So a few months ago the country was enthralled with the idea of a few patients, infected with the Ebola virus, coming to the United States. Up until this point, we had been safe from Ebola due to the fact that bats can’t fly over the Atlantic. Some people were completely indifferent, while others had seen Outbreak one too many times. Most were a healthy mix, somewhere in between, but what bothered me the most was both the lack of education and the poor information that was spreading more virulently than the virus could ever hope to.
First, I want to stress that I am a nurse, not a virologist, and hopefully throughout my post you will see that I am not pretending to be one. I have a Bachelor’s in Nursing and am currently a graduate student. I have worked extensively with Infectious Disease Specialists. I have been exposed to almost every infectious disease known to the modern world. I have taken courses in Biology, Microbiology, Anatomy, Physiology, Pathophysiology, Advanced Pathophysiology, Pharmacology, and an assortment of others. However, I am not and will not pretend to be an expert, just an experienced professional. When it comes to an epidemic of any sort, my first focus is on the patient, protecting and healing them, my second focus is on protecting the community. I don’t care about which strain does what, or what we can do with in lab. As a nurse, I concern myself with the current patient and future possible patients. I feel the first thing we should examine is Ebola itself. It is foreign to the US, both literally and figuratively. What it does to people and how it harmonizes with nature are both things that most westerners have little concept of. It is a virus, not a bacteria. This means that it is not its own organism. It is actually much smaller and basic than you can imagine. It is nothing more than a few pieces of DNA/RNA and some proteins. No cell wall, no cytoplasm, no metabolic functions. This is both their advantage and their downfall. Viruses require a host. For this example I will use the HIV virus. HIV gets into the human body and invades the host’s white blood cells, T4 cells to be exact but I won’t get that involved. The proteins help get the virus into the cell and those few small sequences of DNA/RNA write themselves into the host DNA/RNA. Now instead of the white blood cell attacking invaders, it is nothing more than an HIV factory. All of its metabolic functions are redirected at producing more of the virus, which pours out of the white blood cell like a sieve until eventually the host cell dies. This is why HIV infected patients have poor immune systems. The virus re-writes the DNA of the host cells. This is not something we can stop. New viruses are pouring out of the white blood cells at a rate of millions a day. We cannot filter them out. We cannot “kill” a little chunk of DNA and we don’t know enough about the human genome to correct the DNA sequences. This is why a lot of viral infections like HIV, Herpes, and Hepatitis are life long infections. HIV invades the white blood cells, Herpes invade the nerve roots, and Hepatitis invades the liver.
Now that we have a better grasp of viruses, we will focus on Ebola a bit more. In tropical Africa, Ebola naturally lives in bats. It is nice to the bats and doesn’t cause them many issues. It is rumored that there are many viruses humans carry our entire lives and have no idea because they show zero symptoms. Therefore, they have never been studied. If this sounds crazy, just remember that it was in recent years the we discovered there was a virus behind cervical cancer. A virus that men can carry and spread without ever knowing they have it. Where the problem arises is that in tropical Africa, people like to eat bats. Sometimes they get infected with Ebola and it spreads. This process is called Zoonosis and can be true of bacteria or viruses. Racoons carry Rabies, Armadillos carry Leprosy, Birds carry the Flu, Bats carry Ebola.
