ebooks are a source of ebola. who knows?

were caring for Ebola patients.

Alert the media.

Wait...

I rather doubt he'd actually been in contact with Ebola patients, not at his age.

in Guinea,the country this 5 year old just returned from, right?

And it's out in the villages where humans occasionally have contact with whatever the as-yet unknown reservoir of Ebola resides.

The five year old boy wasn't out in rural villages, I'm pretty sure. And I'm even more certain he wasn't in contact with Ebola patients.

For every single person who simply happens to travel to West Africa, let alone any other part of that huge continent, to freak out when they spike a fever after coming home, isn't rational. There is nothing totally mysterious about the spread of this disease. It's not because Jews poisoned the wells -- wait, that's what ignorant people thought about the Black Plague. Even those who don't know EXACTLY how they got it, all had contact in some way with it. Even that cameraman had hosed down the interior of a car someone had vomited in who was in the end stages of Ebola, the time when there is the largest viral load.

I sincerely doubt the five year old was doing anything remotely like that.

where the child was, or who the child was in contact with, and age is a completely irrelevant to exposure to Ebola.

Last edited Sat Feb 13, 2021, 06:51 PM - Edit history (1)

no where near any Ebola victims, and everyone freaked out because he was in the same country with them.

Sort of like the school not allowing a teacher, I think, who'd traveled to some country several thousand miles away from where the Ebola epidemic is happening, because, well Ebola! Africa!

that the child was not at risk based on age. Ebola does not respect age. Nor do you know where the child traveled, who the child visited, or much of anything else about the child.

What we do know is that the child was in a country where there is an active Ebola outbreak. In case you have not consulted a map, by the way, there is no place in Guinea which is "several thousand miles" from any other location in Guinea. Guinea has 15% of the cases, with two hot spots - one of which includes the airport and the surrounding area. http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014-west-africa/distribution-map.html (It is in the city on the west coast of Guinea with the lab, hospital, and Ebola treatment center - in the midst of a larger area in which cases are also heavily concentrated).

It would be stupid to act as if a child (or anyone else) coming from a country with an active Ebola outbreak, running a fever, with diarrhea, had anything other than Ebola, until proven wrong.

clearly referred to someone else, not this child. I understand perfectly he'd been in a country currently experiencing Ebola outbreaks.

The child's actual exposure is still the pertinent factor. Maybe the parents were minding Ebola victims and their child was helping them? Possible, but unlikely in the extreme. I still see this as just another case of total panic because someone who was in the same country as the Ebola outbreak is assumed to have Ebola until proven otherwise.

who was necessarily in the same area where there is active Ebola in order to fly out of the country (because that is where the airport is located), who had a fever and diarrhea. Yes. He should be treated as having Ebola until it is proven otherwise - as should anyone in those circumstances regardless of age. Blood tests take less than 24 hours, and isolation for 24 hours costs a lot less than tracing 160+ contacts for 21 days and treating 2 new patients. Ebola doesn't care that he is only 5 years old, or that you don't think he could have possibly been doing anything to be exposed.

As to the thousands of miles, you chose that analogy, and it was a poor one, because he had to be within a mile of someone with Ebola in order to board the plane. And, even had he been at the farthest point in the country, it would have been under 1000 miles away - and he had symptoms consistent with Ebola. The person thousands of miles away did not have a fever or diarrhea.

Not to mention that your initial response was to reassure me that,

where the as-yet-unknown reservoir of Ebola exists. It is nice that the blood test exists and can give a negative result quickly. But my point still is that if the little boy in question had no contact with Ebola patients, he was not at risk. Yes, it is an excess of caution to test him, but an appropriate excess of caution?

The thousands of miles away analogy I am talking about has nothing to do with this five year old child, but the fact that people in this country have been totally freaking out about anyone who has been to any part of Africa at all. That has been happening. As well as the attempt to quarantine people just because they had worked with Ebola patients in Africa, even when they have no symptoms at all. Or that Connecticut is enforcing a 21 day quarantine on health workers with no symptoms. The hysteria and stupidity are breathtaking. Meanwhile, every single day thirty people die from gun violence. No one freaks out about that. Every year 400,000 people die from the effects of cigarette smoking. No one freaks out about that.

Now I do realize that those examples, and many others I could come up with are very different from Ebola, but my point remains. To overreact is not a good thing. Remember the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf? I honestly think that we are in danger of that, and that when some other, more realistic danger shows up, people will not care because of all the false alarms. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this country as a whole is simply primed to react to every danger equally, no matter how dangerous it really is. It's been this way more or less since September 11, 2001, and shows little sign of changing.

Meanwhile, jobs are lost. Too many people don't have adequate health care. Pensions have disappeared. And so on. But let one person die of Ebola, and a handful of others become infected, then let's just freak out about every returnee from Africa who spikes a fever, whether or not that person had any contact with Ebola in the first place.

