Ebola in the USA... Anyone Concerned?

[Ryllban]

So, what would you do when you realize it's spreading rapdily in your country?

Im living in Sweden. We have not had any public ebola case yet. But Im on my way to buy a respirator mask, suit and also stock up food + water.

It's like some people say, when the outbreak is here and everybody is rushing to the store, thats when you know you have acted to slow. And if the ebola doesn't spread that crazy in my country, I at least have food + water that I can use .

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

It's like some people say, when the outbreak is here and everybody is rushing to the store, thats when you know you have acted to slow.

Yup.

It really comes down to behavioral psychology that is common in all supply/demand economics...

By the time you realize you should have bought that great NYSE stock, the price has already moved too high and it's too late.
By the time you realize that Fantasy Football player is a really productive player, it's too late. He's gone.
By the time you realize you need water, masks, whatever, it will be too late to get the items through normal channels.
By the time you realize you should have done [enter whatever], it's too late-- once the masses are involved in the rush, it's too late.

I'm not saying that you should go do this stuff, but if you are going to "prepare" or "react" -- you want to do it before the masses.

 

[Jakeeck]

Isn't it pretty likely that these nurses went home and made out/had sex with their husbands/boyfriends or whoever or shared a drink with someone in between the periods where they thought all was good until the time they were tested positive??

Now I can't stop thinking about this stuff.

Or sneezed and pet the cat without washing their hands, etc.. there are like a million ways they could have spread it, no?

 

[GuestUser140]

Im living in Sweden. We have not had any public ebola case yet. But Im on my way to buy a respirator mask, suit and also stock up food + water.

It's like some people say, when the outbreak is here and everybody is rushing to the store, thats when you know you have acted to slow. And if the ebola doesn't spread that crazy in my country, I at least have food + water that I can use .

I live in Europe too, although closer to Paris and London and thus more densely populated. Would you go high up north to sparsely populated areas such as Norrbotten if all hell broke loose?

 

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[Ryllban]

I live in Europe too, although closer to Paris and London and thus more densely populated. Would you go high up north to sparsely populated areas such as Norrbotten if all hell broke loose?

My family have a cabin close to Norrbotten so yup, would move up there. Get all my stock with me and hope that some vaccine will get to us.

 

[GuestUser140]

My family have a cabin close to Norrbotten so yup, would move up there. Get all my stock with me and hope that some vaccine will get to us.

I will move to the Lofoten in Norway, I know the place. Plenty of fish to eat, only vegetables/vitamins and carbs would be an issue.

Well, let's hope it doesn't go that far.

Edit: obligatory picture.

 

[Gale4rc]

Then there's a pretty decent chance that, since the hospitals lose money on the emergency rooms and want people out of there

NVM

 

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[splok]

Then, when they are finally in such dire shape that they MUST go to a hospital, they will take public transportation (since the ambulance ride will break them.) Once they arrive, we'll park them for hours in a room full of people who already have compromised immune systems. Then there's a pretty decent chance that, since the hospitals lose money on the emergency rooms and want people out of there, we'll just give them a few aspirin and put them right back on the bus that brought them in.

Well, to be fair, how is this part any different from places with socialized medicine? Far more people use public transport in countries that aren't the US, and doctor visits can take a while to get. I mean if you call them up and tell them you've got the ebola, they'll probably get you sorted out pretty quickly no matter what country you're in, but people will deny it to themselves and treat it like the flu until it's too late.

 

[biophase]

Thank you, I appreciate this information and will shop based on what you have said.

Ok, I have to ask. What are you going to do with those hazmat suits? I understand stocking up on supplies, etc... but would you wear that suit outside your home? Why would you be going outside your home?

The customer demographic of my business has a decent amount of doomsday preppers. So in dealing with them and also watching the shows and research, I had actually dedicated a storage unit to supplies a few years back. Luckily, being in Arizona my home happens to have an abundance of two resources, water and propane. So all I needed to stock up on was food and supplies. Haven't read much on ebola, but I'm assuming it cannot contaminate water?

