No illness detected in Ebola patient's fiancee, family

WFAA ^ | 10/20/2014 | WFAA

[palmer]

The number of exposures in any situation does not change the statistics of the incubation period for two reasons. First all exposures are unique. Second all exposures are independent events.

The statistics (admittedly from Africa) indicate that each person who is exposed should get sick by around day 6 or 7. If there was an exposure for a group of people and none of them got sick at day 6 or 7, then makes it less likely that any were infected in that event (see hypothetical event below). But all exposures are all individual. How much virus each person got depends on how much vomit they touched, how much virus was in that particular vomit, etc. The incubation period does not shorten or lengthen based on that factor. They either got infected or not, and they will get sick or not around day 6 or 7 and most likely by day 21 if they were infected.

Hypothetically If 20 people were exposed at the exact same level (impossible to know or constrain) and none of them were symptomatic at day 21, then the odds are essentially zero that any of them will get sick after that because there are extremely high odds that one of them would have had symptoms by then.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[exDemMom]

Well, we now know Donna Brazile’s FR handle. When Big Gov fails, just blame the victim! Seriously, just stop. It was shown to you that the protocol was followed, but the CDC’s protocol was flawed. I’m sure DU would love your Big Gov boot licking, so just go there and trash the victims.

Did you even read the articles I posted? It is very clear that the nurses were not using proper PPE. The hospital had not trained them properly, nor provided correct PPE. It was a mess.

Remember, the only ones claiming that the nurses were using proper PPE are the news media--you know, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS? Since when are the news media more accurate than the people who are actually familiar with the situation? They are looking for sensationalism--it is a heck of a lot more dramatic to claim that the nurses got sick while using proper PPE than it is to say they made mistakes. I'm seeing fewer articles claiming that they used proper PPE--so the media is (slowly) getting it right.

In the realm of safety, it is very important to be able to look at the situation objectively and determine how an accident occurred. Most often, the victim caused the accident. This can be the result of inadequate training or failure to adhere to established safeguards. You can't avoid looking at the victim's role in the accident because of some stupid concern that doing so is "blaming the victim." The only way to decrease similar accidents in the future is to understand exactly why and how they occurred--and that DOES mean looking at the victim's role.

Ebola is not some supernatural entity that can drill its way through PPE to infect someone. Hundreds of people using PPE manage to avoid catching Ebola every day. But they were properly trained.