Medical Expert: Ebola Virus May Be Airborne
Monday, 15 Sep 2014 01:29 PM
It’s feasible that the U.S. government is not being forthcoming with the American people about how easily the Ebola virus can be contracted and whether it’s an airborne virus, according to medical expert Dr. Jane Orient, who appeared Monday on Newsmax TV's “America’s Forum.”
“One of the biggest question about this disease that I’m not sure the CDC is answering honestly is whether it’s contagious before the person has symptoms, particularly before he’s really sick,” she said.
“Some say, oh don’t worry about if a person is not really, really sick you’re not going to get it, it requires intimate contact. But by intimate may mean that somebody bled on you or threw up on you and one thing about this virus is it takes very, very few viral particles to establish an infection and you can catch it through your skin.”
There is some evidence, she added, based on animal studies and the Canadian Public Health Service that the highly contagious virus is airborne.
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There are many unknowns, according to Orient, such as how many casualties may result from Ebola, which is spreading like wildfire across West Africa, and when it might make its way to the United States.
“The CDC says it’s inevitable that it will and of course the people that we have brought back who were infected were brought under very good isolation,” she said.
Orient questioned why President Barack Obama is sending troops to Sierra Leone rather than the United States’ southern border.
“What if somebody is walking across the border who’s not yet sick?
"We know that West Africans have come across our southern border. In past years they’ve been apprehended we don’t know how many are coming who have not been apprehended so again, there are lots of routes by which this virus can enter the country and it won’t necessarily be on a CDC airplane with negative pressure to keep any potential of airborne virus from infecting them.”
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