Disease transmission?
 

As a bike mechanic in ME, would I be in danger of contracting Ebola if I worked on Kaci Hickox's bicycle?

Chances are small that I would be working on her bike -- she lives and rides in Ft. Kent, I'm at the other end of the state in York, but I-95 passes right through town, she would have drove right by on her trip up from NJ, and if she's headed out of state, she might pass by again, stop in for a frozen yogurt and a quick tune.

Today, she headed out for an offroad ride with her boyfriend -- also potentially infected at this point -- I assume they sweat if they are not total wussies, and ebola is transmissible via sweat.

Unfortunately, our shop does not have full PPE, as recommended by CDC; best we could do is double nitrile gloves.

Should I be worried...?

as long as there is a 21 day service backlog & she is willing to not ride the bike for a while . after dropping it off throw a sheet of plastic over it .

....
...I'm always a little worried. I think you should be, too.

In short, no. You are not going to catch Ebola from a bike unless it has glistening sweat, fresh vomit, wet blood, semen, or other bodily fluids hanging out on it.

If you are worried (which you should not be), mix up a 10% sodium hypochloride solution (bleach), and give it a quick spray down wearing vinyl nitrile gloves (which is exactly what I used to use and wear in the lab), and don't lick the seat.

As a related side note, it is good to remember that despite all the news coverage, far less than one millionth of the US population has ebola.

Well... she headed off into the woods with her fiance and they haven't been together for a while, since she's been doing humanitarian work in Africa...

So bleach, huh?

Hypochlorite "kills" most things... it causes proteins to clump together. It is the same stuff our immune cells use as a first defense. This of course kills our own cells, which is why I recommend using the 10% bleach (sodium hypochloride) on the bike before you lick the seat if you are worried (just don't ruin the fabric bits if there are any).

I suspect the free valence electrons on the oxygen atoms also play a role, but haven't really thought about it.

Of course, I wouldn't be worried.

I think you should volunteer to work on her bike as an experiment. Get her to ride it on a trainer first so the top of the frame is nice and salty. And make sure you put your face right down into the saddle when leaning over to tighten the rear QR, as maybe ass-sweat has a different level of contagion than head sweat.

If you don't get sick (and she actuall has Ebola, which is super unlikely and only a complete ignoramous would actually worry) then obviously bicycles are not vectors for the disease.
If you do contract ebola and die, meh, no big loss.

Please do not try to downplay the risk. I think the total right now is approximately one hundred-millionth of the the US population is infected. Mconlonx should never ever leave his house again, just to be sure.

I'd be more worried about catching fatbikitis from her BF

The viability of the virus outside the body is relatively short, so you might simply "quarantine" the bike overnight before working on it. Overall, nothing is absolutely safe, but as a mechanic in farm country this should rank far lower than concern over getting tetanus from a frayed cable.

You do keep your tetanus vaccine up to date, don't you?

I'd be more worried about the boyfriend, since he's likely to be exposed to anything she has after this "bike ride". Should she suddenly starts to develop symptoms ... if she's in denial ... and not being a professional heath specialist educated about Ebola, he won't be watching symptoms as closely as she is. And he has a bike to ...

Would you recognize him if he came in to have his smeary bar tape changed? Maybe you should start wearing surgical gloves and mask for awhile ...

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada:
"When dried in tissue culture media onto glass and stored at 4 °C, Zaire ebolavirus survived for over 50 days"

Oh no, that means the "service backlog" needs to be bumped to 50 days, instead of 21! You'd never know if someone treated their bike with tissue culture media, infected it, dried it and kept it at 4°. Better safe than sorry.

Bikes aren't generally greased with tissue media culture, nor are they generally stored in the lab at 4C. Just saying.

Intersting tweet on this subject by BikeSnobNYC just now:

By the way, open ride invitation for any returning health care workers passing through NYC who want to spin out the jetlag...

How long will the virus survive in a hand print under unknown conditions? Please advise.

...I keep all my project bikes at 4* centigrade while in storage. I thought this was standard procedure ?
And you should see some of the grease that comes out of those things.........looks a lot like blood agar.

I'm gonna continue to worry, otherwise I'll just worry about something else.

yea you should be very worried

The 21 days is not the wait time to be sure all fee virus cells have died, it is the wait period to see whether or not the cyclist has ebola. If the bike has been in their custody for 21 days or more, and no new cases of ebola have been reported, the person who dropped off the bike does not have ebola, and therefore there are no ebola cells on the bike, tissue culture media at 4C or no.

But the more I think about it, since the op is the one bringing up this red herring, I suspect he has something to hide vis. his own ebola status.

Well if you're going to live dangerously like that, at least keep them isolated from each other during storage! You wouldn't want contaminated bodily fluid deposits to have contact transfer from bike to bike.

Also, for all our sake, I hope that you take appropriate precautions before entering the bike lab.

...just to be cutting edge cautious, I'm thinking of going to positive pressure ventilation with airlocks in the garage.
The splash footbath reservoir with bleach was actually pretty easy to set up. I'ts harder to do wheels in a containment suit, though. :(

That's in a tissue culture, and stored at low temp. Bike mechanic don't do autopsies and are unlikely to be dealing with bits of dries tissue. You chose to point out the worst case possibility. The rest of the cited paragraph indicates much shorter viability times under ambient conditions.

If anyone is concerned, they can wipe down the bike with bleach solution or wear gloves but the real world likelihood for picking up an infection from a sweaty (if infected in the first place) is nearly zero.

Unfortunately, the real danger of Ebola in the USA isn't about human health, it's economic. It's very expensive to manage suspected ebola cases. Currently, we have guidelines for suspicion which include possible sources of infection, and symptoms such as fever. If we let the genie out of the bottle the number of possible (not probable, just possible) sources explodes exponentially. That alone might still be manageable, except that we're entering flu season. Imagine if a large percentage of flu cases had to be managed as possible Ebola. Our medical resources would be swamped in short order as we have to search for needles not only in a haystack but throughout farm country.

Fortunately this isn't my problem and I don't have to make policy, but I do support some sort of limited quarantine (more like limited travel into crowded areas and reduced/managed contacts, than strict quarantine) to try to keep this particular Genie in the bottle.

Point taken, but could some article of clothing transfer the virus to the bike even if she doesn't have it? Maybe she accidentally had some infected dried tissue culture media in her luggage, kept at 4°, and unwittingly smeared the bike with it. Or her boyfriend's bike. If you want to be safe, better to stick with 50 days.

That is fishy now that you mention it. Someone should alert the Governor, so he can order OP to voluntary quarantine himself. And no bike rides.

That's a relief. You were starting to worry me there.

Viruses shed in fluids such as sweat, sebum, etc. If you look at the design of that experiment, you will see that it was intended to mimic real world conditions in a repeatable manner for independent peer review.