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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

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Typhoon wrote:
kmich wrote:
Zack Morris wrote:What ever happened to Ebola? Why isn't anyone getting sick anymore? Could the scientists and public health experts have been right all along?
In this country, this has mostly been about the politics of fear not about science. The science is actually pretty straightforward since substantial experience and data has been available from the African experience over the past 30 years.

Ebola is still epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in West Africa. Around 14,000 infections and about 5,000 fatalities in those nations as of early this month.

The Texas “epidemic” is over with one fatality. Our bubble is secure for now. Nobody ever really cares much about Africa anyway other than feeling depressed when pictures and video of the suffering there interrupt the latest “reality” show. There’s this week’s election to hoot and kvetch about now, next week it will be something else…
Ebola update

[quote]In this country, this has mostly been about the politics of fear not about science.
The science is actually pretty straightforward since substantial experience and data has been available from the African experience over the past 30 years.
Typhoon wrote:Sums it up rather well.
5000 now dead. The science says an Ebola isn't over until 21 days after the last case is over. Clearly the US health care systems was not ready for Ebola. Clearly the outbreak is not over in Africa. Clearly the outbreak has lost the attention of the MSM and the Obama Admin who stated yesterday that its efforts to contain the out break in Africa are being reduced/ phased out.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Ebola fears

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Image
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

Teresa of Ávila
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Re: Ebola fears

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Nonc Hilaire wrote:Image
Not sure what your point is but the map left off Mali.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Good golly; missed Mali!
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Typhoon »

Doc wrote:
Typhoon wrote:
kmich wrote:
Zack Morris wrote:What ever happened to Ebola? Why isn't anyone getting sick anymore? Could the scientists and public health experts have been right all along?
In this country, this has mostly been about the politics of fear not about science. The science is actually pretty straightforward since substantial experience and data has been available from the African experience over the past 30 years.

Ebola is still epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in West Africa. Around 14,000 infections and about 5,000 fatalities in those nations as of early this month.

The Texas “epidemic” is over with one fatality. Our bubble is secure for now. Nobody ever really cares much about Africa anyway other than feeling depressed when pictures and video of the suffering there interrupt the latest “reality” show. There’s this week’s election to hoot and kvetch about now, next week it will be something else…
Ebola update

[quote]In this country, this has mostly been about the politics of fear not about science.
The science is actually pretty straightforward since substantial experience and data has been available from the African experience over the past 30 years.
Typhoon wrote:Sums it up rather well.
5000 now dead. The science says an Ebola isn't over until 21 days after the last case is over. Clearly the US health care systems was not ready for Ebola. Clearly the outbreak is not over in Africa. Clearly the outbreak has lost the attention of the MSM and the Obama Admin who stated yesterday that its efforts to contain the out break in Africa are being reduced/ phased out.
Life is not without its risks and, surprisingly, not everything bad that happens on the planet is Obama's fault.

In the US, this was a typhoon in a teacup.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

Typhoon wrote:
Doc wrote:
Typhoon wrote:
kmich wrote:
Zack Morris wrote:What ever happened to Ebola? Why isn't anyone getting sick anymore? Could the scientists and public health experts have been right all along?
In this country, this has mostly been about the politics of fear not about science. The science is actually pretty straightforward since substantial experience and data has been available from the African experience over the past 30 years.

Ebola is still epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in West Africa. Around 14,000 infections and about 5,000 fatalities in those nations as of early this month.

The Texas “epidemic” is over with one fatality. Our bubble is secure for now. Nobody ever really cares much about Africa anyway other than feeling depressed when pictures and video of the suffering there interrupt the latest “reality” show. There’s this week’s election to hoot and kvetch about now, next week it will be something else…
Ebola update
]In this country, this has mostly been about the politics of fear not about science.
The science is actually pretty straightforward since substantial experience and data has been available from the African experience over the past 30 years.
Typhoon wrote:Sums it up rather well.
5000 now dead. The science says an Ebola isn't over until 21 days after the last case is over. Clearly the US health care systems was not ready for Ebola. Clearly the outbreak is not over in Africa. Clearly the outbreak has lost the attention of the MSM and the Obama Admin who stated yesterday that its efforts to contain the out break in Africa are being reduced/ phased out.
Life is not without its risks and, surprisingly, not everything bad that happens on the planet is Obama's fault.