I think worse case scenario is that you quarantine your home from the outside world. If you don't need food deliveries, gas, etc... then you don't need to see anyone else. Just become a hermit for a few months. This would be a much better solution than getting a hazmat suit.

 

[Guest3722A]

And that's what I really like about this site is the forward thinking from so many great minds is phenomenal!

 

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[ChickenHawk]

Well, this gets better and better...The CDC TOLD the Nurse to Get on That Plane.
http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/heal...las-hospital-worker-diagnosed-ebola/17290677/

From the Story
The second Dallas nurse diagnosed with Ebola shouldn't have traveled on a commercial flight due to her exposure to the virus prior to her diagnosis, said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the CDC has now confirmed that it gave Amber Vinson permission to make a trip to Cleveland....However, because of her exposure to the virus, Vinson shouldn't have traveled on the commercial flight, the CDC director said on Wednesday. Frieden revealed the nurse registered a low-grade fever of 99.5 degrees before she boarded the plane. It was later confirmed that the CDC gave Vinson permission to get on the plane because she was showing no other symptoms of the virus, and her temperature didn't reach the threshold of 100.4 degrees.

WTF!!!!

See, they told Nurse#2, "Go ahead, get on that plane. Noooo problem..." Then when it went to crap, they said, "OMG, she shouldn't have been on that plane!" Basically, it's the same thing they did to Nurse#1. What they're doing is issuing bullshit guidance, and then blaming the nurses when the guidance results in disaster or bad P.R.

 

[D11FYY]

Lets be honest if its going to become a proper global pandemic there is not much we can do. Just hope for the best.
It is scary however the rate at which it could spread.

What does annoy me is how the governing bodies let that nurse onto a commercial flight she should be in quarantine after dealing with the patient to make sure she hasn't caught or able to spread anything.

This posted nearly 1 year ago http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/12/deadly-disease-modern-global-epidemic

 

[Unknown]

 

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[Guest3722A]

Well, this gets better and better...The CDC TOLD the Nurse to Get on That Plane.
http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/heal...las-hospital-worker-diagnosed-ebola/17290677/

From the Story
The second Dallas nurse diagnosed with Ebola shouldn't have traveled on a commercial flight due to her exposure to the virus prior to her diagnosis, said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the CDC has now confirmed that it gave Amber Vinson permission to make a trip to Cleveland....However, because of her exposure to the virus, Vinson shouldn't have traveled on the commercial flight, the CDC director said on Wednesday. Frieden revealed the nurse registered a low-grade fever of 99.5 degrees before she boarded the plane. It was later confirmed that the CDC gave Vinson permission to get on the plane because she was showing no other symptoms of the virus, and her temperature didn't reach the threshold of 100.4 degrees.

WTF!!!!

See, they told Nurse#2, "Go ahead, get on that plane. Noooo problem..." Then when it went to crap, they said, "OMG, she shouldn't have been on that plane!" Basically, it's the same thing they did to Nurse#1. What they're doing is issuing bullshit guidance, and then blaming the nurses when the guidance results in disaster or bad P.R.

n.E.C.s.t ??? lol

 

[SBS.95]

I'm not really worried about this, but I've always been curious. Could Ebola travel on the packages I import from China using UPS? I used to believe everything was irradiated, but I can't seem to find any evidence on Google.

No. Ebola relies on a host to survive. It cannot survive on surfaces for any extended period of time. The idea of an Ebola victim sneezing on a package, and then it showing up at your door a few days later, and then you getting the virus, is absurd- even under perfect laboratory conditions the virus wouldn't be capable of surviving a long trip like that.

While it's easy to get freaked out because the news (the people who get money from our attention) is broadcasting it everywhere, it's important to keep the facts in mind. It's very unlikely that the nurse who traveled to Cleveland infected anyone. Most infections have occurred to those caring for people already showing later symptoms of the virus. This recent update certainly shouldn't stop me, or anyone else, from going to a Browns game (though my dislike of Johnny Football would.)