When I said Westerners don’t really understand Ebola, the primary aspect that I am talking about is the patient. We don’t ever see what Ebola does. Our media is too censored, we hear how many died, and see people in haz-mat suits. Speaking of suits, we’ve all seen the pictures. Rubber gloves are adequate for AIDS and hepatitis, a simple mask (N95) stops Tuberculosis, but this requires space suits, just keep that in mind when you think its no big deal. So here is what happens when you catch Ebola, I figure you’re getting bored with reading right about now, so I’ll spice it up. First the virus gets into your system, I’ll elaborate on that later. Then, it hangs out for a few days, even up to 21, growing, multiplying at a rate of millions a day, and guess what, you’re infectious. Now at this point it would pretty much require a straight blood to blood interaction so the only real threat here is for IV drug users who share needles. Just like with the flu or hand foot and mouth disease, you can be spreading it to others before you show a symptom*(apparently not many see the *, so please read the elaboration at the bottom). Remember, nurse mind set, protect the community. At first it’s not bad, little nausea, some sweating, diarrhea, much like a stomach bug. But then the virus really starts to build up in your liver and adrenal glands, after it has saturated your blood cells, the lining of your vessel, your skin, and bones. Hepatocellular necrosis occurs, which is fancy term for your liver starts to decompose.Your liver is what regulates blood clotting. This causes your blood either clot up and turn to jelly in your veins, stay liquid and bleed profusely, or a combo of both. The adrenal glands then do the same, causing your blood pressure to drop. This requires lots of IV fluids to keep your circulating volume up. At the same time inflammatory cytokines are released which causes vascular leakage. Cells don’t do a good job of holding things together so it all becomes a bloody goop. Anywhere in your body that blood vessels are shallow, like your nose, ears, gums, throat, GI tract, urethra, vagina, rectum, all start oozing fluids and bleeding because the tissues that normally keep it contained are disintegrating. So now you bleed from every orifice, including your eyeballs. Every time someone or something touches you, your tissue gets damaged which further the cycle, so a shot in the arm can turn into a massive blood blister. Those who survive are left with massive scarring. Since the adrenals cannot keep your blood pressure up, and you are losing blood and fluids, we have to put IV fluids in to keep you out of hypovolemic shock. This in turn reduces your blood concentration, lowering your oxygen carrying capacity, which causes your heart to race. So you lay in bed, oozing fluids from everywhere, all while feeling like you just ran a marathon, with bloody diarrhea, oh and did I mention pain? Lots and lots of pain, but you can’t have any pain medicine because your liver and kidneys have failed. This why it pains me when I see this outbreak ONLY has a 50% death rate, when in Africa it is up to 90%…ONLY 50%. That is literally worse than cancer, and people are blowing it off. Imagine if cancer was infectious, and you lived in a country with zero cancer, and someone thought it would be a good idea to fly a few people in. I think there would be a different attitude.
The biggest part of the discussion is how Ebola is spread. I will say two things on the topic, no, it is not airborne, and yes, basic hygiene plays a HUGE factor. But while on the topic of whether it is or is not airborne, 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, Small Pox, Tuberculosis, Measles. 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. I’m going to digress for a second and get back to HIV and Hepatitis, while I let droplets dwell in your mind. Everyone knows that HIV and Hepatitis are spread by blood contact, and sexual fluids, I don’t mean a drop of blood on the skin, or even a mucous membrane, it has to get INSIDE of you. This is why only gloves are required. HIV and Hepatitis are not found in urine, stool (Some forms of hepatitis are, but you have to eat the stool to get infected) saliva, sweat, tears, or mucous. This is where some viruses are different. The flu gets into your mucous and other secretions, Ebola tends to stay in the blood, but remember, every one of your bodily fluids are full of blood now. So a person with the flu sneezes, and now millions of little droplets (remember those guys?) shoot out of their nose at nearly mach 1, all across the room, same for a cough, all it takes is a little microscopic droplet to land in your eye, nose, mouth, or the unlikely scenario of an open wound, and you’ve now been infected, because you came in CONTACT with their bodily fluids. I see the word contact thrown around a lot, but most people think of mass amounts of contact with blood, but what they don’t realize is that contact also includes microscopic mucous and saliva droplets, each one chock full of Ebola. Bacteria can survive for long periods of time without a host because they are their own organism. They can feed on just about anything and be happy. Viruses lifespan without a host is much shorter. Their goal is to infect, replicate, and spread, if they cant replicate, they die. Measles only lives 2 hours. But Ebola, depending on what data you look at, can survive for several days.
