISIS fighters who crossed the Mexican border! (Didn't happen.)

 

Thinking people deal with the threat we have *now*, not some paranoid fantasy that might happen.

 

Actually thinking people think ahead. Problem with this virus response was we are reacting now when we sure have been proactive in the response to it.

[bigvalboy]

Actually MFLV is correct. The doctor who discovered Ebola said as much in the article below and in an interview on CNN. The question as to whether or not the Ebola virus could become airborne keeps coming up. Every time the virus infects someone it mutates, and the possibility of it becoming airborne increases, though unlikely, but it is a possibility, "and it is clearly mutating". I have always believed that sooner rather than later, we will be able to contain Ebola, but we would be remiss in our assumptions if we thought that it was not a possibility that the Ebola virus would ever become airborne.

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-06/doctor-who-discovered-ebola-1976-fears-unimaginable-tragedy

 

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2014/08/28/wrn-ebola-outbreak-peter-piot-intv.cnn.html

 

I posted this interview, because it is interesting and concise, although it is not the one where he talks about the possibility of the virus mutating and becoming airborne. I only had time for a quick search, and that did not produce the CNN interview that I had seen yesterday. While Dr. Piot does say that it is 'highly unlikely' he did mention that every time the virus mutates, that possibility is there. I think it would be naive to suggest that would never be a possibility.

[marylander1940]

Actually thinking people think ahead. Problem with this virus response was we are reacting now when we sure have been proactive in the response to it.

 

Exactly.... I remember the times where everybody used condoms to prevent HIV/Aids... The disease was supposed to be almost gone now but some people gave up and started BB.

[Steven_Draker]

Ebola Fears Are Triggering Mass Hypochondria

 

 

Yes, Ebola is here. The news of the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed on U.S. soil is unsettling, no matter how many times health officials calmly implore us not to panic, followed by a reminder that the virus is unlikely to spread widely beyond this one case in Dallas, Texas (that patient died today). But Ebola anxiety, on the other hand, is so far proving to be a highly contagious thing.

 

On Monday, Texas Health Commissioner Dr. David Lakey told reporters that stress and panic were likely to cause more damage to the community than the fearsome virus itself. In Dallas, some parents are keeping their children home from school, the Dallas Morning News reported, and some nonprofits told the newspaper that some of their volunteers are refusing to enter the neighborhood where the patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, first showed symptoms.

 

 

At the national level, a survey back in August by the Harvard School of Public Health found that nearly 40 percent of Americans are “concerned” that there will be a full-fledged outbreak, à la Outbreak, of Ebola within the next year. It’s not altogether surprising, considering some of the near-hysterical television coverage. On Meet the Press this past weekend, Joe Scarborough made his case for mass Ebola panic, saying, “If you think the Atlantic Ocean is going to stop it from coming over here, you’re kidding yourself.” And on a recent Fox & Friends, Elisabeth Hasselbeck demanded to know why she should worry more about flu than Ebola, countering infectious-disease specialist Dr. Dalilah Restrepo’s calm but thorough answer with a simple “But it’s here.”

 

In a way, what we’re seeing here is hypochondria manifested on a mass scale, said Catherine F. Belling, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who has written a book on hypochondria. “I know that there are a lot of people, clearly, who are very anxious and panicking at this point, who maybe don’t altogether trust what the CDC is saying,” she said. “And they’re worried that it’s out in America now, instead of being far away in Africa.” We tend to think of hypochondriacs as the irrational individuals who, after spending entirely too much time on WebMD, become convinced that a minor headache means a brain tumor, or that a lingering cough means lung cancer. But that anxiety and fear some of us are having over catching Ebola (a highly unlikely health outcome)? That’s hypochondria, too, Belling explained.

 

 

Belling recently talked to Science of Us about hypochondria, how the disorder relates to a mistrust of health officials, and why it isn’t exactly fair to call hypochondriacs “irrational.”

 

What is hypochondria? Is there an agreed-upon definition?

