Ebola and Travel

[clifp]

I'd like to see a comparison to the odds of getting Ebola while traveling to the odds of dying in a plane crash while traveling. You can bet the odds of dying in a plane crash (which are very low) are astronomically higher than the odds of getting Ebola. I know Ebola is a scary disease but this fear is getting out of hand. One single person in the US has gotten Ebola and that was the person with regular direct contact with an infected persons bodily fluids. Get a grip people!! Live your lives

While this almost certainly true in the US. It is important to keep the magnitude of the Ebola in Africa in prospective. At more than 4,000 death, and 8,000 cases double roughly every month, it will certainly kill more deaths than all the airline crashes this century, and odds are will surpass the number of people killed in all airline crashes of all time.

The high end estimate of 1,000,000 case with a 70% fatality rate, will exceed the total deaths, in the war in Syrias, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined and Ebola will have done in 1 year what it took man to accomplish in 13 years.

The way to keep Ebola from being a problem in the US, is to stop it in Africa, nothing else really is effective.

 

[EastWest Gal]

The 24 hour news cycle gets alarmist about everything. A bit of perspective on major diseases in the world should calm many fears about travel and Ebola:

So far about 4000 deaths from Ebola in West Africa. The population of the region is about 340 million. That's about .001% of the population of the region. It has such a high mortality rate, it does deserve media attention. And this is just the beginning of the outbreak. If the infection were surreptitiously airborne we would have seen far more people acquire the infection from the traveller from Liberia to Texas. This upcoming Sunday will mark 3 weeks since he was admitted to the hospital. The max incubation period is 3 weeks.

Now for perspective, a few other deadly diseases:

1.6 million people died of AIDS related infection in 2012. Untreated, HIV infection is 100% fatal.

Tetanus has a 60% mortality rate. Vaccine preventable. in 1990, 272,000 deaths due to tetanus. in 2010, 61,000, but 59,000 were in newborns. Much fewer these past few years due to a huge WHO public health vaccination campaign. Be sure keep up your vaccines before you travel. Highest mortality rate in 60 year old and over who have let their vaccines lapse (that could be some of us...). Clostridium tetani is a soil bacteria, so it has no potential for eradication like smallpox, measles, and polio.

Hep B virus: The WHO estimates that 600,000 people die each year due to complications of the infection. Spreads similarly to HIV. Most people recover from completely but some become chronic carriers. Vaccine came out in 1982. However, those chronically infected (mostly from being born to infected mothers and not vaccinated at birth) cannot benefit
from the vaccine. There is no treatment.

Malaria-rates have declined recently but up to 500 million people infected per year as recently as 2010 and up to a million people may have died from the infection. It's much harder to control exposure to mosquitos than it is exposure to dead animals (the source of Ebola virus).

Bubonic plague--1/3 of the population of Europe died between 1340 and 1400.

I think most of us can safely travel, but avoid West Africa.

 

[travelover]

..............Bubonic plague--1/3 of the population of Europe died between 1340 and 1400............

If I ever do any time travel, I'm gonna stay the hell outta Europe.

 

[2B]

Bubonic plague--1/3 of the population of Europe died between 1340 and 1400.

Given life expenctancies at the time, I'm sure well over 100% of the population died between 1340 and 1400. The worst part is that the total population of Europe fell by about 1/3 during the same time. (just teasing you)

 

[Chuckanut]

I was watching an interview with two doctors this past weekend. The lady doing the interview seemed intent on whipping up something scary from the doctor's replies to her questions no matter how calm and thoughtful the doctors remained.

I don't minimize this outbreak. The worst thing the world can do is act like it will be contained by somebody else who takes the risk. The entire world, especially the more well off countries need to jump on this thing now so that it does end up being a soon to be forgotten inconvenience (except, of course, for those poor souls who have died or lost loved ones.)