Dallas Hospital Isolates Possible Ebola Case

[sjfcontrol]

Wonder what happens when the Ebola virus meets and falls in love with Enterovirus.

[Keith B]

It is not easy to catch and you must have direct contact with the individual. The area this comes from has a very poor sanitation standards. Easily passed between people when they have no modern healthcare readily available. I am more worried about the storms coming Thursday and possibly getting struck by lightning.

Not quite accurate. Contact with body fluids is the method of transmission. The infected person doesn't have to be there, just the fluids.

Not something I am normally in contact with from those I don't know. No matter, you must have had some form of contact, it's not an airborn virus. You're not going to get it off of a toilet seat.

[Keith B]

The areas where these major epidemics spread are where the people live in VERY unsanitary conditions. If you have never been around these type places, you have no idea the filth that they live in. Unless you have had face to face or more contact with this individual your chances of contracting this from him is lower than your chance of getting hit by a meteor.

[rbwhatever1]

Wonder what happens when the Ebola virus meets and falls in love with Enterovirus.

[Skiprr]

The thing that's mildly disturbing is that the patient walked into the hospital's ER on Friday. However, early symptoms of Ebola are nonspecific. The hospital sent him home. On Sunday he was transported to the hospital via ambulance, and that's when Ebola was suspected. He evidently left Liberia on September 19, and arrived in Dallas on the 20th, but was asymptomatic until the 24th. So he was symptomatic and not quarantined for four days.

Given the escalating situation in west Africa, I'd think the protocol for anyone showing up in an ER with possible Ebola symptoms and who had been in a hot-spot country within the previous three weeks would be draw blood and test for Ebola. Can't be so many people that testing would be too expensive.

An epidemic in the U.S. is highly unlikely, but shouldn't we try not to turn away people from the ER if they're recently sick and came from Liberia five days before? Isolation without confirmation may be prohibitively expensive, but if you have an address and submit the blood sample, you can send properly equipped personnel to pick him up if the test comes back positive. Just kinda seems like common sense...

(BTW, the Dallas Fire-Rescue ambulance crew that transported the man to the hospital has been quarantined and is being monitored.)

[carlson1]

Copied Rotors post from another thread and it sums it up for me.

The problem with everything the CDC says ( and it all may be true ) is that they can't really say anything that might panic the public. So, hopefully this is a contained case but knowing that they might not tell everything to prevent a panic I can not say with certainty that we can believe anything they say. We will just have to wait and see if any new cases show up. I personally would not be surprised if new cases did show up. The CDC is a government run agency with all of the the imperfections of any government run agency. They couldn't track smallpox or anthrax in their own facility. The infected individual went to a hospital 2 days before and was sent home??? Remind me not to go to that ER.

[txglock21]

Mental note - stay away from other peoples' fluids.

Sorry, but that hit me as funny as heck! Coffee coming out nose is not fun though.

[Cedar Park Dad]

The only way I see to contain Ebola is by closing all flights coming in and out of the areas the outbreak is in.

They would just fly into Mexico and walk across the border. Unless we make some drastic changes there is no containing it.

Er...if you have EBOLA, I don't think you're not going to be walking in from Mexico...

ISIS - risk yes. EBOLA risk from border walkers...low.

[Keith B]

Mental note - stay away from other peoples' fluids.

Sorry, but that hit me as funny as heck! Coffee coming out nose is not fun though.

Ewww, you have fluids coming from your nose; run everyone run!!!!

[KD5NRH]

Mental note - stay away from other peoples' fluids.

Lest you be accused of being part of the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

[esxmarkc]

The only way I see to contain Ebola is by closing all flights coming in and out of the areas the outbreak is in.

They would just fly into Mexico and walk across the border. Unless we make some drastic changes there is no containing it.

Er...if you have EBOLA, I don't think you're not going to be walking in from Mexico...

ISIS - risk yes. EBOLA risk from border walkers...low.

What need to worry about is it being carried across the border in the arms of it's mother as a quarter million people a day flee the epicenter of an unchecked outbreak raging through an impoverished neighboring country.

You need to think bigger here. It made the dreaded "exponential break" last week which means short of an inoculation there is no getting in front of it. It is jumping an order of magnitude per month. If plotted on a log graph there is a clear trend showing it will hit a million cases by years end.

[RoyGBiv]

You're not going to get it off of a toilet seat.

It seems entirely plausible to me that the combination of an unclean toilet (diarrhea from an infected individual CAN contain the virus) and your bare bottom could (not "will" but "could" ) lead to transmission.

[Crossfire]

It is not easy to catch and you must have direct contact with the individual. The area this comes from has a very poor sanitation standards. Easily passed between people when they have no modern healthcare readily available. I am more worried about the storms coming Thursday and possibly getting struck by lightning.

Not quite accurate. Contact with body fluids is the method of transmission. The infected person doesn't have to be there, just the fluids.

Not something I am normally in contact with from those I don't know. No matter, you must have had some form of contact, it's not an airborn virus. You're not going to get it off of a toilet seat.

No, but a person who is sick, and coughing or sneezing, is transmitting body fluids into the air. It is a virus, just like the cold or flu virus. I find it hard to believe that it cannot be transmitted the same way.

[Keith B]

You're not going to get it off of a toilet seat.

It seems entirely plausible to me that the combination of an unclean toilet (diarrhea from an infected individual CAN contain the virus) and your bare bottom could (not "will" but "could" ) lead to transmission.

If you practice proper hygiene you are not going to sit in something like that. This IS the reason the 3rd world countries have epidemics though, as they live in very unsanitary conditions. I have seen some of these remote villages in South Africa and while they do the best they can, the conditions are deplorable. No clean water, no way to bathe or even properly wash hands, etc.

[Keith B]

It is not easy to catch and you must have direct contact with the individual. The area this comes from has a very poor sanitation standards. Easily passed between people when they have no modern healthcare readily available. I am more worried about the storms coming Thursday and possibly getting struck by lightning.

Not quite accurate. Contact with body fluids is the method of transmission. The infected person doesn't have to be there, just the fluids.

Not something I am normally in contact with from those I don't know. No matter, you must have had some form of contact, it's not an airborn virus. You're not going to get it off of a toilet seat.

No, but a person who is sick, and coughing or sneezing, is transmitting body fluids into the air. It is a virus, just like the cold or flu virus. I find it hard to believe that it cannot be transmitted the same way.

Not according to the studies http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-me ... hrough-air" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;