In the US, this was a typhoon in a teacup.
You are missing my point completely.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Re: Ebola fears

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WHO | Ebola situation report: 2014 Dec 17
The toll in the West African Ebola epidemic is now more than 18,000 reported cases and 6,800 known deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
That's nowhere near the worst-case scenario suggested in late September by a mathematical model -- some 1.4 million cases by Jan. 20.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Re: Ebola fears

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Typhoon wrote:WHO | Ebola situation report: 2014 Dec 17
The toll in the West African Ebola epidemic is now more than 18,000 reported cases and 6,800 known deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
That's nowhere near the worst-case scenario suggested in late September by a mathematical model -- some 1.4 million cases by Jan. 20.
That was at the rate then projected numbers then and it is still not under control. Besides that while 6800 dead and 18,000 cases are big numbers, the number are greatly under reported. Last time I looked a few days ago it seems like it was 6000 dead.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Re: Ebola fears

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Doc wrote:
Typhoon wrote:WHO | Ebola situation report: 2014 Dec 17
The toll in the West African Ebola epidemic is now more than 18,000 reported cases and 6,800 known deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
That's nowhere near the worst-case scenario suggested in late September by a mathematical model -- some 1.4 million cases by Jan. 20.
That was at the rate then projected numbers then and it is still not under control. Besides that while 6800 dead and 18,000 cases are big numbers, the number are greatly under reported. Last time I looked a few days ago it seems like it was 6000 dead.
Terrible numbers for anyone affected by the disease.

However, the main point is that the model estimates were off by about two orders of magnitude.
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Re: Ebola fears

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Scientists outsmarted Republicans again?! Didn't see that one coming.
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

Typhoon wrote:
Doc wrote:
Typhoon wrote:WHO | Ebola situation report: 2014 Dec 17
The toll in the West African Ebola epidemic is now more than 18,000 reported cases and 6,800 known deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
That's nowhere near the worst-case scenario suggested in late September by a mathematical model -- some 1.4 million cases by Jan. 20.
That was at the rate then projected numbers then and it is still not under control. Besides that while 6800 dead and 18,000 cases are big numbers, the number are greatly under reported. Last time I looked a few days ago it seems like it was 6000 dead.
Terrible numbers for anyone affected by the disease.

However, the main point is that the model estimates were off by about two orders of magnitude.
Again the numbers reported are quite low compared to reality(People were being told not to go to hospitals and therefore dying at home in the shanties unreported). The disease is definitely not contained and the projections were based on nothing additionally being done to stop it. There is still a danger of it breaking containment and becoming endemic. Besides that Jan 20th is still one month away. At the time of the projection there were around 1000 dead. And AS OF TODAY there are a reported 7373 dead in West Africa.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/ ... D120141220

When was it reported there were 6800 dead again? Four days ago and 500 more dead? Sounds rather exponential to me.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Re: Ebola fears

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Zack Morris wrote:Scientists outsmarted Republicans again?! Didn't see that one coming.
Some questions Zack:

Are you saying that Republicans started the epidemic?
Are you saying people do not have the right to question authority ?
Are you saying the Ebola outbreak is all about Politics?
Are you saying that Ebola is not an extremely deadly disease that should not be taken extremely seriously?

If your answer is "yes" to any of the above questions then please explain.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Re: Ebola fears

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2014 Lie of the Year: Exaggerations about Ebola

By Angie Drobnic Holan, Aaron Sharockman on Monday, December 15th, 2014 at 3:08 p.m.
Thomas Eric Duncan left Monrovia, Liberia, on Sept. 19, for Dallas. Eleven days later, doctors diagnosed Duncan with Ebola.

Eight days after that, he was dead.

Duncan’s case is just one of two Ebola-related fatalities in the United States, and since Duncan traveled to Dallas, more Americans -- at least nine, and likely many more -- have died from the flu.

Yet fear of the disease stretched to every corner of America this fall, stoked by exaggerated claims from politicians and pundits. They said Ebola was easy to catch, that illegal immigrants may be carrying the virus across the southern border, that it was all part of a government or corporate conspiracy.

