from Hacker News

Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

by jbarrec on 10/24/14, 12:36 AM with 84 comments

• by shirro on 10/24/14, 4:13 AM

  The smart thing would be for aid agencies that send workers to these hot spots to pay for their employees to stay in a nice quite "resort" somewhere for a month on their return for them to relax and as a thankyou for their efforts. And to deflect growing negative public opinion about the risks returning aid workers pose. Needless to say the "resort" could have daily health checks and minimal contact between people but could otherwise be quite pleasant.

• by 001sky on 10/24/14, 1:49 AM

  "People infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they begin to display symptoms, and it cannot be spread through the air. As people become sicker, the viral load in the body builds, and they become more and more contagious."

  This is sort of misleading in this context, unfortunately. The WHO considers (sustained presence) within 1 meter of EBV carrier to be ~physical exposure. The young doctor appears to have been on a NYC subway within 12 hours of having a fever of 103. Creating a potential group of exposures that may be un-traceable.

  Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong. But this would be highly unfortunate if these reports are correct. Presumably the uber driver is also in this group now, but records should be able to provide some data on that one much easier.

• by msie on 10/24/14, 1:10 AM

  The doctor should have known better than to go to a bowling alley soon after he returned. Whether or not he was contagious now they have to perform contact tracing and disinfect the place.

• by googler_314 on 10/24/14, 2:16 AM

  Before judging this man for going bowling etc., we should bear in mind that he caught Ebola working for Doctors without Borders in Guinea. I would guess that without workers like him, the risk to Americans and others outside Africa, would be much higher, since the disease would be spreading much faster within Africa. Hopefully he recovers and we can improve travel policies if necessary.

• by joe_the_user on 10/24/14, 2:35 AM

  "Many signs point to the viral load not being highly infectious at the beginning. Duncan was sent back to his home by the hospital and lived with his fiance who was taking care of him for two days before being readmitted. She wore no PPE yet appears to be uninfected. If sitting next to someone infected on a bus or subway is enough to pass it on, there would be a million cases in West Africa by now, not 10K. It appears to be primarily caregivers at the later stages of the disease, and the custom of kissing corpses that appear to be spreading the disease because the viral load is extreme at that stage. This doesn't mean that the potential contacts of this person should not be traced or that it was good idea for him to go bowling, but the sky isn't falling just yet." wfjackson https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8501792

  Please look at this first

• by westward on 10/24/14, 3:13 AM

  Based on the timeline, he had to have contracted Ebola pretty much the day he left.

  That seems pretty unusual, isn't it? How long was he there, a couple months?

  "Symptoms usually occur within eight to 10 days of infection and Dr. Spencer had been home nine days when he reported feeling ill." That's not including travel time local and international.

  That's a tight schedule!

• by uptown on 10/24/14, 2:44 AM

  He was a passenger in an Uber. It doesn't sound like they've made any effort to ensure the vehicle was cleaned.

  http://blog.uber.com/nyc-statement

• by knappador on 10/24/14, 3:31 AM

  How about "Doctor Returning From Guinea..." to more accurately reflect the geographic relationship instead of creating a bomb of a headline as if some random, yet-unknown vector resulted in Ebola in New York.

• by akjetma on 10/24/14, 2:27 AM

  Do location-based services work in the NYC subway? I suppose you could also infer locations and transfers based on train schedules and tower handoff times upon emerging from stations. I mean, if there is a 21-day gestation period between infection time and the ability to retransmit the disease, it seems like it would be worthwhile/possible to look into.

  Apologies for the cliche 'use technology to solve all the problems' HN comment.

• by hackuser on 10/24/14, 4:21 AM

  This response is poor risk management. I'm not sure the risk is significant: What is the chance that someone else will get infected? Higher than the many other risks we face every day?

  What is higher risk?: 1) Going to the Ebola zone in W. Africa (EDIT: And taking the proper precautions to protect yourself), 2) Walking as a pedestrian on NY streets, or 3) Sharing a subway car with someone who has been in the Ebola zone?

  There are around 3 cases of Ebola in the United States. I expect most of the resultant suffering will be because the public reaction is causing us to divert resources from where they could do more good (including West Africa).

• by jeffdavis on 10/24/14, 5:46 AM

  I'm not afraid of Ebola as much as the "experts" who keep intentionally misleading us about Ebola. I don't know why they do it, and that scares me. But it's very obvious that it's intentional.

  See the first three sources I found about Ebola transmission in sweat: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/ebola-ask-well-spre... (claims that sweat doesn't contain Ebola) http://www.afro.who.int/en/clusters-a-programmes/dpc/epidemi... (claims that Ebola can be transmitted through sweat) http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/qas.html (hard to tell whether they think sweat is a transmission mechanism or not... they define "body fluids" twice, once including sweat and another excluding it)

  I also heard on NPR that sweat contained a lot of the virus (don't have a reference handy).

  Real experts don't shoot their mouth off with false assurances about a disease we don't know much about. The "hard to catch Ebola" mantra was going on long after that was discredited[1]. These aren't experts, they have some kind of agenda, and I'm not sure what it is. For some, it's probably just being on TV. For others, it's to feel smug about how the ignorant masses under them are panicking irrationally. As for the rest, probably political.

  Again, I'm not panicking about Ebola. We'll have a few isolated cases in the West. It will remain in Africa in all of the hot zone countries until we have a vaccine. And hopefully that happens before it spreads to Nigeria, India, Brazil, or other areas where it might be hard to control.

  I am not panicking. I am just mad at the irresponsibility of these "experts" we keep hearing from.

  [1] No references here, but I think everyone remembers that the first story was that, unless you were engaging in some unsanitary funeral practices deep in an African village, it was impossible to catch. After doctors began to catch it, the story changed to be that they don't have enough resources to protect themselves. Then several Western doctors got infected while in hospitals in Western countries (Spain and the US at least), and the story changed into something about how the protocols will protect us, but were just not followed properly these few times (despite not knowing the specific protocol violations that lead to infection).

• by uptown on 10/24/14, 2:51 AM

  NYCs Ebola Patient Visited:

  -Harlem

  -An Uber car

  -The High Line

  -A restaurant

  -A Train

  -Jogged 3 miles

  -L Train

  -1 Train

  -The Gutter

• by imaginenore on 10/24/14, 1:44 AM

  Wow, this moron went bowling and took a taxi.

  Unbelievable.