Thread: Ebola in NYC
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Nathans_Dad Nathans_Dad is offline
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Quote de Nathans_Dad



It's a conspiracy!



Seriously, do you want to know what I actually think?

Not if you're hitting the Cap-lock key in prep to spell panic in green font.



Otherwise, yes.
No, nothing like that.

Honestly I think the main difference is that in Africa Ebola patients sit at home until they develop the diarrhea and vomiting. Here we intensively manage patients from their first fever.

Ebola kind of follows phases. Initially you have flu like symptoms, fever, muscle aches, fatigue, etc. This lasts a couple days. Then the diarrhea/vomiting starts. After a few more days of this the bleeding phase starts.

I think the real killer may be that vomiting/diarrhea phase. If not aggressively treated this leads to dehydration and kidney failure. Then once the bleeding phase hits you're already too sick to survive.

With aggressive treatment and early IV fluids you can hopefully avoid the kidney failure and be in much better shape to survive the bleeding phase.

There may also be some contribution from your initial viral inoculation. If you get a small amount of virus your course may be initially slower, giving you time to get care before the bad phases hit. This would be like what happens to nurses or doctors who were wearing protective gear but still got contaminated in some way. With a larger initial viral burden the disease may advance more rapidly in the first few days, cutting the time doctors have to get the body optimized to weather the storm. That's more like the people in Africa who get massively exposed to dying family members.

Last edited by Nathans_Dad; 10-24-2014 at 10:29 AM..
Old 10-24-2014, 10:26 AM
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