<p>And this is why it makes no sense to compare the number of deaths from Ebola with that of diseases for which there are vaccines. Many people get infected with known infectious diseases, but because the major ones have vaccines available, people never develop the disease. And even other diseases without vaccines still have no way near the same mortality rate. </p>
<p>The stark reality is for every 100 Ebola infections at least 70 people will die. That is is why containment and limiting the spread of infection is important. Plus the drain on healthcare resources because of the sheer amount of people and money required to care for each Ebola infection is a huge problem.</p>
<p>People are counting on “advanced” nuitrion/facility in the first nations to bring down the fatality from 70% to ??? 30%? 30% is the small pox. Didn’t we all hear horror stories about small pox? </p>
<p>The only way to get the current outbreak under control is quick diagnosis, isolation of the sick, and contact tracing. It is labor intensive. We’d like to think that a macro measure – like a travel ban – will protect us, but ultimately it won’t. Hands on attention to individual cases is required.</p>
<p>It most likely, however, day 40 is better indicator than day 21. as to be being totally out of the woods. The 21-day quarantine is actually the minimum quarantine standard for the risk profile of Ebola infection. </p>
<p>Medically, people are still infectious through Day 25 and beyond; it is just harder to get at that point, but it is still wise to be careful around exposed people until after the 40th day. The 21-day quarantine is not some magic dividing line between infectious and not; it is just where the risk profile of getting infected drops by 60%.</p>
<p>Tatin, yes, lots and lots of education is needed. That takes a lot money, and it takes a big international cooperative effort. Both are in short supply compared to when we eradicated smallpox. For example, Germany is one of the richest countries in the world, and it is only now stepping up in a serious way.</p>
<p>Las Ma, your article highlights how rigorously one has to deal with infectious disease. Small pox spread through puss, not any body fluid, making Ebola much harder to contain.</p>
<p>More importantly, small pox was eradicated because there was a vaccine. Education on preventing speed helped some, but the vaccine is the primary way it was eradicated. Additionally, the small pox vaccine controlled disease even when administered shortly after known infection. There is no such vaccine for Ebola, and even the experimental antibody treatments are unknown in how effective they will actually be. </p>
<p>EDIT: The steps in post #1468 are important, but those steps allowed finding potential exposed and infected, isolating and treating them early with the vaccine, while containing spread.</p>
<p>However, the successful eradication would not have occurred unless the healthy population was vaccinated in advance of exposure.</p>
<p>Well, yeah, I’m not even in Dallas this weekend, much less 40 minutes away in Fort Worth. However, even that example isn’t evidence of “full scale insanity” as a generalization of how a city is behaving. Maybe I have a different definition than the friend who is saying this.</p>
<p>That whole incident at the DART station was worsened IMO by WFAA running with a total wrong story without even verifying the simplest of facts and sending out a barrage of “bulletins” over the net. This is the kind of thing which gets the numbers of people feeling anxiety up.</p>
I’m not sure that is true. The origins of Ebola lie elsewhere and it is possible that patient zero (and who was that anyway and how does anyone know that he or she was the first?) contracted it from another source such as bats or insects. I’m reading The Hot Zone right now and it is very interesting.</p>
<p>Ah yes, let’s tell scores of people constantly on the verge of starvation to just cut out part of their diet. Seems simple, logical, and absolutely nothing can go wrong. </p>
<p>"It most likely, however, day 40 is better indicator than day 21. as to be being totally out of the woods. The 21-day quarantine is actually the minimum quarantine standard for the risk profile of Ebola infection.</p>
<p>Why not 100 days? Why not stick to the six sigma approach? Wouldn’t it be better? The 21 day is the WHO recommended quarantine based on the cost/benefit analysis. The burden of quarantining potential contacts for 20 extra days is cost-prohibitive and will result in many more potential contacts NOT reporting to the authorities because 21 days is already bad enough, and who wants to spend more than a month in isolation?</p>
<p>According to this and other articles I saw when I googled - they don’t really know who patient zero was. The contact trace only went as far back as a two year old in boy in Guinea who got sick last December. </p>