So with all this information, lets have some role play, so that you can see exactly what this means, to a nurse, in the real world. Imagine it as a cheesy PSA or lifetime movie. You go to see your doctor because its that time of year, you need some blood drawn and refills of your blood pressure med. You sit patiently in the waiting room, thumbing a magazine while your 2-year-old plays with her toys. Like all two year olds, she touches everything, and everything goes in her mouth, toys, pens, her own fingers. She is a 22 lb drool factory and you love her to pieces. You see the doctor, get your goodies, and go home. A week later your angel starts vomiting blood and within 3 days she dies because her heart raced so fast it finally gave up while trying to maintain a blood pressure. Her eyes are blood red and demonic, her skin falls off in sheets. What you don’t know is that 3 days before your visit, someone thought they had the flu. It is October you see and they sneezed while thumbing through that very same magazine you thumbed through. The same thumb you grabbed her pacifier out of your purse with in the waiting room. The people caring for Ebola patients wear space suits, and burn the bodies, yet it still spreads. Here in America, we have much better protocols, and much better hygiene. So if it spreads, it will be contained much better. Still, it spreads prior to symptoms and survives will outside the body, just like the flu. Despite vaccines and good hand washing, thousands still get the flu every year. But while the flu kills 1-2% of its victims, Ebola kills 50% on a good day, and spreads the same way. So please, do not write it off as hype. It is a real thing and it is here.
The case in Dallas has been confirmed. The patient had contact with five children and adolescents prior to admission. Those five kids attend four of the largest schools in Dallas. One sneeze and we could already have thousands of people, who don’t know it yet, infected.
Thank you for reading. Please feel free to comment.
Symptoms* I have had a lot of comments in regards to this. I picked my words carefully, but I never imagined getting thousands of views an hour, or my article getting picked apart, but I will try to elaborate now. I said spread, the virus, I did not say you were contagious. What I meant by this, was the summation of two concepts. To fully explain everything I could write a book, but this is meant to be short and sweet. The first concept is that of a fomite. We have established that the virus can survive for an unspecified amount of time outside the host, and we have established that sneezing/coughing is a perfectly logical method of transmission. So if patient A is infectious/contagious, they sneeze on patient B, but then patient B goes home and picks up their sisters 1 6 month old, who rubs his face, and licks all over your shoulder, he could very well have just orally consumed large quantities of the virus, therefore become patient C. Patient B never got sick, the virus never entered their system, yet they are responsible for spreading the virus to someone else. This is why the 5 exposed kids are so important, there may only be a 2% chance or whatever that they’ll get sick, but if they went to school, and each rubbed up against 500 kids in the hallways, you now have 2500 exposed kids, 50 of which will statistically become infected, 25 of which will probably die. No I do not have a source for the 2%, that is just an EXAMPLE number used to represent the relatively low likelihood of contracting the virus if exposed, granted the R0 factor of R2 is correct. Remember, heal the patient, PROTECT the community. The second concept of this is defining “symptom”. Lets assume it means anything other than your baseline condition. That means the first signs of being contagious, are also the more mild symptoms, sneezy, achy, nausea, flu-like symptoms. So who is going to wake up, feel a little under the weather, and think, crap, I have Ebola, better get quarantined, no, THAT’S how you start fear mongering and mass panic. Again, flu season is upon us, the initial stages of Ebola are like the flu, and its human nature to be in denial, so many people, if infected, would hope its just the flu and wait it out, they are not showing symptoms indicative of Ebola, but they ARE symptomatic of something, and therefore, by the CDC definition, would be contagious. Its also normal procedure for people to be symptomatic BEFORE seeking medical care, so technically, everyone will be contagious, BEFORE knowing they have Ebola. But like I said before, I omitted this lengthy explanation because I didn’t feel it was necessary for the point of the article.
