Don't make Hag post any more of those nasty ebola pictures and ruin the thread for others.

What we need now is that Israeli chic from Day Z.

Ebola is no different than HIV. Both are transmitted by bodily fluids...or eating an uncooked fruit bat.

Not until flu season is over

My plan is to drink a lot of beer. That way the alcohol in my blood will kill any ebolas that get in there.

Oh, and thoroughly cook any fruit bats I eat. I usually just eat 'em medium rare, but I guess it's not too much of a hardship to get 'em well done from now on.

Hopefully it won't spread in Texas like it did in Africa, where the crowding and lack of sanitary conditions for the sick, and the close ritual contact with the bodies of the dead, and distrust of advice from doctors all contributed to the spread...

Texas and the CDC will handle this much differently I would expect.

I can finally say all my time enjoying post-apocalyptic games and movies was preparation

Read Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six....that's a real ebola story. Sequel to Executive Orders.

“The virus is killed when meat is cooked at a high temperature or heavily smoked, but anyone who handles, skins or butchers an infected wild animal is at risk of contracting the virus,”

Rather then beer - i suggest something with greater alcohol content such as the dish, "Fruit Bat du Provence" - cooked
very well over open pit coals with a strong and savory vodka sauce and local herbs

mmmmm....savory vodka sauce....aaaaagggggghhhhhhh </drool>

I had just finished reading that one when 9/11 happened.

Also remember The Hunt for Red October is loosely based on an incident too...

Anyone have a spare tinfoil hat?

Ah, the token "disease that will wipe us all out!" of the month.

Well, since April it shows a "nice" exponential trend:

Actually better shown as nice linear plot on a logarithmic scale (but the normal scale is more dramatic)

Approx. a factor of 10 per 4-5 months.

On the first part, the government has had doctors and CDC guys on the TV (what I have seen) doing an education session. Which is good, but still with some situations they can't win.

On the second part, regarding handling, I am not sure. The most effectively handledout breaks I've read about have involved going back to the victims home, and circling out from there, locating any potential close contact victims. I remember reading about Nigeria doing this fairly well, with their one victim who flew in resulting in about 900 people getting daily checks by the traveling healthcare teams.

Of interest to me is how the scope of travel and interaction may enlarge those circles. I am unfamiliar with the major cities in Nigeria, how much travel is available/affordable to the general public. Thinking about the Dallas area, you've got DART trains and buses cheap and accessible to anybody. I'm also not certain of how different the public spaces may vary, things like the State Fair in Dallas, or the many evening/nightlife filled streets.

I haven't seen enough TV to know whether the press have the reporters on the street showing any CDC research activity, or maybe from helos in the air. What little I saw of the TV this morning they already had a news helo circling the quarantined ambulance used to transport the victim to the hospital, so I'd not doubt it. The reports this morning are that the victim first went to a doctor and was sent home with antibiotics and didn't seek medical attention again for 3 days. Either way, we'll probably get some indications on the scale of his contacts over those 3 to 5 days. Will be interesting to see.

Still not worried. Like, at all.

I suspect deaths from people texting about Ebola while driving will far exceed deaths from the disease itself here in the US.

Oh, and "Thanks Obama!"

Yeah I agree, a big key to this will be who this patient interacted with since he flew into Dallas from Liberia, and whether there was a chance for bodily fluid to be exchanged, hopefully he just stayed at home from feeling ill, if not then hopefully the CDC and doctors can identify and keep close eye on anyone he came into contact with.

Definitely will be interesting to see, I'm sure they know stopping the spread now is vital.

I think failure to control people crossing borders will be seen as a major failure. Lax immigration is causing not just a potential exposure to Ebola, but also to illnesses that we had pretty much eradicated by vaccine and health systems; TB, polio, etc.

I'm not an alarmist about this Ebola issue, but would err on the side of caution. We should have done extensive screening on possible cases. Establish a quarantine system until we had better control and identification.

I don't trust that they have the ability of spread sufficiently known.

Right. There is something to be said about infectious diseases in the First World- the flu virus has killed millions and millions of people, but that tends not to be the case in the US. People die from it, but it tends not to be as dramatic (or on the other hand, it is more accepted as a fact of life, since it's not thought of as exotic).

But if Ebola freaks people out, there have also been warnings that already in the works existing common, relatively treatable germs may mutate into more hardy, antibiotic resistant strains, the world uses too many indiscriminate antibiotic consumer products, too many people anticipate and seek treatment for things which the body is usually capable of beating on its own, or people don't use them correctly- so the scenario is being spun that we might one day return early 20th Century when penicillin no longer works and many more people could expect to die from common infections that we generally accept as not a problem today.

I bet there are people right now in my area freaking the F out over Ebola who don't vaccinate their kids. Probably slathering them in essential oils just in case.

Sort of off topic, but I saw an article the other day where some kid in the tropics was bitten in the leg by a snake. The kid wasn't treated with anti-venom but antibiotics. I'm not a doctor, but that defies even a layperson's sense. They showed pictures of the kid's necrotic leg as the venom dissolved and broke down the tissue, it turned completely black and looked like a discarded chicken bone.