Giving the school the benefit of the doubt, letting the teacher have a paid holiday was probably the path of least resistance in placating the frothing parents. One teacher down is better than a whole bunch of kids being kept out of school for weeks.
I'm sure the teacher was overjoyed. Free holiday!
I appreciate the sentiment but my wife is always on edge when she misses a class day because then the whole class is behind. If she was this teacher she would be super stressed.
psn: PhasenWeeple
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
"Infectious" and "Contagious" are not synonyms. Ebola is extremely infectious because you only need to be exposed to small amounts of it to get infected. It is not extremely contagious because you have to come in direct physical contact with an infected, symptomatic person's bodily fluids to be at risk of infection.
Unless the teacher went to Dallas Presbyterian and hugged Duncan's corpse (or touched the blood/vomit/etc of one of the nurses before they were shipped out to competent facilities), she has a literally zero percent chance of getting infected.
Fine. I was not aware of that distinction in the english language.
It's a bit more contagious than that though. While the virus is quickly destroyed by...well, pretty much anything (air, water, disinfectants) the sheer infectious nature of it means that a single microdroplet can be enough. A symptomatic person sneezing or coughing in the same room (ejecting droplets all over the place) is enough if a microdroplet hits a mucous membrane.
Doctors without Borders in west africa have lost more personel in this outbreak than they've lost to disease in the last 15 years. Sure, they're in direct contact with victims, but they're also not "hugging corpses" or willingly touching any sort of bodily fluids.
The disease is not airborne. There is no evidence of it being airborne or ever becoming airborne. There have been many, many posts in this thread discussing it. Stop recycling the media's panic points.
DWB have lost people because they were not, and as far as I know were never, given basic protection measures, such as rubber gloves, let alone the necessary suits that they should be wearing.
"Infectious" and "Contagious" are not synonyms. Ebola is extremely infectious because you only need to be exposed to small amounts of it to get infected. It is not extremely contagious because you have to come in direct physical contact with an infected, symptomatic person's bodily fluids to be at risk of infection.
Unless the teacher went to Dallas Presbyterian and hugged Duncan's corpse (or touched the blood/vomit/etc of one of the nurses before they were shipped out to competent facilities), she has a literally zero percent chance of getting infected.
Fine. I was not aware of that distinction in the english language.
It's a bit more contagious than that though. While the virus is quickly destroyed by...well, pretty much anything (air, water, disinfectants) the sheer infectious nature of it means that a single microdroplet can be enough. A symptomatic person sneezing or coughing in the same room (ejecting droplets all over the place) is enough if a microdroplet hits a mucous membrane.
Doctors without Borders in west africa have lost more personel in this outbreak than they've lost to disease in the last 15 years. Sure, they're in direct contact with victims, but they're also not "hugging corpses" or willingly touching any sort of bodily fluids.
And Duncan's family who home cared him through the early stages of the illness are fine. Perspective man.
Last I remember the infection by aerosol droplets was a theoretical transmission vector. I don't think they've proven a transmission by this method.
Ok. Time for me to be the word pedant. An aerosolized droplet is different from a microdroplet.
If it can be aerosolized it means that it's airborn in pretty much every definition of the word. It means that it can survive in particles that remain suspended in the air, and travel along with the winds.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that even tiny tiny droplets can be ejected and travel quite a distance. If you sneeze the sheer virulence of Ebola means that even the tiniest droplet is enough to infect and kill.
How far ebola can travel in a suspended in a particle of blood, saliva etc is definitely unknown, but when an ebola particle leaves its favorable environment (ie, the body of a living, or formerly living, being) its survival can be measured in Hours, minutes or seconds depending on the environment (the Ebola virus is quite vulnerable to most natural factors that break down protein). Days if it's in a relatively large droplet in a cool environment (like a fridge), but that's not a huge vector.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Last I remember the infection by aerosol droplets was a theoretical transmission vector. I don't think they've proven a transmission by this method.
Ok. Time for me to be the word pedant. An aerosolized droplet is different from a microdroplet.
If it can be aerosolized it means that it's airborn in pretty much every definition of the word. It means that it can survive in particles that remain suspended in the air, and travel along with the winds.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that even tiny tiny droplets can be ejected and travel quite a distance. If you sneeze the sheer virulence of Ebola means that even the tiniest droplet is enough to infect and kill.
