CNN is reporting that “A patient being treated at a Dallas hospital is the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, health officials announced Tuesday.”
Don’t be surprised if you start seeing all kinds of “Chicken Little” style reports popping up. ย News that Ebola hasย turned up is freaking out a lot of Americans. โHelpfulโ bits of commentary include things likeย itโs โdeadly uncurable,โย has aย 90% fatality rate, andย causes โa hemorrhagic fever that eventually leads to a complete bleed-out.โย Todayโs news merely amplifiesย the anxiety thatโs been buildingย sinceย word got out that two Americans infected with Ebola have beenย moved to US hospitals for treatment.
But Quartz wrote an excellent articleย explaining why you shouldn’t be that worried:
- Ebolaโs not airborne. It can only be spread through bodily fluids.ย The virus spreads when blood, semen, urine, vomit, feces, or other bodily fluids of an infected person come into contact with someone elseโs mucus membranes.
- And itโs not just any infected personโitโs asymptomaticย infected person.ย People can only catch ebola from someone actually exhibitingย symptoms. Those include vomiting, diarrhea, and, in some cases, hemorrhaging of mucus membranes, such as nose, nail beds and eyesโin other words, pretty hard to miss.
- It isnโt curable, but people survive it. In fact, this outbreak has a 57% mortality rateโmuch lower than that oft-cited 90%. Victims die of organ failure, not blood loss.
- That pig study doesnโt mean anything.ย Some people are citing a 2008 study showing airborne Ebola transmissionย from pigs to rhesus monkeysย (theyย were never in direct contact with each other). However, as Aetiology explains, this experiment showed merely that pigs seem unusually goodย at spritzing the air with coughed-up viruses.ย Avoid Ebola-infected pigs and youโre fine.
- Nearly every hospital in the US is equipped to treat Ebola patients and keep them in isolation.ย And the symptoms, once they set in, are so aggressive that itโs hard to do much of anything except head to the hospital.
- Another reason for all the worry is that the media (Quartz included) has tended to zeroย in onย this outbreakโs rapid spread and its being the โdeadliest in history.โ While both are true,ย thatย says wayย more about the quality of medical care in war-torn, poverty-stricken pockets of West Africaย than it does about Ebolaโs virulence.
So, while the news of Ebola showing up here in the US is something to be aware of, it’s by far not time to start making your funeral arrangements.