Lastly, and this will come across as callous, but I'm just trying to lay out the facts... this outbreak has been going on for 6+ months, and has infected 9000 people in Africa. That's a CDC estimate and many are calling that inaccurate, so let's go ahead and double their estimate. That's 18,000 infections in 6 months, in countries with poor health care systems, poor sanitary conditions, and where there is a tradition for all members of a village to touch the dead body of Ebola victims. The fact that it has only infected this amount of people should say something about how hard it is to contract the virus.

P.S. The country of Nigeria is now Ebola-free. They stopped it. We will too. That doesn't mean everything will go perfectly as planned, or that there won't be more infections, or that the CDC is the most competent organization in the world. But I think we can handle it. Either way, the people going out and buying bio suits and respiratory masks need to stop reading /r/Ebola and blogs run by guys living somewhere in the foothills of Montana.

Just wash your hands and don't go swapping spit with sniffling strangers on airplanes, and you'll be fine.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nigeria-stopped-ebola-2014-10

---

By the way, I'm not saying we should be playing this with our head in the sand. Ebola is an excruciatingly painful way to die and it's sad that we are at the place we are. But for those of us safely living in 1st world countries, we should be talking about international relief, not "which bio suit should I buy", which is where this thread has devolved to in the past couple days. This isn't real-life Contagion, although that's a good movie if anyone is bored this weekend.

 

[bringitnow28329]

I certainly don't want to see an outbreak but it's probably inevitable. I am a professional trader and have been trading the Ebola related stocks recently. TOday it was VSR, last week it was LAKE and the two weeks before TKMR. I'm up $60k this month so Ebola is great for me.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

And all of those deaths are the result of poor lifestyle choices, a conscious choice to engage in a repeated behavior. Ebola is not my choice, but if I do get infected, most likely it will because of someone else's shit-poor choice-- not mine.

 

[Thrive]

Seriously!? This has been widely debunked for years. It's complete bullshit. There is 0 correlation. If you aren't vaccinating your children, you are part of the problem- you allow these diseases to pop up again and perhaps mutate into more potent strains, infecting those of us who understand that organizations like pharmaceutical companies can't be broken down into black/white (good/evil.)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...tism-vaccines-mccarthy-view-medicine-science/
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/autism/
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/
http://www.autismsciencefoundation.org/autismandvaccines.html <--- THIS ONE IS RIGHT OFF THE AUTISM SCIENCE FOUNDATION'S WEBSITE
http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/final-nail-coffin-vaccine-autism-myth/

The reason more children weren't diagnosed with ADHD, autism, or bipolar disorder 100 years ago is because doctors and medical researchers at the time were unaware of the existence of them. Please. Why don't we start lobotomizing again? How about trying to "beat the gay gene" out of people? Got any more out-of-date medical practices we should start using again?

Let's get back to the topic at hand. I, and I'm sure most others, have no interest in debating a study that was found false, with conclusive evidence, a decade ago.

First off, there are other ways of preventing viruses and sickness than just vaccines and conventional medicine. Just because it is the status quo today, does not mean it is entirely the best option. Just like leeching blood was widely used and accepted as a sound medical practice until it was de-bunked, any medical practice today can have side-effects/repercussions we cannot observe or even notice. Take the corporate food industry for example. It takes 20 years for the chemicals and carcinogenic ingredients in mainstream food to take a visible effect on the body.

Secondly, it is not your place or the governments to force anyone to vaccinate their children. You can educate and instruct all you want, but the more things we "force" people to do, the more we entrench ourselves along this path to losing our freedoms. In the end, people have the right to chose.

Thirdly, have you ever thought about who funds these researchers? Oh my, well its the pharmaceutical companies usually. Wouldn't want to anger the benevolent corporation who just payed me a bunch of money to conduct this research. Might be best to frame the results in a way that is pleasing to them...

I thought people on this forum might be more open minded, given, this is a forum about "challenging the Entrepreneur status quo" but I guess certain mindsets are just built in too deep.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

The new forum software has the ability to ban people from threads. Please do NOT hijack this thread into a vaccination discussion otherwise I will have to test the new feature.

 

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[Emanuel]

Without having the slightest intention of offending anyone here, I think some people are a little too obsessed and paranoid about Ebola simply because it's all over the news.

