Anyone else worried about Ebola?

[ray hampton]

Sure larry, I understand no one is asking you. No one is asking any of us. That doesn't mean we can't have a discussion and try to educate ourselves. I see it as information exchange and discussion - pardon the title but you know what I mean.

Anyway - more recent news:
"The spread of Ebola in Europe is "unavoidable", the World Health Organization said shortly after the contraction of four new cases was announced in Spain.
“Such imported cases and similar events as have happened in Spain will happen also in the future, most likely,” the WHO European director Zsuzsanna Jakab told Reuters.
On Monday scientists predicted that there was a 75 percent chance that Ebola would reach France by the end October and a 50 percent chance for the UK.

I guess that's why I care. Its not just a west Africa problem anymore if you believe the WHO

"

there is one detail that do not worry me BUT IT SURE CONFUSE ME, why is this a West Africa problem and not a problem for the whole nation of Africa

[paul cottingham]

there is one detail that do not worry me BUT IT SURE CONFUSE ME, why is this a West Africa problem and not a problem for the whole nation of Africa

Exactly. If it was as contagious as the fear mongers think, Africa would be completely depopulated by now.

[David Weaver]

Sure larry, I understand no one is asking you. No one is asking any of us. That doesn't mean we can't have a discussion and try to educate ourselves. I see it as information exchange and discussion - pardon the title but you know what I mean.

Anyway - more recent news:
"The spread of Ebola in Europe is "unavoidable", the World Health Organization said shortly after the contraction of four new cases was announced in Spain.
“Such imported cases and similar events as have happened in Spain will happen also in the future, most likely,” the WHO European director Zsuzsanna Jakab told Reuters.
On Monday scientists predicted that there was a 75 percent chance that Ebola would reach France by the end October and a 50 percent chance for the UK.

I guess that's why I care. Its not just a west Africa problem anymore if you believe the WHO

"

so, in my day job, I deal with probability a lot. When I see lines like "a 75 percent chance that it will reach __ and __" kind of thing, I wonder what they're doing to model that and what the accuracy is.

when it comes back to us, though, it really is whether or not we or someone we know will be affected, and we substitute headlines like "75 percent chance that it will come to spain (which is already probably part of a very loose confidence interval)" for "75 percent chance that it's a lot more likely to affect me".

But there is no such link that's actually there. I literally would wait until it was in my neighborhood before i would worry about it. At this point, if you don't touch fresh bodily fluids or someone who is symptomatic, it doesn't appear that transmission is occurring or is remotely likely to occur. When they ask people and 10 percent say they have no idea how they got it and they don't recall touching bodily fluids, it's likely that most of those folks touched bodily fluids or bodies and:
* don't remember
* don't want to admit to doing something stupid that people told them not to

A Dave A. mentioned, there are many things that materially affect us, and worrying about things that don't materially affect us is sort of like allowing part of our lives to be robbed from us little bits at a time.

As a perpetual worrier, in the last 5 years, I've made a conscious effort to not allow myself to worry about something if I am not actually doing something about it at the time. If it doesn't spur you to do something, then it is like good intentions without action.....

I think worry must be a natural mechanism to keep us on guard, even when it's irrational, but it's rational to turn it off most of the time, and focus on action or improvement instead.

[Mark Bolton]

Exactly. If it was as contagious as the fear mongers think, Africa would be completely depopulated by now.

Wow.. they must really put the fire on a sneeze over there?!? So you mean a person with Ebola lets off a sneeze and its suppose to make it to the southern tip, the eastern coast, and the northern most reaches of an entire continent in a matter of months?

It just goes to show that we have absolutely zero comprehension of what it is to live within the confines of a few acres of land for nearly our entire lives. Much of the world (and our country for that matter) are simply NOT mobile. They stay in close. Which in this case is a very good thing.

This reminds me of stories I heard when I moved here to WV. The older people (perhaps in their 60s now) talk openly about the fact that they lived their entire lives "on the farm". There are small one room schoolhouses up and down my road (9 miles long) to this day because population was higher but people schooled and lived very close to home. There are two old country store buildings in that 9 mile stretch and one at the end of the road. This meant no one had to travel more than 2.5 to 4 miles to get supplies. They talked that traveling to the store at the "END" of the road (9 miles for the farthest resident) was a MAJOR affair. That traveling to the state capital (40 miles away) was an all day event and many say that until they were much older then simply never got off the road. They lived and breathed every day of their lives in a couple mile radius. And this was not back in the "old days". Were talking the 40's and 50's here.

