About three weeks ago a senior scientist at my company gave a talk on Ebola. This man has had personal experience with the disease, having been at Reston, Virginia when an outbreak occurred among laboratory monkeys back in the 1990's. Unlike the current strain/strains of Ebola, this one was airborne and it killed many of the animals before they were able to get it under control. Fortunately, although it could be transmitted to humans, it apparently did not cause any symptoms.
I know this man well, and I know he is not an alarmist. But he frankly confessed that he was very afraid. He said, "Ebola is just a plane ride away from these shores." However, he said, the "good" thing about this strain of Ebola affecting West Africa, is that because it takes down people very quickly it was "unlikely" that anyone affected with the disease would feel well enough to get on a plane and come to the US. Well, we all know differently now.
I haven't had a chance to talk to this scientist since, so I don't know if he is even more concerned, but I imagine that he is. Because I for one am not amused when I hear about people who have had contact with Ebola patients going out and breaking quarantine, going on planes, subways, cruise ships, etc. What were they thinking?
Ebola has been around since 1986--at least that was when it was first identified and named--and international health authorities have long known the nature of this disease and the type of personal protective equipment needed to care for Ebola patients. While we don't have Ebola in our lab, we do potentially have an even more serious disease called Herpes B-Virus, found in rhesus and cynomolgus monkeys, which is 99.9% fatal in humans and is transmitted the same way as Ebola and HIV. There are only a handful of people in the world who have survived B-virus infection, I used to work with one before he retired. We learned the hard and painful way about the dangers of being careless with B-virus when a young lab worker died after being infected, and now we take B-virus and personal protective equipment very, very seriously. More seriously, apparently, than the hospitals in Texas and other places in the US that are dealing with Ebola. Among other things, those who come in contact with the monkeys and anything they have come in contact with have been instructed to tell their families and health care providers that they work with animals that may carry B-virus, and what the symptoms are, and this goes even for when they are on vacation. And the symptoms of B-virus infection are similar to the flu, to meningitis, even to Ebola.
I have been hearing that Ebola is very hard to catch, So is HIV/AIDS, which you don't hear as much about these days, but is still adding new cases worldwide every day at an astronomical rate. And HIV/AIDS is especially ravaging Africa. HIV/AIDS is in my community, it is in your community, and it continues to spread. I don't have exact figures at my fingertips but it's pretty sobering. Both diseases are transmitted the same way, through contact with body fluids. Including semen. And this is the part that the CDC and others are leaving out.
Ebola, like HIV/AIDS, is a sexually transmitted disease. And people can be pretty careless with their sex lives. They can also lie about their disease status, as did Mr. Duncan before he got on that plane. They can also go out and deliberately infect others. There's been several cases of people doing that with HIV. Add drugs and alcohol into the mix and you have a recipe for disaster, especially if you are dealing with people who cannot afford health care or have reason to stay under the radar. Ebola has the potential to get into our poorest communities and spread like HIV. My colleague thought that we would be protected because an Ebola patient would be too sick to have the energy for an international flight. He was wrong. If an Ebola patient can find the strength to get on an international flight, than he or she can also find the interest and energy to engage in sex. That is what the CDC is NOT telling us. The others that have since come down with Ebola--the ones that were taking flights, going on cruises, breaking quarantine--were they also celibate during this time period, or were they also sexually active, and with whom?
I think that we are only seeing the very beginning of an Ebola epidemic outside of Africa.
I know this man well, and I know he is not an alarmist. But he frankly confessed that he was very afraid. He said, "Ebola is just a plane ride away from these shores." However, he said, the "good" thing about this strain of Ebola affecting West Africa, is that because it takes down people very quickly it was "unlikely" that anyone affected with the disease would feel well enough to get on a plane and come to the US. Well, we all know differently now.
I haven't had a chance to talk to this scientist since, so I don't know if he is even more concerned, but I imagine that he is. Because I for one am not amused when I hear about people who have had contact with Ebola patients going out and breaking quarantine, going on planes, subways, cruise ships, etc. What were they thinking?
Ebola has been around since 1986--at least that was when it was first identified and named--and international health authorities have long known the nature of this disease and the type of personal protective equipment needed to care for Ebola patients. While we don't have Ebola in our lab, we do potentially have an even more serious disease called Herpes B-Virus, found in rhesus and cynomolgus monkeys, which is 99.9% fatal in humans and is transmitted the same way as Ebola and HIV. There are only a handful of people in the world who have survived B-virus infection, I used to work with one before he retired. We learned the hard and painful way about the dangers of being careless with B-virus when a young lab worker died after being infected, and now we take B-virus and personal protective equipment very, very seriously. More seriously, apparently, than the hospitals in Texas and other places in the US that are dealing with Ebola. Among other things, those who come in contact with the monkeys and anything they have come in contact with have been instructed to tell their families and health care providers that they work with animals that may carry B-virus, and what the symptoms are, and this goes even for when they are on vacation. And the symptoms of B-virus infection are similar to the flu, to meningitis, even to Ebola.
I have been hearing that Ebola is very hard to catch, So is HIV/AIDS, which you don't hear as much about these days, but is still adding new cases worldwide every day at an astronomical rate. And HIV/AIDS is especially ravaging Africa. HIV/AIDS is in my community, it is in your community, and it continues to spread. I don't have exact figures at my fingertips but it's pretty sobering. Both diseases are transmitted the same way, through contact with body fluids. Including semen. And this is the part that the CDC and others are leaving out.
Ebola, like HIV/AIDS, is a sexually transmitted disease. And people can be pretty careless with their sex lives. They can also lie about their disease status, as did Mr. Duncan before he got on that plane. They can also go out and deliberately infect others. There's been several cases of people doing that with HIV. Add drugs and alcohol into the mix and you have a recipe for disaster, especially if you are dealing with people who cannot afford health care or have reason to stay under the radar. Ebola has the potential to get into our poorest communities and spread like HIV. My colleague thought that we would be protected because an Ebola patient would be too sick to have the energy for an international flight. He was wrong. If an Ebola patient can find the strength to get on an international flight, than he or she can also find the interest and energy to engage in sex. That is what the CDC is NOT telling us. The others that have since come down with Ebola--the ones that were taking flights, going on cruises, breaking quarantine--were they also celibate during this time period, or were they also sexually active, and with whom?
I think that we are only seeing the very beginning of an Ebola epidemic outside of Africa.