The claims -- all wrong -- distorted the debate about a serious public health issue. Together, they earn our Lie of the Year for 2014.

PolitiFact editors choose the Lie of the Year, in part, based on how broadly a myth or falsehood infiltrates conventional thinking. In 2013, it was the promise made by President Barack Obama and other Democrats that "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it." While no singular line about Ebola matched last year’s empty rhetoric about health care, the statements together produced a dangerous and incorrect narrative.

PolitiFact and PunditFact rated 16 separate claims about Ebola as Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire on our Truth-O-Meter in 2014. Ten of those claims came in October, as Duncan’s case came to the fore and as voters went to the polls to select a new Congress.

Fox News analyst George Will claimed Ebola could be spread into the general population through a sneeze or a cough, saying the conventional wisdom that Ebola spreads only through direct contact with bodily fluids was wrong.

"The problem is the original assumption, said with great certitude if not certainty, was that you need to have direct contact, meaning with bodily fluids from someone, because it’s not airborne," Will said. "There are doctors who are saying that in a sneeze or some cough, some of the airborne particles can be infectious." False.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., described Ebola as "incredibly contagious," "very transmissible" and "easy to catch." Mostly False.

Internet conspirators claimed President Obama intended to detain people who had signs of illness. Pants on Fire. Bloggers also said the outbreak was started in a bioweapons lab funded by George Soros and Bill Gates. Pants on Fire.

A Georgia congressman claimed there were reports of people carrying diseases including Ebola across the southern border. Pants on Fire. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Americans were told the country would be Ebola-free. False.

When combined, the claims edged the nation toward panic. Governors fought Washington over the federal response. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stumbled to explain details about transmission of the virus and its own prevention measures. American universities turned away people from Africa, whether they were near the outbreak or not.

"Americans spent March through July thinking that the outbreak was no threat at all, then from August to October, it was the apocalypse," said Stephen Gire, a researcher who has been to West Africa and is studying the Ebola genome at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "And now in December, a year after the first case of Ebola infected a young Guinean, Americans are complaining that it was all ‘overhyped.’

"During this whole year, people in West Africa have been dying of Ebola at an increasing rate. We as Americans are so far removed from the reality of what is really going on."

From Liberia to Dallas, the facts

Duncan died at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Oct. 8, but that single event was months in the making.

Health workers identified Ebola in March in the West African country of Guinea and later in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The virus didn’t garner much attention from the United States at first. But by June, the international medical group Doctors Without Borders warned that efforts to contain the disease were failing.

A month later, two U.S. health care workers in Liberia became ill.

Their homecomings played out in front of a national television audience. News helicopters followed Dr. Kent Brantly’s ambulance on a half-hour ride through Atlanta, and watched as Brantly emerged in a protective suit, leaning on the arm of another health care worker.

Brantly’s arrival, followed days later by Nancy Writebol, set off a frenzy of commentary, reaction, and eventually, misinformation. Websites like Infowars.com made an erroneous connection between their arrival and an executive order that the website claimed "mandates the apprehension and detention of Americans who merely show signs of 'respiratory illness.' " (Pants on Fire.)

Personalities such as Donald Trump called for stopping all flights from countries where Ebola cases had been found. Governors in New York and New Jersey moved to strictly quarantine health care workers even if they showed no symptoms, procedures that were later relaxed.

Duncan was the first person to die of Ebola in the United States. A Liberian who traveled to visit relatives in the United States, Duncan flew out of Monrovia, connecting through Belgium and Dulles International Airport in Washington before heading to Dallas. Duncan went to the Dallas hospital Sept. 25 complaining of abdominal pain, dizziness, nausea and headaches. Health care workers sent him home, but he returned Sept. 28 via ambulance. He was seriously ill.

In the days after Duncan’s death, two nurses who cared for him -- Nina Pham and Amber Vinson -- contracted the virus but recovered. That scare forced the CDC to change protocols for health care workers. Before, the CDC recommended gowns, gloves and face masks, which allowed some skin, such as the neck, to be exposed. The new guidelines aimed for no skin exposure and called for use of a respirator.

The other fatality occurred Nov. 17, when a Sierra Leone doctor with Ebola died after a two-day stay at a Nebraska hospital.

