Yet strangely, libs, including xoxo libs, are zealously arguing that Ebola is NBD and is some republican scare tactic scheme.

What am I missing here?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26507903)

At the time you were missing a strong daddy-figure leader like DJT.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#42551484)

Honestly, my lack of concern comes down to math. The disease kills too quickly and the risk of casual transmission too low for this to become widespread. Sure, if you are a medical professional dealing directly with a patient you need to be very careful, otherwise it's nbd.

Why haven't Dallas d00d's family come down with it? How did Senegal seem to stop it?

We have containment mechanisms in place that Liberia doesn't have, not to mention a smaller percentage of fuck nuts who will turn to local "healers" when they get a fever

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26507941)

Cancelling flights could backfire and trigger a mass exodus of infected masses. But more likely it was a logistical nightmare to enforce

This is just SARS, avian flu, swine flu du jour.

If I am wrong than fuck me, ill see you in the woods

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508087)

Explain. I actually heard a lib say this earlier.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508097)

Signalling, more than anything else.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508117)

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508164)

"Eh, no biggie"

*distant country across the globe institutes a travel ban*

"ZOMG run!!!"

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508236)

"Hey aid worker, why are you telling us to chill in this center and use western medicine if America itself can't contain it"

"..."

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508268)

(a) Ebola is not easy to transmit. That is especially true because Ebola doesn't have any natural reservoirs here like, say, the fruit bats in Africa that are largely responsible for African outbreaks. That means person-to-person transmission is our only risk.

(b) Because person-to-person transmission is its only mechanism here, there are strong limits on its ability to move in the US. It is hardly surprising the nurse got sick--caregivers are some of the first people to get sick when there is an outbreak. The public awareness of Ebola, combined with our health infrastructure, and the lack of non-human transmission vectors here (not to mention the fact that our culture doesn't encourage touching dead bodies) renders it virtually impossible for this to be an epidemic unless the virus rapidly mutates to go airborne. And if that happens, closing the fucking borders won't make a difference any way.

(c) Closing the borders is a dumb, symbolic, counter-productive gesture. You could make a better case for closing inter-state borders in places where d68 has been killing kids. As long as you're employing basic screening overseas and stateside, the odds of more than one or two isolated cases is highly unlikely. There is a real risk that taking steps like this could also dramatically worsen the african ebola crisis.

Just my two cents.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508152)

(b) seems to hinge on first sentence of (a). person-to-person is perfectly adequate for a disease outbreak, so the question then becomes what the person-to-person risk is. one obvious concern is that ebola can live in your jizz for a few weeks after you've recovered, so what if it starts to act as a lethal STD?

> Closing the borders is a dumb, symbolic, counter-productive gesture

if it's counter-productive, it's dumb and symbolic. but you don't really explain why it's counter-productive

> There is a real risk that taking steps like this could also dramatically worsen the african ebola crisis

you don't explain this either and it's hardly intuitive

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508204)

Ebola living in semen is not that big of a deal when you only have two cases in the US. I'm not even sure how your point really gets to my points at all, brother.

It is counter-productive because we are getting essentially no benefit in the US aside from the symbolic gesture, and in the process are creating an environment that will only increase panic in Africa. That will further worsen containment there and further expand the epidemic. The more ebola outbreaks there are, the greater the chances it mutates over time into something worse. I know conservaheroes are on that "LOL FUCK THEM ITS AFRICA" tip, but we all have a global stake in minimizing the number of times this virus infects humans. More infections will likely have a modest downward pressure on its lethality, but a strong upward pressure on transmissibility.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508234)

anyway, i'm not saying that you're actually wrong that it's hard to transmit, i'm saying that even if it is, we shouldn't take unnecessary risks because there is little upside and significant downside.