How far ebola can travel in a suspended in a particle of blood, saliva etc is definitely unknown, but when an ebola particle leaves its favorable environment (ie, the body of a living, or formerly living, being) its survival can be measured in Hours, minutes or seconds depending on the environment (the Ebola virus is quite vulnerable to most natural factors that break down protein). Days if it's in a relatively large droplet in a cool environment (like a fridge), but that's not a huge vector.
Righto. I used aerosol incorrectly from the disease transmission definition.
Last I heard transmission by way of what I would term "non-productive" coughing and sneezing was theoretical.
Righto. I used aerosol incorrectly from the disease transmission definition.
Last I heard transmission by way of what I would term "non-productive" coughing and sneezing was theoretical.
Fair enough?
Fine. However, given the number of victims that bleed from the nose and mouth...
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Righto. I used aerosol incorrectly from the disease transmission definition.
Last I heard transmission by way of what I would term "non-productive" coughing and sneezing was theoretical.
Fair enough?
Fine. However, given the number of victims that bleed from the nose and mouth...
I think that it's safe to say that, at least on this board, you have a strong backlash to the panic that likes to minimize the risks of the disease. Like, it is true that its nonsense that a teacher who visited Dallas should be suspended, but it is also true that this is a disease that a lot of experts expect to kill tens of thousands of people before the ongoing epidemic peters out.
There's some degree of patronizing complacency in the idea that this disease only spread because of quaint village customs about washing the dead or poorly trained medical staff. That doesn't explain how, for example, the head of Médecins Sans Frontières ebola response team, who had years of training dealing with the disease, ended up dying from it.
This is a serious disease, but it can be contained with just basic disinfectants and quarantine procedures. Once you have thousands of people in an area with it, though, the chances of a fluke accidental exposure rises accordingly. The U.S. is nowhere near that, but this doesn't mean that we shouldn't be worried about it at all.
That doesn't explain how, for example, the head of Médecins Sans Frontières ebola response team, who had years of training dealing with the disease, ended up dying from it.
Well, it's becoming pretty clear that health workers dealing directly with ebola suffering patients, at the height of their symptoms, are at great risk of infection. I would rate the general public's need to worry pretty low right now. We can educate people on the symptoms, on basic sanitary methods to reduce risk, to get flu shots, and so on, but needlessly generating a panic is just going to force people who start showing symptoms to hide, and to me, that is the real danger about the virus in the US.
A Ministry of Health document says all passengers from the U.S. and Spain - two countries that have seen cases of Ebola - will have temperatures taken upon arrival. Passengers with fevers will be denied entry, and those without fevers will still be required to report daily health conditions.
Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, Rwanda's health minister, said Tuesday that travelers from the U.S. and Spain will be required to fill a detailed form upon arrival at border entry points.
Take bottles of hand sanitizer off the shelf, and place them at all registers. Discuss Ebola safety measures with all staff members.
In fairness, semi-regular use of hand sanitizer while you're in a public space is not a bad idea. Ebola's not very contagious, but plenty of bugs are, and cleaning your hands is a good way to prevent infection. I've been trying to habitualize the practice of using public sanitizers whenever I see one.
Just nod your head at the staff meeting, put on the 'such srs bsns' expression, and be glad that a dumb panic resulted in you getting marginally better work conditions.
When the bosses at work came out with freestanding hand sanitizer stations to put at every door and elevator lobby as "Ebola prevention", I just nodded and said to myself "we're finally going to have a quiet flu season".
Take bottles of hand sanitizer off the shelf, and place them at all registers. Discuss Ebola safety measures with all staff members.
In fairness, semi-regular use of hand sanitizer while you're in a public space is not a bad idea. Ebola's not very contagious, but plenty of bugs are, and cleaning your hands is a good way to prevent infection. I've been trying to habitualize the practice of using public sanitizers whenever I see one.
Just nod your head at the staff meeting, put on the 'such srs bsns' expression, and be glad that a dumb panic resulted in you getting marginally better work conditions.
When the bosses at work came out with freestanding hand sanitizer stations to put at every door and elevator lobby as "Ebola prevention", I just nodded and said to myself "we're finally going to have a quiet flu season".