Well, it’s been defined as an irrational fear of illness. But I think it’s not at all irrational to fear illness. We all fear getting sick, on some level. What hypochondria is, then, is the inability to put that very rational fear into context, where you can continue to function normally rather than being paralyzed by it.

 

Because, the thing is, it’s entirely rational to be afraid of Ebola. When it crosses the line is when someone who is in, for example, New York, won’t leave their apartment because they’re afraid of getting Ebola. They’re incapable of recognizing that there’s truly an incredibly minuscule likelihood of getting Ebola.

 

source: https://www.yahoo.com/health/ebola-fears-are-triggering-mass-hypochondria-99496948183.html

[MFLV]

Nice post Steven. I agree that fear can get out of hand. I think a lot of irrational fear is caused by the 24 hour news cycle that throws it in people's faces and seems to have a hysterical tone to it's reporting. It doesn't help that the way Texas handled the Duncan case. That allowed fear to grow as the initial and then subsequent responses in dealing with Mr Duncan and his family were pitiful. Allowing the family to live in the apartment for 4-5 days without aid in dealing with the contaminate items boggles the mind and certainly does not put any confidence that we are prepared to deal with this virus. I'm not saying we aren't prepared it's just scary to see the many missteps in this initial case. I hope this topic becomes a post of the past quickly!

[armadillo]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&docid=VZlX9Xyam37kiM&tbnid=yfca2WGGn0gs4M:&ved=0CAcQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftheweek.com%2Fspeedreads%2Findex%2F265990%2Fspeedreads-check-out-a-sneak-peek-of-this-weeks-cover-of-the-week-magazine&ei=u9g3VM_HJYb4yASQ_4HIDA&bvm=bv.77161500,d.aWw&psig=AFQjCNEqFU210rxSunliV5ppcsLmrf3tcg&ust=1413032479720698

[bigvalboy]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&docid=VZlX9Xyam37kiM&tbnid=yfca2WGGn0gs4M:&ved=0CAcQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftheweek.com%2Fspeedreads%2Findex%2F265990%2Fspeedreads-check-out-a-sneak-peek-of-this-weeks-cover-of-the-week-magazine&ei=u9g3VM_HJYb4yASQ_4HIDA&bvm=bv.77161500,d.aWw&psig=AFQjCNEqFU210rxSunliV5ppcsLmrf3tcg&ust=1413032479720698

 

Armadillo, I couldn't get your link to work. I got a 'redirect' notice, and the redirect link wouldn't load.

 

Is this the cover you were referring to?

 

http://theweek.com/home/mtoc

[Steven_Draker]

http://media.theweek.com/img/generic/01_tw_0815_UPC_COVER.jpg

[armadillo]

Ebola is one bad ass contagion. In theory, US hospitals have the latest in medical technology, support from the CDC, an intelligent medical staff and are following best practices to avoid Ebola. Despite all this a health worker has contracted Ebola from patient zero. Let us not forget the Spanish nurse last week also.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/12/health-care-worker-at-dallas-hospital-tests-positive-for-ebola/

[+ purplekow]

Ebola contagion is unforgiving of error. Small numbers of viruses are all that is needed and outside the body, the virus is still rather long lived. IF this virus presence hits a tipping point, it may be as devasting as any virus we have seen. Of course, the "Spanish" influenza killed millions in the early 20th century, but that virus was airborne so it made it easier to pass around. That virus also had a known shelf life and most people survived it, leaving a large portion of the population protected in the future from that particular strain of fly. Of course, the following year, a less deadly form was around getting people sick but with nary the death toll of that particular virus. Flu still kills 36000 people a year in the US even though we have a protective vaccine for that.

