I see the CDC protocols for isolating and sanitizing errors remain in effect

This is interesting as an example of the uneven dissemination of known knowledge through a community.

My oldest son came home to visit a month ago and as is often the case, we quickly became immersed in a wide ranging conversation. At some point, we touched on the Ebola epidemic. Neither of us are doctors but both of us are curious about things and are wide-ranging in our reading.

In that conversation we touched on several known issues including:

Ebola has a relatively high rate of mutability and so one of the challenges is to stay on top of emergent versions that might pose even higher risks.

That there was dispute about the appropriate duration of quarantine - 21 days or 45? Apparently 21 days gives you a 95% certainty that you can accurately know the person is uninfected. 95% is probably acceptable for sociology research but when the consequences of the 5% is death by dissolving organs, that probably might be considered too low a threshold of confidence.

That there seemed to be an almost deliberate effort to obfuscate the difference between airborne infection and infection by direct contact. Ebola is not an airborne virus but it can be spread through the air by coughing and sneezing. Those international institutions who acknowledged this seem to be issuing guidelines of maintaining a distance of between 3 and 12 feet from the potential infected patient (the variance depending on the particular institution.

That the administration and the CDC seemed to be spending much more effort (and very ineffectively) trying to control panic about Ebola rather than trying to actually control the Ebola outbreak itself.

Speculation as to why the administration might be motivated to focus on control of panic rather than focusing on controlling the spread of Ebola.

Speculation about why the CDC seemed more focused on the theater of action rather than making decisions based on evidence and critical thinking.

As I say, our conversation was not powered by any degrees in epidemiology. It was based on the reading of The Hot Zone and a couple of other books like that, books about the Black Death, Justinian's Flea, and other books touching on the history of health, medicine and plagues. The science sections of newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Archaeology, The Economist, New Scientist, etc. These aren't either esoteric sources or hard to access.

Here we are, a month later, and according to Political Cycles; Sternutation Nation by James Taranto, the realization that Ebola can be spread by coughing and sneezing is being treated as a revelation and is still causing the CDC to act in ways contrary to making evidence-based decisions.

If this story from the New York Post doesn’t restore your faith in government, we don’t know what will:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control on Thursday yanked a poster off its Web site explaining how Ebola can be spread by contaminated droplets—from a sneeze for example—a day after The Post reported on the frightening revelation.

The fact sheet was taken off line, and a link that led to it a day before now sends viewers to a different page with a different message.

“The ‘What’s the difference between infections spread through air or by droplets?’ fact sheet is being updated and is currently unavailable. Please visit cdc.gov/Ebola for up-to-date information on Ebola,” it read Thursday.

Officials with the CDC remained mum on the issue, refusing to respond to questions for the original story and again on Thursday.

“I see the CDC protocols for isolating and sanitizing errors remain in effect,” quips John Hayward on Twitter. We checked the CDC website and found this:

Can Ebola be spread by coughing or sneezing?

There is no evidence indicating that Ebola virus is spread by coughing or sneezing. Ebola virus is transmitted through direct contact with the blood or body fluids of a person who is sick with Ebola; the virus is not transmitted through the air (like measles virus). However, droplets (e.g., splashes or sprays) of respiratory or other secretions from a person who is sick with Ebola could be infectious, and therefore certain precautions (called standard, contact, and droplet precautions) are recommended for use in healthcare settings to prevent the transmission of Ebola virus from patients sick with Ebola to healthcare personnel and other patients or family members.

You could legitimately ask what is going on with the administration and the CDC and that would be a good question.

What is also interesting is why this is being treated as a new fact. Ebola being spread by coughing and sneezing was well established more than a month ago, and probably much longer ago than that. Why has it taken so long to percolate through to public awareness?