When I worked QA, there was this one guy who would refuse to wash his hands, or even just wipe them on a sleeve or something, after sneezing. Then he'd use the communal PC. When called out on it, he basically said it didn't matter since, if he was actually sick, he'd already be getting others sick as it was.
True or not, social graces didn't matter in this case. That's literally when I started sneezing onto the back of my hand. I mean how many times do you see people just coughing up a lung without even bothering to cover their mouths.
Take bottles of hand sanitizer off the shelf, and place them at all registers. Discuss Ebola safety measures with all staff members.
In fairness, semi-regular use of hand sanitizer while you're in a public space is not a bad idea. Ebola's not very contagious, but plenty of bugs are, and cleaning your hands is a good way to prevent infection. I've been trying to habitualize the practice of using public sanitizers whenever I see one.
Just nod your head at the staff meeting, put on the 'such srs bsns' expression, and be glad that a dumb panic resulted in you getting marginally better work conditions.
When the bosses at work came out with freestanding hand sanitizer stations to put at every door and elevator lobby as "Ebola prevention", I just nodded and said to myself "we're finally going to have a quiet flu season".
I hate those things on a personal level (they give me a terrible headache that lasts 10 minutes every time I've used them[confirmation bias may be involved]), but on a societal level they are civilization and should be mandated at every entrance of every building open to the public.
Take bottles of hand sanitizer off the shelf, and place them at all registers. Discuss Ebola safety measures with all staff members.
In fairness, semi-regular use of hand sanitizer while you're in a public space is not a bad idea. Ebola's not very contagious, but plenty of bugs are, and cleaning your hands is a good way to prevent infection. I've been trying to habitualize the practice of using public sanitizers whenever I see one.
Just nod your head at the staff meeting, put on the 'such srs bsns' expression, and be glad that a dumb panic resulted in you getting marginally better work conditions.
When the bosses at work came out with freestanding hand sanitizer stations to put at every door and elevator lobby as "Ebola prevention", I just nodded and said to myself "we're finally going to have a quiet flu season".
I hate those things on a personal level (they give me a terrible headache that lasts 10 minutes every time I've used them[confirmation bias may be involved]), but on a societal level they are civilization and should be mandated at every entrance of every building open to the public.
I, for one, welcome the idea of sanitation showers at every public entrance. Clean this world up!
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
I'm not really concerned about Ebola here in the U.S; I could theoretically just wait it out at home if I needed... I'm more concerned about containing it from being a more massive outbreak over there.
That's literally when I started sneezing onto the back of my hand. I mean how many times do you see people just coughing up a lung without even bothering to cover their mouths.
Don't sneeze/cough on your hands, use the crook of your elbow for that.
Take bottles of hand sanitizer off the shelf, and place them at all registers. Discuss Ebola safety measures with all staff members.
In fairness, semi-regular use of hand sanitizer while you're in a public space is not a bad idea. Ebola's not very contagious, but plenty of bugs are, and cleaning your hands is a good way to prevent infection. I've been trying to habitualize the practice of using public sanitizers whenever I see one.
Just nod your head at the staff meeting, put on the 'such srs bsns' expression, and be glad that a dumb panic resulted in you getting marginally better work conditions.
When the bosses at work came out with freestanding hand sanitizer stations to put at every door and elevator lobby as "Ebola prevention", I just nodded and said to myself "we're finally going to have a quiet flu season".
I hate those things on a personal level (they give me a terrible headache that lasts 10 minutes every time I've used them[confirmation bias may be involved]), but on a societal level they are civilization and should be mandated at every entrance of every building open to the public.
I hate to tell you all this but triclosan (the most common machine dispensed sanitizer) is not actually effective, contributes to superbug growth, and is probably a potent endocrine disruptor.
That's actually one of the things I wonder about. If we're generally against overprescribing antibiotics because of the probable eventual resistance, why isn't the same true of hand sanitizers and other stuff we generally use to clean stuff?
Take bottles of hand sanitizer off the shelf, and place them at all registers. Discuss Ebola safety measures with all staff members.
In fairness, semi-regular use of hand sanitizer while you're in a public space is not a bad idea. Ebola's not very contagious, but plenty of bugs are, and cleaning your hands is a good way to prevent infection. I've been trying to habitualize the practice of using public sanitizers whenever I see one.