ADDENDUM: Sadly, I feel the need to point out that the title of this blog is “Ebola, A Nurse’s Perspective”, not “A Nurse’s Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse”, or “How to Become an Ebola Expert in 15 minutes”. It could just as well be “Hamburgers, A Chef’s Perspective” and no one would be hounding me over grammar, a misplaced comma, or wanting citations as to why I say it should be on the grill 5 minutes per side of 7 minutes per side. The point is those things are irrelevant to the goal of the article, this is MY perspective (a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.) I don’t have to prove anything, the point of my article is to take what the uneducated (in a medical sense) journalists say, what the talking heads on TV say, and then let you know what the people say who are on the front lines. That’s like discrediting your grandads account of what happened when he stormed Normandy beach, because its not what your history teacher told you. Have I experienced Ebola first hand? Nope, have I experienced a WHOLE lot of other things that the majority of the population has not? You bet your ass I have, and I felt the need to take the time to hopefully help other people out a little. So please keep that in mind, I’m not perfect, but my experiences are my experiences, and I wanted to share them with you, to let you inside the head of a nurse for a minute.
dtolar 
public health nursing…being front line in event of public health crisis, communicable disease intervention and investigation….handling of TB cases now seems like child’s play in comparison……..retirement is looking better every day….
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Reblogged this on MomentsbyTy and commented:
Couldn’t have said it better!
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Very well written and honest throughout. I feel better educated by your paper than anything I have heard on CNN. Thank you for taking your time and explaining this in a way a common person can understand. God Bless.
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Awesome article. I appreciate this article and as a nurse feel it is so important and informative that I will be sharing it with all of my nurse friends as well as my family! Cudos to you for such a great explanation of this virus.
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Thank you for sharing…I learned a lot
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Thank you for your time and this great article. Please disregard negativity from other folks and focus on the ones that truly appreciate you taking the time and doing this.
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Faith you Have explained this disease so that anyone who reads will have a better understanding of it. Thank you so much for all this information!
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Who’s Faith?
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I really apprieciate you taking the time to help us have clarity. I have been reading many misleading articles and also extremely helpful articles about this Ebola virus and yours puts the Info In a much easier way to absorb thank you!! You did the right thing sharing your opinion and please just ignore the idiots…
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Thank you for taking the time to help us have a better understanding of these medical issues.
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MY UNDERSTANDING is the virus is not contagious until symptoms are evident. Is this not true?
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Read the * at the bottom of the page
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This was a great article this had a lot of information thatthe goverment wwon’t tell us thank you
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Well said, informative and rational explanation. Please contine to share information. Would like to hear more about PPE requirements for healthcare workers.
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In the U.S. Army, virologists wear positive pressure “space suits” when interacting with level-4 biohazards such as Ebola and Marburg.
The following photo shows a typical level-4 biohazard “space suit.” Note the puffy, inflated look of the suit which comes from the positive pressure air source that keeps the suit at a higher pressure than the surrounding room:
THE PICTURE DID NOT COME OVER.
CDC blames the victim
The CDC, which has remained in a state of dangerous denial about Ebola transmission vectors from the very start, is now blaming the health care worker for the infection.
Without even conducting any investigation of the matter, CDC director Tom Frieden leaped to the conclusion that “a breach in protocol resulted in the second Ebola infection in the U.S.” according to KPTV. [2]
But the press is also reporting that “she was in full protective gear while caring for Duncan.” So instead of admitting that the gear is inadequate for dealing with a level-4 biohazard, the CDC is blaming the victims and implying that they somehow made a mistake.
The CDC remains utterly unable to admit that Ebola requires a level-4 biohazard gear response, which includes full face respirators and positive pressure suits.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047226_Ebola_outbreak_Dallas_health_care_worker.html#ixzz3G29jkme7
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Of course….its always the nurses fault….
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Idk I still believe its an airborne virus. But I enjoyed reading this. You educated me on some things. But my faith is still telling me it’s airborne and people aren’t taking it seriously.
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Great information, I am the DON of a Psych long term care facility and you can bet my next inservice will be on this topic as an education tool. Thank You so much for the information. Maybe you should write for the CDC and more people would understand.
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This is all information I didn’t know. I keep seeing and hearing about Ebola and I knew nothing about it. This was very helpful and informative. Thank you for sharing.