[Guest]

Well, unlike the flu, the common cold is most commonly spread the same way as Ebola. Infected fluids (mucous in the case of rhinoviruses) get deposited either on objects (door handle, elevator button, telephone, etc.) then the virus gets inoculated when a person rubs his eyes, or picks his nose, etc. That's how the Spanish nurse's aide got infected. She was wearing full protective gear, but rubbed her eyes with her gloved hand. I suspect that the reason the virus hasn't spread more than it has so far is that most of the people who've been exposed can't afford international travel. I understand they're having some success in coming up with a vaccine. But it wouldn't take much until we wouldn't have resources to transport every patient in specialized conveyances into specialized hospital rooms set up for this infection.

There may come a point when we may have to have to place those with stamps in their passports showing travel to endemic areas within the last 20 days, into controlled environments in quarantine until the incubation period has passed. I know that the government doesn't want panic, but the truth of the matter is that this virus is much easier to transmit than HIV--and it can be transmissible even after a patient has died. A virus doesn't have to be transmitted via the airborne route in order to be highly contagious. It just has to remain capable of inducing contagion via fomites, on inanimate surfaces.

[armadillo]

I would like to know what the 'breach' was in Dallas Health Care Workers protocol, and why Frieden is so certain of this. Also, why has Patient Zero's family remained symptom free after being in contact with him, and had no precautions.

[Steven_Draker]

Ebola is one bad ass contagion. In theory, US hospitals have the latest in medical technology, support from the CDC, an intelligent medical staff and are following best practices to avoid Ebola. Despite all this a health worker has contracted Ebola from patient zero. Let us not forget the Spanish nurse last week also.

 

Ebola In The U.S. Will Never Look Like Ebola In West Africa

(But You Should Care Anyway)

 

If you lived in a place like Guéckédou, Guinea and your two year old became sick you would hoist him on your back, walk to the river, paddle a canoe, get to the other side and then walk for up to two days to the nearest treatment facility. All this for just a diagnosis, explains Raj Panjabi, physician and founder of Last Mile Health, as sounds of his own young son echo through the phone from Boston.

 

Guéckédou is the tiny village where the Ebola outbreak now ravaging West Africa is thought to have quietly begun — a two year old boy is thought to have been the first victim. Villages like this don’t have running water, cell phone service or paved roads. “Imagine having a fever — which is one of the symptoms of Ebola — in a setting like this now and how much panic that would cause,” says Panjabi.

 

You don’t live in a setting like this. According to The World Bank the United States had 2.9 hospital beds per 1,000 people in 2011, the most recent year for which data is available. In 2010, the most recent year data is available for Liberia, that country had 0.8 beds per thousand. This is why, during a briefing on the first confirmed Ebola case in the U.S. Tuesday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Thomas Frieden was able to confidently declare that there is “No doubt in my mind that we will stop it here.”

 

Panjabi works in Liberian villages very much like Guéckédou. For the doctor and his team the path from a rural toddler in Guinea, to the packed slums of Liberian capital Monrovia, to a Dallas hospital is quite clear — but so is how it could have been stopped and how to keep it from ever happening again.

 

“We are fighting this perception that this is a terrible thing because it might infect an American or it might infect a European,” said Joshua Albert, Last Mile’s country director on the ground in Liberia, in a conversation before the Dallas case surfaced. “This is a terrible thing because it proves that we don’t have the systems we need in place to keep everyone in the world safe and healthy.”

 

After fleeing Liberia’s Civil War as a kid Panjabi, 33, became a Harvard doctor and founded Last Mile to bring quality care and jobs to remote regions of his childhood home. He does this by training community members to administer treatment and preventative care. Today, the nonprofit works in 42 villages and has trained more than 250 frontline health workers. When Ebola struck Liberia in March, Last Mile sprung into action training 120 Liberians to prevent and identify the disease (totally new to the region) and if necessary, get patients into the health clinic system. They also provide educational material on how to prevent transmitting the disease for the communities and protective gear for the workers.