Just nod your head at the staff meeting, put on the 'such srs bsns' expression, and be glad that a dumb panic resulted in you getting marginally better work conditions.
When the bosses at work came out with freestanding hand sanitizer stations to put at every door and elevator lobby as "Ebola prevention", I just nodded and said to myself "we're finally going to have a quiet flu season".
I hate those things on a personal level (they give me a terrible headache that lasts 10 minutes every time I've used them[confirmation bias may be involved]), but on a societal level they are civilization and should be mandated at every entrance of every building open to the public.
I hate to tell you all this but triclosan (the most common machine dispensed sanitizer) is not actually effective, contributes to superbug growth, and is probably a potent endocrine disruptor.
A quick search shows very few studies supporting the idea of triclosan helping create resistant strains. Also, slightly more effective than hand soap =/= not effective, as plain old soap is actually pretty effective at killing microbes. Also, many hand sanitizers distributed in retail stores for public and employee use are usually the rubbing alcohol variety and don't employ triclosan as the antibacterial ingredient anyways.
The endocrine disruptor part does suck pretty badly though.
Take bottles of hand sanitizer off the shelf, and place them at all registers. Discuss Ebola safety measures with all staff members.
In fairness, semi-regular use of hand sanitizer while you're in a public space is not a bad idea. Ebola's not very contagious, but plenty of bugs are, and cleaning your hands is a good way to prevent infection. I've been trying to habitualize the practice of using public sanitizers whenever I see one.
Just nod your head at the staff meeting, put on the 'such srs bsns' expression, and be glad that a dumb panic resulted in you getting marginally better work conditions.
When the bosses at work came out with freestanding hand sanitizer stations to put at every door and elevator lobby as "Ebola prevention", I just nodded and said to myself "we're finally going to have a quiet flu season".
I hate those things on a personal level (they give me a terrible headache that lasts 10 minutes every time I've used them[confirmation bias may be involved]), but on a societal level they are civilization and should be mandated at every entrance of every building open to the public.
I hate to tell you all this but triclosan (the most common machine dispensed sanitizer) is not actually effective, contributes to superbug growth, and is probably a potent endocrine disruptor.
I was thinking of the purell stuff that's, as far as I am aware, essentially a gelled alcohol to rub over your hands. Or are those just as bad?
That's actually one of the things I wonder about. If we're generally against overprescribing antibiotics because of the probable eventual resistance, why isn't the same true of hand sanitizers and other stuff we generally use to clean stuff?
It should be I think - I'm not sure if alcohol and heat are subject to the same rules... though you can hardly boil a countertop.
That's actually one of the things I wonder about. If we're generally against overprescribing antibiotics because of the probable eventual resistance, why isn't the same true of hand sanitizers and other stuff we generally use to clean stuff?
It should be I think - I'm not sure if alcohol and heat are subject to the same rules... though you can hardly boil a countertop.
Chemicals and heat are a little more...brute force than antibiotics, so they're harder to evolve resistance against. It can happen, but it's harder.
So firstly, alcohol and heat attack cellular life at a very different level than antibiotics. Antibiotics are targeting bacteria-specific traits - e.g. penicillin targets bacterial cell walls. However, many bacteria don't have cell walls anyways, and others already have resistances against penicillin via other biochemical means. Thus, penicillin non-resistant bacteria can rather "easily" gain these traits from penicillin resistance bacteria, and then if you apply penicillin to a single field repeatedly, this can result in a selective force for the resistant bacteria.
On the other hand, alcohol, for example, attacks ALL cells, via disruption of the cellular membranes. AFAIK, all living cells are vulnerable to high concentrations of alcohol, being amphiprotic like the phospholipids that make up cell membranes. There is no complete resistance to it, AFAIK, though there are different levels of tolerance via different molecules that maintain integrity of the cell membranes under different conditions. Still, 90% alcohol pretty much kills everything - hence why it stings like a m-f-er when you apply it any to any of your living cells.