>> It is counter-productive because we are getting essentially no benefit in the US aside from the symbolic gesture, and in the process are creating an environment that will only increase panic in Africa. That will further worsen containment there and further expand the epidemic.

someone said this upthread, but it seems really convoluted to argue that africans will be more panicked by a US travel ban than by their relatives and neighbors dying horribly. nigeria dealt with the issue by quarantine, isn't quarantine pretty much how you handle disease outbreaks generally?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508310)

as for the rest, i haven't heard anyone in the media address the ebola-as-STD issue at all, do you have any thoughts of your own on this subject

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508338)

the STD bit has been reported even by lefty rags like mother jones, so don't act like its some conservahero secret. and that is only an issue if you have appreciable infections in the US in the first place. we don't, so while it is an interesting dynamic in how transmission works it doesn't have much to do with our current discussion in re US policy.

i think you're way off on this stuff, but in all seriousness thanks for engaging reasonably rather than just screaming "shitlib" or "nignog" over and over again.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508487)

i haven't heard it reported by anyone, lib or conservative, so i'm glad to hear it's being talked about. i don't think that it's some "conservahero secret", just an aspect of the disease that isn't being widely discussed. it seems obvious to me that this is the most dangerous thing about it, because sexual transmission by (currently) asymptomatic carriers is exactly how we got a serious aids problem.

>> travel bans will increase panic and mistrust of western medicine, and encourage migration even among people that wouldn't have the option to travel by plane... regardless the infected in africa are largely the destitute, who can't afford to get on a plane anyway.

i just don't get this part. is this something that we have some kind of evidence for? the logic seems unconvincing, and the last sentence seems to contradict the first (people who can't travel and live in villages will suddenly panic because they are now banned from traveling?)

>> [the STD point] is only an issue if you have appreciable infections in the US in the first place

or if carriers who are by now asymptomatic come to the US and have sex with americans, which doesn't seem impossible

>> in all seriousness thanks for engaging reasonably rather than just screaming "shitlib" or "nignog" over and over again

same to you, except for that "conservahero secret" crack. you might want to slow your roll a little, based on memphis bleek's subthread it's not playing well to other liberals who are not up on the latest agency positions

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508556)

this has been explained a few times, and no point in doing it further. if you don't buy it, you don't buy it. i have yet to see any public health official or epidemiologist worldwide that disagrees with this logic, but i'd be happy to hear a sane counterpoint other than "who cares as long as we can save even a single american life."

i hear what you're saying, but as i understand it that only applies after you've gone symptomatic and up to 90 days post infection.

my crack isn't at everyone worried about ebola. i'm not saying it's not a worrisome issue that we shouldn't take seriously. it is directed to the fucking idiots above that just want to take political shots and feed panic, rather than making any effort to rationally consider this stuff.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508581)

>> i hear what you're saying, but as i understand it that only applies after you've gone symptomatic and up to 90 days post infection.

that's pretty scary, bro. idk if there is any possibility of asymptomatic carriers typhoid mary style, but these days, jizz moves pretty freely

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508638)

http://youtu.be/KU4SaLet29g

Here is his background: hardly some political hack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci

I don't particularly have the time to collect scholarly literature on this, but you'll have a hard time finding any health officials that disagree.

Your last paragraph kind of gets to my point: most people's reactions to this are based on "what a scary idea" and not facts. Like I said, my understanding is that your scenario of a pre-symptomatic dude passing ebola around with semen is a fantasy because the viral loads wouldn't be sufficient to cause infection. happy to be shown that i'm wrong if i'm wrong.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508689)

i get his point about the traffic volume and it's a good refudiation of the common-sense position that we should "close the border" if the disease really is NBD, able to be contained with low-tech airport screening measures (though that doesn't reach the STD question since that is post-recovery). like i said, i'm willing to accept that a consensus exists among experts. i'd just like more color on it (and in that clip, he doesn't get into the question of worsening an epidemic through travel bans).

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508767)

i always thought i was a lib but i guess not

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508377)

also i didnt really take any position other than i would prefer there not to be an ebola outbreak in the US

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508404)

i don't think this is limited to xo

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508469)

personally, i would be concerned about a possible outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in the age of air travel no matter who was president

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508562)

Ebola: almost as bad as Benghazi

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26508568)

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2698688&forum_id=2#26614077)