Help me be less scared of Ebola

[Trinket to Ride]

So, Ebola. I have an anxiety disorder, and pandemic is one of my biggest fears, so I'm not having a very good time right now. It's gotten to the point where I don't want to leave my room for anything, I've spent a good part of each day literally trembling with fear, and I've barely eaten in three days.

Despite all the reassurances that it won't be that bad in the US, all the horrible nightmare scenarios keep playing out in my head. I feel like anything that says not to worry is a lie and anything saying this is the black plague times ten is looking out for my best interests. Like, I hear people tell me it's not that easy to catch, but then why are there thousands of people with it in west Africa? And I know the US isn't west Africa, but still, what if?

I don't think I'll be able to fully calm down until it stops being in the news every day, be it because they found a cure, were able to contain the spread well enough, or news stops being printed because all the journalists are dead. Either way, I'm looking at a minimum of a month of solid panic.

Anyone want to offer me some reassurance or ways to keep me going until it gets worse or blows over?

 

[Eleuthera]

How often do you lick people? If the answer is "never" you're going to be fine.

You have to somehow ingest some bodily fluid (urine, faeces, blood, sweat) from an sick person (just infected isn't enough, Ebola doesn't transmit during it's incubation stage). The only people in the western world with a decent chance of catching the disease are doctors and nurses treating sick individuals, and if they adhere to the safety precautions/rules it's nearly impossible even for them.

 

[AWAR]

Stop watching the news. Try to avoid all sources of fear mongering if possible.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Yeah, the influenza (flu) epidemic of 1918 killed 50 million people in a couple of years.

This ebola outbreak, so far, has killed a few thousand.

Ebola is a popular subject for the media (and was long before this recent outbreak) because it's quite a nasty disease if you manage to catch it, but it's actually very difficult to transmit. A person with influenza can potentially infect hundreds of people during incubation, i.e. before their symptoms even develop, while the risk of catching Ebola is only really significant once symptoms appear.

Heck, Ebola was around in the 70s but noone cared about it. The only reason people started paying attention was because another disease, HIV (which again, has a much better transmission strategy because a person can go for years without knowing they have it) appeared from Africa in much the same way as Ebola did and then ultimately broke out and spread around the world, killing 30 million people so far. But that's the thing, people didn't know about HIV until it was identified in gay men in the US. At that point, it was already too late to stop it spreading. Ebola just isn't that kind of disease.

That said, this is the worst Ebola outbreak in history. For some reason it was identified fairly late, and attempts to control its spread thus haven't been very effective. If a few hundred people have come into contact with a disease, there's just fewer points of potential transmission than if thousands of people have it and it puts a greater burden on healthcare workers. So yes, this is unprecedented, and it's potentially very bad for people in the affected areas, but as long as you aren't coming into contact with bodily fluids from people who are sick and as long as healthcare organizations remain alert, it's probably not going to effect you at all.

 

[BlueGlowstick]

Ebola is mostly spread from person to person through bodily fluids. Blood and urine, fecal matter, sweat. The doctors in West Africa get it because they don't have the proper equipment to prevent themselves from contracting the disease. They make their own suits.

Ebola is kind of spread like HIV/AIDS, I guess. That is spread through bodily fluids too. And dirty needles.


But unless someone is coughing blood on you then don't worry about it. (Well, worry about the person coughing blood. They could be dying.)

Always wash your hands and carry those pocket packs of Kleenex around with you. And when you cough or sneeze, do it into your elbow.

 

[Lilani]

This video is from FOX News, however it seems there is just a bit of sense in that strange world. It just all belongs to this one guy right here.


The news doesn't talk about ebola because it's something important or threatening, they talk about it because it's good for business to talk about it. The news isn't about sharing facts, it's about marketing events and happenings.

 

[Callate]

To the best of my knowledge, the people who have contracted Ebola have all done so by caring for a living Ebola patient or handling the remains of a deceased Ebola sufferer. As disturbing as, say, that one hospital worker who managed to get on a cruise ship might be, said person remains asymptomatic, and appears not to have contracted the disease.

As far as the U.S. goes, the big mistakes appear to have been made, with relatively minor consequences, and precautions are now getting better. More attention and money are being paid to the matter in Africa, and international response is mobilizing at a promising rate.

Even if you live in Dallas, right now there is a greater chance that you'll be swept off in a hurricane than that you will contract Ebola.

 

[f1r2a3n4k5]

"You can't adjust the wind, but you can adjust your sails."

In other words, don't worry about what you can't control. Control what you can.

Which may sound unrelated to this, but it isn't. At this point, Ebola is very isolated in the Western world. You are far more likely to die of the flu. Get your flu vaccine. You are far more likely to die of heart disease. Exercise regularly and eat healthy.

Control what you can.

 

[Nukekitten]

Like, I hear people tell me it's not that easy to catch, but then why are there thousands of people with it in west Africa?