Secondly, evolution only works through repeated or prolonged non-lethal exposures in a semi-isolated environment. The problem with antibiotics is not just that they're over-prescribed, but that they're not being taken properly, with people discontinuing their regimens before the antibiotics have sufficiently killed everything. It'd be like if you constantly put food in the refrigerator and take it back out again; each time, some X% of the bacteria survive, then colonize the food, and then survive the next refrigeration with X(i+1) > X(i). But if you were to just freeze your food, it'll mostly be okay for a long while (and some of the eventual breakdown won't be due to bacterial colonization but rather just the food itself structurally breaking down). If you're covering your hands with alcohol a few times every day, even if it's not wiping everything out, there's enough "other stuff" happening to your hands - picking up other bacteria from other sources, bacteria migrating from your arm, your washing your hands with other chemicals - that alcohol resistance is not a trait that's being sufficiently strongly selected for to pose a major problem.
Of course, we're just playing a lot of really low probability odds here, and arguably if we play it enough, we'll eventually lose, but even then, unless the alcohol-resistant bacteria gain some other traits, like easy transmission, contagion, antibiotic resistance, it's probably still not a big deal. The antibiotic-resistant bacteria we're concerned about already have 2 of those traits, so adding the 3rd is the terrible part.
So, fear of suicide bombers spreading ebola is like the perfect storm of derp. Ignoring the logistics involved in a successful suicide bombing to begin with, combining that with the logistics involved in finding someone who is infectious but still healthy enough to actually execute the bombing is vanishingly small.
That said, if it did happen it would be a mess, but probably not as big as you're thinking. True, there would probably be a lot of victims and first responders that got infected due to contact with the bomber's remains, but the exposed would almost certainly be quarantined / isolated as soon as it was realized 'ebola' and long before they became symptomatic / infectious. So...a bad time / place to be on the scene or in the ER, otherwise probably not that much bigger of a deal overall than a 'normal' terrorist attack.
Basically, the panic / response would be a far bigger problem than the attack itself. I honestly wouldn't be very surprised if the response to a bio-terror attack like that was nuclear.
On another note, as was pointed out, bacteria / viruses developing a resistance to alcohol / bleach / peroxide is roughly on a par with developing a resistance to fire. It might be something that could happen in a lab with very careful selective pressures, but even then it seems like it would be a bit of a stretch. Viruses and bacteria are also quite a bit different, so I'm not sure how a virus would evolve that resistance. Among other factors against evolving that resistance is the fact that ebola evolves slowly to begin with, and is so infectious (and virulent) that it's pretty unlikely that it would have the need or opportunity to evolve that resistance in the first place.
You know how we talk about how unlikely it is ebola will become airborne? Evolving resistance to alcohol / bleach / peroxide is about as likely as ebola becoming airborne, flying over to a rock, and then bashing you over the head with it.
Let's also not forget that a big part of hand washing is the mechanical scrubbing where virus / bacteria are literally washed off your hands - not just directly killed. Ebola may be super-infectious, but if it's run down a drain it isn't infecting anyone. You're significantly less likely to spread an infection if the particles of blood / bodily fluids that contain the virus are washed away.
I'm fairly sure that any situation where ebola could be used as a weapon of terror Anthrax would do a better job.
So, not overly concerned about that.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Honestly I suspect if you got half a dozen people who were all willing to die (in very painful fashion) and had at least one person infected with Ebola and understood the transmission vectors they could cause a ridiculous amount of havoc.
So like any of a dozen biological attacks that could happen.
While it may not seem likely that someone from small-town Sidney could get Ebola, the chances are higher than you may think. Hospital CEO Jason Petik says, “The possibility of someone from our area getting Ebola is very real. Many of our family, friends or neighbors have traveled to Africa. They also travel abroad for business.
The grocery store I work at sent down a "this must be done in three hours and confirmed electronically!" task. This is the kind of thing done for hazardous product recalls. The task this time?
Take bottles of hand sanitizer off the shelf, and place them at all registers. Discuss Ebola safety measures with all staff members.
Using hand sanitizer. On the fucking Vermont/New Hampshire border.
And here, living in the DFW metroplex, I thought we had people overreacting. Northern side of the metroplex, probably 30 minutes from downtown Dallas. But the deputy who went to the CareNow clinic when he thought he had it, his son went to a high school in my school district. And late last week, there was some uproar by parents when a letter went out from the ISD superintendent that there were community members on the flight back from Cleveland with Amber Vinson, wanting to know what schools to pull their kids from. Turned out that the county health office requested we send the form out, there weren't even any students on the flight (though one MS student spread a false rumor that they were on the flight). Though now that the family of Duncan have been released cooler heads are starting to prevail.