Some of the parts of Africa are more like native American times, before we even came along.

Its just comical to me how we are so unable to put ourselves in other situations and spend just a few seconds thinking through the notion that there are places in this world (many, and many here in WV) where mobility is simply not what you would think.

[Jim Matthews]

Let me ask you if you think that the Ebola strain we are dealing with can be passed via mosquito or biting fly? If what it takes is bodily fluid, that seems a likely way to pass the disease, much like malaria I think it was.

I do agree, that in places like west Africa where hygiene is less than desirable (due to lack of clean water for example) then containing a disease like this is impossible. But, take a look at the good old USA and men in public restrooms, I'd hazard a estimate that more than 1/3 don't wash their hands - there you go for disease spreading mechanism right here. Makes you sick just thinking about it.

I don't care to speculate above my paygrade.

I may be among the rare American, still believing what credentialed experts say.

If YOU wash your hands with soap and water, or use the most basic disinfecting procedure - dilute bleach in water -
your risk from this, or any other communicable disease drops below that of lightning strikes.

There's a reason that viruses like this are common in warm, wet places and rare in Minnesota.

Maybe tonight isn't the best night to watch "The Andromeda Strain" or "28 days later".

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/...tober-2014/en/

[Dave Anderson NH]

It's been a long time since I had a course in epidemiology but here are a few general guidelines for multiple contagious diseases.

1. The disease has to first have a host or several hosts which it doesn't kill and which provide nourishment in order to have long term survival.
2. Whether by aerosol or bodily fluid contact (of any type), the disease must be robust enough to survive in its chosen environment.
3. To eradicate or mostly eradicate a disease the best chances for success are finding and isolating or destroying the vector.
4. A disease moved to any environment other than its native one will either have to find a new host in that environment, mutate (adapt) to the new environment, or die out in the new environment.

Just as a point of reference, Ebola is only one of a class of diseases in the group known as hemorrhagic fevers.

[paul cottingham]

Wow.. they must really put the fire on a sneeze over there?!? So you mean a person with Ebola lets off a sneeze and its suppose to make it to the southern tip, the eastern coast, and the northern most reaches of an entire continent in a matter of months?

It just goes to show that we have absolutely zero comprehension of what it is to live within the confines of a few acres of land for nearly our entire lives. Much of the world (and our country for that matter) are simply NOT mobile. They stay in close. Which in this case is a very good thing.

This reminds me of stories I heard when I moved here to WV. The older people (perhaps in their 60s now) talk openly about the fact that they lived their entire lives "on the farm". There are small one room schoolhouses up and down my road (9 miles long) to this day because population was higher but people schooled and lived very close to home. There are two old country store buildings in that 9 mile stretch and one at the end of the road. This meant no one had to travel more than 2.5 to 4 miles to get supplies. They talked that traveling to the store at the "END" of the road (9 miles for the farthest resident) was a MAJOR affair. That traveling to the state capital (40 miles away) was an all day event and many say that until they were much older then simply never got off the road. They lived and breathed every day of their lives in a couple mile radius. And this was not back in the "old days". Were talking the 40's and 50's here.

Some of the parts of Africa are more like native American times, before we even came along.

Its just comical to me how we are so unable to put ourselves in other situations and spend just a few seconds thinking through the notion that there are places in this world (many, and many here in WV) where mobility is simply not what you would think.

Uh, you are missing the point of my post. And I actually do have a pretty good idea about what Africa looks like. I am saying that Africans may not be all that mobile, but there are still plenty of people who are, that could spread Ebola around like a rocket. Except that 1) it kills too fast, 2) it not airborne 3) it makes people too sick, too fast, (especially low mobility people) to spread that quickly.
look at AIDS. It has decimated subsaharan Africa. My church has built several orphanages mostly populated by babies whose parents have perished from aids. But it sickens slowly. So people have plenty of time to spread it. And mobility is good enough that it has spread throughout Africa.
so if Ebola was that deadly, and infectious, it would be all over Africa.

[David Weaver]

Some broadcasters or bloggers go out of their way to make up incredible linkings between imagined conspiracies and actual events. The sad part is at anytime at least 25% of our population take what these lords and ladies of artistic bull shoveling as the gospel truth. "If xxxx said it, it has to be true." Now if I could just convince them that xxxx wants them to buy my bridge...

