posted
The incubation period is fairly well documented at this point. Somewhere between 5 - 21 days before symptoms emerge. There has within the last day or so there is some talk of it perhaps being longer than that in some cases.
At this point we are dealing with a new, never before seen, Ebola. So who really knows?
Posts: 2965 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
And the nurse that flew from Cleveland to Dallas had a low grade fever, 99.5 I think I read, when she boarded the plane. Gee, I wonder if maybe she coughed/sneezed into her hand or wiped a watery eye before handing her bags over to the baggage handler. Or bought a latte and handed a 10 spot to the airport Starbucks employee.
It's chit like that that's going to expose the world when the real Stephen King like killer virus comes along. My guess is that Ebola is going to be contained and eventually disappear like it has in the past. Look to the corona viruses as the ones that will eventually take us out.
Posts: 5729 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
We could be fugged. It's almost time to go live in a school bus down by the river. No human contact sounds like a good thing to me.
Posts: 5729 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: Sep 2003
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It's almost as if the administration is doing everything in its power to spread a panic (come to think of it, when is the last time there was any Ukraine civil war coverage, or ISIS for that matter?).
While one of the big Ebola updates overnight, in addition to Obama being open to appointing an Ebola czar - because clearly the CDC is unable to handle the epidemic, best to have one on top of it all -is that some schools in Ohio and Texas are closed today after students’ potential exposure to a nurse with Ebola furthered fears of the disease spreading, this is nothing compared to the just released revelation that a health care worker who may have handled a specimen from the Liberian man who died from Ebola in Dallas is on a cruise ship in the Caribbean.
Just in case an Ebola-infected nurse traveling coach cross country doesn't do it?
From USA Today:
Industry giant Carnival says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified it late Wednesday that a passenger on the Texas-based Carnival Magic was a lab supervisor at the Dallas hospital where Thomas Eric Duncan died from the disease earlier this month.
Carnival says the unnamed woman has been placed in isolation on the ship and has shown no signs of illness.
"At no point in time has the individual exhibited any symptoms or signs of infection, and it has been 19 days since she was in the lab with the testing samples," Carnival says in a statement sent to USA TODAY. "She is deemed by CDC to be very low risk."
The Carnival Magic is one of the largest cruise ships in the Caribbean with a capacity for more than 4,000 passengers. It sails with more than 1,000 crew members.
Carnival says it in close contact with the CDC, and "at this time it has been determined that the appropriate course of action is to simply keep the guest in isolation on board."
posted
Bammy will welcome them back personally with hugs and kisses, all while feeling safe. He will then demand they all visit the local mall and spend time offering free hugs to anyone near.
quote:Originally posted by Relentless.: Bammy will welcome them back personally with hugs and kisses, all while feeling safe. He will then demand they all visit the local mall and spend time offering free hugs to anyone near.
Should be fine
how else can he get America to come up with the cure?
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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As if there was any $$$ left in the tub to begin with.
Of course they can do better.
-------------------- All post are my opinion. Do your own DD. Who's clicking your buy/sell button!? Posts: 7800 | From: Virginia | Registered: May 2006
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posted
that actually makes me feel a little better boodog.
this is not a drill. the military at least has enough discipline to deal with this. the discipline within the civil service has become nearly non-existent in the last decade or two. You won't find the military people on cruise ships ten days after possible exposure... the two man rule is pretty much etched into military consciousness, etc...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
without getting into a long post about a historic past going back as far as antiquity we have come out of every epidemic. ebola has been around for forty years.
most recent epidemics have been the Spanish flu and polio all looked like the end could be near. Guess what we are here.
Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
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posted
whole towns died in the spanish flu ray, 'we' as you say represent the lucky ones who either thru genetics or geographical accident are still here..
ebola is scary because it has a high death rate, as we now know it is not particularly contagious- this is proven by the fact that patient 0 (Duncan) was in an apartment with his family and none of them got sick...
there is always a wierd relationship between parasites and their hosts. yeah viruses parasitize us, even thou we don't actually call them parsites... a parasite that kills it's host too quickly is actaully a failed parasite... they need a chance to distribute themselves forward thru time & space...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:Originally posted by raybond: without getting into a long post about a historic past going back as far as antiquity we have come out of every epidemic. ebola has been around for forty years.
most recent epidemics have been the Spanish flu and polio all looked like the end could be near. Guess what we are here.
