We found out Wednesday that a nurse from Dallas who took care of a man with Ebola contracted the virus herself and then visited family in the Akron area. She also took a plane from the Cleveland Hopkins Airport back to Dallas. It made a lot of us anxious, scared, and a little paranoid. The good news is that Ebola is a very difficult virus to get and the person here in the area was not showing symptoms, which is required for the disease to be contageous.
Yesterday, several area schools stayed closed as a precaution, including Cranwood @ JFK in CMSD. JFK cleaned their whole school with a bleach-mix and students returned on Thursday. The District's actions were precautionary measures to prevent the spread of this terrible virus, even though the likelihood that anyone in Cleveland has Ebola is very low and the virus cannot live long outside of the body. In a statement to VOXSTA, SuccessTech Principal Sara Kidner said, “It is important for our students to have factual information so they have an understanding, although there are general percussion that we can take to prevent this."
We should be aware that Ebola is NOT the only virus out there. For example, 36,000 people die in the U.S. every year from the flu virus. Other viruses like hepatitis and many different STDs are far more likely to affect us. Many of these viruses, like Ebola, only get spread through direct contatct with bodily fluids. Therefore, it is really important that we avoid contact as much as possible with other peoples' fluids...even though that sounds really nasty, it just makes sense. One thing we see a lot at STA is people drinking out of other peoples' pop bottles. We shouldn't be drinking out of our friends' pop bottles--even "air drinks" can spread viruses. Know the facts, wash your hands often and use common sense, and you should be OK.
For more information about infectious diseases, visit www.cdc.gov!
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