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comment by crafty
crafty  ·  3743 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Airborne Transmission of Ebola

That is a good point. I would hope someone is helping to provide things like gloves and masks, as it sounds like a near-death sentence to attempt treatment without those things. I find it hard to know what the conditions really are on the ground. I've only seen a handful of videos with interviews of doctors and I think most healthcare workers I've seen are using gloves and masks, although not full face respirators.

I agree, the evidence backing up his claim is rather circumstantial. Simply citing the number of Ebola cases among healthcare workers is, in and of itself, inconclusive, and the studies, best I can tell, prove nothing, although I'm curious about the pig/monkey study. Is my understanding correct in that the virus has different effects in different species and in at least one boar species, the virus is aresolized more so than in the monkey species they tested? I think his point wasn't that there is an entirely new mode of transmission, but that current health care standards are perhaps not as strong as they should be. In the highly unlikely event of a widespread western outbreak, I could see it overwhelming our ability to treat it as a BL4 contaminant, as it sounds like we have a limited number of hospitals equipped with self-contained space suits. I would hope hospitals be able to use respirators, which would seem more effective to me than the N-95 masks they currently recommend. Maybe the CDC guidelines don't need to be upgraded from what they are currently, but regardless, I'm sure there will be plenty of research about this outbreak in future.