To Accountants, A Matter of Earnest Importance

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) headlines why Ebola is so alarming:

Ebola diminishes tax collections in Liberia.

No wonder the disease has everyone in an uproar.

Oscar Wilde's famous description of a cynic may well be applied to accountants:

"A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Remarkably Discerning

Another venerable word, recently in the news, may have religious roots:

The original quarantine, dating back to the medieval era, actually lasted 40 days, and that history is embedded in the word itself. It comes to English from Old Italian “quarantina,” originally from “quadraginta,” the Latin word for the number 40.

In the 14th century, as the bubonic plague ravaged Europe, cities took extreme measures to limit the epidemic....

Historians are unsure why 40 days became the standard European length for a quarantine, giving it its name. While the rationale was tied to observations for how long it took for infected people to die from the plague, it may have had more religious underpinnings.

Forty-day periods show up throughout the Old and New Testaments: from the length of the Great Flood, to Moses’ stay on Mount Sinai, to the time that Jesus spent fasting in the desert. The latter is commemorated in the 40 days of Lent, and the same time period has been used for other expressions of penance and asceticism.

In fact, the first known appearance of “quarantine” in English (from around 1470, according to the Oxford English Dictionary) refers to the place where Jesus is believed to have fasted. In the 16th century, it could mean the 40 days in which a widow was allowed to reside in her late husband’s house.

The use of “quarantine” for infectious diseases made it into English by the time of the Great Plague of London in 1665.

The recommended waiting period for people who may have been exposed to Ebola is 21 days; if symptoms don't appear within that period, the quarantine can be lifted.

If one does have the disease, the quarantine can last much longer. Ebola can be transmitted for weeks, even past death. WHO:

Burial ceremonies in which mourners have direct contact with the body of the deceased person can also play a role in the transmission of Ebola.

People remain infectious as long as their blood and body fluids, including semen and breast milk, contain the virus. Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness.

Considering that micro-organisms weren't observed until the 17th century, and that they weren't established as one source of disease until the 19th, the ancients who developed the rules of quarantine were remarkably discerning.

Hold Your Breath

(ABC News photo)

With headlines like Ebola Death Rate Hits 70% the public is understandably panicked.

The good news seems to be that Ebola will not be contracted if the uninfected completely avoid the body fluids of a sick person:

It kills health workers by exposing them to patients who, by the end, exude up to ten litres of virus-laden fluids a day. The number of infections [in Africa] seems to be doubling every two to four weeks. As health-care workers fall ill and the infection grows exponentially, a society’s defences against Ebola are rapidly overwhelmed.

The disease poses only a slight risk in rich countries, because tracing, diagnosing and isolating scattered cases is within the scope of their health systems. Officials are minimising the threat by screening travellers.

As of this writing, eight cases have been treated in the United States, but only two of them were contracted on American soil.

Hold your breath.

The Castellated Abbey

Life (from ABC 7, Chicago):

In Africa, health officials actually screen travelers for Ebola symptoms. Here in the U.S. they don't. Even with deadly Ebola racing thru Western Africa, passengers coming from there are given no special attention arriving in the U.S.

Art (excerpts from the short story by Edgar Alan Poe):

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal--the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys....

The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure....

it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colours and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not.

The story doesn't end well for Prince Prospero and his cosseted courtiers. But it's only fiction.