Ebola Progress...Confusion Lingers

CNN is reporting a hazmat team is finally cleaning up the quarantined apartment.  This is progress.

Hazmat team arrives to clean quarantine apartment

Newsweek is reporting that faster, more portable tests for Ebola will be tested in a few weeks.

How Hospitals Test for Ebola

There's still confusion on how Ebola is spread.  And herein lies the problem.

So many people think that you have to touch an Ebola patient to contract Ebola.  Not true.

Even the NBC News Cameraman who contracted Ebola wrote to his parents how he was being so careful, washing with chlorine based products, and not coming into direct contact with patients.

'Committed': NBC News Freelancer Returned to Liberia Despite Ebola Risk

MRSA, another deadly infectious virus, can stay alive on contaminated inanimate objects and items.  According to the World Health Organization, Ebola also stays alive on contaminated inanimate objects and items.

The following is from the World Health Organization website:

"Ebola then spreads through human-to-human transmission via direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g. bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids."

The key word here is "surfaces."

That means Ebola is like MRSA in that you could contract Ebola from any surface that is contaminated such as a door knob, a light switch, a countertop in a public place, a plane seat, a towel, a piece of public gym equipment, and the list goes on and on.  This is how CA MRSA or Community Associated MRSA is spread in the community.  Why would Ebola be any different? Clearly, the cameraman didn't touch any infected patients and he was being safe, but he still contracted Ebola.  So, where did he actually contract it?  Like MRSA, no one will ever know the exact origin of the transmission.

Should everyone be wearing disposable gloves?  It may come to that point.

And the next time you're shopping for groceries, you might want to finally use those sanitizer wipes to wipe down the cart before you push the cart around the store.  Until Ebola is widespread, MRSA still could be lingering on whatever you touch in public places.  This is about being proactive and smart instead of dismissing sanitizer wipes.  Why do you think those sanitizer wipes are being offered in the first place?  Maybe the companies realized that someone could contract MRSA and they don't want a lawsuit?  Hospitals face MRSA lawsuits regularly.  In the community, it's far harder to determine the origin of the MRSA infection.

One of the articles I think is very honest about Community Associated MRSA is from 2011, but it's accurate in its advice if you read the entire article.  The number of MRSA cases is far higher than what is reported in the article because it's 2014 and many MRSA skin infections go unreported. But the information about what people should know is accurate.

MRSA Infections: How to protect your child

A multitude of questions...