That seems needlessly complicated considering the havoc someone can cause with a pressure cooker and a handful of fertilizer
It's more about the 'ticking time bomb of fear'. The Joker liked explosives because they're cheap and plentiful. Fearmongers like more elaborate ideas because it increases budgets and, well, fear.
I'm sure the bitching about how unfair that is would be pretty entertaining.
Well it's all Obama's fault, obviously. Other nations don't trust us because of him and how bad he is at everything. People at work are starting to refer to him as "Ebola Barry" and talk about how he wants Ebola to spread through the US because that was his plan all along.
I'd figure it'd have to be much easier for a president to release Ebola than to have a guy come into contact with it on the other side of the planet and then try and go to a hospital that turns him away, not infect his family, but then infect two nurses.
I mean, can't he just call the CDC and say 'enact Operation Turd Flu'?
That seems needlessly complicated considering the havoc someone can cause with a pressure cooker and a handful of fertilizer
It's more about the 'ticking time bomb of fear'. The Joker liked explosives because they're cheap and plentiful. Fearmongers like more elaborate ideas because it increases budgets and, well, fear.
Pretty much this. If any terrorist group resorts to using something like ebola in a terror attack. The goal won't be to cause an ebola outbreak on a large scale. The goal would be to spread terror among the population. I'd say sadly, the dipshit media and several shitty republican politicians have probably made this scenario more likely because they've proven that it's really easy to stoke irrational fears about ebola.
I'm sure the bitching about how unfair that is would be pretty entertaining.
Well it's all Obama's fault, obviously. Other nations don't trust us because of him and how bad he is at everything. People at work are starting to refer to him as "Ebola Barry" and talk about how he wants Ebola to spread through the US because that was his plan all along.
Whoa, whoa, don't you mean he's releasing Ebola so he can take our guns away?
In other news that's dumb but also probably, you know, just North Korea being North Korea, they're banning foreign tourists because Ebola supposedly. Or it's a convenient excuse. Who knows what's going on there. I'm not sure if the North Koreans themselves know.
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I appreciate the sentiment but my wife is always on edge when she misses a class day because then the whole class is behind. If she was this teacher she would be super stressed.
The disease is not airborne. There is no evidence of it being airborne or ever becoming airborne. There have been many, many posts in this thread discussing it. Stop recycling the media's panic points.
DWB have lost people because they were not, and as far as I know were never, given basic protection measures, such as rubber gloves, let alone the necessary suits that they should be wearing.
And Duncan's family who home cared him through the early stages of the illness are fine. Perspective man.
Ok. Time for me to be the word pedant. An aerosolized droplet is different from a microdroplet.
If it can be aerosolized it means that it's airborn in pretty much every definition of the word. It means that it can survive in particles that remain suspended in the air, and travel along with the winds.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that even tiny tiny droplets can be ejected and travel quite a distance. If you sneeze the sheer virulence of Ebola means that even the tiniest droplet is enough to infect and kill.
How far ebola can travel in a suspended in a particle of blood, saliva etc is definitely unknown, but when an ebola particle leaves its favorable environment (ie, the body of a living, or formerly living, being) its survival can be measured in Hours, minutes or seconds depending on the environment (the Ebola virus is quite vulnerable to most natural factors that break down protein). Days if it's in a relatively large droplet in a cool environment (like a fridge), but that's not a huge vector.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Righto. I used aerosol incorrectly from the disease transmission definition.
Last I heard transmission by way of what I would term "non-productive" coughing and sneezing was theoretical.
Fair enough?
Fine. However, given the number of victims that bleed from the nose and mouth...
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Right, though at that stage one would assume they are not sitting next to you on the L train.
My understanding if they are deep into the symptomatic portion of the disease at that point.
I think that it's safe to say that, at least on this board, you have a strong backlash to the panic that likes to minimize the risks of the disease. Like, it is true that its nonsense that a teacher who visited Dallas should be suspended, but it is also true that this is a disease that a lot of experts expect to kill tens of thousands of people before the ongoing epidemic peters out.