If it were really that contagious, there should have been millions of cases in the last couple of weeks. I'm not trying to imply not taking any action, but don't make an obsession out of it. Simply stay away from public places as much as you can and practice good hygiene to minimize the risks.

Food and water is extremely affordable for most of us so I'm surprised there's some individuals here that are only now considering stocking up on it. Were there no risks before Ebola? If you ask me, we should all have 2-3 months worth of food and water in our houses. War, solar flares, Yellowstone eruption, other natural disasters and many many other things could lead to consequences far greater than Ebola. Why haven't you stocked up till now?!

I think what @MJ DeMarco said a few posts back is our major cause of concern: people are EXTREMELY self centered. In case of a disaster, anarchy and chaos would certainly be the outcome. Humans collapse under pressure and their rationale goes out the window. Throw in the 300 million fire arms that are currently present in the U.S. and imagine the consequences.

 

[twdavis]

Like I said earlier in the thread, the only thing that really concerns me as of yet is the fact that if the virus moves through enough people it could potentially mutate and become airborne.

THAT would be cause for panic.



Also...that lady who flew from Dallas to Cleveland was in Akron...and has connections to Kent State...and I live about 40-45 minutes from both of those areas...so that's a little concerning...

 

[SBS.95]

First off, there are other ways of preventing viruses and sickness than just vaccines and conventional medicine. Just because it is the status quo today, does not mean it is entirely the best option. Just like leeching blood was widely used and accepted as a sound medical practice until it was de-bunked, any medical practice today can have side-effects/repercussions we cannot observe or even notice. Take the corporate food industry for example. It takes 20 years for the chemicals and carcinogenic ingredients in mainstream food to take a visible effect on the body.

Secondly, it is not your place or the governments to force anyone to vaccinate their children. You can educate and instruct all you want, but the more things we "force" people to do, the more we entrench ourselves along this path to losing our freedoms. In the end, people have the right to chose.

Thirdly, have you ever thought about who funds these researchers? Oh my, well its the pharmaceutical companies usually. Wouldn't want to anger the benevolent corporation who just payed me a bunch of money to conduct this research. Might be best to frame the results in a way that is pleasing to them...

I thought people on this forum might be more open minded, given, this is a forum about "challenging the Entrepreneur status quo" but I guess certain mindsets are just built in too deep.

Like I said in my other post I don't want to debate this here. But if you are truly confident and entrenched in your opinion I implore you to start a thread on this topic because I will be happy to point out what I feel are some gaping logical fallacies in your argument. Props for challenging the status quo I suppose.

Back to Ebola...

 

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[daivey]

If ebola became airborne, we would all be fuct. Hope you have a bomb shelter

 

[Vigilante]

I am a germ phobe. I don't particularly like to talk about what's going on with Ebola. I don't even like to shake hands with people, much less somebody sneezing on me and killing me. This Ebola thing is really f*cked up and has the potential to get even crazier. It's been around since the mid-1970s in the fact that they can't contain it is very troubling.

 

[SBS.95]

I am a germ phobe. I don't particularly like to talk about what's going on with Ebola. I don't even like to shake hands with people, much less somebody sneezing on me and killing me. This Ebola thing is really f*cked up and has the potential to get even crazier. It's been around since the mid-1970s in the fact that they can't contain it is very troubling.

I don't think anyone saw it as a threat until now. This chart is months old, the virus has since infected nearly 10,000 people, so multiply the 2014 bar by 6x. Most of the time it would emerge in a couple African villages, kill 100 people, and then vanish for years. Westerners didn't really see it as a threat.

Like I said, I don't fear getting Ebola here in the US. But I do find wish we were offering a better international response. And I'm not talking about the US. I saw the other day that Mark Zuckerburg donated $25 million to help combat Ebola. The country of Saudi Arabia donated like $300,000. Not to turn this political, but it seems to me if the UN was ever established to get countries together to do something for the good of the world, an epidemic would be it. I mean what else do they do?

