Condition upgraded for NYC doctor with Ebola

[TomCADem]

Source: MSNBC

Craig Spencer, the doctor with Ebola who briefly sent New York City into a panic, is getting some good news Saturday from hospital officials.

Spencer’s condition has been upgraded from “serious but stable” to “stable,” according to a statement from the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation.

Spencer, 33, will continue to receive treatment at Bellevue Hospital Center, and he will remain in isolation, according to the statement.

The doctor recently traveled to Guinea in an effort to treat patients suffering from Ebola, and shortly after returning he became the first person in a city of eight million to test positive for the deadly virus. Following visits to a Brooklyn bowling alley and other parts of the city, including his home in 147th Street in Harlem, Spencer reported having a fever of 100.3 degrees. City health officials began retracing Spencer’s steps as the city’s residents became concerned with possible infection.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/condition-upgraded-nyc-doctor-ebola

[Turbineguy]

1. The GOP won't like this news....

[Electric Monk]

2. Are people who survive Ebola then immune? It would seem so, for a time at least.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-31/in-liberia-ebola-survivors-find-they-have-superpowers

Yesterday, Dr. Darin Portnoy, a family physician from the Bronx, completed his first rounds—60 patients, five of them children—in an Ebola ward of a treatment center in Paynesville, about 250 miles southeast of Monrovia, Liberia. He’s been impressed from the start by the efficiency of the clinic, but what struck him the most was watching as an Ebola survivor, a man he describes as looking a little like Mike Tyson, scooped up an 11-year-old boy in the infectious stages of the disease, carried him to a washbasin, and gave him a sponge bath, before carefully returning him to his cot.

Survivors, Portnoy says, are playing an increasing role in caring for the sick and the effort outside the wards to halt the epidemic. Ebola survivors are immune to the virus for as long as three months. This means they can risk getting close to those with symptoms, and even touch them—something that’s especially helpful with children, a number of whom are separated from their families. “It’s kind of like a superpower,” Portnoy says of the survivor’s immunity. “Even those who are not fully recovered, but that you can tell are going to clear the virus, they’ll help other patients before they’ve finished convalescing,” he adds.

[NutmegYankee]

3. It's that way with most diseases. Once you've had it you have some immunity.

The immune system remembers the disease markers and is always ready to wipe it out. This is how vaccines work.

[Electric Monk]

5. And that's a good thing :) This doctor could go right back to the front lines if he wants

and not have to bother with the elaborate suits masks and gloves routine and all that entails, plus the suit removal procedure, etc.

[NutmegYankee]

6. Other than he needs to clean up well to avoid infecting others, but yes, he could.

[Electric Monk]

7. Of course. nt

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. The panic-mongers are hoping against hope that he infected somebody else

They care more about being right on the internet than they do about this "public health" they keep babbling about.

[notadmblnd]

8. + 1000

[FLPanhandle]

9. They were hoping Ebola would be more than the dud it was

But science smacked them down.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

10. Yeah. How inconvienient is that? Science, fact, and truth bites them again!