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Next time we need to reject ideological across the board irresponsible budget cuts. As a matter of fact they need to be restored asap. ‘As the federal government frantically works to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and as it responds to a second diagnosis of the disease at home, one of the country’s top health officials says a vaccine likely would have already been discovered were it not for budget cuts. Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, said that a decade of stagnant spending has “slowed down” research on all items, including vaccinations for infectious diseases. As a result, he said, the international community has been left playing catch-up on a potentially avoidable humanitarian catastrophe. ‘ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/12/ebola-vaccine_n_5974148.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063
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Thank you for a well written article.The points in your piece are ones that I’ve been putting together on my own since Ebola came to the U.S. If you’ve had healthcare experience or microbiology classes it’s hard not to connect the dots yourself and come to conclusions that this virus is much more serious and contagious than we are currently being led to believe. Having a son who’s immunosuppressed I’m constantly aware if someone coughs, has a cold or touches things, which is why your article makes perfect sense to me. Until we pay attention to the behavior of others because the life of a loved one is at stake we are blithely unaware of how much contamination happens all the time. Not sure why the attitude toward Ebola should be so lax when all previous evidence of disease transmission points in the opposite direction. Hard to minimize the facts when you know what the numbers and science say about it. Thank you again for speaking up!
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Could not have said it better. Anyone with a fair knowledge of English understands this better. This is the information that the lay man out there needs to comprehend. Again thank you very much for taking your time to explain.
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Your article content is great. However, as a graduate nursing professor, I would like to say your dissemination is also important to ensure credibility. If you are getting nasty comments, that is why it is happening.
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If Africa. Had. Oil, it. Would. Have. Cured. Ebola. Long time ago..
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You have some very basic errors in this post. Ebola is not a DNA virus, but an RNA virus so it does not contain DNA. Also, the CDC states that influenza is spread via airborne transmission, which you appear to not agree with as you also state Ebola spreads via the same route as the flu. Statistically speaking that’s nonsense based on the differing infection rates of the two diseases. I realize this is your own blog and you probably didn’t intend for it to go viral (ha!), but I would expect an infectious disease nurse, with the coursework you listed, to at least be able to do a 30 sec Google search to verify some of their “facts” before throwing them out in cyberspace.
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Joe, I am not a nurse or a doctor. I do not claim to have any medical training. But I do claim to have common sense. From what I can see and have heard, the CDC is attempting, as related to Ebola, to forestall a panic. Since this disease/virus/infection/condition/death sentence has not been adequately studied, they are not totally sure how this disease is, or can be, spread. They have some strongly defensible opinions (mostly backed up with letters after the names of th people espousing these opinions), but very few hard core facts. It may be that you are 100% correct in your assertions, but then again, you may only be partially correct or completely wrong. Statistically speaking, since this is the internet, you are probably full of crap.
What is clearly evident to me is that you miss the point of this article. It was written in such a manner as to inform me, Average Joe, of the danger Ebola poses to the USA. The citizens here should be raising hell with their congressmen and senators demanding steps be taken to prevent, as effectively as possible, additional cases from entering this country. Our entire way of life hangs in the balance. Because we are NOT a third world nation we are far more at risk than Liberia or any of the other African nations. We can move quickly for thousands of miles by plane (Atlanta to LA). We move hundreds of miles a day by car (Atlanta to Birmingham or New Orleans). We travel by buses across town (in Atlanta, that is 50+ miles). All of this is normal, everyday life. In those African countries, the average person never travels 10 miles away from their village in their lifetime unless some fanatic with a machine gun forces them to leave or run to a refugee camp. Just the sheer logistical dissimilarities here should make you readdress your laze-fare attitude towards the “differing infection rates”. The infection rates present in Africa have little to no bearing on the infection rates that are not only possible but probable in the USA if we dont clamp down on this NOW.
However, thanks for your opinion. I do not see it as viable, but thanks anyway.
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Writing for “Average Joe” is not a viable excuse for being lazy in your research and providing inaccurate information to the layperson. It IS a reason to simplify the presentation and avoid esoteric jargon, which is not the same as being inaccurate. As for the research into Ebola, the CDC and USAMRIID have both been investigating it for decades, so assuming just because it’s a Third-World disease that no one has bothered to look into it until now is a bit mistaken. They have also developed protocols for treating patients to avoid contracting the disease, protocols successfully used in decades of treating patients in past outbreaks – hence their assertion that, with a healthcare worker in the US being infected, that there was likely a breach in protocol to blame. It’s not politics or trying to blame the poor nurses, it’s experience with the disease.