Those blog type issues are easy for me to avoid, personally. If I notice a site that does that even once, I cross it off of my list.

More concerning is that the factual accuracy of the actual main news houses has not improved despite the fact that it is a lot easier for most of us to do fact checking now. 25 years ago, what fact checking was there to examine the level of credibility of the national news? The anchors took themselves very seriously back then, but they also had the problem of thinking that the news was a trademarked event of theirs, and that they added something to it other than transmission (they did add something...bias).

I challenge anyone who feels the news goes biased one way or the other to do a thorough review of all of it. And now it's half news half marketing. I want the news as a news consumer, not what someone has computer optimized to sell the most ad time or make the most loyal viewers. If I watch the news at all now (which I generally don't do) it's generally the english speaking news from foreign countries (like NHK).

The rest of the stuff, it helps to have a healthy amount of skepticism for anything that doesn't pass the smell test.

I've seen a lot of stories lately about "researchers worry ebola could go airborne", or "researchers worried that ebola may transmit easier than thought". Those stories do nothing unless someone actually knows something and can prove it. They're chosen because they generate more clicks than "ebola situation same as yesterday....wait a few days and check in again then to see if it's changed".

We have been sold trash on TV because the viewership of it has dropped and the networks have realized that with whatever is left on TV, they can get non-actors and non-writers to make something for 1/3rd of the production cost.

[Scott Shepherd]

And fresh off the L.A. Times press, experts, qualified experts on the subject saying they have no idea how it spreads. A lot of what they say is the same thing the guy said on the radio that I mentioned. One of the guys ran test on monkeys and they said they didn't exactly know how it was spreading, but in the end, it spread so fast, they had to kill all the monkeys to stop it.

Humm....experts saying the same thing the guy on the radio said......go figure. I guess they are just looking for media attention too. A lot of what's been said is contradicted by this article today :

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...ry.html#page=1

[David Weaver]

That is not a west african ebola, it's an asian strain, it's already covered on wikipedia and it's not new. The article states 1989 - one would have to wonder why it didn't infect the researchers who were exposed - the article in the current newspaper appears to be edited to drive readership more than to inform. Here's what else was said about the small strain that was in the apes (from wikipedia):

Airborne transmission has not been documented during EVD outbreaks.^[2] They are, however, infectious as breathable 0.8– to 1.2-μm laboratory-generated droplets.^[28] The virus has been shown to travel, without contact, from pigs to primates, although the same study failed to demonstrate similar transmission between non-human primates.^[29]

[Phil Thien]

Uh, you are missing the point of my post. And I actually do have a pretty good idea about what Africa looks like. I am saying that Africans may not be all that mobile, but there are still plenty of people who are, that could spread Ebola around like a rocket. Except that 1) it kills too fast, 2) it not airborne 3) it makes people too sick, too fast, (especially low mobility people) to spread that quickly.
look at AIDS. It has decimated subsaharan Africa. My church has built several orphanages mostly populated by babies whose parents have perished from aids. But it sickens slowly. So people have plenty of time to spread it. And mobility is good enough that it has spread throughout Africa.
so if Ebola was that deadly, and infectious, it would be all over Africa.

There are a ton of travel restrictions there (Africa) due to the Ebola outbreak(s).

[Mel Fulks]

Few years back on TV they had some Ebola commercials ...guy yelling EBOWLAWWW! through a trumpet -megaphone thing. Said it would stop your coughing. Well, I call that deceptive !

[Jim Matthews]

We celebrate our unwashed Mass annually,
to honor St. Francis of Assissi.

We like to do it in the Spring, when the wind is blowing.

[Jim Matthews]

Don't take it personally.

My BIL is NIOSH.
You should hear the abuse he fields.

Not that anyone accusing him of malfeasance has a clue what he does.
(Epidemiology)

Never play Scabble with a PhD.
They'll cheat, and you'll never know.

[Jim Matthews]

That is not a west african ebola, it's an asian strain, it's already covered on wikipedia and it's not new. The article states 1989 - one would have to wonder why it didn't infect the researchers who were exposed -

Don't confuse the conspiracy nuts with factual analysis, dates and citations.
It just makes them more suspicious and jumpy.

There are some lost causes, with nothing better to do than try
to turn this otherwise useful site into Conservative Redoubt Abjuring Probability.