Officials: Don't shun suspected Ebola contacts

[mystery-ak]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/04/texas-ebola-patient-mishandled/16713389/

Officials: Don't shun suspected Ebola contacts
Natalie DiBlasio, USA TODAY 3:23 p.m. EDT October 4, 2014

Authorities pleaded with the public Saturday to be sensitive to those being evaluated for Ebola and not to shun them.

"The people who are being monitored are people just like your family," Dallas Judge Clay Jenkins said at a daily update hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "There is a lot of misinformation and erroneous fear. ... The people that are being monitored are real people, too — that need your prayers."

Fear is on the rise across the country as universities and local governments take precaution. The CDC has investigated more than 100 Ebola scares in 33 states in just the first four days of October, the agency said.

In Washington, D.C., two people were hospitalized in isolation units before being declared Ebola-free.

In Marietta, Ga., a Cobb County Jail inmate tested negative for Ebola after displaying flu-like symptoms. Because he had recently traveled to West Africa, he was isolated and given a series of tests.

The CDC ruled out Ebola after a man and his daughter were taken off United Flight 998 at Newark Airport on Saturday by health officials in full hazmat gear.

Meanwhile, the only known Ebola patient on U.S. soil, Thomas Eric Duncan, is in critical condition at an intensive care unit in Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

"He is ill," says David Lakey, commissioner of health at the Texas Department of Health. "Our prayers and our thoughts are with him right now."

Liberian authorities plan to prosecute Duncan when he returns home for allegedly lying on his airport departure screening questionnaire about whether he had had contact with a person infected with the virus. Duncan had helped a sick pregnant woman into a cab — but it is not clear whether he knew she had Ebola.

The family living in the Dallas apartment where Duncan got sick was moved to a private residence in a gated community, and a hazardous-materials crew decontaminated their apartment, city officials said.

The treatment of the family drew criticism when they were quarantined in an apartment with Duncan's contaminated belongings for days before a hazardous materials crew arrived Friday to bag up and sanitize the materials.

Dallas County and CDC epidemiologists narrowed the list of people who may have had contact with Duncan and are being monitored from 114 to 50. Only nine of those contacts are considered high-risk.

The higher-risk contacts are being monitored for fever twice daily. They are not allowed to leave their residence or have visitors.

Ashoka Mukpo, an American freelance video journalist working for NBC News in Liberia, was diagnosed Thursday with Ebola and was being treated in the capital of Monrovia. He was expected to return to the United States this weekend along with the rest of the news crew.

The virus that causes Ebola is not airborne and can be spread only through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person who is showing symptoms.

About 230 U.S. troops have been deployed for the Ebola mission, mostly in Liberia. About two dozen are in Senegal setting up a transportation center. The Army will send 3,200 soldiers from various units around the country, including 1,800 from Fort Campbell, Ky., who will arrive later this month.

The CDC is working in infected countries to perform airport exit screening, CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a daily update on Saturday. So far, 77 people have not boarded airplanes due to the screening process that looks for fever or obvious symptoms, he says.

"The first case of Ebola is obviously scary and unprecedented," Frieden said. "I know there have been a lot of concerns about the process of monitoring people when they come into this country. Our number one priority is the safety of Americans."

[Fishrrman]

From the article:
[[ The virus that causes Ebola is not airborne and can be spread only through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person who is showing symptoms. ]]

This cannot be said with certainty.

Previously, I posted one excerpt from Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone" that seems to contradict this.

Here is another excerpt:
=====================
General Russell's office occupied a corner of a low-slung Second World War barracks that had been recently plastered with stucco into a hopeless effort to make it look new. It had a view of the legs of Fort Detrick's water tower. Consequently, the general never opened his curtains. The visitors sat on a couch and hairs, and the general settled behind his desk. He was a medical doctor who had hunted viruses in Southeast Asia. He was in his late fifties, a tall man with hair thinning on top and gray at the temples, lined cheeks, a long jaw, pale blue eyes that gave him a look of intensity, and a booming, deep voice.

C.J. Peters handed the general a folder containing the photographs of the life form in the monkey house.

General Russell stared, "Holy shit," he said. He drew a breath.

"Man. That's filovirus. Who the hell took this picture?" He flipped to the next one.

"These were done by my microscopist, Tom Geisbert," Jahrling said.

"It could be Ebola. The tests are showing positive for Ebola Zair."

C.J. then gave an overview of the situation, telling the general about the monkeys in Reston, and finishing with these words: "I'd say we have a major pucker factor about the virus in those monkeys."

"Well, how certain are you that it's Ebola?" General Russell asked. "I'm wondering if this could be Marburg."

Jahrling explained why he didn't think it was Marburg. He had done his test twice, he said, and both times the samples were positive to the Mayinga strain of Ebola Zaire. As he spoke to the general, he was very careful to say that test did not in itself prove that the virus was Ebola Zaire. It showed only that is was closely related to Ebola Zaire.

It might be Ebola, or it might be something else-something new and different.

C.J. said, "We have to be very concerned and very puckered if it is of the same ilk as Ebola."

They had to be very puckered, Russell agreed. "We have a natural emergency on our hands," he said. "This is an infectious threat of major consequences." He remarked that this type of virus had never been seen before in the United States, and it was right outside Washington. "What the hell are we going to do about it?" he said. Then he asked them if there was any evidence that the virus could travel through air. That was a crucial question.

There was evidence, horrifying but incomplete, that Ebola could travel through the air. Nancy Jaax described the incident in which her two healthy monkeys had died of presumably airborne Ebola in the weeks after the bloody-glove incident, in 1983. There was more evidence, and she described that, too. In 1986, Gene Johnson had infected monkeys with Ebola and Marburg by letting them breathe it into their lungs, and she had been the pathologist for that experiment. All of the monkeys exposed to airborne virus had died except for one monkey, which managed to survive Marburg. The virus, therefore, could infect the lungs on contact.

Furthermore, the lethal dose was fairly small: as small as five hundred infectious virus particles. That many particles of airborne Ebola could easily hatch out of a single cell. A tiny amount of airborne Ebola could nuke a building full of people if it got into the airconditioning system.

The stuff could be like plutonium. The stuff could be worse than plutonium because it could replicate.

C.J. said, "We know it's infectious by air, but we don't know how infectious."

Russell turned to Jaax and asked, "Has this been published? Did you publish it?"

"No, sir," she said.
=====================

After reading this account from people who had direct contact with Ebola at the lab level, who would you believe?

[famousdayandyear]

After reading this account from people who had direct contact with Ebola at the lab level, who would you believe?

I do believe this is Obama's Oct surprise.  Patient jihadist that he is.