FEAR: NYC Hospital Tests Man for Ebola

[Chef Ramsay]

UPPER EAST SIDE (WABC) -- Mount Sinai Hospital is performing tests on a patient who had recently traveled to a West African country where Ebola has been reported, the hospital says.

A male patient with high fever and gastrointestinal symptoms came to the hospital's emergency room on Monday morning, officials said.

The hospital says the patient has been placed in strict isolation and is undergoing medical screenings to determine the cause of his symptoms.

"All necessary steps are being taken to ensure the safety of all patients, visitors and staff. We will continue to work closely with federal, state and city health officials to address and monitor this case, keep the community informed and provide the best quality care to all of our patients," the hospital wrote in a statement.

That's right, right off 5th Avenue adjacent to Manhattan boundaries for all the liberals and nutballs in the media trying to downplay this potential tragic change of events. Not just in Atlanta in the dirty south but right smack dab in the middle of the financial heartland.

Video and more...http://7online.com/health/mount-sinai-patient-tested-for-ebola-virus/239663/

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[REDoctober]

Its gonna be like World War Z, in my imagination.  I will be zombie #32

[Wilikon]

Its gonna be like World War Z, in my imagination.  I will be zombie #32

I had the same image in my head, jut before I eat your brain....

[Chef Ramsay]

Its gonna be like World War Z, in my imagination.  I will be zombie #32

This crossed my mind to until I heard about how the virus actually affects people. Like bleeding through body orifices but can only be contracted through saliva or blood exposure.

[Hazir]

I read somewhere that those fancy viruses who are out there in africa are actually human-made. It is true that there are companies/government test agencies doing research that way... I just suprised it can bite us all in the butt the end...

[lucaspm98]

I read somewhere that those fancy viruses who are out there in africa are actually human-made. It is true that there are companies/government test agencies doing research that way... I just suprised it can bite us all in the butt the end...

Never heard of that, I'll have to look it up.

Anyways, why did we bring him over here?

[kokojie]

Its gonna be like World War Z, in my imagination.  I will be zombie #32

This crossed my mind to until I heard about how the virus actually affects people. Like bleeding through body orifices but can only be contracted through saliva or blood exposure.

It CAN be transmitted airborne at a short distance, also Ebola is a fast evolving virus. Virus CAN evolve the ability of being airborne.

[Bitsaurus]

The droplets would still need to keep the live virus active while in droplet form - so this would only survive in the air in a moist environment.

[EternalWingsofGod]

I've heard of this case hope that they survive but it is scary that someone might have brought it home with them
Guess we will know in a few days ...

[bryant.coleman]

Ebola is not an airborne disease, and therefore it is easy to contain any epidemic if we quarantine the infected people. In developed countries such the US, any epidemic can be easily contained.

[bitbaby]

I read somewhere that those fancy viruses who are out there in africa are actually human-made. It is true that there are companies/government test agencies doing research that way... I just suprised it can bite us all in the butt the end...

It's true, it was shown in a program on tv somewhere I don't remember exactly but it showed how Big Medicine companies invest secretly in making viruses of which they only have the cure and then they spread it and sell their meds and make huge profits.

And the scary part about Ebola right now is there is no treatment, this is what I got from wikipedia:

No ebolavirus-specific treatment exists.[62] Treatment is primarily supportive in nature and includes minimizing invasive procedures, balancing fluids and electrolytes to counter dehydration, administration of anticoagulants early in infection to prevent or control disseminated intravascular coagulation, administration of procoagulants late in infection to control bleeding, maintaining oxygen levels, pain management, and the use of medications to treat bacterial or fungal secondary infections.[79][80][81] Early treatment may increase the chance of survival.[82] A number of experimental treatment are being studied

[koshgel]

Ebola is not an airborne disease, and therefore it is easy to contain any epidemic if we quarantine the infected people. In developed countries such the US, any epidemic can be easily contained.

It's really not as easy as you think. It can stay dormant for up to 3 weeks. So you aren't showing symptoms and can still infect people that you touch.

[Balthazar]

koshgel, you've seen too much movies. If you have no symptoms then you're relatively safe because the titres of virus in your saliva and perspiration are too low to be able infect anybody. But you still can infect other people through blood exposure or sexual intercourse.

[Searing]

Its gonna be like World War Z, in my imagination.  I will be zombie #32

well ..from this pie chart...I'd be in the 'taste delicious' part of the chart heh

http://stripgenerator.com/strip/626096/pie-chart-for-brains/


Searing

(this post is soooooo gonna haunt me in the next pandemic!)

