Ebola outbreak, and other potential epidemics

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 01 Oct 2014, 15:50

When it comes to gun safety in the US,
I'm reminded of the recent cop car video showing a vehicle pull into a service station, followed by the cop. Pulled over, suspected of not wearing seat belt. Driver gets out, cop gets out, calls to the driver to show his driver's licence. Driver leans over and puts hand in cabin, cop fires 4 shots at 5 metre rage , hitting driver in hip once. Driver falls over, says 'Why did you do that? I was doing what I was asked'

I need hardly mention the driver was black, the cop white.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 01 Oct 2014, 15:56

snow hope wrote:
biffvernon wrote:When an ebola case comes to the UK, talk of people threatening to shoot each other just would not happen. Folks are more likely to say, there now, you sit down here while I call an ambulance and put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea.
This is not at all true - out of touch imo. People will be just as likely to be extremely fearful of Ebola if it spreads to the UK as anywhere else in the world....

Fearful yes, but they wouldn't have a gun so they find three quick excuses to keep a safe distance.

1. You sit right down and don't move.
2. I'm going to back off to reach for my phone to get an ambulance.
3. I'm escaping to the safety of my tea-making room.

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 01 Oct 2014, 16:03

biffvernon wrote:
vtsnowedin wrote:This includes 200,000 incidents of women defending themselves from sexual assaults.
What a lot of sexual assault there are in the USA.

However do we manage in Britain, where there are approximately zero cases of women defending themselves with a gun from sexual assaults?

When an ebola case comes to the UK, talk of people threatening to shoot each other just would not happen. Folks are more likely to say, there now, you sit down here while I call an ambulance and put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea.

Actually your rates are much higher then the US. Consider that the 200,000 figure above is for assaults defended against and not actual reported as rapes , The reported rapes is some 85,000 for a population of over 300 million. Now look at your UK figures.
http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/Statistics2.php

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 01 Oct 2014, 16:24

It looks like the outbreak in the Congo is being kept under control, with only 42 deaths and 30 confirmed as ebola. Hopefully it will be officially over in a month or two.

Post by **mikepepler** » 01 Oct 2014, 16:35

Looks like the US health system is not quite as watertight as they'd like to think, based on the reports about the infected person there:

A man who had Ebola but didn't know it walked into a Dallas emergency room September 26. Although his symptoms could have indicated Ebola among other things, no one at the hospital asked him if he had recently traveled, a source close to the case told CNN.

The man, who had just flown from Liberia to the States didn't offer the information either, the source said, and the man left the hospital.
...
Paramedics who transported the patient to the hospital have been isolated, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings' chief of staff said. They have not shown symptoms of the disease so far, Frieden said.

The ambulance used to carry the patient was still in use for two days after the transport, city of Dallas spokeswoman Sana Syed said.

But she emphasized that the paramedics decontaminated the ambulance, as they do after every transport, according to national standards
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/01/health/ebola-us/

So, we had:
- staff forgetting to think about Ebola as a possibility, and forgetting to ask about travel.
- the patient not thinking to mention where he'd been.
- the ambulance still being used for two days after transporting the patient. Presumably the ambulance staff also dealt with other patients the same day too.

Now I know that the cleaning procedures should mean that there is no infection risk to other patients treated by the ambulance staff or transported in that vehicle, but ONLY IF they were stuck to rigidly. There's usually a second level of 'deep cleaning' that is used for an ambulance after transporting someone with an infectious disease, but it's not done routinely.

If other cases come up in the US, and the chain of infection goes more than one step beyond this index case, then the idea of checking where people have travelled becomes less useful, as they may have caught it locally. Then anyone thinking they have flu will need to be checked carefully...

Post by **mikepepler** » 01 Oct 2014, 17:02

And also:

The man was vomiting when the ambulance got to the hospital, Dallas city spokeswoman Sana Syed said.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ebola-case-stokes-concerns-liberians-dallas-25880747

Airborne droplets from the vomit landing on ambulance interior surfaces?

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 01 Oct 2014, 18:14

How soon after arriving at hospital (the second time) was he put into full isolation and control?