The twists and turns of the story created a vacuum of reliable information.

Will’s claim that Ebola could spread through the air via a cough or sneeze shows how solid science got misconstrued. The conservative commentator suggested a thought shift about how the virus could spread. In reality, Will simply misunderstood scientists’ consistent, albeit technical explanation.

Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids such as blood, vomit and diarrhea. Coughing and sneezing are not symptoms.

Airborne viruses, meanwhile, have the ability to travel large distances propelled by a sneeze or cough. In those cases, people breathe in virus particles without even realizing it. Scientists say there is no evidence Ebola works like that.

But what is theoretically possible, and what Will failed to explain properly, is that a person with Ebola could sneeze or cough directly onto someone (likely their eyes, nose or mouth) and transmit the disease through the fluid they pass.

It’s the difference between someone coughing on an airplane one row behind you and the person in the seat next to you sneezing directly into your face, epidemiologists say.

"The whole basis of science tells us to question and keep an open mind to new possibilities, and so when a reporter asks a scientist something like, ‘Will Ebola become airborne?’, even though the scientist knows that this is biologically impossible for many reasons, the scientist can’t exactly say that without all the proper data to make that conclusion," Gire said.

"And so they often will say things like, ‘Well it’s unlikely but could be possible,’ " Gire said. "While that response is in light of the scientific method, the media just highlights ‘it’s possible.’ "

While some claims missed on the science, others were pure politics. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., argued that his opponent Tom Cotton "voted against preparing America for pandemics like Ebola." Cotton voted against one version of a 2013 bill that funded overall pandemic and emergency preparedness. But Cotton ended up voting for the final version, and the bill easily became law. The claim by Pryor, who lost re-election, rated Mostly False.

Ebola fear flowed, then ebbed

The panicked warnings that flared up in October all but disappeared a month later.

Over the course of November, Ebola mentions on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC dropped 82 percent, according to a review of closed caption transcripts. Mentions on the three cable networks dipped another 35 percent in the first week of December.

At the same time, at least 3,578 more people contracted Ebola, according to the World Health Organization, and another 1,119 people died. Overall, the death toll has crept near 6,400.

"Look where we are now, do we hear much about the epidemic in Africa any more? Do we hear about the effective measures that hospitals have put in place? The list goes on and on," said Adam Lauring, assistant professor at the University of Michigan Medical School’s division of infectious diseases. "Perhaps some of it is the 24-hour news cycle, the Twitter-verse, etc. Perhaps some of it has to do with the fact that this all hit right before the election and it was easy to politicize."

Ebola’s particular narrative helped breathe life into the fear, says Jack Z. Bratich, chair of the Department of Journalism & Media Studies at Rutgers University and author of the book Conspiracy Panics. The recipe: A mix of a far-off continent, immigration fears, terrorism concerns and the best scripts Hollywood could deliver.

Members of Congress even came up with their own scenarios, with some suggesting that Ebola could be a security threat to the United States carried in by illegal immigrants or terrorists. But such ideas contradicted basic facts about the disease.

With an incubation period of 21 days, immigrants would have to get infected in Africa, fly to Mexico, travel to the border and hope to make it across before they died themselves. Terrorists would face similar travel challenges, as well as difficulties with attempts to intentionally infect other people. Ebola is spread through bodily fluids and isn’t nearly as contagious as the flu or measles.

In early October, Fox News posted a list of the top nine scariest pandemic movies. At the top was the 1995 film Outbreak, in which a virus mutates, becomes airborne and forces the Army to consider dropping a nuclear weapon on a sleepy California town.

"Whether it's rabid zombies, Ebola-like viruses or both, outbreak films are beginning to feel a bit too real nowadays," Fox wrote.

As for the virus itself?

Experts we spoke to said there remains a possibility that isolated Ebola cases could occur in the United States. More likely is that U.S. medical facilities will treat U.S. Ebola health workers returning from West Africa.

Last week, an American nurse working in Sierra Leone was admitted to the NIH Clinical Center in Maryland after being exposed to the virus.

