Is protective gear inadequate to stop Ebola?
Exclusive: Erik Rush writes 'skimping on precautionary measures is nothing short of criminal'
10.12.2014


I’m not an microbiologist or epidemiologist, but as some of my readers are aware, I did work for many years under a few of the most renowned infectious disease experts (microbiologists, immunologists, and epidemiologists) on the planet. As such, I picked up a lot – and what I picked up makes me more alarmed than most Americans at what I am seeing with regard to the procedures and precautions being used to protect Americans from the Ebola virus here and abroad – as well as how it came to be a threat to America in the first place.

As widely reported, the first patient to break with Ebola in the U.S., Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian visiting family in Dallas, Texas, died this week. Half a dozen more Westerners are being observed for possible symptoms of Ebola; this does not count the hundred or more in Texas being observed whom Duncan may have infected directly or indirectly.

Perhaps even more disturbing is the Spanish nurse who recently contracted Ebola while treating aid workers who had been flown from Africa to Spain for treatment.

Sound familiar?

No one seems to have any idea how she contracted the disease, particularly given the fact that she was working in a developed Western nation, presumably with all of the technology and precautions available. Prior to this week, we’d all been told that one had to come in direct contact with bodily fluids in order to contract the disease.

Now, as reported by WND, we hear that the World Health Organization has admitted that Ebola could be transmitted through coughing or sneezing.

This does not surprise me, because we know that Ebola is a disease that propagates very prodigiously in so many mucous membranes in the human body, it would be astounding if it was not transmissible via this route.

Given this revelation, I am also inclined to disagree with the contention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases that one cannot transmit Ebola if they are asymptomatic (not yet displaying symptoms). All of our lives, we are told that not only can many of the infectious diseases against which we are warned be transmitted when the carrier is asymptomatic, but that they are often more contagious during periods immediately prior to an infection presenting itself.

Yet inexplicably, like so much of the government bafflegab that is being ascribed to Ebola, conventional wisdom seems to have gone out the window.

But on to the major reason I believe Ebola is going to spread in the West

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As perverse as it may sound, it is likely that cost is a factor with regard to the ill-advised employment of BSL-3 protocols. A change of clothing (most of which is disposable) for an individual working in a BSL-3 environment runs anywhere from $10 to $20, whereas a BSL-4 “space suit” can run into several thousand dollars. Even the bare minimum BSL-4 field outfit would probably cost the government between $500 to $1,000 per person.

In the case of responders who live in impoverished nations areas affected by Ebola, obviously we understand that they have to make do with what they have, unfortunate though it may be. However, sending American doctors, aid workers, and military personnel into seething cesspools of virulence and skimping on precautionary measures given what we know – and don’t know – is nothing short of criminal

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/is-protective...UgFY6LdrOxD2.99