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US Army To Transport American Ebola Victim To Atlanta Hospital From Liberia
acidradio (659704) writes American air charter specialist Phoenix Air has been contracted by the U.S. Army to haul an American physician afflicted with Ebola from Liberia to the Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. This will be the first 'purposeful' transport of an Ebola victim to the U.S. The patient will be flown in a special Gulfstream III (formerly owned by the Danish Air Force) outfitted for very specialized medical transports such as this. I dunno. I know there are brilliant doctors and scientists in Atlanta who handle highly-communicable diseases, but is this such a brilliant idea?
theodp (442580) writes with related news In response to the Ebola outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued Interim Guidance about Ebola Virus Infection for Airline Flight Crews, Cleaning Personnel, and Cargo Personnel. "Ebola virus is transmitted by close contact with a person who has symptoms of Ebola," the CDC explains. "Close contact is defined as having cared for or lived with a person with Ebola or having a high likelihood of direct contact with blood or body fluids of an Ebola patient. Examples of close contact include kissing or embracing, sharing eating or drinking utensils, close conversation (3 feet), physical examination, and any other direct physical contact between people. Close contact does not include walking by a person or briefly sitting across a room from a person."
Note that those are cases in an area where part of the funeral rites include (I believe) washing the body of the deceased by hand.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
On the timeline of vaccine research, "available in a year" sounds entirely like it's a solved problem with a pile of paperwork to be done...
Yup, CDC knows how to handle this sort of shit.
Yes they do. Nobody's perfect but I trust the CDC to handle this. I've met people that work there. I'm married to a physician that deals with the CDC from time to time and she trusts them. They are very good at their job.
It's not like they lose track of pathogens or accidentally expose workers to smallpox, no sirree bob.
And that is relevant in what way here? Seriously. Explain to me how some leftover vials of a pathogen from decades ago has any relevance to this case beside pointing out the already obvious fact that there is a tiny but non-zero chance someone might do something stupid. That failure mode has precisely zero bearing on this issue. People are not perfect, news at 11.
Cut out the sissy NIMBY scaremongering. There is really, truly nothing to worry about here. It's not funny and it scares people who don't know any better.
Sierra Leone's only expert on Ebola died from Ebola a couple of days ago, despite being an expert and therefore following all the safety procedures to the best of his ability.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What I find slightly curious is that they'd bother to transport the patient for a disease that (at present) has no treatment other than supportive therapy to try to keep the symptoms from killing you. The Liberian medical system is not exactly a shining star; but this isn't one of those "Oh, sure, we could cure that; but this hospital doesn't have an endoscopic microsurgery suite and we'd need $250k worth of drugs that you can't even buy here." diseases.
Is there a research interest? Is supportive therapy that much better here and the CDC is the place with isolation expertise? What advantage is being sought?
Because it's the right thing to do. Both of these people are heros, and had the bravery to travel to a remote foreign land and care for a people the majority of us didn't even know exist. They've a level of humanity that's rare in Americans, and we should celebrate that just like we'd protect a wounded soldier. You're not going to die alone in a foreign land. You'll receive the best care possible, and if you die, you'll be around your family when it happens. Because that's the right thing to do. Let people volunteer to care for them. I'm sure there are plenty that would do so. I would.
Would you want your family to be anywhere near you when you're dying of a highly contagious and extremely deadly disease?
It seems illogical to honor your heroes in a way that risks the very cause they are fighting for.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The trick is you want to have high infectivity, low severity and low lethality. This way you're highly infectious but since you don't do anything, no one really bothers. Once you start climbing in severity and lethality, the humans notice.
then just wait until you've infected all humans, then recoup DNA points from infectivity (everyone's infected), and spend it on symptoms that are lethal. Because by then it's too late - once you start killing, it hits everyone and they can't research a cure fast enough before everyone is dead.
(It also shows how the game simulation doesn't reflect real life - because once you've infected everyone, if you switch to become lethal, everyone's disease gets lethal, which never happens. Usually you have to re-infect everyone with the new lethal strain. Then there's the entire population thing - assumes newborns will have the disease as well).
The ebola virus, so far, are not airborne, but it does spread via liquid flow
The ebola virus that CDC and all other research labs study are stored inside sealed containers which are stored inside sealed rooms which are inside sealed buildings, and every single time they are done with their research ***EVERYTHING*** goes into the incinerator, ***EVERY SINGLE THING***, in order to make sure that no virus, not even one , will get the chance to escape
But bringing in the patients striken with ebola will mean importing a human being with all the body fluids that are infected with that virus --- and the bodily fluid, from tears to saliva to sweat to blood to excrement are full of the virus
Unless they seal the patient inside a sealed container and then move that seal container inside the military transport plane, and then moved it out when the plane reached the destination, that military transport plane itself will, one way or another, be left with traces of bodily fluid from the ebola patients
Now, I am not scare mongering, but in the medical world there is a thing called "vector" --- which means, the way the disease spread --- and those traces of bodily fluids inside the big military transport plane may become a vector for spreading that disease
Furthermore, when the patient arrives inside the States, that patient will gonna discharge his/her bodily fluid (pee, sweat, saliva, blood, shit) and how are all those bodily fluid gonna be taken care of ?
Unless that hospital has a specialized toilet where all the thing flushed from that toilet goes through an incinerator / or some kind of total disinfection system before that fluid was discharged out into the sewage system --- which will flow down, eventually, into rivers --- how can anyone be sure that none of the ebola virus is going to escape from the hospital ?
It is not about NIMBY --- it is just common sense