Spanish flu mortality rate was 2.5%. Polio mortality rate was 15 - 30%
Posts: 2965 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
that depends on how you cacklack the death rate....
of the people who got the Spanish flu the death rate was 10% to 20%.....
it killed 50 to 100 million people between 3 and 5% of the world population...
the reason that "so few" (as opposed to a Stephen King type flu) died had nothing to do with human intervention either... it just mutated away from it's lethal phase...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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Typically any virus does not want to kill the host. That serves no purpose for the virus.
Bowler started out at 90% mortality.
It's hovering somewhere between 50 and 70%... No way of truly knowing at this point because we are in the midsts of it and not everyone that will die has died.
As far as it's legs here in the states? Jeeze, I don't know. I've flip flopped my thinking quite a few times as events have transpired. I'd like to think our medical resources and the elevated average IQ over the West African nations would limit it's spread. Then I watch as two unshielded janitors with a hose spray ebola stricken vomit off a sidewalk... Right in front of people walking by.
I watch as an infected nurse hops on a plane and goes to a wedding..
posted
Thucydides description of the epidemic that shook athens Greece in 430 bc and forever changed the course of history.
Thucydides himself suffered the illness but survived. He was therefore able to accurately describe the symptoms of the disease within his history of the war. As a rule, however, there was no ostensible cause; but people in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath. These symptoms were followed by sneezing and hoarseness, after which the pain soon reached the chest, and produced a hard cough. When it fixed in the stomach, it upset it; and discharges of bile of every kind named by physicians ensued, accompanied by very great distress. In most cases also an ineffectual retching followed, producing violent spasms, which in some cases ceased soon after, in others much later. Externally the body was not very hot to the touch, nor pale in its appearance, but reddish, livid, and breaking out into small pustules and ulcers. But internally it burned so that the patient could not bear to have on him clothing or linen even of the very lightest description; or indeed to be otherwise than stark naked. What they would have liked best would have been to throw themselves into cold water; as indeed was done by some of the neglected sick, who plunged into the rain-tanks in their agonies of unquenchable thirst; though it made no difference whether they drank little or much. Besides this, the miserable feeling of not being able to rest or sleep never ceased to torment them. The body meanwhile did not waste away so long as the distemper was at its height, but held out to a marvel against its ravages; so that when they succumbed, as in most cases, on the seventh or eighth day to the internal inflammation, they had still some strength in them. But if they passed this stage, and the disease descended further into the bowels, inducing a violent ulceration there accompanied by severe diarrhea, this brought on a weakness which was generally fatal. For the disorder first settled in the head, ran its course from thence through the whole of the body, and even where it did not prove mortal, it still left its mark on the extremities; for it settled in the privy parts, the fingers and the toes, and many escaped with the loss of these, some too with that of their eyes. Others again were seized with an entire loss of memory on their first recovery, and did not know either themselves or their friends. (trans. R. Crawley, in M. I. Finley's The Viking Portable Greek Historians, pp. 274–75) Titus Lucretius Carus provides a second historical description in his verse treatise on Epicureanism On the Nature of the Universe, the final section of which (bk. 6, lines 1090 ff.) deals with (inter alia) disease. In this he provides a graphic description of the symptoms and effects of the Plague of Athens. Although Lucretius' description generally matches closely that provided by Thucydides, the former identifies a further symptom of the disease, which, he states, accompanies the ulceration, setting in around the eight or ninth day (6.1199–1203): If any thenHad 'scaped the doom of that destruction, yetHim there awaited in the after daysA wasting and a death from ulcers vileAnd black discharges of the belly, or elseThrough the clogged nostrils would there ooze alongMuch fouled blood, oft with an aching head.(Viewed at http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/book-vi-part-04-the-plague-athens/ on 15.11.12) The inclusion of the detail of "black discharge[s] from the belly" (nigra proluvie alvi) and nostrils suggests hemolyzed blood of gastrointestinal tract hemorrhages and is perhaps more suggestive of a Hemorrhagic Fever than Typhus or Typhoid (see Cause of the plague, below).
Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
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By David Templeton / Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Severity of the upcoming influenza season could hinge on our old acquaintance H1N1, the virulent strain that caused 13,000 deaths during the 2009 pandemic and has made an appearance each flu season since then.
Many people have developed some immunity to that strain, but if it mutates into a more contagious, deadly strain, another pandemic is possible, health officials say.
Rick Zimmerman, a professor in the University of Pittsburgh department of family medicine, said the big question this year is, “Did H1N1 change?”
