Family & Relationships10 mins ago
Ebola Nurse Critical..
I deliberated as to where to post this...
Society and Culture....it encompasses human spirit
CB....for the general consensus
I opted for News...only because it is News.
However to attempt to pre-empt any-one who says she made the choice herself...so do thousands of troops every day, worldwide, every nationality
So where does humanity stop and self preservation start? Have we a humanitarian endemic on our hands ?
http://
Society and Culture....it encompasses human spirit
CB....for the general consensus
I opted for News...only because it is News.
However to attempt to pre-empt any-one who says she made the choice herself...so do thousands of troops every day, worldwide, every nationality
So where does humanity stop and self preservation start? Have we a humanitarian endemic on our hands ?
http://
Answers
well at least, as I type, the nurse is still alive and the longer she goes on, I guess, the better the chances of her pulling through. Fingers crossed.
23:27 Sun 04th Jan 2015
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The nurse did what she did by choice and knew the risks. I hope she pulls through. The big question has been hinted at by Fusion and anneasquith - a better system of screening needs to be put in place and if that means quarantine then that is what it should be . Animals are put in Quarantine to stop Rabies coming into this country and that's a far smaller risk than Ebola. Maybe the OP would run mile, hands in the air screaming Ebola run for your lives -some people have a little more compassion and should be given more protection.
"Animals are put in Quarantine to stop Rabies coming into this country and that's a far smaller risk than Ebola."
I'm not sure this is actually true. The risk of catching Rabies from a rabid animal is quite high, and if the disease is not picked up on soon enough than the fatality rate is close to 100% regardless of treatment, which is surprisingly far higher than the Ebola death rate (in the current outbreak, about 30% of patients receiving treatment survive). If there's pre-emptive treatment then the death rate from rabies is effectively 0%, but to some extent rabies is actually more dangerous than Ebola.
And then there's the transmission risks. As has been outlined before, but I'll say it again, Ebola can only be spread through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person who is displaying symptoms of the disease. Rabies, by contrast, spreads much easier because rabid animals have a tendency to bite people anyway, and the virus lives in their saliva. This makes the transmission risk of rabies, at least to a single person, rather high and indeed higher than Ebola.
Finally, even in the full extent of the current outbreak, just over 8,000 people have died and just over 20,000 cases have been confirmed (these are believed to be underestimates, so you may as well double these figures); and those deaths are mainly confined to three countries. Rabies remains a global disease killing in the region of 25,000 per year, and very few countries are rabies-free.
I don't think that the risks from Ebola spreading are high enough to justify
full quarantine measures. If anything, the comparison to Rabies should reinforce this, rather than undermine it.
I'm not sure this is actually true. The risk of catching Rabies from a rabid animal is quite high, and if the disease is not picked up on soon enough than the fatality rate is close to 100% regardless of treatment, which is surprisingly far higher than the Ebola death rate (in the current outbreak, about 30% of patients receiving treatment survive). If there's pre-emptive treatment then the death rate from rabies is effectively 0%, but to some extent rabies is actually more dangerous than Ebola.
And then there's the transmission risks. As has been outlined before, but I'll say it again, Ebola can only be spread through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person who is displaying symptoms of the disease. Rabies, by contrast, spreads much easier because rabid animals have a tendency to bite people anyway, and the virus lives in their saliva. This makes the transmission risk of rabies, at least to a single person, rather high and indeed higher than Ebola.
Finally, even in the full extent of the current outbreak, just over 8,000 people have died and just over 20,000 cases have been confirmed (these are believed to be underestimates, so you may as well double these figures); and those deaths are mainly confined to three countries. Rabies remains a global disease killing in the region of 25,000 per year, and very few countries are rabies-free.
I don't think that the risks from Ebola spreading are high enough to justify
full quarantine measures. If anything, the comparison to Rabies should reinforce this, rather than undermine it.
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