Beyond the inaccuracies noted in my original comment, the OP also goes so far as to assert that Ebola can enter humans by eating bats; while there has been evidence of infection found in a species of fruit bat, the virus has not been found in them nor has the OP’s claim that humans can contract it from them ever been proven. As far as your comment about the differences in infection rates between the flu and Ebola, the influenza virus is an airborne virus, so it has a much higher rate of infection than Ebola. That has nothing to do with the location of the disease, but simply the differing routes of transmission. This is all scientific research that you can look up using Google, it’s not classified information. Your fears about it spreading and your proposal for an over-the-top response are not so much constructive as fear-mongering. The most important piece of advice is to avoid contact with bodily fluids of anyone as much as possible, especially someone who appears to be sick.
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This was an excellent read. It’s very informative and more IMPORTANTLY very honest. No one knows everything about everything, but sharing the truth we know is helpful and helps us grow.
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Do you have recommendations for what to do to protect the community against the spread of the virus? Is it to the point where we should not be eating out or going to large gatherings? I understand not wanting to incite mass hysteria, but, from your perspective, what should the community be doing to help prevent this from becoming a pandemic?
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Thank you so much for enlightening the people of our country on how serious this virus actually is.
I just can’t believe how the government has tried to make light of the whole matter. I lived in Zaire Africa in 1976 and 77 and saw first hand how fast this virus can travel. At that time it didn’t even have a name.
It was named after the Ebola River by the natives.
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As a nurse, this was very informative. I feel more educated on the topic than I have since it started. Thank you so much for writing this!
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Thanks for this very helpful article. I’m in a rush this morning and tending not to read long presentations, but this one grabbed me and I’m glad.
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my concern is that the one patient that already died ce onto contact with multiple unsuspecting healthcare workers via a visit to the ER with flu like symptoms days before a return visit and hospitalization. why aren’t we hearing of mass testing being done in that hospital?
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I just have to say that regardless of the positive or negative feedback you get from this blog post, THANK YOU! I for one, am so glad someone sent this to me. So informative and eye opening. Take from it what you will, but let’s just say this, we’ve all been warned.
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Thank you for the information. In addition to protecting our patients and the community, we must protect ourselves and each other. Nurses, do not skimp on isolation procedures when caring for these patients. Also, we nurses need to take care of each other. Check each other and make sure that all garb is put on appropriately. Demand that our hospitals provide us with the correct equipment that is needed to care for Ebola patients.
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I want to thank you for even taking the time, to educate those of us that truly APPRECIATE being given this knowledge!! I’m thankful that I decided to read this instead of passing it up- I was greatly unaware, & was only taking the media’s word… Again, thank you!!
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Thank you for taking the time to present this info.
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I am a nurse as well and work in a high volume, level 2 trauma ED. It’s amazing how it takes a bug like this to increase awareness about simple IC. Issues like reusing the pulse ox probe in triage – now, that simple oversight could carry with it a whole other level of consequences. I wanted to say thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience with the rest of us.
Oh, and I found a source for your statement about fomites and active time of virus:
http://www.msdsonline.com/resources/msds-resources/free-safety-data-sheet-index/ebola-virus.aspx
SURVIVAL OUTSIDE HOST: The virus can survive in liquid or dried material for a number of days (23). Infectivity is found to be stable at room temperature or at 4°C for several days, and indefinitely stable at -70°C (6, 20). Infectivity can be preserved by lyophilisation.
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Just because some one says there are technical discrepancies in the article, it still doesn’t distract the basic info. I now know much more than I did. Thanks for your information. It was very helpful to me.
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I am just a parent of a 32yo and a grandparent now but when pay phones existed I gave my children instructions never to put the phone to their face without wiping it off if they had to use their pant leg to do it. Never put a receiver directly on you face either…..a phobia by many standards but a realist on the home front. I really enjoyed her wisdom and experience thanks so much ❤ Love, Peace, God Bless & Be Well Ev1 ❤
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Thanks so much! A great and informative read! I am a nursing student. Half way through my RN program. Thanks for writing this I will be sharing it with class mates!
