Ebola outbreak: fact vs fiction
Local experts say there is no reason to panic over Ebola, and the best way to stop fear is education.
A common concern people have regarding the disease is the risk of contracting it. But experts said that risk is low.
“People pretty much have to be showing active symptoms in order for you to catch this type of disease,” Doctor John Torres said. “You have to have close contact, it’s not like the flu. It’s not like the cold that you can be in the same room and catch it. Instead, Ebola you pretty much have to have contact with body fluids or the body itself. Even if someone is coughing or sneezing if you’re in the same room, you really don’t have much to worry about. But if they happen to cough or sneeze on you, that’s then when the concern goes a little bit higher.”
Some wonder, if the risk is low, why are people often seen wearing HAZMAT suits, like the crew going into the apartment where the Ebola patient in Dallas stayed.
“That’s a clean-up crew, so they’re going in to clean up those messy areas. They need to be very careful,” Torres said. “There are a lot of bodily fluids left there. The virus can’t handle being outside the body for very long, but if it’s inside the body fluids – we’re talking if somebody has diarrhea, if somebody vomits, bloody vomit, that type of thing – those body fluids themselves are going to have the virus in them, and that can stay around a long time.”
Another misconception is that Ebola is or will become airborne.
“There’s no evidence to suggest it’s going to get airborne, and I regard it as more than a million to one, in terms of the probability for that, more like a billion to one,” Colorado College Associate Professor Andrew Price-Smith said.
Price-Smith has been an associate adviser to the National Intelligence Council since 2008. He specializes in the effects of disease, environmental change and energy flows and scarcity on the security of nations. He said there should be no concern about the possibility of Ebola spreading throughout the United States. But there are other concerns.
“What (people) should be worried about is the potential for greater importation of the disease through infected people coming from other parts of the world into the country,” he said. “That’s a real issue that people may get through the screening process at airports, they may cheat the system, otherwise lie or try to reduce their temperatures.”
Price-Smith said the U.S needs to take the leadership in fighting Ebola because the World Health Organization doesn’t have the resources to do it and the United Nations won’t be able to do it in time. He supports sending troops to West Africa to build treatment units, even though training won’t be easy.
“We worry about the troops getting infected and repatriating it or bringing it to the USA,” he said. “On the other hand, if the Department of Defense isolates soldiers, if they’ve potentially been exposed, for a period of up to 21 days, then I see the prospects of re-importation of disease back into the US as pretty low.”
