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A comment on The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe (2005). Parent comment

Re:The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe (2005) by cm2187 on Monday April 18, 2016 @07:02AM (#11518941)
My understanding is that Ebola is not very contagious. You need physical contact for the disease to spread. Which is why there was some many victims among nurses and doctors. But also why it is unlikely you will be contaminated if you sit 5 hours in a plane next to someone carrying the disease.
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Re:The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe (2005) by hanspeter on Monday April 18, 2016 @07:20AM (#11519009)
And the interesting thing about Ebola is that while it's not very contagious it is extremely infectious. Which means that you need contact with just a few virus particles to be infected.
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Re:The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe (2005) by Fomite on Monday April 18, 2016 @03:37PM (#11522550)
It turns out its not actually all that infectious either. It's just very, very hard to sustain not having contact with infectious fluid for very long.
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Re:The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe (2005) by cm2187 on Monday April 18, 2016 @07:23AM (#11519024)
And then it's game over, low survival rate. Which makes it scary but not very dangerous.
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Re:The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe (2005) by nonbel on Monday April 18, 2016 @07:51AM (#11519146)
I would bet the deadliness of Ebola has been overstated (at least by a little, probably by a lot). Like any infection, many people who get it are probably asymptomatic, and until recently the vast majority of people tested for it were most definitely symptomatic. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/15/ebola-study-fin...
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