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 01 Oct 2014, 18:23

re. guns: Given that all the other Brits have been too polite to mention it, the task falls to me: I think what we're worried about is if the Ebola and the gun both belong to the same person...and they want to (for example) depart from a lockdown.

Tarrel · Post by **Tarrel** » 01 Oct 2014, 18:24

Looks like there may be a second case in Dallas:

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/h ... -1.1959320

Mean Mr Mustard · Post by **Mean Mr Mustard** » 01 Oct 2014, 18:44

If I was Rick Perry I'd be IMMEDIATELY closing schools and banning public meetings and sports events right across the DFW metropolis to get ahead of this. And watching surrounding TX cities for good measure. Surely there must be hundreds of untraced contacts from this index case out there.

Course, that won't happen. Think of the economy...

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 01 Oct 2014, 19:50

Mean Mr Mustard wrote:If I was Rick Perry I'd be IMMEDIATELY closing schools and banning public meetings and sports events right across the DFW metropolis to get ahead of this. And watching surrounding TX cities for good measure. Surely there must be hundreds of untraced contacts from this index case out there.

Course, that won't happen. Think of the economy...

I agree completely. I'm astonished at the response. It looks like the lessons that should have been learned from what is going on in West Africa have not been learned. Don't know if it is complacency, arrogance or an unwillingness to pay the economic price, but mistakes are being made.

I don't understand why anybody is allowed to visit Liberia and come back to the western world - there should be a complete travel ban in place. Why isn't there? I can only assume it is for fear of the economic consequences.

And as for the response in Texas - looks to me like a lot of people are more worried about controlling the panic than controlling the disease itself. Either that or they are worried about the economic consequences of what is now necessary to get ahead of this.

This epidemic could still be brought under control, but it looks to me like failures in human decision-making are going to mean that it isn't. Why didn't this person say he'd been to Liberia? Presumably because he was scared and didn't want to admit to himself that he might have ebola. Why didn't the health officials ask him if he'd traveled anywhere?

fifthcolumn · Post by **fifthcolumn** » 01 Oct 2014, 20:51

vtsnowedin wrote:You don't have to fire the gun to use it effectively, just show it. Americans use their guns about 2.5 million times each year in self defense successfully many times by just showing it.

Correct. The sound of my pump action shotgun alone would make most fools stop in their tracks.

fifthcolumn · Post by **fifthcolumn** » 01 Oct 2014, 20:55

mikepepler wrote: If other cases come up in the US, and the chain of infection goes more than one step beyond this index case, then the idea of checking where people have travelled becomes less useful, as they may have caught it locally. Then anyone thinking they have flu will need to be checked carefully...

That's right. Asking where they've traveled from only works for the index case.
What I'm surprised about is why there have been no cases show up in the UK. The probability of cases ending up in London is enormous.

fifthcolumn · Post by **fifthcolumn** » 01 Oct 2014, 20:56

RenewableCandy wrote:re. guns: Given that all the other Brits have been too polite to mention it, the task falls to me: I think what we're worried about is if the Ebola and the gun both belong to the same person...and they want to (for example) depart from a lockdown.

Not happening. All the rest are also armed to the teeth. I know I am.

fifthcolumn · Post by **fifthcolumn** » 01 Oct 2014, 21:00

UndercoverElephant wrote: I don't understand why anybody is allowed to visit Liberia and come back to the western world - there should be a complete travel ban in place. Why isn't there? I can only assume it is for fear of the economic consequences.

There are already pretty good controls in place. You need a visa to come to the USA or Canada if you're from those three countries. And getting a visa isn't easy so the flow is capped.
Therefore, anybody who gets in, already has a visa.

My suggestion would be to make it even harder to get a visa/blanket ban until things have got under control. Likely, however, there's going to be more cases in the surrounding countries and you'd have to block those nationals too.

I'm pretty optimistic but my gut tells me that best case it'll be a few months until we have outbreaks everywhere.

Thus our best hope is to get vaccine manufacturing capacity significantly upgraded right now to hundreds of millions of doses.