Ebola: the current situation, measures being taken, and reasons for Spain to be optimistic

[minesadorada]

Mercadona sells alcohol hand wash, just a little plastic bottle which drops an alcohol liquid to disinfect. I keep one in the car and use it periodically if I'm out for hours because finding somewhere to wash hands here is never easy. Do we think this could be effective??

And what about the looky looky men? Some are from Sierra Leone, quite a few, I understand, and even though they won't have the disease intrinsically, could any letters or packages delivered from SL bring it here?

I hear the official guidelines, and am part of the dissemination of the "reassurance message" ... but I still feel jumpy about this.

Soap and water and proper scrubbing is sufficient to clear the hands of ebola virus.  Like HIV, it dies quite quickly outside of body fluids and warmth.

If it gets to Tenerife, do the obvious:  Don't make bodily contact with any stranger until the island is declared safe.

[Janet]

soap and water aren't readily available if out and about all day, though ... only today I was emailed by a parent of a schoolchild to ask what she could do because the school didn't supply soap!

Little alcohol wash bottle in my bag, does me fine!!

[El Profesor]

I really don't think alcohol hand wash is necessary . . . . although it might help against flu. Anyway none of the Africans in Tenerife with a fever have it; it's just speculative scaremongering.

Media hysteria - Africans with a temperature - front page news - bullshit.

Perspective time. Don't worry - no way are you going to get Ebola. It is pretty much confined to three counties in a corner of Africa.
The countries with land borders surrounding these three countries - Ivory Coast, Senegal and Mali - have zero deaths (0) . Eight people have died in Nigeria, a major transportation hub, where it is pretty much under control.  . . . That's it.

Ok a few missionaries and nurses have been shipped around the world - but this disease is going nowhere, not this outbreak anyway.

Dumb virus. Media savvy it may have  - but any virus that is so hard to catch and kills its host so quickly needs to do some serious mutating.

HIV,  now there's a smart virus - AIDS'll take about 6 -18 months to kill you, but HIV hangs around surreptitiously for about ten years being infectious. It's killed 40 million people and there are still 2 million new infections a year. If that one developed airborn infection capabilities we'd have to get out our alcohol wipes.

Ebola, what a loser!

[Guanche]

I really don't think alcohol hand wash is necessary . . . . although it might help against flu. Anyway none of the Africans in Tenerife with a fever have it; it's just speculative scaremongering.

Media hysteria - Africans with a temperature - front page news - bullshit.

Perspective time. Don't worry - no way are you going to get Ebola. It is pretty much confined to three counties in a corner of Africa.
The countries with land borders surrounding these three countries - Ivory Coast, Senegal and Mali - have zero deaths (0) . Eight people have died in Nigeria, a major transportation hub, where it is pretty much under control.  . . . That's it.

Ok a few missionaries and nurses have been shipped around the world - but this disease is going nowhere, not this outbreak anyway.

Dumb virus. Media savvy it may have  - but any virus that is so hard to catch and kills its host so quickly needs to do some serious mutating.

HIV,  now there's a smart virus - AIDS'll take about 6 -18 months to kill you, but HIV hangs around surreptitiously for about ten years being infectious. It's killed 40 million people and there are still 2 million new infections a year. If that one developed airborn infection capabilities we'd have to get out our alcohol wipes.

Ebola, what a loser!

Agreed Prof. More harm has been done to the reputation of the WHO and the UN by the way they shouted warnings from the roof tops and tried to whip up hysteria! It would seem that the only infections outside the corner of Africa are down to arrogant miss management by governments.

[Janet]

Over the last few days, there has been something approaching hysteria here at times. We are still awaiting final confirmation that the "Tenerife ebola case" is not ebola at all, but the initial test has come back negative, and in fact the nurse who is ill has tested positive anyway for malaria. It is almost certain, to be confirmed over the next 48 hours or so, that we do not have a single case of ebola in the Canaries, let alone Tenerife.

And yet last evening I heard of several instances where people were cancelling flights or holidays to Tenerife, where people thought Tenerife was "dangerous", where they thought they could catch ebola because we were close to Africa ... and after deciding to post on the subject, find as I'm about to do so that a post has even been made in the meantime on my website by someone who is cancelling a holiday here for the same fears.

Let us be clear. Ebola is not airborne. It cannot waft over from Africa. There are no direct flights with affected countries, and in fact, in the last 24 hours Senegal itself has been declared ebola-free by the World Health Organization, since there have been no new cases there for the last 42 days, which is twice the maximum incubation period for ebola. Moreover, as a result of coordination and cooperation between west African countries, Spain and the EU, there are significantly successful patrols for immigrant boats and the journey on cayuco or patera is in any case longer than the incubation period so there are not hordes of illegals wandering round infecting everyone while appearing healthy.

Assuming, with perfectly justifiable confidence, that the second test on the malaria patient who has already tested negative for ebola confirms that result, there has not been one single confirmed case in the islands as a whole, let alone Tenerife specifically. This is not a disease to be taken lightly, but I personally would consider myself safer here than in international transport hubs like mainland Europe, the UK, or the USA. There is absolutely no travel alert or warning or concern about Tenerife or the Canaries issued by any one of the many international health organizations who might be considered to know exactly the extent and nature of this ebola outbreak, and so absolutely no reason to avoid travel to these islands.

[Michael]

Baffling. 

[El Profesor]

That is just an obvious consequence of scarmongering and media hysteria . . . I could cite this thread as an example

People cancelled flights here when El Hierro was "erupting" too. Let them stay away I say. These are probably people who read the Daily Mail and are scared to walk down the street.

[Michael]

What can you do when logic goes out the window?

In the 70s and 80s many Americans were scared to come to N.Ireland. Statistically, there was a better chance of being shot in Washington DC but that didn't enter into people's thinking at all. 

[Myrtle Hogan-Lance]

Too right Michael.  When I first went to Belfast, around 1988, people asked me if I was scared.  At the time, I was working in Detroit, and got to Belfast by way of Johannesburg.  Belfast did not hold a lot of scary for me. 

[Janet]

I could cite this thread as an example

No, you couldn't, I don't think. We haven't wound ourselves up - we just have different degrees of concern, with Myrtle and I being more worried than others. No-one's suggested it's foolhardy to be or come here, though, or that there's a particular danger. As to the handwash, I carry a small bottle of alcohol wash with me at all times now ... because of flu, not ebola. That it will help in any situation is just an added advantage.