The story barely registered on cable news.
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Re: Ebola fears

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7373 dead in West Africa but I guess politics trumps that. :roll:

Here is the full article I linked to earlier.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/ ... D120141220
Ebola death toll in three African countries hits 7,373: WHO


GENEVA Sat Dec 20, 2014 8:57am EST

Health workers push a gurney with a dead body at a Red Cross facility in the town of Koidu, Kono district in Eastern Sierra Leone December 19, 2014. REUTERS/Baz Ratner


(Reuters) - The death toll from Ebola in the three worst-affected countries in West Africa has risen to 7,373 among 19,031 cases known to date there, the World Health Organization said on Saturday.

The latest data, posted overnight on the WHO website, reflected nearly 500 new deaths from the worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since previous WHO figures were issued on Dec. 17.

Sierra Leone accounts for the most cases, 8,759, against 7,819 for Liberia. But Sierra Leone's death toll of 2,477 is far less than 3,346 recorded in Liberia, leading some experts to question the credibility of the figures reported by Freetown.

Sierra Leone's government this week launched a major operation to contain the epidemic in West Africa's worst-hit country.

President Ernest Bai Koroma said on national television that travel between all parts of the country had been restricted as part of "Operation Western Area Surge", and public gatherings would be strictly controlled in the run-up to Christmas.

Sierra Leone's leading doctor, Victor Willoughby, died of Ebola on Thursday, hours after the arrival in the country of an experimental drug that could have been used to treat him, the government's chief medical officer said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday praised health care workers fighting the Ebola virus as he paid his first visit to Liberia and Sierra Leone following the outbreak.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Re: Ebola fears

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http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/buryin ... VJeRbOB0MA
Burying the dead but not the past
December 21 2014 at 11:09am
By Kevin Sieff

Freetown - To find Andrew Kondoh, walk through the gates of this city’s largest cemetery, where teams in moonsuits bury more than 50 bodies a day in white plastic bags. Look for the man with the wispy goatee and big belly who is overseeing one of the world’s most chaotic, dangerous graveyards as if he’s done it all before.

That’s because he has.

Twenty years ago, when he was 13, Kondoh took it upon himself to guard a heap of bodies, people killed by rebels during the country’s civil war. For three years, as the pile grew, he protected them from being trampled or picked at by dogs. When that conflict ended, Kondoh made a promise to himself. He was done with working with the dead.

Then Ebola surged in Sierra Leone.

“It’s like I’m back there again,” Kondoh said.

In Sierra Leone, the war drove away doctors and destroyed the infrastructure, leaving a decrepit medical system. But it also produced resilient men and women like Kondoh, who have felt compelled to act as the Ebola death toll mounts.

The fighting began in 1991, when Kondoh was 11, and ended when he was 22. Rebels swept through the country, murdering civilians, raping women and abducting children. The army pushed back, committing horrific abuses, as diamond mining rights hung in the balance. Between 10 000 and 50 000 people were killed.

In the eastern district of Kenema, rebels killed suspected government sympathisers and left the bodies. The army eventually picked them up. Without a functioning cemetery, soldiers dumped them in an alley, near a shuttered mortuary.

From his home, 350m away, young Kondoh watched them decompose. He saw people step over them. He couldn’t take it. He stole rope that his father, a butcher, used to hang cuts of meat. He created a makeshift barrier around the bodies and started spending his days guarding the area.

“It wasn’t just about respect, it was that I worried about disease and infection spreading,” he said.

He was concerned that the militants would get angry with him. He’d seen how they would grab children, chop off their arms and then release them, just to demonstrate their power. But when the fighters saw Kondoh, they only chuckled and shook their heads.

He recruited other boys to join him. They became accustomed to the sight of bodies.


“But when I saw kids or pregnant women, it was just too much,” Kondoh said. “I can tell you that our war … was the worst war in the history of the entire world.”

When it ended, the leaders of the fighting forces were tried. The mortuary reopened. Kondoh went to high school. He got a job at an internet café and then an aid organisation. He met his wife, and they had a son. The economy started improving. The dying was over, Kondoh told himself.

In May, Ebola came to Sierra Leone. In September, Kondoh saw an advert for a “burial welfare supervisor”. He sent in his résumé.

“It’s not something I wanted to do again,” Kondoh said, “but I felt I needed to be on the frontline.”

A new horror is unfolding. More than 2 000 Sierra Leoneans have died of Ebola. Organisations like Unicef, which once tended to war orphans, now care for Ebola orphans. Soldiers enforce quarantines at homes and man checkpoints. These days, they wield thermometers instead of guns.

The National Ebola Response Centre was created in a modern compound in Freetown. Until 2012, it had been the Special Court for Sierra Leone, established by the UN to try rebels, soldiers and others for war atrocities.

In the former courtroom, British, American and Sierra Leonean officials review daily death counts.

“Right over there is where we tried men for the worst atrocities,” said Palo Conteh, the head of the response centre, pointing towards the courtroom 18m from his office. “And now we’re here waging a different war. It’s painful.”

Burials in Sierra Leone typically involve large gatherings in which relatives and friends wash, touch and kiss the bodies of the deceased. Such actions are seen as a critical way to show respect.

But they also hasten the spread of the disease. Fifty to 70 percent of Ebola cases stem from traditional burials, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In August, to stop the chain of transmission, the government of Sierra Leone mandated that anyone who died be buried as if they had Ebola – in body bags and by teams in protective gear. Families may attend the ceremonies, but they can’t go near the dead.

Kondoh started the job in September, as Ebola centres in Freetown began to overflow.

People here remember how during the war the dead were left to rot or were sometimes incinerated in mass cremations. This was deeply painful to the victims’ relatives.

Today, families sometimes attack burial teams whom they see as disrupting their religious practices and attempts at closure. Five of the trucks that Kondoh’s teams use have been damaged by mourners.

Kondoh comforts grieving families, assuring them that they are invited to attend the burials, as long as they cover their shoes with garbage bags and stay a long way from the graves.

“No matter how careful we are, it’s a shocking experience for families,” said Fiona McLysaght, the country director for Concern Worldwide, an Irish organisation and Kondoh’s employer.

“Andrew is able to navigate his way around these complex issues.”

Kondoh’s days are a blur. He races across Freetown behind an ambulance. He checks for holes in his team’s protective gear. He ensures Christians are buried in coffins and Muslims under a stack of wooden sticks, as the religions demand here. He looks for signs that fellow workers – many in their late teens and early 20s – may be depressed or sick.


His wife, Basasatu, makes him change his clothes before he enters their home. She knows he is at risk of contracting Ebola. Last month, she moved their son to her sister’s house.


One day last month, Kondoh travelled with a team to pick up a body. As the ambulance arrived, the family began to wail. Kondoh tried to console them while keeping his distance.

“All these people could have it. There’s no way to know,” he said.

Relatives started shouting that the dead woman was pregnant and had died in childbirth.

No one wanted to admit that she had Ebola.

“That’s always what happens,” Kondoh said. “They deny it.”

After the body was carried to the ambulance, his team made another stop a few hundred metres on, for the body of a 4-year-old.

Kondoh tries to project an image of strength in front of his team. After his experience during the war, he can handle almost anything – except for the bodies of children or pregnant women.

“I know it’s painful to see your loved one being put in a bag,” he told the child’s family. “But it’s government policy.” The father nodded, crying.

The boy’s body was loaded into an ambulance. Kondoh watched, his arms crossed and his lips pursed.

“This is when my nights are not okay,” he said.

*Sieff is The Washington Post’s bureau chief in Nairobi. He was previously bureau chief in Kabul and has covered the US-Mexico border.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
manolo
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by manolo »

Folks,

Ebola has slipped out of our news cycle here in the UK.

Alex.
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

manolo wrote:Folks,

Ebola has slipped out of our news cycle here in the UK.

Alex.

Same here. As Ban Kim-Moos said yesterday It is not over until there are no new cases for 21 days. Just one new case can start another epidemic. An addition 125 people died just today.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

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Two hundred more dead reported in three days on first anniversary of the outbreak

Image

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/ ... 2920141224
Death toll in Ebola outbreak rises to 7,573: WHO
(Reuters) - The death toll from Ebola in the three West Africa countries hardest hit by the epidemic has risen to 7,573 out of 19,463 confirmed cases recorded there to date, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

Sierra Leone has the most cases, 9,004, while Liberia has the highest death toll, 3,384, according to its latest figures. Guinea, where the outbreak began a year ago, is the third hardest-hit.

The Ebola crisis that claimed its first victim exactly a year ago is likely to last until the end of 2015, according to Peter Piot, a scientist who helped to discover the virus in 1976.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

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FIVE DAYS FIVE HUNDRED MORE DEAD

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-12-e ... oll_1.html
Ebola death toll rises to 7,842: WHO

The death toll from the Ebola outbreak in west Africa has risen to 7,842 out of 20,081 cases recorded, the World Health Organization said Monday.

The previous toll released on December 26 was 7,693 deaths and 19,695 cases.

Almost all the deaths and cases have been recorded in three west African countries worst-hit by the outbreak: Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

Those apart, six have died in Mali, one in the United States and eight in Nigeria, which was declared Ebola-free in October.

Spain and Senegal, which have both been declared free of Ebola, meanwhile counted one case each, but no deaths.

Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone, which has overtaken Liberia as the country with the most infections, counted 9,409 cases and 2,732 deaths on December 27, the WHO said.

On Christmas Eve, the death toll was 2,655 and there were 9,203 cases. Sierra Leone imposed a lockdown on Christmas and New Year festivities to curb the spread of the virus.

Liberia

Liberia, long the hardest-hit country, has seen a clear decrease in transmission over the past month.

As of December 27, the country counted 7,977 cases and 3,413 deaths, up from 7,862 cases and 3,376 deaths recorded in the previous update.

Guinea

In Guinea, where the outbreak started a year ago, 2,695 Ebola cases and 1,657 deaths were recorded up to December 27. The previous tally was 2,630 Ebola cases and 1,654 deaths as of December 24.

Healthcare workers

Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, is spread only through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person showing symptoms such as fever or vomiting.

People caring for the sick or handling the bodies of people infected Ebola are especially exposed.

As of December 21 a total of 666 healthcare workers were known to have contracted the virus, and 366 of them had died, according to WHO.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

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How an over confident WHO botched the early Ebola response. As a result nearly 8000are dead.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/30/healt ... -back.html
How Ebola Roared Back

For a fleeting moment last spring, the epidemic sweeping West Africa might have been stopped. But the opportunity to control the virus, which has now caused more than 7,800 deaths, was lost
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/healt ... -says.html
Source of Ebola Outbreak in West Africa Might Be Bats, Study Says

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.DEC. 30, 2014


The toddler in Guinea who is thought to have been the first case in the current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa may have caught the virus from bats in a hollow tree near his village, scientists said Tuesday.

A study, led by scientists from the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin and published online by the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, could not prove the link because the tree in Meliandou, a village of 31 houses in the Guéckédou district, burned in late March and the bats inside were immolated or flew off.

The fire took place shortly after Guineans were warned that the virus might come from bats. By then, at least 10 local people were dead.

However, the scientists found enough residual DNA in the charred trunk and fecal DNA in nearby soil to identify the animals as Mops condylurus, long-tailed insect-eating bats that were previously suspected in an outbreak of the Sudan strain of Ebola virus, which is related to the Zaire strain that has infected over 20,000 West Africans.

Sierra Leone Journal: Ebola Ravages Economies in West AfricaDEC. 30, 2014

The study is important because scientists have wondered how a boy named Emile Ouamouno, who died in December 2013 and whom various reports describe as 1 or 2 years old, could have been the index patient.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Re: Ebola fears

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Good thing level-headed Obama and his supremely-competent scientifically-minded administrators are in power here. If it were the Republicans, they would have succumbed to fear and paranoia, blown the epidemic out of proportion, banned travel, and incited panic. Obama's foes don't even believe in basic tenets of biology like evolution. Their ability to understand epidemiology and virology is questionable.
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Re: Ebola fears

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Zack Morris wrote:Good thing level-headed Obama and his supremely-competent scientifically-minded administrators are in power here. If it were the Republicans, they would have succumbed to fear and paranoia, blown the epidemic out of proportion, banned travel, and incited panic. Obama's foes don't even believe in basic tenets of biology like evolution. Their ability to understand epidemiology and virology is questionable.
Oh Please !!! Does everything have to be about politics? AS of yesterday there were 7905 reported deaths and the number of infected has gone up by 2,000 over the last week or so. This is definiately not over.

Banning traffic in many cases make very urgent sense. