Ebola outbreak in Africa

[talltex]

SNIP

the definition of an airborne contagion is one that can freely float in the air, survive lengths of time, and infect someone else. VERY few things fit in this category, most have been eradicated, Polio, Small Pox, Tuberculosis. Things that are also NOT airborne, are the flu and the cold. For the flu, you have to come into direct contact with the patients body fluids. How then, do you explain why people catch it and have no idea how. Well for one, people can spread it before they show symptoms, just like Ebola, and one other HUGE factor…droplets….let that word really sink in. The virus may not be airborne, but the droplets are.

http://dtolar.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/ ... rspective/

Not arguing, but that contradicts what "they" are telling us...

No it doesn't. Droplets are bodily fluid, and they don't float in the air. They travel out of a sneeze at high velocity, slow down and then drop to the ground.

I think the problem most people have with this concept is the difference between the scientific definition of "airborne" and the real world perception of it. The scientific definition tends to make people think they can only become infected by direct physical contact with an infected carrier rather than just touching something they have touched...or sneezed on...or coughed on... or breathed on. It doesn't have to be a sneeze or cough to release "droplets". Just have a conversation with someone sitting across from you where they are backlight by a strong light source and you will clearly see droplets of moisture and saliva ...some tiny, some large...being emitted each time they speak. Microscopic ones are released each time you breathe. That's why "the protocol" calls for use of respirators and face shields...if you are around someone and breathing in the same air, you can become infected, whether its a cold, flu or Ebola. In most people's minds, that seems to be "airborne".

[philip964]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... times.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Most severe heath emergency in modern times.

Apparently in Dallas, it is Ebola news 24/7 on the local TV stations. This comes from a relative who visited Houston from Dallas this weekend. (so much for our quarantine) They were relieved to get away from the local Dallas news.

[The Annoyed Man]

Ruh Row... The nurse has a dog.

Can dogs get Ebola?

The rumor is that dogs can carry Ebola symptom free. It is unknown if a human can catch Ebola from a dog. The French euthanized the dog of their health worker with Ebola, to the complaints of the animal rights people. (And others)

Spanish, not French, but yes, they did.

This is one of my typical long reads, but I think it will help to clarify what we are actually up against, and might help someone to figure out what their own response ought to be.

I am not any kind of expert in infectious diseases, but I worked in a major hospital long enough, around isolated patients long enough, to be perhaps more experienced than the average lay person in transmission avoidance.

Avoiding AIDS is easy. You follow the protocols, and you CANNOT be infected. In fact, whether you follow the protocols or not, unless you share a needle or have violent sex with the patient, you have almost no chance of catching it. Even people who share infected needles do not necessarily catch AIDS. By the very act of walking into the room of a patient with a compromised immune system, you are a bigger threat to the patient than he or she is to you. And unless you have some unresolved character issues, you are never going to catch it "in the wild".

Avoiding hepatitis is harder, but still very easy. Don't stick yourself with their needles, or have sex with them, handle their bodily fluids with gloves on, wear a mask, and you're good to go. An isolation gown is not a bad idea, but any droplet-borne hepatitis viruses are not going to survive on your clothing for more than a few seconds. So even if you get it on you, chances of transmission are very low. And again, unless you are being intimate with someone who is infected, you are not going to catch it "in the wild".

Either of those first two diseases are easy to avoid, as—0utside of an in-hospital patient-care environment—you are not likely to ever be in a situation where exposure is any kind of statistically significant risk. You don't catch either of those diseases from being in mere proximity to an unknown infected person. You catch them by either practicing behaviors which even the practitioners know are risky, or by being physically intimate with someone who practices those behaviors.

Avoiding the Flu is crapshoot. Even if you are working in a hospital in an isolation ward, you have no idea whom you might have been in contact with outside of that environment, and since the disease is contagious even before the patient becomes overtly symptomatic, and since it spreads easily, you might have caught it from someone "in the wild" rather than from the flu patient you are treating......and you you have no way of knowing for certain which person was the actual carrier who infected you. Even if a family member is infected, your particular vector might have been a total stranger in the supermarket, in an airliner, on a bus, at a concert, in a bar, at the post office, at church, in your doctor's waiting room, in a theater, at the mall, or even just the person who passed you on the sidewalk or the parking structure. No. Way. To know. At all. We DO know that it can be droplet-borne and spread by that means.....and we also know that the flu virus doesn't live that long in that droplet, once it has been expelled from the infected person's body. It can easily survive long enough that one person's sneeze can infect another person in proximity to that sneeze on whom some of the droplets land and are ingested or inhaled. But if that droplet lands on the handrail of an escalator at the mall, it is harmlessly inert in a very short amount of time.

So, as long as you don't have an already severely compromised immune system and zero access to medical care, the flu is highly unlikely to kill you. You might be sick enough that you want to die, but that is a very temporary situation.....and barring those other health challenges, you are going to get better on your own in most cases.....whether or not you actually see a doctor.

The problem with Ebola is, it behaves much like the flu in terms of epidemiology, EXCEPT that it is known to survive for as long as days outside the host's body, AND, it has more infectious opportunities. THAT is why space-suits and hepatically filtered rooms are necessary to its containment. But even then, it can escape the confines of isolation. The nurse in Spain who was infected admitted that she might have "violated protocol" after leaving the patient's room, by possibly having touched her own face before she was completely disinfected. Even she wasn't absolutely certain of the mechanism of infection in her own case. One of the problems with these things is that there are seldom any 3rd party observers who can actually see and detect the means of transmission when it occurs—so even if it is being second guessed by a trained mind, it is still speculation. When you add up the facts of substandard medical treatment in the countries of origin, substandard medical infrastructure in the countries of origin, and you combine that with native cultural practices which are practically guaranteed to ensure the disease's spread, plus the fact that in the 21st century an airline ticket can put an infected person into any 1st world nation on the globe within a matter of hours, then it was utterly predictable that Ebola would eventually end up in the U.S. and Europe and Australia and Japan and everywhere else.

But until now, Ebola has remained a "3rd world problem", and 1st world populations—despite all of our superior technologies and practices—have remained relatively ignorant about it. Oh sure, we knew of its existence, but not its horrors......in the same way that, until cancer has directly affected your family or loved ones, you can never have more than a detached understanding of it. Now that the Ebola disease has broken out of its African continental confinement, people are afraid and there is a LOT of speculation with precious little knowledge on the part of the general population. The media, with their "if it bleeds, it leads" ethics, does a lot to ensure that this speculation is rampant, and to scare the crap out of people.

Here's the deal..... Ebola SHOULD scare the crap out of you......enough that, instead of simply swallowing whatever the talking heads say, you should do your own due diligence, and then ACT on it. I have done some of that myself. Some of us here are either employed in, have been employed in, or are related or close to people who are employed in the healthcare system. I'm in the second and third groups. I am NOT going to add to the panic by talking about a couple of the things I have been told in private, because they would simply add to the speculation.

However, I AM going to talk about what we—the general public—already know if we do our due diligence.

1. Ebola is blood-borne.
2. By the time the infected person is symptomatic, their frangible tissues (mucosa, liver, heavily vascularized organs and 'other' areas) are already breaking down, and their blood is becoming mixed with other bodily fluids and excreta—i.e. saliva, semen, sweat, tears, urine, feces, etc., etc.
3. That bloody infusion also exists in droplet-borne form as the product of sneezes and coughing.
4. Unlike most other viruses, the Ebola virus can survive outside the host's body for extended periods of at least days (I don't think we actually know how long it actually will survive; we only know how long we have observed it to survive). I don't know the answer yet, but this being Texas, I think it is worth investigating if mosquitos or other biting insects can be a vector. There has been speculation about pets. I don't know if that's a real risk or not, but consider that there are at least two known animal vectors in Africa—monkeys and bats—which can carry it without being sick, and which are sometimes consumed as food and have been known to be sources of infection. I would suspect that if droplet-borne Ebola is a risk on a carrier's clothing, then it is ALSO a risk on a pet's fur if that pet was exposed to the sneezing, coughing, petting, of an infected person. Until it can be demonstrated that pets are not actual host vectors, and not just "surface" carriers, then sadly, euthanizing exposed pets is probably the responsible thing to do. If it can be proven that they merely carry it on their fur, then there is no reason why a good bath in a strongly disinfectant solution won't be enough..........if one has access to such.
5. We know that it is at least possible for a human to be a vector without actually being infected him or herself, simply by having those droplets on their clothing or skin and then coming into contact with another person who manages to somehow ingest the content of those droplets.
6. We know that even though this disease is extremely aggressive and that it takes the healthy as well as the vulnerable. We have extremely vulnerable populations with the elderly and infants who might be at even greater risk. We therefore have a moral burden to be extra careful to protect those of us who are dependent upon the rest of us for their medical well-being.
7. We know that Ebola, much like other extremely virulent diseases, does not maintain its virulence for very many generations before it burns itself out. However, this may irrelevant this time around because of an unhealthy reliance on globally-minded institutions. I do not know if this is authoritative or not (in other words, it could be speculation) but according to a statement on the Gallup polling website:

