Is anybody really worried about Ebola?

It seems like all hype, I am sorry for the people that got sick but a terrorist threat that could end the world c'mon people.

 

I think one's degree of concern is affected primarily by geography. Right now, here in the Northeast of the U.S., there is not much in the local news, except that two of the Americans who have been infected by Ebola are from this area. One returned to New Hampshire/Massachusetts when he was cured and then sent everyone into a panic when he came down with flu symptoms again and went to the hospital in Worcester. It turned out to be a different flu. The other fellow is currently ill and from Rhode Island, but he is being treated somewhere else in the country.

So, right now, based upon the distance between my community and the disease, I do not have much concern about Ebola. I have stopped flying around the country for business recently, but I might be more concerned if I were on planes all the time.

On the other hand, there is the Enterovirus 68 virus that is going around here and occasionally kills younger children when they catch it and have complications. Most people just get cold symptoms from it, yet some children have gotten polio-like paralysis of the legs and it is not clear that the paralysis is not permanent as was the case with polio. Asthmatic children can have a life-threatening complication. A young, 10-year-old girl who until last week attended our neighborhood elementary school (the same one that my son graduated from last year) died from this virus last week. That threw the town and the school systems into overdrive with health alerts, sanitizing projects, etc. Much higher on the radar screen for us than Ebola, right now.

 

YOu right need more security to prevent spread it on all over the world last week i saw a funny comic cartoon somebody published on daily news paper that a plane leaving from Africa with Ebola virus inside plane..so they try to give a news.. thats all.. but need more preventions​

 

I am somewhat. We are planning to go to Disney in about a month. Now I am double-guessing myself whether or not we should.

 

So.... me and my wife have decided not to go to Disney this year. So, I guess we're worried about this thing. I don't worry about myself per se. I worry about the kids and their well-being. It's not a hype, it's a sobering reality we live in now. If what I hear is true, this virus can spread like wildfire, in a matter of months. I pray and hope it will not.

 

Precaution is always better than cure - why to take chances?

 

As the fatality rate for Ebola is 70% (or higher) and nobody is really sure exactly how it spreads, people should be very worried. If two nurses wearing hazmat suits can get infected, then it seems to me that Ebola can spread much more easily than we are being led to believe. The results could be disastrous.

 

Medicine remains more art than science, even to this day. I am still hoping that the "experts" are right, but there are these troubling signs that could lead one to believe that they are either wrong or lying.

Parsing words carefully is very important with bureaucrats. For example, they have been saying all along that a person must have "direct contact" with a contagious person to catch it himself/herself. However, when you ask the CDC for a definition of "direct contact" they told one reporter that it means that you came within three feet of a contagious person, whether or not you actually touched them or their infamous bodily fluids. That type of bureaucratic wordsmithing during a potential crisis like this is worrisome.

 

Its understandable to be worried you have to put your family first. i would also agree and not participate in the family trip wait for the air to settle on this story and find out what we are facing.

 

Not to say my bullshit alarm is going off, but "cured"

If it was "cured", it wasn't Ebola.

 

A little worried since I'm in West Africa November to December. Not worried enough to stop me going, but the concern is there.

 

You are absolutely right Wisdomtool! One must take care of oneself, in order to prevent himself from Ebola!

 

Wow, good luck with this. I have to admit that I would not be heading in to that geography any time soon.

 

If it spreads far and wide it can be a threat. Many illnesses that were contagious are known to have spread and caused deaths all around the world. Let's hope it is going to be different with Ebola.

 

The latest little tidbit that I learned today is that a recent study suggests that as many as 12% of the potentially infected people released from quarantine after 21 days may, in fact, be infected with Ebola and the symptoms of which will only show up later. This factoid was juxtaposed on the newscast with a video of the family of the fellow who died in Texas as they were leaving their home for the first time in 21 days as the quarantine is now over for them. It looked to be 9 or 10 people heading back into the population...

