Don't panic. It's just Ebola.

There is another patient in the US with Ebola, marking the third to be diagnosed with the disease within our borders (also all in the state of Texas). But, there is still no need to panic (and this coming from someone who catches just about everything so, really, don’t panic).

Here are some facts about Ebola:
    o   It is not contagious when the carrier is not showing symptoms.
    o   It is only contracted through direct contact of infected bodily fluids.

Patient #1 caught Ebola while traveling in Africa (kind of a dick move to bring it back with him). Patients #2 and #3 were his nurses.  These nurses were in close contact with a dying Ebola patient in a quarantine facility. Although fully gowned and gloved, they were constantly handling very infectious material and the simple act of taking off gloves improperly after tending to the patient could have led to contamination and infection.  Walking past someone with a fever won’t do it.

According to the CDC, the incubation period for symptoms is 2-21 days with most averaging 8-10 days.  We are coming up on the close of this window with the individuals identified as being in contact with patient #1 before he was admitted to the hospital and, so far, none of them have become sick. The most recent patient, however, flew on an airplane with a low-grade fever on Monday and was diagnosed with Ebola on Tuesday. While all passengers of the flight are being contacted to be closely monitored, unless she sneezed directly into their mouths, odds are pretty good they didn’t catch Ebola.

www.npr.org

I love the movies Outbreak and Contagion but don’t go off and watch them, freaking yourself out to a point where you become a hermit sitting in a bath of hand sanitizer. Use them as a learning tool (mostly of what not to do). Ebola isn't airborne and it has an Ro of 2 (pictured; H1N1 (swine flu) is 1.6).  There is always the possibility that the virus could evolve into something more serious (like the initial virus did in both movies) but, technically, that is true for any virus.  Do you sit around worrying about when the flu is going to evolve into a flesh-eating zombie-creating virus?  No, that would be silly and a waste of your precious mind-power.  

So, go buy yourself some hand sanitizer, wash your hands regularly and don’t let people get their bodily fluids on you. Not only will you not get Ebola, you won't get the common cold or the flu either (BONUS)!