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Thanks for sharing and I feel you did an awesome job.
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Very well written. And as a Nurse it is scary that we will be at the front line of this when it reaches our Hospital Unit. Not the doctor’s, not the hospital administration, not Obama…..The Nurse.
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Anyone know the R0 on stupidity? Must be pretty high since this misinformation article has been shared so many times…
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What a vacuous comment! If you’re as smart as you think you are, how about improving the minds of the stupid instead of just being less than one?
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This was a great article, well written and informative. Im not buying into the mass panic like many people, i do recognize that this disease is horrible, but i ask, what are the odds that we would be having so many cases crop up if those 2 infected individuals had not been brought back to this country? I cant help but think it was compeltely irresponsible to bring them here when we had no issue with it. Im sure those people knew they were traveling to a country where such a deadly disease was rampant when they left the safety of our country, they knew they would be at risk, but they went anyway. Im sure it sounds callous and selfish, but they shouldve been left where they were. Because now, not only is it an american concern, but america is also full of travellers. How many people have this virus on their skin and are boarding a plane for the uk? Its not an american concern now, but a global concern, we are a fast paced society with places to be. I will end this comment by saying, i understand americans feel the need to save the world, but we have enough problems here in our own country to contend with, without adding more. If someone chooses to leave for parts unknown to save the poor and starving elsewhere, they should have to undergo testing before coming back to ensure they arent bringing back something that could become a global epidemic.
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Thank you, great information. What was clarified for me is the way Ebola is transmitted, though deemed not airborne, it is, with a vehicle…mode of transmission, namely sneezing…and untrained/uneducated person would think literally….black and white, not airborne…but this is not the case.
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Thank you for this information. You helped explain this in a very real way. I would like to see your article shared with every school, every daycare, every health care facility, every business, and read on every news outlet available, so that the public can actually understand what this virus does and take measures to help protect themselves.
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Thank you so much !!! Am I worried ? You bet !! Do I want to burry my head ? Heck ya!! Truth be told , this sickens me and I can’t stop snooping around to find out what the everyday health workers say about this. I’m leaving for cancun soon and will be stopping for a lay over in Dallas!!! I’m very worried in fact scared to death of getting this horrible thing. What should I do ?? Please help me I’m worried
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This isn’t a mass outbreak, you’ll be just fine going through the airport, I promise.
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Thank you for putting this information out there for those of us who desire more information. My suspicion rose a lot when I heard “breach in protocol”. What the hell does that mean anyway? The doctor at a later news conference finally explained a little about what those words could mean, but I was, and am still, very suspicious. I know they are not telling us enough because they are trying to prevent panic. But knowledge is power and we need to know ALL the facts in order to protect ourselves and others we love. So thanks again for taking the time to give us more information. It seems almost elementary to suggest that if everyone who came into contact with anyone who has this disease would be quarantined for the 23 days. Why not quarantine anyone coming from the African areas for the 23 days? Yes, it would be inconvenient. Yes, it would be difficult. But how many have to become infected before drastic action is taken. Seems to me that if these kind of drastic actions at the beginning had been taken we would have had a much better chance of safeguarding our population. Start the actions where the outbreak first occurred. Not that difficult to figure out to me.
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I have been asking how long it survives outside the body for awhile. I couldn’t find the information either, and I don’t think many people understand how important that information is. Thanks for educating and I am sharing this link.
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There’s so many studies that show different lengths of time in different scenarios, so its hard to tell. Most things I’ve seen that are closest to ambient conditions is from a few days up to a week
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Thank you for a very educational article!
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Really awesome article. Puts everything into perspective and easy to relate to everything else in the crazy world of health care.
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Thank you for this! I am terrified of this and for the health of my friends and family.
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Very well said, thank you for taking time to explain this disease process in a way everyone will understand, all facts and no bullshit, shout out to you and all medical staff who are in front lines actively involve and caring for sick patients, and working on prevention of spreading this dse.
Keep up the great job you’re doing.
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