   http://www.gallup.com/poll/176096/quali ... tries.aspx
   
   Implications
   
   Rather than showing signs of dissipating, the worst Ebola outbreak in history appears to be only spiraling further out of control. Though it took nearly five months for the World Health Organization to declare the outbreak a public health emergency, there are signs that the international community is awakening to the seriousness of the outbreak. Citing the potential for profound political, economic, and security implications, President Barack Obama dramatically upped the U.S. commitment to battle Ebola this week.

   WHY did the WHO NOT declare it a public health emergency for FIVE months? One word: FECKLESSNESS. The larger explanation is that these organizations do not exist to serve mankind; they exist to justify their own budgets. Consequently, until now the rest of the world's nations had not treated Ebola as a serious consideration because it did not directly threaten them. They were content to leave management of global pandemics to an organization more concerned with political correctness, not offending anybody, and promoting whirled peas. As long as Ebola remained confined to subsaharan Africa, the world's nations were content not to invest too much in its eradication.
   
   The sad fact is this: until 3rd world diseases become 1st world problems, they never get eradicated; and then the 1st world panics when those diseases rear up to bite them on the ass.
8. We can no longer afford (G). As a newly minted philosophically libertarian person, I have a slight tendency toward isolationism. But the bitter truth, whether or not I like it, is that this is no longer a subsaharan African problem. It is in DALLAS........Near where I live and MY loved ones live. Therefore, I have to adjust my expectations.
9. Our government categorically refuses to protect our borders, and unlike the days of Ellis Island, the government refuses to quarantine the immigrants it uses as political pawns as it has disbursed them to all 50 states, and then released them into the general population....often without, or with only the most cursory medical examinations. Our government's own representatives—INCLUDING THE VERY AGENCY TASKED WITH CONTAINING THE SPREAD OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES—insist that closing our airspace to commercial air traffic from affected countries would not protect us, and that it would prevent us from sending medical help AND guidance to affected nations.........on the absolutely insane reasoning that being forced to use specially chartered or military flights would prevent them from getting there and back. This has an ominous implication: that protecting the U.S. population from Ebola has become politicized issue.
10. Therefore, our government cannot be counted upon to:
    1. be truthful about it
    2. protect us from it
    3. tell us what we must do to protect ourselves if they cannot protect us
11. THEREFORE: we must protect ourselves, our families, and our communities, in that order. I cannot devote myself to protecting my family if I am sick. I cannot devote myself to protecting my community if my family is sick. It starts with me, and that is not selfish, that is self-sacrificing. It means that I have to make inconvenient choices and adopt inconvenient behaviors so that I can protect myself, so that I can protect my family, and protect my community.
12. You don't have to be panicked to do these things, but you DO have to be irresponsible not to.

The OFFICIAL line is that Ebola is not airborne. But I submit that it is only a semantic difference, and a very small one at that, between "airborne" and "droplet-borne" in terms of a disease which can survive in droplet form for days......in any densely populated area.....like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, etc., etc., etc. The PRACTICAL difference between "airborne" and "droplet-borne" for most of us as we go about our daily business is irrelevant, and responsible people will behave accordingly.

