I’m nervous about Ebola. You’re nervous about Ebola. We’re all nervous about Ebola. Even my cat is nervous about Ebola (JK she’s just a very nervous creature). This guy who flew on a plane with a homemade hazmat suit on is DEFINITELY nervous about Ebola. With the CDC epically failing with Ebola nurse Amber Vinson possibly infecting a myriad of individuals all the way from Dallas to Ohio, as well as the initial hesitance to treat Eric Duncan for Ebola, I would say it’s perfectly normal to feel nervous. Ebola, might I add, is extremely deadly; it kills about 70 percent of those infected and there is no known cure. To make things even more spectacular, humans are flawed and sometimes our attempts to protect ourselves fail. In fact, both Amber Vinson and Nina Pham (another nurse who treated Duncan) claimed they wore protective suits, and yet here they are today, totally sick with Ebola.
It’s unclear whether both Dallas nurses wore full protective gear, but hazmat suits are generally pretty impenetrable. In this video, you get to witness the grueling process of exiting out of a protection suit. First, this health worker is wearing, like, a million layers. He has everything tucked in. Not only is he wearing gloves over his suit, but he’s wearing gloves under his suit. Before he steps away from the infected patient's room, he immediately wipes himself down with antibacterial cloths. He has a fully-suited buddy help him take every single layer off one by one, and when he is fully de-suited, he has to shower off using hardcore antibacterial soap. Is there room for error? Of course there is. But if you watch the video, you’ll see that most of, if not all (hopefully all) Ebola health workers really do try to protect themselves the best they can.
So how does one go about becoming infected with Ebola? According to the CDC, a person must make contact with a victim’s blood or bodily fluids. Which might seem easy to avoid, since normally people don’t go lapping up other people’s blood and shit. But since bodily fluids also include salvia and sweat, that’s when things start to get a little sketchy. It's not that hard to accidentally touch sweat, or spit (good luck dodging a sneeze in an enclosed space, like an airplane.)
Will this tremendously arduous process of protecting health workers from getting Ebola help stop its spread? Will every nurse and doctor follow protocols (from now on)? I guess we’ll just have to sit here and panic until we really find out. Watch the incredibly laborious process of getting the anti-Ebola suit off here:
Image: Getty Images
