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Make no mistake about it, Ebola is one of the most virulent, frightening diseases to emerge in the last 100 years. Yet, there is a lot of “good news”, if you can call it that, in this disease and the world’s situation.
The most important is the way in which the disease can be transmitted. Not through the air, not casually from person to person, but only through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or direct touching of the skin of an infected person, followed by the person touching a point of access into their body, such as the eyes, nose or mouth. The other encouraging factor is that it is not normally transmitted during the incubation period, but rather only after the person is showing symptoms. If it could be transmitted earlier, the task of controlling and shutting it down would be far, far more difficult.
The answer about how dangerous ebola might be to us and the world is contained in these essential facts. Once a person catches it, the chances of death are very high. Trying to contain it and shut it down, however, is well within the capacity of medicine and collective governmental and citizen action.
The only way to stop it before it does massive damage is to get it early and to hit back hard against it spreading. Consider this: if 10 people have it and each of those persons has come into contact with another 10, that is 100 people who need to be monitored, or self monitor, for a minimum of 2 to 8 days but, more likely, for 21 days. If 100 people have it, and they were in contact with 10 people each, that’s a field of 1,000. If 1,000 people have it, that would be at least 10,000 people who need monitoring. The numbers go up very fast from this point. 100,000 people with ebola, almost an unthinkable thought, would mean at least 1,000,000 people in need of monitoring. In turn, 1 million would mean 10 million potential victims or, at minimum, 10 million who have to be monitored.
It is easy to see that once the disease spreads widely, getting it back in the box would be very, very difficult. What’s more, people are generally not that good at self monitoring, nor are they that good at isolating themselves when they are a danger to others. The spread of AIDS around the world, once an all but certain death sentence, shows how people will continue to move about and infect others, even when they know they shouldn’t.
Should we be scared of Ebola? The answer is no, as long as the response moving forward is strong, consistent and existing knowledge about how to deal with it is employed to the fullest. This disease, as the experts have said, can be contained and the current outbreak can be tamped down, but it is not likely to happen quickly now, since it has spread so far in western Africa and conditions there, including communications and the ability to coordinate actions, are poor. Right now, the situation is not being treated enough as a genuine emergency in some areas, including Liberia where several hundred thousand dollars in much needed medical equipment has been sitting on the docks, refused entry by the government, according to news reports.
The unfortunate case of the man from Nigeria who went to Dallas and has now died will most likely have benefits for us all. Clearly, his case was a major wake-up call for the American medical establishment and hospitals everywhere. Ebola now is not seen as some far off disease of concern only to foreign aid workers and people living in remote areas of Africa. It can come anywhere and can spread here, if not put in check.
We should be alert, aware and careful, but not alarmed about the potential for Ebola here. It is possible, though not likely, to have a major outbreak in the U.S. If that were to occur, it would shock the nation like nothing else since the terrorists attacks of 9-11, 2001. Before the case in Texas, the potential for any cases here seemed small. The same applies not to a major eruption of Ebola in the US, but that doesn’t mean it could never happen.
The important task is to stamp it out in Africa, to coral it like a wild dog and not let it out. There is very little most of us can do at this stage, other than hope that the medical establishment in this country has gotten the message and, further, keep pressure on our government to treat this as being every bit as serious as the war in Iraq and Syria. In a way, Ebola carries a greater risk than war, because if it isn’t controlled, the world wide impact could be massive.
Doug Terry, 10.9.14
1. You can’t get it from casual contact.
2. You can’t get it from a person who is in the incubation stage, before symptoms show up.
3. You can’t get it carried on the air the way many diseases are spread.
4. You can get it by touching a person who has it, then touching your nose, eyes or mouth with your hands. (These three portals are the primary means for diseases of all types to enter the body. Unfortunately, most people touch their nose, eye area or mouths dozens of times per day.)
5. You can get it by touching the surface of something where someone with the disease has placed fluids, like vomit, sweat or other bodily product. (The amount of time the disease will live on surfaces is not known at this point.)
6. You could get it through intimate sexual contact with an infected person.
6. There is no known cure and death occurs in a majority of cases of those who get the disease.
7. Isolating a patient completely from contact with others is the normal course. People with whom the person has come into contact need to be isolated, too, for a period of 2 to 21 days, but the symptoms will generally show up, if the disease has been contracted, within 2 to 8 days.
8. There have been many outbreaks of Ebola in Africa and, until now, all of them were contained in fairly sort order. This outbreak is unprecendented in scope.
9. A person with the disease normally with infect only one or two other people before dying or being isolated, so the disease does not spread expotentially in the ordinary course of matters. However, should Ebola ever get to a stage where thousands of people have been infected, tamping it down and shutting it off could get very dicey.
Please note: all of the information contained here is based on statements by doctors and reliable medical authorities and having following previous outbreaks in Africa. Years ago, I was also, by pure happenstance, a personal witness to scientists and lab workers dealing with a virulent disease outbreak at a scientific lab in northern Virginia, near Washington, DC. The TerryReport believes all of the information contained here is accurate, but readers are of course free to compare it to that offered elsewhere.
Of major concern to The TerryReport would be any effort by U.S. medical authorities to downplay or misstate facts about Ebola in order to condition public reactions. You can be assured that The TerryReport will quickly report on any such misinformation that can be detected.
Doug Terry, 10.9.14
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