Tuesday, December 16, 2014

EBOLA - what am I scared of more now?

Dear scared citizen!
     I understand your worries when you heard about EBOLA crossing Atlantic and eminence of doomsday scenario portrayed by movies like 12 Monkeys (I personally loved this movie). Accidentally or coincidentally remake of which will be airing soon on Sy-Fy channel. And Sy stands for science - right? Warning: Do not forget fy...
     It has been a while that we started to worry about EBOLA. Today even North Korea stepped in to discussion about EBOLA and made accusations that U.S.A. is behind everything. The epidemic still killing people in Africa and victims number reached some 7000.
Damn, I'm molecular biologist I must have been co-conspirator....
     The NIH has received few patients - proximity to my house about 1 mile (1.4 km for metric world). People got scared in many different distant places and I got questioned how do we feel about it here. As you can see, my delayed reaction time correlates with the level of attention I payed to EBOLA scare. Considering that first patient that slipped through the control barriers has traveled with more than 100 people on board of the two planes, touching and speaking to numerous people and no one got infected, I stay pretty calm.
    What gets me is that the only people who got infected were nurses in the hospital who cared for the infected patient. The institution who is supposed to protect public from diseases seems to be the most vulnerable. Well obviously proper protocols were not in place and people got endangered. Now I understand mindset of the older people against hospitals - "I'm not going there because if I go I will get sick." Well usually we do not pay much attention to such a comments - because it is not EBOLA. Well consider flu. It kills tens of thousands of people every year. In negligent conditions it spreads between vulnerable and kills... And then even consider - "Anti-vaxers" - sweet mother of Jesus... Although this is another story...

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