Have you touched an Ebola Patient’s Puke, Sweat, Sh*t, or Blood? If Not, You Don’t Have Ebola.

[Savannahmann]

17. Great, so we can rule out Mosquito's as a method of transmission

Outstanding. You will excuse me if I don't jump for joy by the way. In fact, you'll excuse me if I reject that assertion out of hand as utterly illogical and asinine.

I've got some experience in engineering. The wise old Engineer who trained me taught me this way. Never build up, always cut down. What he meant was this. Start with the worst case scenario, and work down from there to best case. With a disease like Ebola, one that already has a 70% mortality rate, don't assume that the means of transmission is the best case, assume it is the worst case. Assume that droplets from a sneeze days before the patient became symptomatic are infectious. There had to be ebola strands in those droplets, the disease does not progress from one strand to a billion in the space of a few hours. It progresses in a logical logarithmic manner. From one you get two, then four, then eight, with a doubling on a predictable schedule. Some of those will be ejected before the patient is symptomatic. That is plain and simple logic. That is plain and simple common sense experience of everyone who has ever endured flu season. So a sneeze from an individual from a source as innocuous as dust could eject ebola strands into the air, where it is breathed in by another.

So the worst thing we can do is panic the population. That is a given. The second thing on the list of bad things that we could do is give the people a false sense of security. Don't worry, you can't get it unless you roll round in the blood, bile, or feces of the patient showing frank symptoms is that second worst thing.

Read some history, read about how diseases were stopped in history. Read about the Plague, the Spanish Flu, and many other diseases were tackled by science. The Bubonic Plague was not eliminated when we killed the rats. It was eliminated when we isolated all those who had come into contact with someone who had the plague. Plague Islands for ports where the disease showed up. They were used to quarantine anyone with any disease. The diseases did not spread, because the individuals with the diseases were unable to intact with and infect the public.

Widespread panic is a bad thing. I agree. However, false sense of security is just as bad. Because if Ebola continues to spread, than people will decide that the public health experts are fools and will ignore them and take matters into their own hands. Civil order is one of the major challenges facing the nations with widespread ebola outbreaks. Neighboring nations have closed their borders in order to protect their own populations.

We are using nonsensical statements in an effort to contain the panic, but those statements will be utterly rejected if things get worse. That is not hair on fire nonsense. That is an assessment from history. Deal with it.