What this means for me is that I have gloves and masks, at home and in my car. I will go about my normal day, but I will be MUCH more attentive about using hand sanitizers, PARTICULARLY after having handled surfaces that have been recently handled by other people. For example: I went to Costco on Saturday, and I totally did not think to sanitize my hands after pushing a shopping cart around, and I DID stop by a couple of the sampling stations and sample something being offered.....without thinking to sanitize my hands which had just been pushing that cart. I have exactly ZERO idea of who had handled that cart before I did. Beginning today, I will be carrying a packet of those Lysol hand wipes with me everywhere. You can take it to the bank that I will be more careful going forward. I'm not really a crowd-friendly kind of guy anyway, but I will be MUCH more likely to avoid crowds going forward. I haven't figured out what to do about church yet, particularly as I am very actively involved in mine, but I will be doing less hugging, and more hand sanitizing for sure. My wife and I have already agreed that we would rather babysit our granddaughter than to have our son and DIL take her to places where she might be exposed, thus freeing them up to do the things they need to do. I will be looking today into getting some of those "baby bags" (I don't know what else they are called) that are like a giant face-mask/bag that you put the infant inside of which gives them the same protection as a face-mask does to an adult. We will be flying to Los Angeles as a family in early December. If this thing hasn't burned itself out by then, I don't care HOW dorky it looks, my family and I will be wearing face-masks on the airplane. I'll never see those other passengers again, so I don't really care what they think about me.

These are all simple strategies which, in the long run, will not significantly impact my life in any kind of negative way, and which, in the short run may save it, or save the life of someone precious to me.

I think that we should all brush aside the panic, BEHAVE as if Ebola is at least some kind of statistical risk to us no matter how small, and take some simple measures to protect our families and our loved ones, because for damned sure, the government is not going to do the things it should do to protect us......because it doesn't want to offend anyone who isn't an American citizen.

[The Annoyed Man]

No it doesn't. Droplets are bodily fluid, and they don't float in the air. They travel out of a sneeze at high velocity, slow down and then drop to the ground.

baldeagle, I'm sorry, but you couldn't be more wrong about droplets. Yes, some will land on the ground. It's really windy at my house today. Some might get carried away to land harmlessly on an oak leaf 3 blocks away, to be irradiated by ultraviolet sunlight until harmless. Some may land on my neighbor's doorknob. A droplet could land in my granddaughter's eye......and she wouldn't even feel it! Some may go straight across the room to be inhaled by my wife. THIS IS EXACTLY ONE OF THE MEANS OF HOW FLU GETS TRANSMITTED! And... you could step where some of those droplets have landed, and because it survives outside the human host for at least days at a time, you track the virus into your grandkids home, where they get into the carpet.......the same carpet your grandkids play on.

I do not say these things to engender panic. I say them so that you will abandon this false argument that Ebola cannot be spread by this means. There are common sense things we can do to avoid it, and we don't have to be crazy paranoid about it, but responsibility dictates that we take them into account in our daily business........for exactly the same reasons we carry a gun. We don't expect to need it, but we want to have it just in case we do. That does not mean you are about to mugged any minute, and neither does it mean that you will be exposed to Ebola any minute.

But I do think you've dug yourself a rhetorical hole here, and you need to stop digging.....if not for your own sake, then for the sake of not disseminating incorrect public health information.

[KD5NRH]

Spanish Nurse only went in the patients room twice both times wore personal protection.

And they now know she contacted the virus by rubbing her face with gloves that contacted infected material. You can't do that. " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And if you're used to working with infection, you don't do that. I'm about as suspicious as if they'd told me a welder absentmindedly stuck the lit torch in his pocket or an electrician just happened to hold the live 480V line in his teeth.

[KD5NRH]

The virus may not be airborne, but the droplets are. [/u][/i][/b]

http://dtolar.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/ ... rspective/

Not arguing, but that contradicts what "they" are telling us... [/quote]

Just wait for cold and flu season when they'll be back to telling us how every sneeze suspends virus-laden droplets in the air for several minutes.

Then think about how dangerous it really is to be in that environment without a fully-enclosed impermeable suit that can be properly sanitized before it's taken off; if the droplets are suspended, any exposed skin or "street clothing" (anything you don't take off as part of the decon routine) can be contaminated. Any contaminated exterior surface getting touched while removing the suit is a problem too. This should be a bare minimum in terms of PPE, but a lot of the photos are showing the Tyvek hoodie with respirator and goggles, (or full face respirator) which leaves exposed skin around the edges, and sometimes no hood, with a cap instead, leaving the back of the neck and some hair exposed.

[baldeagle]

Spanish Nurse only went in the patients room twice both times wore personal protection.

And they now know she contacted the virus by rubbing her face with gloves that contacted infected material. You can't do that. " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And if you're used to working with infection, you don't do that. I'm about as suspicious as if they'd told me a welder absentmindedly stuck the lit torch in his pocket or an electrician just happened to hold the live 480V line in his teeth.

