Monday Open Thread [10.20.14]
Conservative columnist and climate change skeptic George F. Will baffled his fellow Fox News on Sunday panelists by insisting that scientists had not come to a consensus about whether Ebola could go airborne. Uh, Georgie poo, if Ebola was airborne, by now, the population of Dallas, Texas and Cleveland, Ohio, not to mention the whole continent of Africa, would be showing symptoms by now. I really am amazed at the conservative brain, or lack thereof. I mean, George Will is suppose to be one of their smart ones.
Several years ago, Will had a column in NEWSWEEK in which he wrote that liberals and progressives love railroads because they regiment people, and that rail is the transportation favored by socialists. Every now and then, he writes a reasonable column, but he definitely qualifies as looney.
I’m old enough to remember when George Will wasn’t a constant presence on TV. He was just a syndicated columnist in 1987 when he wrote that a society in which a DHS tape machine was in 80% of American homes within three years of its introduction was a society that was NOT over-taxed (this was back when Reagan was raising taxes).
TV money changed him radically. He left his wife and disabled son, took up with a younger woman and turned hard right.
Money. Changes. Everything.
He has to show his nutcase credentials to maintain relevance in the GOP
I was surprised to see him as one of the talking heads on the recent Ken Burns FDR spectacle on PBS. He spoke reverently of FDR’s accomplishments throughout, and I kept wanting to adjust the set feeling as though something was wrong.
@TeleMan: My guess is that his comments were edited to sound that way. All his quotes were descriptions, in his big-vs.-small-government frame, of FDR’s thinking. Burns just clipped off the parts where he explained why FDR was wrong.
Not so quick DelDem. Respiratory secretions are considered part of bodily fluids, the origin of the disease, hence the case is made for an air-borne transmittal. Given, where a patient may be in the disease process increases the risk of transfer of the disease.
This is why precautions are such involving FULL BODY COVERAGE. Unlike, perhaps a staph infection of a wound, or a c. dif infection of stool, usually requiring gloves alone.
The reason the entire continent of Africa, or population of Cleveland, Dallas etc.., you mention HASN’T been infected, is because by the time you are that sick, with respiratory involvement, you either already died or you are under medical care, preventing the spread, or your range of respiratory potency is negated by the strength of other people’s immune symptoms, and/or the dilution of droplets in that casual contact.
Make no mistake. This is a fully contagious disease. And I don’t get a flu shot, so am NEVER the alarmist in these situations. For me, right now–this one is right up there with fulminating, full blown TB, bloody secretions upon coughing, and public health wants you!
So laugh at his word choice, or whatever–but this disease is active thru all body fluids, respiratory secretions included.
Ya know, I was riding down the road yesterday texting, smoking a cigerette and searching through radio stations while eating my lunch without my seat belt on when I occurred to me that I had my window open and if the guy in the truck next to me sneezed, I could catch ebola.
Why ebola isn’t an airborne risk — from the Scientific American.
Aw heck, not you mouse. You live that charmed life. Your more apt to die tripping off the curb, the city didn’t fix.
And the cough in the next truck? That’s some work ethic, to be still driving once it’s hit respiratory dangers in it’s progression to share with you. Late stage mouse. So finish your lunch. That’s just a random, run of the mill cough buddy.
And may the Shingles remain on all our houses. 🙂
Pundits never bow out gracefully as long as there’s a buck to be made, notice their numbers rarely seem to decrease. Nigeria was declared Ebola free today, others will follow, possibly even Texas. Bummer!
LOL! I more fear being hit on my bike by someone from DC in road rage on Rehoboth Ave while I’m eating a slice of Louies.
TOTALLY AGREE with you cass as the primary vector. Those studies always deal with aerolization etc., as primary mode. What needs to be delineated, and now that we have survivors is the potency of respiratory secretions when a patient survives that far to be a contagion and at what level.
Went thru this with AIDS, back in the day…..husband awarded research prize, I worked prior to the official “name”etc..for the identification of the MANY modes of transmission. What was first thought blood and feces–soon (haha-we all know the YEARS with that one)….semen, lactation, tears, mucus, etc..
Here’s a comparison….chicken pox we know is airborne, and classified as such. However, open pox can also be the source etc.. Stool is not–it’s denatured by then.
Scarlet fever was cause for quarantine, as a respiratory disease decades ago. The Board of Health would not even allow your windows to be open for fresh air, for fear of the spread in the neighborhood. What they didn’t realize, but of course do now, and we have antibiotics is just a simple impetago a child had, was the same culprit, a kid with scarlet fever was being quarantined for. They had not made the connection that impetago could lead to scarlet fever, or scarlet fever could settle into a wound causing impetago. Same germ. Point being, you are more overall sick with scarlet fever than perhaps with impetago. But the kid with scarlet fever was quarantined, while that kid in the tree with the nasty, oozing scab–was the 6 inch rattlesnake.
With Ebola, since primarily it begins as more of an enterovirus, that of course would be primary concern. However, those who are surviving thru MORE ravages of symptoms, it is absolutely been extended to ALL BODY FLUIDS, and why it is full-on gear and not just “let’s glove up”. Before, very limited, and only anecdotal evidence of survivors only breached the basics of hand-washing, handling of waste, and care of the dead–which of course in a 3rd world country is about all they can CLEARLY point out isn’t exactly antiseptic. Now, that we are actively engaged as a nation in responding to this…..it’s just a matter of print media catching up with the reality of transmission–as end stage as that may be. The virulence of which body fluid will proof out. That’s all.
Meanwhile, death in 3 weeks is enough to get me to wear a mask, if I were to care for that patient profile–and I’ll let the journals continue to publish the retrospect, because the more valuable data is being gathered real time now.
Pundits, media, it’s all nano-second sound bytes agreed. But when you start committing troops, and parallel agencies it once again becomes a John Bolaris Storm.
It sucks for the person who REALLY gets Ebola, and exposes where their risk was–and it stinks for the hyperexposure of media play and resources this distracts as the gnat in the eye.
Just wait until they hear of the resurgence of leprosy. And just when is America going to get real serious about Hepatitis C? Now that should be front page stuff……
I’ve climbed in and out of a fair amount of PPE, Joanne, even including controlled air. The problem with telling people that ebola is airborne (like Will is doing here) is that it tells people that they can get this in the same way you can get a cold. That would be wrong. Cranking up the fear factor betrays all common sense for this. Especially since you are at greater risk of being shot today than you are of being infected with ebola. And we don’t do much to try to control the risks of those guns, either.
Americans are such over fed, ignorant pigs with cushy lives that they are easily frightened by low risk things while they ignore the big stuff.
I mean, I mean, I mean, how many overly fat Americans drove their giant SUVs through the fast food drive through this morning for a fried fat sandwish and drove to work smoking a cigerette with no seat belt on? It has to be millions. Now that’s risk man.
I loved the Burns series on the Roosevelts but I won’t be buying the DVD, as I so often do with PBS stuff, because they chose George Will to comment. It was like a giant poop in the middle of the banquet table.