[yorkietalkjilly]

Good lord, Linda, none of have actual Ebola expertise and likely we all learn words, facts, terms and phrases and post about them using the words the experts, CDC, WHO, NHIC, etc. use, not purporting the words or phrases to be our original thoughts unless we are experts in that field. I'm not the only poster on this thread who has made direct, very descriptive and definitive statements about the Ebola outbreak based on things they have heard or read on a subject none of us has any expertise in. People have posted that Ebola lives outside the body for days but they don't know that from personal experience or original thought, merely from things they have learned. We're all just passing along information we've gathered, good and bad, positive and negative, scary and less-scary.

Dr. Lyon and others who have referred to Ebola as wimpy are referring to the fact that it does not last long off its host as compared to other viruses and that it's easily killed in the environment using several methods. Google "Ebola is a wimpy virus" and you will see more than one Ebola health care provider, city health authority and at least one CDC spokesperson, well-versed in the viruses properties, using the term. Wimpy is a perfectly good term of the ability of this virus to fail to thrive or survive long off its host. NONE of them are saying it is not horribly deadly for many but that one cannot readily contract it from virus that has been off its host and in the environment for very long.

Most of the docs who should know and WHO are saying sweat carries none to very little amount of Ebola virus and that the saliva of an Ebola patient with a load of virus can carry it, but that newly-ill patients don't have much virus in their saliva. True? I don't know and neither do any other posters on this thread.

Who knows - maybe the experts are all wrong and we should be scared - but it seems to me that we'd have far more cases here with thousands of the Ebola patients in West Africa who kiss while early in the contagion phase, hug/touch/become intimate with each other with sweaty hands and body parts, ride in city elevators, buses, unknowingly sit beside unaware, not that sick-yet Ebola patients at home, in local clinics, cafes, church and touch things Ebola patients have touched before leaving West African countries prior to flying right to America. Three countries in West Africa have cases everywhere and many villages have families who have all been touched by the disease. Yet Thomas Duncan is our only such case of all the people who have arrived here since the epidemic started.

I expect we will have many more Ebola patients but don't think the disease will spread wildly here or that we should be really frightened of getting it unless we come into direct contact primarily with with the bodily fluids of someone sick with Ebola or a dead Ebola patient.

Health care workers wear protective suits only when working with potential/known Ebola patients for the obvious reasons that the patients could be highly contagious if their virus-laden, wet, bodily fluids should get on those working closely around them or with their bodily fluids or items still wet and warm from those fluids. I don't know nor have I heard any expert say how long a dead body hosts the Ebola virus but it could be at least as long as there is warmth and moisture in it - but that is merely a guess.

And none of the information above is original to me(except the guess) but from articles and advisories from the CDC, WHO, DCHHS, several online Ebola news articles and TV news shows.