 

I know I'm a bit of a heretic when it comes to reacting to things -- this whole "don't panic, everything is fine" attitude when it comes to something like Ebola is to me akin to the whole namby pamby nanny state bull that seems damned near everywhere.

There's a meme out there right now, that boils it down to a single question - "have you been in contact with the blood, urine, feces or spit of someone with ebola? No, you don't have it" that I attacked as being the same halfwit bull as it's '80's equivalent: "Are you gay? No, then you don't have AIDS".

Almost immediately a friend said "Well, do you have a better way of preventing the panic?"

PREVENT IT?

We're talking a disease more communicable than malaria, lyme, and AIDS combined (using the same attack vectors) with no known treatment or cure, that results in an agonizing painful death by having your internal organs turned into liquid shit. One good mosquito and tick season mated to a typhoid mary?

MAYBE IT'S JUST ME... but maybe, just maybe panic is the CORRECT reaction?

MAYBE if we had a panic, hospitals would be properly equipped and trained with PPE or at the very LEAST MOPP 4? MAYBE if we had a panic, we'd be screening people coming in from known source countries with more scrutiny? MAYBE if we had a panic, we wouldn't be letting people out of quarantine after 21 days on a disease that has a gestation period of anywhere from two to sixty days?!?

"Well, we're a little over a third of the way past the longest known case of showing symptoms, close enough!" does NOT strike me as sane and rational practice; but maybe that's the engineer in me where you "Mr. Scott" all your time estimates by doubling them. "Ach laddy, ya didnae tell him how long it'uld REALLY take!?!"

There are certain things people seem to think are always bad -- hate, anger, panic -- when to be frank these natural reactions can be far more of a force for good than this lame, limp, soft laissez-faire attitude many people seem to have ingrained into their core.

I think a lot of it goes back to something Lovecraft wrote: "The oldest kind of emotion is fear, the oldest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

Fear can trigger one of two emotional reflexes -- fight or flight -- and it seems most people these days are hardwired for flight, even if said reaction is as effective as an ostrich impersonation. It often seems like people are so unable to accept the reality of a situation they will accept whatever convenient fiction comes along to soothe their fears.

Of course, that's why we have religion and why the majority of sheeple are dumb enough to believe in made up fairy tales. An inability to accept that "we don't know" is a valid answer mated to a cognitive dissonance rooted in ritualistic indoctrination.

I think I'll stop here before I start quoting Dave Grossman's "Of Wolves, Sheep and Sheepdogs".

Still maybe, JUST MAYBE, panic might be the correct reaction?

 

NY doctor has symptoms of ebola...
He is white, so we know he will live....

Why does the US continue to let these people
back in; The us should force them into isolation
from where they come for at least 21 days or
whatever period it maybe...but wait, they do
not catch it until after they have arrived....

The us supports the spread of Ebola!!!

Tell your doctor you are going, and ask for the Ebo shot.
and if I was in charge of the US, then I would make you wait
at least 30 days before allowing you to return, and just in
case, you would be getting more shots....

I have seen 1-2 doctors come back from near death, so
they infact have some type of treatment at the very least;
how proven it is, and if you get it in time is another story....

 

Ebola is pretty freaky. It's kills you quickly (a week or two) and painfully (liquifies your insides) and very contageous (don't be kissing strangers). Just educate yourself on the disease and you'll know why there's panic. Me personally, I think there is legitimate reason to be very concerned and protective about this issue. Panicking is never good because you act irrationally. But when the mortality rate is between 50-90% depending on where you live, and an outbreak would probably decrease quality health care, I would hope anyone would feel to worry about the problem and act to protect the people.

It for sure wouldn't destroy the world though. 10% of people are naturally immune to this disease, so if there was an outbreak and nobody had treatment 10% of the population would survive.

 

It is very serious and very deadly, but the way it's transmitted is just not something you'd need to worry about. It is certainly over-hyped in that it won't cause an epidemic outside of Africa, but is serious in that it's devastating particular African countries.