Well, there are very contradictory statements that are put out by Ebola EXPERTS. Why are we ignoring those people that have been working with and against Ebola for over 40 years.
Some Ebola experts worry virus may spread more easily than assumed - LA Times
Some Ebola experts worry virus may spread more easily than assumed
U.S. officials leading the fight against history's worst outbreak of Ebola have said they know the ways the virus is spread and how to stop it. They say that unless an air traveler from disease-ravaged West Africa has a fever of at least 101.5 degrees or other symptoms, co-passengers are not at risk.
"At this point there is zero risk of transmission on the flight," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said after a Liberian man who flew through airports in Brussels and Washington was diagnosed with the disease last week in Dallas.
Other public health officials have voiced similar assurances, saying Ebola is spread only through physical contact with a symptomatic individual or their bodily fluids. "Ebola is not transmitted by the air. It is not an airborne infection," said Dr. Edward Goodman of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where the Liberian patient remains in critical condition.
Yet some scientists who have long studied Ebola say such assurances are premature — and they are concerned about what is not known about the strain now on the loose. It is an Ebola outbreak like none seen before, jumping from the bush to urban areas, giving the virus more opportunities to evolve as it passes through multiple human hosts.
Dr. C.J. Peters, who battled a 1989 outbreak of the virus among research monkeyshoused in Virginia and who later led the CDC's most far-reaching study of Ebola's transmissibility in humans, said he would not rule out the possibility that it spreads through the air in tight quarters.
"We just don't have the data to exclude it," said Peters, who continues to research viral diseases at the University of Texas in Galveston.
Dr. Philip K. Russell, a virologist who oversaw Ebola research while heading the U.S. Army's Medical Research and Development Command, and who later led the government's massive stockpiling of smallpox vaccine after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, also said much was still to be learned. "Being dogmatic is, I think, ill-advised, because there are too many unknowns here."
If Ebola were to mutate on its path from human to human, said Russell and other scientists, its virulence might wane — or it might spread in ways not observed during past outbreaks, which were stopped after transmission among just two to three people, before the virus had a greater chance to evolve. The present outbreak in West Africa has killed approximately 3,400 people, and there is no medical cure for Ebola.
"I see the reasons to dampen down public fears," Russell said. "But scientifically, we're in the middle of the first experiment of multiple, serial passages of Ebola virus in man.... God knows what this virus is going to look like. I don't."
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There is nothing concrete about how this is transmitted, how fast it is mutating, and how long it can stay dormant. There are other studies that show that in 5% of the cases it has stayed dormant for up to 45 days.
5% may seem like a small number, but it really is not a small number when we are talking in the aggregate.
All I know is there is a lot we do not know and the mutation of this disease is the disconcerting part.
Why are there only 3 people infected? Let us hope to God that it remains "only three." It has been about 2 weeks, since people have been exposed. Barely 10 days or so since that woman with Ebola went on a plane with the virus.
It stays dormant UP TO 21 days according to the experts. Let us see and hope. When I say hope......I mean really really hope.
Let us just consider the hazmat suits that are worn by the experts in the field. They wear those things for a particular reason, and there are also reasons why strict protocol is followed when they disrobe from them. Along with getting rid of the waste.
Strict protocols.
Nothing is concrete, in the meantime let us.....
HOPE more cases do not pop up.
