printAs a former HIV/AIDS volunteer counselor in South Africa, it is my never-humble opinion that comparing Ebola to HIV/AIDS amounts to politically correct theatre. For one thing, it is not easy to contract the human immunodeficiency virus. For another, the virus is relatively fragile outside the host. Viral load or titer factors into the chances of transmission. And it is both easy and cheap to prevent transmission. AIDS infection rates in Africa have nothing to do with lack of resources but, rather, with unprotected sex irrespective of ample education.
Ebola is the exact opposite. It is not difficult to get. The virus doesn’t easily destruct outside the body. In West Africa, in particular, it is difficult to stop an Ebola epidemic because of magical thinking and a lack of infrastructure.
Front men for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have obfuscated plenty about Ebola. However, Dr. Barack Obola, who should get that growing proboscis checked out, takes the cake. The president has managed to dispense Ebola advice in direct contradiction to even the CDC’s breezy platitudes.
“You cannot get it through casual contact like sitting next to someone on a bus. … Ebola is not spread through the air like the flu. … You cannot get it from another person until they start showing symptoms of the disease, like fever. … cannot get it from someone who’s asymptomatic.” (CNSNews & Hot Air)
The CDC’s website, as opposed to its media representatives, provides the correct information, distilled by Hot Air:
Casual transmission in close quarters in public spaces is possible.
Spending “a long amount of time” within three feet of an infected person is risky, a scenario that logically includes a long bus ride.
A spokesman for the CDC told the LA Times recently that “I’m not going to sit here and say that if a person who is highly viremic … were to sneeze or cough right in the face of somebody who wasn’t protected, that we wouldn’t have a transmission.” Well, there you go. If there’s a risk of transmission on a plane, why wouldn’t there be a risk of transmission on a bus?