CDC Forced to Admit that Ebola Might Be Spread to Healthcare Workers through Coughing and Sneezing

“I’m Not Going To Sit Here And Say That If A Person Who [Has Ebola] Were To Sneeze Or Cough Right In The Face Of Somebody Who Wasn’t Protected, That We Wouldn’t Have A Transmission”

Scientists have said for some time that Ebola may be spread through coughing, sneezing and other aerosol transmission.

The top American health agency – the U.S. Centers for Disease Control – has denied this for months.  But CDC has finally been forced to [amazon asin=0990463109&template=*lrc ad (left)]admit that it’s true.

The Los Angeles Times reports today:

Some scientists who have long studied Ebola say such assurances are premature — and they are concerned about what is not known about the strain now on the loose.

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Dr. C.J. Peters, who battled a 1989 outbreak of the virus among research monkeyshoused in Virginia and who later led the [amazon asin=B0008F4HPQ&template=*lrc ad (right)]CDC’s most far-reaching study of Ebola’s transmissibility in humans, said he would not rule out the possibility that it spreads through the air in tight quarters.

“We just don’t have the data to exclude it,” said Peters, who continues to research viral diseases at the University of Texas in Galveston.

Dr. Philip K. Russell, a virologist who oversaw Ebola research while heading the U.S. Army’s Medical Research and Development Command, and who later led the government’s massive stockpiling of smallpox vaccine after the [amazon asin=B0049S9HJO&template=*lrc ad (left)]Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, also said much was still to be learned. “Being dogmatic is, I think, ill-advised, because there are too many unknowns here.”

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“I see the reasons to dampen down public fears,” Russell said. “But scientifically, we’re in the middle of the first experiment of multiple, serial passages of Ebola virus in man…. God knows what this virus is going to look like. I don’t.”

Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the CDC in Atlanta, said health officials were basing their response to Ebola on what has been learned from battling the virus since its discovery in central Africa in 1976. The CDC remains confident, he said, that Ebola is transmitted principally by direct physical contact with an ill person or their bodily fluids. [Well, yes … everyone knows that physical contact with the victim or their fluids is the prime route of exposure.]

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