There's some degree of patronizing complacency in the idea that this disease only spread because of quaint village customs about washing the dead or poorly trained medical staff. That doesn't explain how, for example, the head of Médecins Sans Frontières ebola response team, who had years of training dealing with the disease, ended up dying from it.
This is a serious disease, but it can be contained with just basic disinfectants and quarantine procedures. Once you have thousands of people in an area with it, though, the chances of a fluke accidental exposure rises accordingly. The U.S. is nowhere near that, but this doesn't mean that we shouldn't be worried about it at all.
That are walking the streets of Dallas? That number would be zero.
That are capable of walking anywhere? Also zero.
Okay, what about these people that don't exist?
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Well, it's becoming pretty clear that health workers dealing directly with ebola suffering patients, at the height of their symptoms, are at great risk of infection. I would rate the general public's need to worry pretty low right now. We can educate people on the symptoms, on basic sanitary methods to reduce risk, to get flu shots, and so on, but needlessly generating a panic is just going to force people who start showing symptoms to hide, and to me, that is the real danger about the virus in the US.
I'm sure the bitching about how unfair that is would be pretty entertaining.
When the bosses at work came out with freestanding hand sanitizer stations to put at every door and elevator lobby as "Ebola prevention", I just nodded and said to myself "we're finally going to have a quiet flu season".
When I worked QA, there was this one guy who would refuse to wash his hands, or even just wipe them on a sleeve or something, after sneezing. Then he'd use the communal PC. When called out on it, he basically said it didn't matter since, if he was actually sick, he'd already be getting others sick as it was.
True or not, social graces didn't matter in this case. That's literally when I started sneezing onto the back of my hand. I mean how many times do you see people just coughing up a lung without even bothering to cover their mouths.
I hate those things on a personal level (they give me a terrible headache that lasts 10 minutes every time I've used them[confirmation bias may be involved]), but on a societal level they are civilization and should be mandated at every entrance of every building open to the public.
I, for one, welcome the idea of sanitation showers at every public entrance. Clean this world up!
How effective would it be at spreading ebola?
It’s not a very important country most of the time
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Don't sneeze/cough on your hands, use the crook of your elbow for that.
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A quick search shows very few studies supporting the idea of triclosan helping create resistant strains. Also, slightly more effective than hand soap =/= not effective, as plain old soap is actually pretty effective at killing microbes. Also, many hand sanitizers distributed in retail stores for public and employee use are usually the rubbing alcohol variety and don't employ triclosan as the antibacterial ingredient anyways.
The endocrine disruptor part does suck pretty badly though.
I was thinking of the purell stuff that's, as far as I am aware, essentially a gelled alcohol to rub over your hands. Or are those just as bad?
It should be I think - I'm not sure if alcohol and heat are subject to the same rules... though you can hardly boil a countertop.
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PSN: AbEntropy
Chemicals and heat are a little more...brute force than antibiotics, so they're harder to evolve resistance against. It can happen, but it's harder.
On the other hand, alcohol, for example, attacks ALL cells, via disruption of the cellular membranes. AFAIK, all living cells are vulnerable to high concentrations of alcohol, being amphiprotic like the phospholipids that make up cell membranes. There is no complete resistance to it, AFAIK, though there are different levels of tolerance via different molecules that maintain integrity of the cell membranes under different conditions. Still, 90% alcohol pretty much kills everything - hence why it stings like a m-f-er when you apply it any to any of your living cells.
Secondly, evolution only works through repeated or prolonged non-lethal exposures in a semi-isolated environment. The problem with antibiotics is not just that they're over-prescribed, but that they're not being taken properly, with people discontinuing their regimens before the antibiotics have sufficiently killed everything. It'd be like if you constantly put food in the refrigerator and take it back out again; each time, some X% of the bacteria survive, then colonize the food, and then survive the next refrigeration with X(i+1) > X(i). But if you were to just freeze your food, it'll mostly be okay for a long while (and some of the eventual breakdown won't be due to bacterial colonization but rather just the food itself structurally breaking down). If you're covering your hands with alcohol a few times every day, even if it's not wiping everything out, there's enough "other stuff" happening to your hands - picking up other bacteria from other sources, bacteria migrating from your arm, your washing your hands with other chemicals - that alcohol resistance is not a trait that's being sufficiently strongly selected for to pose a major problem.