Humans make mistakes all the time. It's not hard for me to believe she would have made a mistake like that. The first day a nurse works in an isolation ward, I'm certain their awareness of protocol is heightened. After days go by and the work becomes routine, not so much.

[baldeagle]

No it doesn't. Droplets are bodily fluid, and they don't float in the air. They travel out of a sneeze at high velocity, slow down and then drop to the ground.

baldeagle, I'm sorry, but you couldn't be more wrong about droplets. Yes, some will land on the ground. It's really windy at my house today. Some might get carried away to land harmlessly on an oak leaf 3 blocks away, to be irradiated by ultraviolet sunlight until harmless. Some may land on my neighbor's doorknob. A droplet could land in my granddaughter's eye......and she wouldn't even feel it! Some may go straight across the room to be inhaled by my wife. THIS IS EXACTLY ONE OF THE MEANS OF HOW FLU GETS TRANSMITTED! And... you could step where some of those droplets have landed, and because it survives outside the human host for at least days at a time, you track the virus into your grandkids home, where they get into the carpet.......the same carpet your grandkids play on.

I do not say these things to engender panic. I say them so that you will abandon this false argument that Ebola cannot be spread by this means. There are common sense things we can do to avoid it, and we don't have to be crazy paranoid about it, but responsibility dictates that we take them into account in our daily business........for exactly the same reasons we carry a gun. We don't expect to need it, but we want to have it just in case we do. That does not mean you are about to mugged any minute, and neither does it mean that you will be exposed to Ebola any minute.

But I do think you've dug yourself a rhetorical hole here, and you need to stop digging.....if not for your own sake, then for the sake of not disseminating incorrect public health information.

It wasn't my intent to claim that droplets were not dangerous but to dispel the notion that they are eternally dangerous. According to my research, Ebola only survives in bodily fluids, other than blood, for a few hours outside the body. Ebola in blood can survive for days. The point I'm trying to make is that, because an Ebola patient was in the mail 2 days ago does not mean you are in danger today, from droplets they may have left behind.

Duncan was in an apartment with three other people. As far as we know, none of those people have tested positive for Ebola yet. So SOME of the fear of Ebola is apparently unfounded.

[G26ster]

baldeagle, I'm sorry, but you couldn't be more wrong about droplets. Yes, some will land on the ground. It's really windy at my house today. Some might get carried away to land harmlessly on an oak leaf 3 blocks away, to be irradiated by ultraviolet sunlight until harmless. Some may land on my neighbor's doorknob. A droplet could land in my granddaughter's eye......and she wouldn't even feel it! Some may go straight across the room to be inhaled by my wife. THIS IS EXACTLY ONE OF THE MEANS OF HOW FLU GETS TRANSMITTED! And... you could step where some of those droplets have landed, and because it survives outside the human host for at least days at a time, you track the virus into your grandkids home, where they get into the carpet.......the same carpet your grandkids play on.

I do not say these things to engender panic. I say them so that you will abandon this false argument that Ebola cannot be spread by this means. There are common sense things we can do to avoid it, and we don't have to be crazy paranoid about it, but responsibility dictates that we take them into account in our daily business........for exactly the same reasons we carry a gun. We don't expect to need it, but we want to have it just in case we do. That does not mean you are about to mugged any minute, and neither does it mean that you will be exposed to Ebola any minute.

TAM, if everything you say here is factual (and I believe it is) then how can simply carrying and using hand wipes and wearing a face mask on the plane (as you stated in a previous post) possibly protect one from this virus? Sure, it might help in a tiny way, but you say, "we don't have to be crazy paranoid about it, but responsibility dictates that we take them into account in our daily business." Well I think based upon what you said here, even being crazy paranoid about it and holing up (ala Howard Hughes) wont protect us. How do we protect ourselves from daily life? How do we protect ourselves from things such as, getting (touching) the mail, eating at restaurants where we don't know the medical condition/sanitary habits/exposure of the food preparer, the server, the previous guests at out table, or walking past other people in town, buying groceries (who touched that product before we did, or sneezed/coughed on the floor we walked on so we track it in the car and in the house and on the rug), and on and on and on. Doesn't seem possible.