Because their sanitation, medical and communications infrastructure sucks. You can catch almost anything if you're stuck in a small room with someone who has it 24/7, touching things they've touched that haven't been properly sanitised and so on.

We're talking, in many of the more seriously afflicted areas, about things like access to running water and soap being rare, where trust for modern medicine is frequently very low, and where funeral rites involve washing the bodies of the deceased. Where initial diagnosis is going to be slow, the virus has more chances to spread itself, and contact tracking is going to be difficult.

More developed countries are, I suspect, going to tend to have a vastly better shot at keeping this stuff nailed down.

 

[Duster]

ebola doesn't travel far often because most people who catch it die before traveling much.

 

[renegade7]

Have you eaten any undercooked meat from an African fruit bat? Disposed of bodies of ebola victims or treated an ebola patient without any safety gear? Has anyone coughed blood on you recently?

If the answer to these questions is "no" then I think you're okay.

Ebola's a pretty terrifying disease, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not nearly that bad. Ebola in the last few decades has killed about 5,000 people. Malaria, on the other hand, kills 225,000 people EVERY YEAR. Influenza kills about 500,000 annually.

Also, while ebola is a nasty disease to have, if you do somehow manage to catch it, remember that you're in a first-world country with a fully-developed health care system: ebola is treatable. On top of that, it's such a high-profile disease right now that you're basically guaranteed top-quality care. Most of the deaths due to ebola are a result of the health care systems of the affected countries being unable to handle ebola.

Phobias and paranoia related to disease are actually pretty common. Avoiding stress triggers is probably the best move, avoid news sources that like to sensationalize about ebola. If you feel like you're still stressed out or you start to feel like it's disease in general you're feeling panicked about, then you might want to talk to a therapist, there are plenty of specialists who help patients overcome phobias.

 

[Solsbury_Grille]

Sure. We can make you feel better.

Okay, first of all, let's take a look at what Ebola is. It's a VHF (viral hemorrhagic fever) in the family filoviridae. There are about 5 viruses in that family, Ebola Zaire (which is the strain that came into Dallas - about 45 minutes away from me) is the one you're concerned about. Also in that family are Marburg virus and Ebola Reston. We'll come back to those in a minute.

Ebola is a fluid-borne illness. This means you have to be exposed to blood, saliva, semen, or sweat. Repeatedly. For a prolonged period of time. There were approximately 45 people who were held in isolation here in Texas who were exposed to Ebola from the index patient, Thomas Duncan. They have all finished their 21-day isolation period. None have gotten ill.

Ebola is not airborne. It cannot be transmitted through a sneeze unless the person sneezes their blood directly into your eyes. A lot has been made of environmental exposure with Ebola. What they don't tell you is that they hold those test samples in the most clinical of situations that would never present themselves in the real world. Viruses are extremely fragile, the Sun will kill them.

Only two people that were exposed to Mr. Duncan fell ill, nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson. This was because they were exposed to this guy on a daily basis in the most intimate of ways. It was not a mere sneeze that got them sick. They were cleaning up blood, puke, urine, feces, and changing IVs to keep this guy alive.

Much has been said about the Ebola virus and mutation to become airborne. You must understand that this is very hard to do. First, viruses are very specific about what tissue they like to infect. Influenza is an airborne disease because the flu likes your lungs and nasal passages. The viruses' capsid (the protein coat its wrapped in) is specifically designed for those cells. Ebola Zaire is engineered to infect liver cells. Getting a virus to mutate to go from infecting liver cells to lung cells is next to impossible.

Now, there IS a form of Ebola that is airborne and will infect people, it's called Ebola Reston. Know what it does to people?

Nothing.

That's right. Nothing. As a matter of fact, it's already been in the US. Remember that awful movie "Outbreak"? It was based on an event that happened in Reston, VA (hence the name). It came to the US with a shipment of macaques to a primate research facility in 1989. Then it came back in 1990 to another primate facility in Alice, TX. What happened there was even more interesting. Six workers there tested seropositive for Ebola Reston (their body was making antibodies for it), five from breathing it in, one got it because he was stupid and cut himself during a monkey necropsy.

Know what happened to those six people? Nothing. Not so much as a sniffle. The other cousin, Marburg virus, has been to both Europe and the US.

And as someone else said, and this is so true, the flu, the common flu, will kill hundreds of thousands of people a year. Ebola has killed about 5,000 people in this latest horrific outbreak in West Africa. It doesn't even compare.

So, to sum up:

1. Don't let people vomit, poop, pee, or sneeze blood into your eyes or other orifices.
2. Don't fondle the dead. If you must, wear nitrile gloves.
3. Make sure your fruit bat is well done.

I live less than an hour from the Texas outbreak in Dallas. We're all fine.

 

[The Egalitarian]

OP, You'll be fine. We're hopefully sensible enough to not allow several of the already previous statements to happen to your person and as stated, you'll be fine.

If anything, just take a few deep breaths, play a few games and take your mind off it. It's nothing to be feared yet.