 

The lack of a system like this in Guéckédou, contends Panjabi, is why the disease was able to advance. After the Guinean toddler, two of his family members died, next was the village midwife and then a doctor in a regional hospital. It wasn’t until the doctor’s death in February — close to two months after the initial case — that the health system became aware there was a problem. By then the disease had spread too far, creeping through the rain forest belt connecting Guinea to Sierre Leon and Liberia. In Nigeria, for example, Ebola seems to have been contained to just 20 patients because doctors were able to harness the infrastructure the Gates Foundation had built there to fight Polio.

 

Liberia, still recovering from that brutal civil war, needs everything. Its health system is a shell, so with more than a million people living in remote areas the disease has spread wildly. According to CDC data more than half the cases in the outbreak have been in Liberia where 3,696 people have been infected and 1,998 have died, but these statistics are widely believed to be under reported.

 

“There are a lot of communities that simply don’t have access to care,” explains Albert. ”The absence of a health system that provided care to everyone in those remote setting was in fact a key reason that this has grown into what it has grown into and the tragedy that has emerged. There was no one to identify those cases.”

 

“The problems of remote villages have now become the problems of the capital cities of three important countries,” adds Panjabi. “There is no better proof that illness is universal but access to care is not.”

 

There have not been any cases of Ebola in the villages where Last Mile has been working. This is likely due in part to the network that has been set up there. Panjabi is also confident about the prospects of controlling the spread if the virus were to find its way to the Konobo district. Community members in those villages can bring their medical concerns to a neighbor they know and trust rather than to a distant health system that has never given them cause for confidence. Meaning they are more likely to seek help as soon as symptoms appear.

 

Others are confident about Panjabi’s methods too. Part of President Obama’s plan to fight Ebola is training up to 500 healthcare providers per week. Last Mile will train up to 1,500 of those workers. As part of this effort Last Mile is expanding its effort to more counties — where Ebola is currently present.

 

And as FORBES editor Randall Lane reported last month, Last Mile is teaming up with Paul Farmer, the co-founder of Partners in Health, as well as an impressive roster of billionaire backers to bring modern medical care to Liberia, confronting Ebola with modern medicine for the first time. Panjabi will train the workers and Partners in Health will staff the Department of Defense-built facility. The new facilities will round out the three tier attack on the disease. Frontline health workers cam cover prevention and case monitoring, but hospitals are necessary to provide life saving care.

 

“This case is Dallas shows how inter-connected we are in this world and how the plight of people thousands of miles away, in the country I grew up in, is the same plight as people in America,” says Panjabi. “The answer ought to be compassion and action, not protectionism and isolation.”

 

source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2014/10/03/ebola-in-the-u-s-will-never-look-like-ebola-in-west-africa-but-you-should-care-anyway/

[Steven_Draker]

... but the truth of the matter is that this virus is much easier to transmit than HIV

 

Sure thing.

 

Ebola is much, much easier to transmit than HIV, more lethal, and harder to contain.

 

 

"Ebola and AIDS spread through the body with the same mechanism. HIV, which causes AIDS, and Ebola bud from the same cells which they infect. Both the viruses hijack cells of our body and inject genetic materials in the cell. As a result, the cells turn into a small virus factory. Before infecting the next new cell, the virus bud from the injected cell. It is really remarkable to see that two very different viruses share the same mechanism to bud. Both of them have been also termed by researchers as ‘engineered viruses.’ There is no cure to either HIV or Ebola infection. Ebola causes hemorrhagic disease and kills nearly two-third of its victims within days.

 

Both the viruses attach to the T-Lymphocytes, cells in the body that are responsible for the immune system. During the replication time period of these viruses, the T-Lymphocytes is disabled and destroyed. As a result, even common infections such as cold become lethal. The HIV virus does not physically destroy the cells as fast as Ebola virus. Hence, Ebola virus limits in number of additional people to be infected.

 

The HIV virus is stopped by preventive measures to further transmit. The virus is isolated, though theoretically till date. On the other hand with Ebola virus it is not possible. The virus is a biosafety level 4 agent. This means that it is handled under extremely tight security with all possible safety measures."