Of course, we're just playing a lot of really low probability odds here, and arguably if we play it enough, we'll eventually lose, but even then, unless the alcohol-resistant bacteria gain some other traits, like easy transmission, contagion, antibiotic resistance, it's probably still not a big deal. The antibiotic-resistant bacteria we're concerned about already have 2 of those traits, so adding the 3rd is the terrible part.
So, fear of suicide bombers spreading ebola is like the perfect storm of derp. Ignoring the logistics involved in a successful suicide bombing to begin with, combining that with the logistics involved in finding someone who is infectious but still healthy enough to actually execute the bombing is vanishingly small.
That said, if it did happen it would be a mess, but probably not as big as you're thinking. True, there would probably be a lot of victims and first responders that got infected due to contact with the bomber's remains, but the exposed would almost certainly be quarantined / isolated as soon as it was realized 'ebola' and long before they became symptomatic / infectious. So...a bad time / place to be on the scene or in the ER, otherwise probably not that much bigger of a deal overall than a 'normal' terrorist attack.
Basically, the panic / response would be a far bigger problem than the attack itself. I honestly wouldn't be very surprised if the response to a bio-terror attack like that was nuclear.
On another note, as was pointed out, bacteria / viruses developing a resistance to alcohol / bleach / peroxide is roughly on a par with developing a resistance to fire. It might be something that could happen in a lab with very careful selective pressures, but even then it seems like it would be a bit of a stretch. Viruses and bacteria are also quite a bit different, so I'm not sure how a virus would evolve that resistance. Among other factors against evolving that resistance is the fact that ebola evolves slowly to begin with, and is so infectious (and virulent) that it's pretty unlikely that it would have the need or opportunity to evolve that resistance in the first place.
You know how we talk about how unlikely it is ebola will become airborne? Evolving resistance to alcohol / bleach / peroxide is about as likely as ebola becoming airborne, flying over to a rock, and then bashing you over the head with it.
Let's also not forget that a big part of hand washing is the mechanical scrubbing where virus / bacteria are literally washed off your hands - not just directly killed. Ebola may be super-infectious, but if it's run down a drain it isn't infecting anyone. You're significantly less likely to spread an infection if the particles of blood / bodily fluids that contain the virus are washed away.
So, not overly concerned about that.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
So like any of a dozen biological attacks that could happen.
Not really anything new there.
Sleep tight.
I suppose the better question would be how well does the heat and pressure of a bomb sterilize the remains of the bomber
And here, living in the DFW metroplex, I thought we had people overreacting. Northern side of the metroplex, probably 30 minutes from downtown Dallas. But the deputy who went to the CareNow clinic when he thought he had it, his son went to a high school in my school district. And late last week, there was some uproar by parents when a letter went out from the ISD superintendent that there were community members on the flight back from Cleveland with Amber Vinson, wanting to know what schools to pull their kids from. Turned out that the county health office requested we send the form out, there weren't even any students on the flight (though one MS student spread a false rumor that they were on the flight). Though now that the family of Duncan have been released cooler heads are starting to prevail.
It's more about the 'ticking time bomb of fear'. The Joker liked explosives because they're cheap and plentiful. Fearmongers like more elaborate ideas because it increases budgets and, well, fear.
Well it's all Obama's fault, obviously. Other nations don't trust us because of him and how bad he is at everything. People at work are starting to refer to him as "Ebola Barry" and talk about how he wants Ebola to spread through the US because that was his plan all along.
I mean, can't he just call the CDC and say 'enact Operation Turd Flu'?
Pretty much this. If any terrorist group resorts to using something like ebola in a terror attack. The goal won't be to cause an ebola outbreak on a large scale. The goal would be to spread terror among the population. I'd say sadly, the dipshit media and several shitty republican politicians have probably made this scenario more likely because they've proven that it's really easy to stoke irrational fears about ebola.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Whoa, whoa, don't you mean he's releasing Ebola so he can take our guns away?
In other news that's dumb but also probably, you know, just North Korea being North Korea, they're banning foreign tourists because Ebola supposedly. Or it's a convenient excuse. Who knows what's going on there. I'm not sure if the North Koreans themselves know.