Ebola – I’m scared
Featured image: Huffington Post
I know this might sound a bit extreme to most people, but I am honestly terrified of an Ebola outbreak here in Europe. You might have heard that the deadly disease has made its way to Madrid now and many newspapers are predicting a 50% chance of it reaching the UK and France by 24th October.
The question is: Are we really prepared?
Many have been criticising Africa for not dealing with the crisis properly, but we’re talking about very poor countries here, with health care that just cannot be compared to Europe or the rest of the world. But it turns out we were too quick to judge, because it seems we do not handle the situation any better than Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Take the latest case in Spain. Just how on earth can a nurse treating two Ebola patients get infected herself? It turns out she did not follow the procedures properly. This scares the hell out of me and I feel that people like that should not be health care professionals or at least not be allowed to deal with such a dangerous virus. Also, the equipment was substandard and did not meet WHO standards which is unacceptable. More than 50 possible contacts are now being monitored, but I doubt that this is the real number – the Ebola patient in the US alone had contact with over 100 people and he was not a health care professional. You can read the article here.
It basically shows that Spain is not equipped to handle an Ebola outbreak. But neither are other countries. Irish medics say that “the country is ill-prepared for an outbreak of the Ebola virus”. Many surgeries have not received the recommended equipment when treating a suspected Ebola patient.
Let’s take a look at the US, Dallas to be precise. It’s their first case of Ebola and the patient is fighting for his life. How did they deal with it? When the patient showed symptoms and sought medical help he was sent home with a prescription for antibiotics.
World Health Organisation (WHO) previously said that ‘Europe is at low risk from the virus’ but they keep changing their statement and are now stating that “Ebola in Europe is unavoidable“. Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts one worst-case scenario at 550,000 infections.
Ebola destroys living tissue cells, which leads to the haemorrhaging, or bleeding. The average fatality rate is 50%. It is transferred from person to person through contact with the blood or secretions of other bodily fluids of infected people. Symptoms are:
– rapidly developing fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headaches, sore throat at the start
– followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, kidney and liver problems and bleeding
Death can be very painful, as the disease destroys connective tissue and also attacks skin and internal organs. There is no vaccine for Ebola and no cure, apart from an experimental drug called ZMapp. How dangerous is it? It is classified as a level 4 biohazard, regarded as the most dangerous and requiring decontamination for those who work with it.
It sounds horrifying. Are you scared yet? No? You should be.
In order to stop the disease from spreading once it arrives in other countries, OUR countries, we need to stop thinking “Oh, this was Africa. Europe is totally different!”. We need to take this matter seriously and that starts with proper hygiene.
I have started to get into a routine of disinfecting everything from work surfaces to door handles. I also wash my hands more often and disinfect them every time before I touch my nose, mouth or eye and when I handle food & drink. The bf and I are going to stock up on sanitiser, gloves, face masks and frozen/canned food + rice. It might sound crazy but if there is an outbreak here in Dublin we will stay inside and wait how the HSE (Health Service Executive) is going to react.
Under no circumstances would we go to work. I don’t even want to think about the possibilities of how much Ebola can spread at all the large corporations here in Ireland and they all have open plan offices with air conditioning and many employees share desks.
Companies need to start implementing business continuity plans by handing out laptops and phones to office based employees or at the very least make sure staff can access their emails and company applications remotely. I can imagine that once there have been several confirmed cases e.g. 50+, people will no longer wish to come to work. I won’t.
I am scared of getting infected and dying. I am worried sick about the possibility of my family, partner and friends contracting the virus. I am frightened of losing the people I love the most. Let’s hope for the best.
I’m scared too because it’s a frightening thing to even think about and I really hope they find a way to treat it before it spreads 😦 But don’t worry about it Mel or you won’t be able to sleep! I missed you Mel! ❤
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Thanks Nad, I’ve missed you, too! I’ll try and post more often again, it was just so hard to adjust being back at work. And the guest post is coming along, slooowly but surely in snail speed 😉 You’re right I won’t be able to sleep if I live in fear but it seems too many people are not scared enough and take things lightly. Every day at work I see people not washing their hands once, even after going to the toilet. People sneeze on desks, keyboards, etc. It’s bacteria and virus heaven. I think you should be better off in Sweden. Your health care is fantastic and there aren’t many densely populated areas. But it doesn’t completely erase the risk of course 😦 Let’s pray and hope we’ll be fine! xx
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I totally understand and no worries. How’s work going? Can’t wait to read your posts again. I mean you can be careful and small changes are better than none so we all should be aware and it’s nothing wrong with that. But I see your point. I mean there have been news that they thought that a person had it here but it was a false alarm so no place is safe but our health care is very aware though. Be strong Mel ❤
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Hey Nad, sorry I haven’t replied to this comment yet I’m just so busy >__< work is going great I'm doing localisation now, so I get to test video games and check for system and translation errors it's so much fun 😀 xx
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No worries Mel, I totally understand! I’m just glad that you found a job! Wow that sounds really fun job, man I’m jealous :p no but I’m happy for you ❤
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I live four hours away from Dallas… and I just read that Eric Duncan died. (that’s the name of the patient.) I’m scared.
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Hey sweetie, I’m so sorry I haven’t responded until now! Trying to juggle work, studying, spending time with partner and friends.. and being scared of a deadly virus wiping out the world’s population! Well, it’s not that bad but I’m still getting more scared every day. I don’t know how you can cope, 4 hours isn’t that far. Plus another nurse contracted the virus now. Scary stuff!! :((
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I don’t understand why they haven’t stopped flights to and from the infected countries. The people who have the power to make this happen don’t seem to be taking it seriously enough or else they would have put up safety measures by now. I read an article where Britain is going to send loads of people to West Africa to help fight Ebola because ‘that is the only way to stop the spread’. IT IS NOT. The main thing is to keep it contained within that area and prevent a worldwide pandemic. It is outrageous that people who could have Ebola are still allowed to travel to different countries. Sorry for the rant, I just don’t understand why so little is being done about the spread of Ebola.
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More people die from HIV, smoking, and obesity….
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True! But death isn’t so quick with HIV, you can lead a good life for many years. And obesity is not contagious.. lung cancer is pretty nasty, but again, takes a while. What scares me is how awful and painful the death is from Ebola..
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I was really scared about ebola. I live in a big city and when I was in the metro looking around me I was thinking “all those people they are living their lives as usual, as if ebola was not there, they don’t know that they are already dead, they don’t know what exponential growth really means”. That was really an unpleasant feeling.
What I did was to educate myself about the risks and the disease. I started collecting pieces of information about the disease and it worked pretty well. I consider the disease in a more rational way now. I hope my collection of articles can help some of you in the same situation:
https://skim.it/u/Danton/reasons-to-be-optimistic-about-ebola
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Thank you for your comment and posting the link, I will definitely have a look! You’re right, once we understand more about the disease we can control our fear. I think I am less fearful than I was when I wrote that article. Partly because countries put in more measures to protect the public but also because it has not spread in Europe as badly as newspapers predicted 🙂
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