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Ebola, Natural Cures, And Panic: A Rant

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This article is more than 9 years old.

I try to stick to writing about cardiovascular topics but it's been hard to avoid thinking about Ebola in recent weeks. Trying to take a break from the Ebola insanity yesterday I turned to Facebook to find some cute cat videos. Instead, I found this, posted by an old friend, from the Organic Consumers Association:

There are natural methods proven to be effective for prevention and treatment of Ebola. But doctors refuse to explore them.

My friend simply asked her FB friends: "What do you think? Please share."

I'm afraid I didn't respond well:

This is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. Anyone who honestly believes this should volunteer to move to West Africa and test it out themselves and let the rest of the world try to fight this very sad situation with science and medicine. There's enough nonsense and idiocy out there already without adding this sort of crap to the mix.

My friend responded:

I didn't know that posting meant a 100 percent agreement with whatever we are posting. If so I never signed that agreement. I thought the post was interesting. It's not like someone here in the USA is not going to seek medical treatment for ebola because of my post. As for the people in the affected area of West Africa are they on facebook, and will they read my post? More likely they do not have any health care facilities, or doctors to treat them because of civil war, and the West's indifference to their existence and misery. I'm more concerned about Craig Spencer, who is both heroic and foolish. Heroic for going to West Africa to treat the afflicted, and foolish for running around a city of 11 million like a chicken with his head cut off when he came home. Seriously, he couldn't sit at home with his girlfriend and eat take out??? I hope you are not angry with me. I certainly don't share your point of view. I guess we can't blame people for hunger, or poverty, or climate change, but if folks didn't eat primates; our cousins, this disease wouldn't exist....

I then responded:

Please understand, that post was NOT "interesting," it was completely irresponsible and dangerous. It detracts from the very serious problems that need to be addressed. We don't need crank cures or false preventive measures. Although it would be great if a real (not quack) vaccine or effective treatment emerged, the current crisis CAN be effectively managed with what we know now, BUT only if we don't get distracted by hysteria, fear and other BS like these so-called natural methods.

The last thing we need is to panic now. Anyone in NYC or the US who is not a health care worker is at absolutely minimal risk for ebola right now. With proper methods, which now are in place at Bellevue and elsewhere, health care workers who treat these patients are also at very little risk. (And let's be clear, even if they do get infected, most people who are caught early and get good attention with good healthcare in the west will be fine in a few weeks.)

The very real and long-term danger is in West Africa. Unless this situation receives the full attention and resources and efforts from the rest of the world we will, in fact, be threatened, and it won't take all that long for the danger to become real here as well as there. So the absolute worse thing we can do now is discourage or disincentivize health care workers from volunteering in West Africa.

And yet that is what we are now doing. A nurse coming back from West Africa, with no signs of illness, has been treated like a criminal and had her liberty and her civil rights taken away. You said that Craig Spencer, who did EVERYTHING right, and at no point did anything to endanger his fellow New Yorkers, is  "foolish" and "running around a city of 11 million like a chicken with his head cut off." It's very easy to panic and react emotionally but the absolute fact that every infectious disease expert has stated time and again is that his activities represented no threat to the rest of us.

So if you really want to end this crisis you will listen carefully to what the public health and infectious disease experts have to say. You will do everything possible to encourage and reward people like Craig Spencer and the New Jersey nurse to help in the fight in West Africa.

But if people panic, if unnecessary quarantines are put in place only to assuage fear, if health care workers won't volunteer because they don't want to be treated like criminals or be involuntarily incarcerated, then we will lose the war in West Africa. And ebola will spread, insidiously and inevitably, to NYC and everywhere else. And you will find out just how effective these natural cures really are.

My friend responded:

Larry, I understand your point of view, but I will say that the international health care community initially minimized the seriousness of this epidemic. We know that WHO said so. They have also said they don't know everything they need to know about the disease. What if they discover the incubation period is 42 days not 21, or that the virus is more communicable than previously thought? This is not the environment for either of those things to be discovered. I stand by my opinion that Craig Spencer was foolish. He is responsible for the current hysteria. He chose to go to West Africa, the people riding the subway with him didn't. If the government wants people to calm down there have to be the appropriate public health safety precautions in place that reassure the public.

My final (for now) response:

What if they discover that the incubation period is 5 years? We simply can't address every single possible bad and unforeseen event. There is and there can never be perfect certainty.

But the one good thing about a large outbreak is that we get to better understand the disease. So far there have been NO (zero, nada, zip) cases of non-healthcare workers infected outside of West Africa. So far there have been NO healthcare workers who have developed symptoms after 21 days.

You stand by your opinion that Craig Spencer was foolish. You should also remember that there have now been several thousand healthcare workers from the west who have served in West Africa and returned home. None until now have been quarantined. Only a small handful have developed symptoms and none have died. Not one of these heroes has infected another person through casual contact.

You talk about "appropriate public health safety precautions." You should educate yourself about this. With almost perfect unanimity every public health and infectious disease expert has stated and restated the position that ebola can not be transmitted through casual contact by people without fever and symptoms. And even with fever and symptoms it is very hard to transmit unless you come in intimate contact with that person. So if you avoid kissing a feverish stranger on the subway you will be ok.

Here's the problem with mandatory and unnecessary quarantines for people who aren't symptomatic: they don't work and they will eventually make things much worse. They don't work because when you treat people like criminals (just think about what you've already said about Craig Spencer) they will then act like criminals. This is REALLY important because the major difference between West Africa and here is that we have a public health infrastructure and a (generally) cooperative population. The epidemiologists know that if you have a cooperative patient and follow their contacts it is quite possible to prevent further transmission of the disease. And, in fact, for all our early mistakes and missteps and stumbling, we have had remarkably few cases in the US and no one has died. And not a single non-healthcare "civilian" has been infected, including the fiancee of patient zero in Dallas and, so far at least, Craig Spencer's fiancee.

Let me once again remind you that the ONLY way this war can be really won is by defeating it in West Africa. For now there are thousands of cases and we CAN control its transmission here. But if this becomes a continent-wide epidemic involving millions of people then it will be absolutely impossible to stop. Every public health expert will tell you that large scale mandatory quarantines and other drastic measures like closing the borders WILL NOT WORK. And, in fact, as I explained above, they are counterproductive because frightened and sick people will fail to cooperate.

So the single best thing we can do now to protect ourselves is to do everything we can to assist the fight in West Africa. Criminalizing the heroes who have volunteered for that fight is dangerous, counterproductive, and foolish.

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