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Merged So Ebola's back......

casebro said:
Your link was to an outbreak 40 years ago.
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Treatment and mortality hasn't significantly improved. Untreated the Zaire strain has a mortality of ~90%, with support this can be kept at ~70%

casebro said:
But of interest, most cases were caught from other people, with syringe re-use the rest. I had thought it was mostly bat-> people? Or is that something that has changed in the ensuing 40 years?
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In the current, and most past, outbreak the main modality was human to human by contact with bodily fluids, washing of the bodies of the dead and funeral practices in general is a particular hazard though health workers are also at significant risk (the first cases in Guinea, for example, were amongst a doctor's family). The bats are generally the initial point of transfer into the human populace, a reservoir of the virus. It's possible that additional encroachment on the bat habitats has increased the likelihood of initial human infection, perhaps by the small scale mining operations that have sprung up in the Guinea forests (which aren't actually forests but have been a mosaic of forest, savanna, and farmland for at least several centuries) or indirectly by displacing ape populations, which can also carry the virus an infect humans.
 
We should be extremely scared.

However, it's well known that Ebola can't swim, and is allergic to wrinkles (this is why the elderly and people with extensive laugh lines never contract Ebola). I recommend sitting in a bathtub full of water until your fingertips get pruney. Repeat as necessary, and you should be fine.
 
Don't expose yourself to the blood and fecal matter of infected people and you will be fine.
 
Travis said:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/...0878.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000044&ir=Green

When the lead doctor you send in to combat an outbreak dies in the outbreak I get a bit concerned. And there is news other doctors have contracted Ebola in their fight against it.

Ebola is scary stuff. Even with medical treatment it has a mortality rate that is terrifying.
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Which leads to the answer...outside of Africa, not at all.

Someone said there's never been a case anywhere else. Is that true, even with todays jet travel? If so, it's not worth a thought unless you are traveling there.

Planning a trip Travis?
 
It's sad that medical providers trying to care for these people are not safe enough. The same thing happened with SARS and it killed more well trained medical providers than ebola. Even in the best equipped facilities some health care workers and their family members died. It took some time to learn just what isolation measures were needed to protect the workers.

Biosafety Level 4 isolation is extremely hard to carry out, and if you are in a country with little health infrastructure, it's even more fallible.

It's possible there could be an isolated outbreak as more potentially infected people board planes/buses/trains and travel. But no outbreak in any western country is going to affect more than the initial contact cluster because our public health is capable of confining it.
 
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There may not have been an Ebola outbreak outside of Africa, but there have been a few outbreaks hemorrhagic fever caused be a related filovirus (Marburg):

h**p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg_virus
 
zakarpatska said:
There may not have been an Ebola outbreak outside of Africa, but there have been a few outbreaks hemorrhagic fever caused be a related filovirus (Marburg):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg_virus
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Link fixed for you.

We know a bit more about infection control than we did in the 60s. But you never know when the next new pathogen is going to defeat our infection prevention standards.
 
How scared of the Ebola outbreak should we be?

Very scared. And do note that a pandemic could fix global warming at a stroke.
 
Travis said:
Ebola is scary stuff. Even with medical treatment it has a mortality rate that is terrifying.
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Although last I heard, the correct medical treatment is to keep the patient hydrated and hope for the best.
 
If you're someone taking care of an ebola patient, a bit. If you're in an area with an outbreak, a little, but you're probably going to be hit by a car first, or shot. Elsewhere, not much. In order for it to spread really significantly, everybody in the world is going to have to switch to similar really unsafe burial and sanitation practices, and if everyone did that, there would be a lot more things to worry about first.

Notice how outbreaks go in waves. People get scared and get a bit more careful, and it goes away. Then they get sloppy, and it comes back.

Worry more about the outbreaks of easily preventable childhood diseases due to anti-vaccination psychotics, which is governed by the same flaw in human psychology.
 
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epepke said:
...Worry more about the outbreaks of easily preventable childhood diseases...
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No.

Because I have a six-year-old son. He has had all the vaccinations. But if Ebola comes my way, then one way or the other, I might be in a situation where I don't have to worry about easily preventable childhood diseases any more.
 
Farsight said:
No.

Because I have a six-year-old son. He has had all the vaccinations. But if Ebola comes my way, then one way or the other, I might be in a situation where I don't have to worry about easily preventable childhood diseases any more.
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Then stop rolling in blood of contaminated people and manipulating cadaver in unsanitary condition. if you follow those two steps you will be fine.
 
Travis said:
How scared of the Ebola outbreak should we be?
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Not in the slightest. The worst outbreak of Ebola ever has so far killed less than 700 people over the course of 6 months. Influenza kills around 500,000 people every year, and is exactly as easy to treat. Measles kills hundreds of thousands. TB kills millions. Sure, those two have vaccines and are treatable given the resources. Yet vaccines and treatments aren't perfect, the UK had a big outbreak of measles just over a year ago, and TB resistant to most or all antibiotics is spreading. And those are just a few obvious examples off the top of my head.

Ebola is a nasty disease, but it's uncommon and doesn't spread easily. Avoiding contact with infected people's bodily fluids is basically all that is required to avoid catching it. The current outbreak is a problem largely because of the conditions in the area - poor, little medical care, virtually no real borders, and so on. Even if it did spread to other countries, we'd be looking at isolated cases, not a virulent pandemic sweeping the world and wiping out civilisation as we know it.
 
The PRI show, The World, had an interview with folks on the ground over there fighting the outbreak.
Part of the problem is the deep superstition and ignorance of the affected populations.

They think the "Western" doctors and health-care workers have brought the disease with them. They are terrified of the protective gear worn by health-care workers. There is no infrastructure to educate these populations in regards to safety when caring for the affected...

As noted, this disease essentially does not exist in first-world countries.
 
Short answer: not very.
Longer answer: the fear of an outbreak or the response to one outside Africa could do far more harm.
BTW there's another thread on this outbreak where we've been discussing it since March.

casebro said:
Don't expose yourself to the blood and fecal matter of infected people and you will be fine.
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Or tears, or semen. In fact semen remains infective for months after the patient has recovers.
And cannibalism is also out.

Of course a Reston type mutation would change the situation, that incident had some scary possibilities.

Jim_MDP said:
Which leads to the answer...outside of Africa, not at all.

Someone said there's never been a case anywhere else. Is that true, even with todays jet travel? If so, it's not worth a thought unless you are traveling there.
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There have been a few, lab accidents. Geoff Platt was the most interesting as he was walking around London for several days while infectious. He survived. Nadezhda Makovetskaya, who avoided telling her bosses died.

Rat said:
Although last I heard, the correct medical treatment is to keep the patient hydrated and hope for the best.
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Pretty much, there are other supportive measures beyond electrolytes such as coagulants, oxygen, analgesics and treatment for secondary infections.
Platt's treatment, in 1988, used Interferon and serum from an Ebola survivor.

nvidiot said:
Well there's my weekend plans ruined.
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:D
 
catsmate1 said:
...Of course a Reston type mutation would change the situation, that incident had some scary possibilities.
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See for example The Ebola Virus: Candidate for Genetic Mutation?

"It has been speculated that one of the virus' strains--Ebola Reston--has 'airborne' qualities, therefore making it transmittable via, well, air. While many scientists challenge this view and maintain that none of Ebola's four identified strains can be transmitted in such means, it provokes the question: how does a virus that kills its host so quickly ensure its progression and evolution?"
 
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