There’s no proof of it yet, “but if it is proven that it has changed — and that’s the pandemic H1N1 virus of 2009 — we might have real concern about a flu outbreak,” he said. “I’m anxious to see what happens.”
Health officials and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are recommending people get immunized as soon as vaccines are available and by October at the latest to reduce infection risk. Some drug stores already are advertising they have the vaccine.
The CDC recommends the live attenuated nasal spray vaccine for children ages 2 to 8 and the quadrivalent injected vaccine for everyone older. Some health officials, however, are recommending the high-dose trivalent vaccine for people 65 and older, on claims that it’s more effective for that age group, although CDC doesn’t currently recommend it, said Amesh A. Adalja of the UPMC Center for Health Security and member of the public health committee of the Infectious Disease Society. He presented a lecture to doctors last week at UPMC Shadyside on the flu, treatments and trends to doctors.
This year the vaccine is identical to last year’s with a focus on H1N1 and a less virulent but ever persistent H3N2 strain, along with the two B-strains of Yamagata and Victoria lineages, but a mutated version of H1N1 is what health officials say they fear most because of the risk of another pandemic, with ultimate concern that the virus returns to the H1N1 strain that caused 675,000 American deaths in 1918.
Consider that the national population then barely topped 103 million, which means one of every 153 people died, mostly from secondary pneumonia and other complications, Dr. Adalja said.
Flu strains routinely mutate, with some mutations leading to more virulent strains.
“Everyone is worried about H1N1 that started in 2009,” said Kelly Stefano Cole, a University of Pittsburgh associate professor of immunology and co-manager of Regional Biocontainment Laboratory in the Pitt Center for Vaccine Research. “As it passes through people, it changes, and that’s the history of the flu. The changes make it more resistant to the vaccine, and it only takes one change for it be recognized as a new strain that can be more transmissible and pathogenic.”
Another concern is the avian (bird) strain, H7N9, which first appeared in March 2013 in China. Of 132 cases, 37 people died. Most had chronic health conditions, but it represented a 28 percent death rate. For now, the World Health Organization reports, H7N9 is transmitted mostly from birds to humans who raise and handle chickens or other fowl. Should it develop a better means of transmission, from human to human, a health crisis would emerge.
Flu-season predictions rarely are accurate, Dr. Zimmerman said.
Clues to what might occur are limited to flu strains now existing in the Southern Hemisphere, where winter and the flu season are winding down, and flu strains in Asia. Health officials south of the equator “are seeing a very severe flu season,” Dr. Adalja said.
Last week, he advised physicians to prescribe more readily the antiviral medication, Tamiflu, especially for pregnant women, who have a significantly greater death rate from flu infections.
He also said physicians should prescribe Tamiflu even if the patient has had symptoms beyond the cutoff point of 48 hours. “You should give the antiviral medication no matter how long out the patient is, and not just limit it to the first 48 hours,” he said.
Dr. Adalja also said a person becomes contagious one day before symptoms appear, which helps explain why the flu is readily transmitted person to person.
David Templeton: dtempleton@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1578.
Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
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quote:Originally posted by raybond: but if it mutates into a more contagious, deadly strain,
A virus rarely mutates into something more deadly to the host. It serves no purpose for the virus. If the host dies, the virus dies.
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posted
There is no doubt in my mind that things could get out of control.
Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
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quote:Originally posted by raybond: There is no doubt in my mind that things could get out of control.
Hope and change...bring them over here for treatment. Send troops over there. No quarantine unless for troops and not aid workers. Gotta love your man.
Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
i read this back in '01 just before 9-11...
The Soviet Union was firmly dedicated to weaponizing the Marburg virus in order to unleash a deadly plague in populated enemy centers. Ken Alibek, in Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World -- Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It, describes
Marburg is similar to but worse than Ebola,....
"The mysterious virus appeared to liquefy body organs. One of the survivors went mad after the virus chewed away his brain cells. Before the victim dies, every inch of their body was wet with blood." Some scientists fear that many cases of Marburg are currently being misdiagnosed as Ebola, leading some to fear that arthropods may be partly responsible for the current filovirus outbreak.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
It's possible, although the Liberian strain didn't seem to produce as much of the bleed out that was typically associated with bowler.
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posted
the biggest concern should be whether or not terrorists have the capabilities to take advantage of the current outbreak in the same way the Russkies wanted to.
there is some significant movement in the entomologic community to ID possible arthropod carriers and or reservoirs... there may some news on that forthcoming in th enext two weeks....
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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