After we have done all we can do to avert disease, we then must rely upon God to protect us. He has promised that He will. There appears to be some bad news from what I see in a recent death in the State of Washington, USA.
A brain tissue sample of a deceased 32-year-old Spokane woman is being tested for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. An autopsy noted that CJD was a potential diagnosis. Many die from CJD, what is of concern with this death is that she worked at Deaconess Hospital as a pharmacy technician for several years and later worked as a dental hygienist. As I read I was thinking as to why a pharmacy tech would contract the disease. It did not seem like a high risk, then I got to the "dental hygienist" in the statement. I fear that this may be a vector for the transmission of spongiform disease. And, if Alzheimer's proves to be related to CJD, then there is a risk that Alzheimer's patients can infect others through medical instruments also. It is already a concern that dental instruments may not be free from infectious material when working on CJD patients. The sterilization methods are not always satisfactory. If Alzheimer's is related to spongiform diseases, then we are dealing with a huge population that are already infected and receiving medical and dental treatment.
Different strains of spongiform diseases have different lengths of incubation periods. The good news is that if there is a connection between the dental work and the disease, it would have been a fairly short incubation time. Which would indicate that the risk is fairly low since we are not getting a lot of similar reports.