Ebola is prevalent for well over 100 miles around the city. It is not just the in the hospital because people from the countryside are there for treatment.

This child was in a country, and in an area of the country (at least in order to board the plane - and by your near certainty earlier, for longer than that) where Ebola is prevalent. When someone comes from a country where Ebola is prevalent, with a fever, and diarrhea, yes - it absolutely should be treated as Ebola until proven otherwise. Failing to treat Duncan as having Ebola until proven otherwise resulted in the communication of Ebola to 2 other individuals, and the monitoring of more than 200 people who had contact with one of the three infected individuals (along with the associated costs). And, despite most of the reports, his family members say he was extremely careful not to expose himself to Ebola - and that he did not aid a pregnant woman who later died from Ebola.

Treating this child as the child had Ebola until proven otherwise is not freaking out. That is respecting this disease for what it is - a disease which has a 50% or greater fatality rate, and which is communicable when symptomatic. It costs far less to isolate the child in the hospital while waiting for the test results than it would to do contact monitoring for everyone the child came into contact with if the test had turned out positive.

Last edited Sat Feb 13, 2021, 06:34 PM - Edit history (1)

... when you admonish someone not to freak out if they have traveled to West Africa and then spike a fever. Even if I was confident I didn't do anything to expose myself while on the trip, I'm still probably going to at least have a mini-freak. I guess that's just human nature.

My suspicion is patient zero got it from a bat or other bushmeat since he is, after all, patient zero.

Two people in this thread have stated, point blank, that because this person is 5, he could not possibly have been exposed to Ebola. When you make a an unqualified statement like that, a single counter example proves it false. I provided a counter example, who just happened to be the first person identified as having Ebola. I did not make any assertions at all about where patient zero acquired it from - which is completely irrelevant to that child's function as a counter-example to the silly statement that a 5 year old couldn't possibly have been exposed..

EBOLA! And...freedom.

For 21 days until we know for sure111!!!!11!

Just like Kaci Hickox!

Can't be too careful!!

Fear.

with all of this starting just as cold-and-flu season begins. Soon, every time someone gets the sniffles, they will run to the hospital, convinced that they have ebola.

the completion of incubation periods w/out new infections, the survival of the American doctors and nurses treated in the US, the recognition that the 5-year-old (even recently in Guinea) would have been highly unlikely to encounter a situation leading to Ebola infection (etc.) will help tamp down the anxiety. (Perhaps I am too optimistic...)

but it seems as if the more cases like this are reported, the more the general public is likely to start saying, "SEE! We TOLD you Ebola is everywhere and that everyone, absolutely everyone, is at risk!" Who was it that said no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

What we see every single day here on DU, as well as in the rest of the country, is exactly that.

this year because of ebola over reactions.

and the same for his parents!

Sounds irresponsible to me.

Last edited Sun Feb 14, 2021, 12:37 AM - Edit history (1)

I suppose it could be to visit family, or a vacation, or volunteer to help, or something. But......the 5 year old should have stayed home this time I think.

The whole family should have stayed at home. Would you want any of your friends and family going there, even to help with the Ebola crisis? In the latter case, most of us would wish that person well, while worrying (and praying, if religious) that everything goes OK. Tourism seems like an unnecessary frill at this time.

Especially since he didn't have any possible informed choice in the decision.

Hey, I'm starting to pick up from our discussions that you have the impression that Ebola is really no big deal. Correct me if I'm wrong by saying something nasty about the disease, for a change.

and heartbreaking. For those who are sick with it, of course it is a big deal. Of course it is.

And conditions in war torn and very poor W Africa are bad. They have so few health care providers, such fear of so much related to this outbreak (Red Cross is spreading it on purpose, for instance), riots, poverty, hunger, so many kids orphaned and abandoned by their villages, lack of infrastructure, equipment, etc etc etc. It really sucks.

Side note, I joined the Peace Corps 1980, joined a group of nurses and others off to Liberia. PC decided they didn't want nurses so let us all go, looking for non-professionals to go to parts of the country that hadn't had USAians before, to prepare for a group of nurses later. Friends who went (non-nurses) got airlifted out 6 months later when the civil war started native Liberians vs Americo-Liberians.

Until now, I wasn't too sure. Maybe you understand why I don't want either it or irrational fear of it spread in the US. It breaks my heart to know that kids from any part of Africa are being hassled about it in schools. If we had managed to keep it out with travel bans on tourists, and quarantines on medical workers coming back from the hot zone, maybe it wouldn't be on the news 24/7, inspiring idiots to harass innocent people over it.

is what I disagree with, buys into that irrational fear you talk about, same as hyper cleaning places that don't need it.

The only bright thing I can see is having more people be aware of the problem "over there" but unfortunately interest in helping fight it there to keep from it spreading everywhere in the world will soon fade until people think it is personal again. I do not how to put more pressure on politicians to send more help, to even acknowledge the problem.