8 Myths About The Ebola Outbreak

BuzzFeed - Latest 2014-10-22

Summary:

TL;DR: You won’t need to wear a hazmat suit to any cocktail parties any time soon.

"Someone could have Ebola and be contagious without knowing it."

"Someone could have Ebola and be contagious without knowing it."

According to the the World Health Organisation, an Ebola patient is only contagious when they are showing symptoms. It takes between 2 and 21 days (but typically around 5–7 days) from infection for someone to start showing symptoms.

Symptoms include "a fever, a headache, joint and muscle pain, a sore throat, and intense muscle weakness".

Before they start showing symptoms, a person would be unaware that they have Ebola, but they wouldn't be infectious.

Frederick A. Murphy / CDC

"You can catch Ebola if someone coughs or sneezes on you."

"You can catch Ebola if someone coughs or sneezes on you."

"There's no evidence for that at all," Dr Ron Behrens, a senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told BuzzFeed News.

Yet a poll of 1,004 American adults showed that 85% of them believed you'd be "likely" to catch Ebola if you were coughed or sneezed on by someone who had the disease.

The truth is Ebola isn't airborne, so you can't catch it from people coughing and sneezing. It's spread through a person's broken skin or mucous membranes coming into contact with bodily fluids of ill people, preparing dead bodies for burial, or from coming into contact with infected animals.

Getty Images/iStockphoto bert_phantana

"You could catch Ebola from a pet dog."

"You could catch Ebola from a pet dog."

In Spain, a dog (above) belonging to a nurse who was infected with Ebola was euthanised. According to Associated Press, "the government said available scientific knowledge suggests a risk that the mixed-breed dog could transmit the virus to humans".

But that does not seem to be the expert view. "We were all very surprised at the decision," Behrens told BuzzFeed News. "There was no medical reason for [the dog to be put down]."

If bodily fluids were exchanged, it's possible a dog could catch the virus. But scientists don't know what would happen then. "Whether the dog would become sick or not is unclear," said Behrens.

Handout / Reuters

"You can catch Ebola at a cocktail party."

"You can catch Ebola at a cocktail party."

American politician and a former ophthalmologist Rand Paul (above) has warned partygoers of the dangers of Ebola. "If someone has Ebola at a cocktail party they're contagious and you can catch it from them," Paul said in a speech at Plymouth State University, New Hampshire.

But an exchange of bodily fluids needs to take place to catch Ebola from someone. So while it's technically possible to catch Ebola from someone at a cocktail party, you'd need to be doing more than making polite conversation.

"You can't catch it from sitting next to a person, and you can't catch it from shaking hands," Behrens told BuzzFeed News.

Jemal Countess / Getty Images for TIME


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Date tagged:

10/22/2014, 09:03

Date published:

10/22/2014, 08:46