My understanding of the flu vaccine, in the UK at least, is that it is targeted against the epidemiologists' best guess at what this year's flu is going to be. I've just had my jab and this year's flu hasn't yet emerged over here (maybe we won't get one) so no-one knows how effective the vaccine will be. It could be useless.
Yep, that happens sometimes. They've even had to go back and add a new vaccine occasionally, like they did with the H1N1 outbreak a few years back.
The think with the flu comparison, though, is that while thousands of people might die of flu every year, they're a tiny fraction of the people (less than 1%) who actually get it. For most, it's an unpleasant but relatively mild illness.
Ebola has death rates that are upwards of 50%, even with medical support. And it has no vaccine or treatment that is known to be effective yet. It's less contagious than the flu, and the odds of catching it are small in the US. But people don't have a reliable means of protecting themselves, and the consequences of catching it are severe (and it's a gruesome disease too).
Fear of the unknown is at work here too. Plus the fact that there are things that are being confidently stated, like, "You can't catch it without touching an infected person. Oh, or by touching their bodily fluids. And if you want to be really safe, then stay 3 feet away. Or 3-6 feet to be absolutely safe. And health care workers should be fine with masks and gowns. Well, okay. Maybe they should wear goggles and respirators and make sure no skin at all is exposed, and work in pairs."
Then there's the situations where they go over and above recommended protocol "just to be extra safe." Like that case where they went to the cruise ship and
tested someone who was isolated wasn't showing any symptoms who was actually at very low risk for getting the disease.
When something like this happens, people start saying, "Hey, wait. They told us people can't transmit the disease if they're asymptomatic, but now they're sending a crew to a cruise ship to test a passenger who is asymptomatic? So obviously they're really worried and don't believe their own reassurances."
And possibly exposed people are being put under mandatory isolation in some cases, with health care workers coming twice a day to take their temperature. Yet other potentially exposed people are being put under voluntary isolation or simply being asked to take their own temperature daily or report if they experience any symptoms.
I think the lack of a uniform set of guidelines and policies, and the lack of clear, consistent explanations for
why they're handling different cases differently, is part of the issue. The media doesn't help, as there have been some real bloopers being circulated on the web.
The issue with the dog they killed in Spain comes to mind, where some "experts" were saying there have been cases where dogs have been tested and show signs of harboring the virus, others saying there is no reason to believe dogs can carry the virus, and still others saying there is no way to even test if dogs can harbor the virus or not (seems odd, since they can even isolate tiny traces of ebola in a man's semen three months after he's had it, so why can't they test a dog's blood, saliva, feces etc)?
No one explains these things. I'm confused, and I have training in biology. Imagine how most people would feel.
) And there are plenty of people who don't bother.