If ebola became airborne, we would all be fuct. Hope you have a bomb shelter

That's unlikely, for no other reason than the virus kills its host so fast it doesn't really have time to develop. Obviously viruses develop a lot faster than, say, a mammal, but when you consider a lot of people who get this virus are dead within 14 days or so... yeah. It's a really, really hot virus. There's really no reason to fear this thing going airborne. It's pretty hard to catch.

Lastly (and this part is just my personal speculation) if there would be any sort of small outbreak in a Western country, I think we would see the R0 to be significantly lower. With many of these countries, people are touching the dead bodies before burial. By the time you are dead from Ebola, your body is like a petri dish of the virus. It's WAY more dangerous brush your hand over a dead Ebola victim's body than it is to be sneezed or coughed off by someone in early stages. Over here, this thread shows lots of people are scared to go near public transit, yet along a dead body. I firmly believe our paranoia would ultimately save us from any outbreak.

 

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[loop101]

if the virus moves through enough people it could potentially mutate and become airborne.

THAT would be cause for panic.

A big problem with these viruses is that they live in other animals, called "natural reservoirs", without causing problems. It is through these other animals that the viruses have time to mutate and change. The Ebola virus has been around for a long time, as in thousands of years, and probably will continue to be. The "swine flu" pandemic of 1918 was from a "pig-virus" that made the jump to humans, and H1N1 is a descendant of the 1918 virus. There are currently 5 different "strains" of Ebola. If Ebola mutates and becomes airborne, it would likely happen in a "natural reservoir" animal, and be a 6th strain.

 

[loop101]

I remember a few years ago some scientists wanted to publish a paper on how they "weaponized" bird-flu, but finally agreed not to publish it. If some dictator had his scientists weaponize it, and ship samples to major cities world-wide, they could hold the whole world hostage, "Send me $300 to get your cities back".

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/scientists-weaponize-deadly-bird-flu.html?PageSpeed=noscript

"The experiments, which involved mutating the virus a total of 5 times, made the strain highly contagious between ferrets — the very animal model used to study human flu infection."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...be-censored-on-concern-at-terrorism-risk.html

"Scientists agreed not to publish certain details of research showing how lethal bird flu can be made contagious after a U.S. biosecurity panel asked that it be kept secret for security reasons. "

 

[Trill2b]

Not even slightly worried. And I worry about everything.

The medical infrastructure in place in North America is heads and shoulders above anything in West Africa.

SARS, MERS, norovirus, H5N1, H1N1... whatever.

I feel bad for the poverty, ignorance, lack of education and fear that caused the outbreak in the first place.. but life goes on.

As long as you aren't bathing dead people and eating bushmeat/fruit bats it's all good.

Hmmm... seems you don't know much about Ebola...

 

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[Trill2b]

The fact is, it's EXTREMELY difficult to transmit from person to person. You can be on the same plane or even a few seats over.. or EVEN NEXT TO the guy/gall with ebola and even so your risk is VERY low unless you start making out with said guy/girl among other things...

I assure you its not extremely difficult to transmit Ebola from person to person.
I'm a medical doctor living in Nigeria where we just succeeded in kicking it out.
Just touching the bedding of a sick Ebola carrier and touching your nostril or scratching your eyes or picking your teeth etc may be enough...

 

[SBS.95]

I assure you its not extremely difficult to transmit Ebola from person to person.
I'm a medical doctor living in Nigeria where we just succeed in kicking it out.
Just touching the bedding of a sick Ebola carrier and touching your nostril or scratching your eyes or picking your teeth etc may be enough...

That's at advanced stages of the virus though. There was an interview a few days ago by one of the medical researchers who discovered Ebola in the 70s, where he said he would happily sit next to an Ebola victim on the bus, assuming they were still in the early stages of the virus. I'll try to find the link. But basically something along of the lines of in the early stages the virus tries to multiply itself as much as possible, so it tends to stay within the victim, whereas in the later stages it is almost excreting itself, making itself much easier to catch.

Obviously if you're picking your teeth next to piles of Ebola-ridden blood you're at risk.

I would be interested in hearing what the general "level of fear" was on the ground in Nigeria though. I know you guys had significantly more victims than the US does currently, but still managed to stop it. Were people as freaked out about it there as some of the people here are?