Ebola

[BoredomKilledTheCat]

Aibu to be absolutely terrified of the Ebola virus that I can't get it off my brain. I watched the news earlier of which a nurse has now got it in Spain after treating a patient who died from it.

Makes me wonder why the WHO and pharmaceutical companies aren't doing more to get a cure considering the chances of surviving it are low and it could wipe out many.

I just feel.... Helpless!

Can understand you are scared but the risk is to people who have contact with infected body fluids. Yes the nurse was in Spain but she was doing a much higher risk job than average non-health care worker who never comes into contact with anyone else's body fluids much. Does also suggest something went wrong with their infection control techniques.

There will be working on a vaccine rather than a cure, given it's a virus. This does take time and Ebola is a relatively new virus - HIV has had billions spent on it and there's no cure for that either.

I am petrified of it :-(

Oh dear god, this again? Come on people! You CAN'T get it unless you come into contact with someone's bodily fluids who have it! Mass hysteria is going to help no one!

The best thing you can do is donate to MSF or one of the other organisations who are working so hard to contain the outbreaks in the affected counties.

Almost 7 billion people, 6500 or so have died from Ebola.

Wash your hands and don't eat monkeys, you should be OK.

This charity was founded by the widow of an Ebola victim. She's also spoken out about Liberians being ostracised. [[http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2014/10/06/widow-of-1st-american-ebola-victim-strives-to-end-ignorance/

charity

Watch this, really great video and explains why you should not be panicking.

Link fail

You are not going to contract ebola.

Really.

Thank your lucky stars you aren't a poor person living in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. If you aren't, the chances of catching ebola are vanishingly small. People are dying in scary numbers there, but that won't happen in Western countries, it just won't.

I have some doctor friends. They worry about flu epidemics but not ebola. This latest outbreak has been smaller than previous ones I think. By the time people are really an infection risk, the poor things are too ill to be out and about spreading it. You really do need to be in actual contact with vomit, poo or blood of an infected person in order to catch it. If you aren't a relative of someone with ebola, ministering to nfected people (dead or alive) then you're safe.

"This latest outbreak has been smaller than previous ones I think."

This is the largest ever ebola outbreak, and the first time the WHO has made such serious warnings. By that does not however mean there is any reason to be worried if you are not in an outbreak area.

The risk that UK might have one or more cases in returning travellers has always been the case but, as in Texas, contacts should be identified and can expect to be quarantined. There are enough isolation beds and specialist staff here.

The people to be concerned for are those in outbreak countries. The number of cases was described as doubling every fortnight. WHO and aid agencies say that there is an urgent need to bring this under control within a month.

Could you turn your worries into something positive and donate?

Worry about something you have control over. YABU

BTW, OP, there's a long thread in "chat" (started yesterday I think) which has lots of informative posts about Ebola.

For goodness sake, if you're "terrified" of something carrying such a minute risk, how do you tolerate getting into a car or crossing roads?

I remember all the hysteria when that unfortunate nurse with Ebola was shipped back to the UK from Africa. Posts all over social media saying how there was going to be a mass epidemic and how selfish he was for coming back, he should have just stayed in Africa and died. And, guess what, the number of people catching Ebola in the UK since he came back is precisely zero.

We have been kindly given a new ebola topic from mn so that all of the discussions, which have pretty much been sensible can be gathered in one place. Hopefully it wont be needed for too many months. More of an explanation here and mn say that as long as owners of threads are happy they will move threads into the topic.