[koshgel]

koshgel, you've seen too much movies. If you have no symptoms then you're relatively safe because the titres of virus in your saliva and perspiration are too low to be able infect anybody. But you still can infect other people through blood exposure or sexual intercourse.

So you're saying it's not like Contagion? 

[2dogs]

People, see Cantagion for a preview of what could happen.
It will scare the &%$! out of you!!

[Balthazar]

Unfortunately, the most of movies are too far away from reality for the sake of action.

If you see Flaviviridae for examples, then you will see that lethality rate of Flaviviridae family members is slowly decreasing in case of consequent infection. First transmission of "wild" strain from animal to human results with almost 100% deaths, but next transmissions (from one human to another and so on) produce strains with lower lethality rate. And after 10-20 consequent transmissions we're getting a strain with "only" 60% lethality rate, for example. It seems that virus adaptation process went similar in the wild nature. A sequence of transmissions from one monkey to another eventually created an adapted strain, which is harmless for them. The purpose of natural selection is a survival and continued reproduction in the future. For this reason, any "new" virus is always has a high virulence, but as a result of adaptation to unknown host species it becomes less dangerous for them. Because it is more beneficial way for the virus, which leads to greater amounts of copies of viral genome.

[koshgel]

Unfortunately, the most of movies are too far away from reality for the sake of action.

If you see Flaviviridae for examples, then you will see that lethality rate of Flaviviridae family members is slowly decreasing in case of consequent infection. First transmission of "wild" strain from animal to human results with almost 100% deaths, but next transmissions (from one human to another and so on) produce strains with lower lethality rate. And after 10-20 consequent transmissions we're getting a strain with "only" 60% lethality rate, for example. It seems that virus adaptation process went similar in the wild nature. A sequence of transmissions from one monkey to another eventually created an adapted strain, which is harmless for them. The purpose of natural selection is a survival and continued reproduction in the future. For this reason, any "new" virus is always has a high virulence, but as a result of adaptation to unknown host species it becomes less dangerous for them. Because it is more beneficial way for the virus, which leads to greater amounts of copies of viral genome.

This may be true for Ebola since its been around for a few decades.

What if in the future there is that initial animal to human transmission but it happens in a highly populated area and spreads to other locations before it could be contained?

Should I be scared then?

[Balthazar]

Unfortunately, the most of movies are too far away from reality for the sake of action.

If you see Flaviviridae for examples, then you will see that lethality rate of Flaviviridae family members is slowly decreasing in case of consequent infection. First transmission of "wild" strain from animal to human results with almost 100% deaths, but next transmissions (from one human to another and so on) produce strains with lower lethality rate. And after 10-20 consequent transmissions we're getting a strain with "only" 60% lethality rate, for example. It seems that virus adaptation process went similar in the wild nature. A sequence of transmissions from one monkey to another eventually created an adapted strain, which is harmless for them. The purpose of natural selection is a survival and continued reproduction in the future. For this reason, any "new" virus is always has a high virulence, but as a result of adaptation to unknown host species it becomes less dangerous for them. Because it is more beneficial way for the virus, which leads to greater amounts of copies of viral genome.

This may be true for Ebola since its been around for a few decades.

What if in the future there is that initial animal to human transmission but it happens in a highly populated area and spreads to other locations before it could be contained?

Should I be scared then?

It depends on what route of infection predominates. If the most of infection cases will be caused by contact with infected animals or infected meat then we'll see something like happens now in Africa, i.e. persistent infections rate with high lethality.

If human-to-human transmission is a predominant way, then we'll see some kind of explosion process which will fade away a bit later due to development of collective immunity. Collective immunity will be maintained by:
1) people who have survived infection;
2) people who were infected with attenuated strains and came through a moderate or asymptomatic form of disease.

We even able to estimate possible death count and predict required amount of time to develop a suitable level of collective immunity, which will be able to stop the epidemic process and prevent it from returning. However, it's required to know an exact speed of virus adaptation, otherwise an inaccuracy will be too high. I'll try to make some calculations a bit later.

P.S. It's interesting that this process slowly goes even in endemic regions with animal-to-human as predominant way of transmission. According to research results, about 7% of local population have strong level of antibodies against Ebolaviridae in their blood, despite the fact that many of them have never suffered any symptoms of the disease. But 7% isn't enough, it's required to have 40-50% of people with antibodies to stop current breakout and 70+% to prevent it from happening again.