Seems to me that taking a "few" non-paranoid precautions like we do to protect from the flu virus, which you says dies almost instantly outside the body anyway, is almost meaningless when it comes to Ebola. I guess we need to change the slogan "always carry, or guess right" to "Hole up like Howard Hughes, or guess right." MHO.

[Keith B]

Nurses dog will not be euthanized (at least for now)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/1 ... =Good+News" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[philip964]

Nurses dog will not be euthanized (at least for now)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/1 ... =Good+News" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thank goodness. She doesn't need bad news now.

http://www.click2houston.com/news/nurse ... u/29092982" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The nurse has been identified.

Way down in the story it says her patient (who if you remember per Jesse Jackson wasn't given good care) was on dialysis and was on a ventilator. Sounds like they did everything but a heart lung machine to keep him alive.

[The Annoyed Man]

baldeagle, I'm sorry, but you couldn't be more wrong about droplets. Yes, some will land on the ground. It's really windy at my house today. Some might get carried away to land harmlessly on an oak leaf 3 blocks away, to be irradiated by ultraviolet sunlight until harmless. Some may land on my neighbor's doorknob. A droplet could land in my granddaughter's eye......and she wouldn't even feel it! Some may go straight across the room to be inhaled by my wife. THIS IS EXACTLY ONE OF THE MEANS OF HOW FLU GETS TRANSMITTED! And... you could step where some of those droplets have landed, and because it survives outside the human host for at least days at a time, you track the virus into your grandkids home, where they get into the carpet.......the same carpet your grandkids play on.

I do not say these things to engender panic. I say them so that you will abandon this false argument that Ebola cannot be spread by this means. There are common sense things we can do to avoid it, and we don't have to be crazy paranoid about it, but responsibility dictates that we take them into account in our daily business........for exactly the same reasons we carry a gun. We don't expect to need it, but we want to have it just in case we do. That does not mean you are about to mugged any minute, and neither does it mean that you will be exposed to Ebola any minute.

TAM, if everything you say here is factual (and I believe it is) then how can simply carrying and using hand wipes and wearing a face mask on the plane (as you stated in a previous post) possibly protect one from this virus? Sure, it might help in a tiny way, but you say, "we don't have to be crazy paranoid about it, but responsibility dictates that we take them into account in our daily business." Well I think based upon what you said here, even being crazy paranoid about it and holing up (ala Howard Hughes) wont protect us. How do we protect ourselves from daily life? How do we protect ourselves from things such as, getting (touching) the mail, eating at restaurants where we don't know the medical condition/sanitary habits/exposure of the food preparer, the server, the previous guests at out table, or walking past other people in town, buying groceries (who touched that product before we did, or sneezed/coughed on the floor we walked on so we track it in the car and in the house and on the rug), and on and on and on. Doesn't seem possible.

Seems to me that taking a "few" non-paranoid precautions like we do to protect from the flu virus, which you says dies almost instantly outside the body anyway, is almost meaningless when it comes to Ebola. I guess we need to change the slogan "always carry, or guess right" to "Hole up like Howard Hughes, or guess right." MHO.

It may not BE possible, but I'm going to try. I don't think wearing a mask all the time is the answer......but wearing a mask in an airplane might be, and people have actually been doing that for years now, so it's not even that unusual. I don't want to minimize Ebola's contagion, but getting it INTO you is a much bigger threat than getting it ONTO you. Some of the people in Africa handling the remains of the dead have caught it, but not ALL of them. That signifies something.

[baldeagle]

It may not BE possible, but I'm going to try. I don't think wearing a mask all the time is the answer......but wearing a mask in an airplane might be, and people have actually been doing that for years now, so it's not even that unusual. I don't want to minimize Ebola's contagion, but getting it INTO you is a much bigger threat than getting it ONTO you. Some of the people in Africa handling the remains of the dead have caught it, but not ALL of them. That signifies something.

I would think you would want to wear googles as well (or some sort of sealed eye protection.)

[baldeagle]

It may not BE possible, but I'm going to try. I don't think wearing a mask all the time is the answer......but wearing a mask in an airplane might be, and people have actually been doing that for years now, so it's not even that unusual. I don't want to minimize Ebola's contagion, but getting it INTO you is a much bigger threat than getting it ONTO you. Some of the people in Africa handling the remains of the dead have caught it, but not ALL of them. That signifies something.

I would think you would want to wear googles as well (or some sort of sealed eye protection.)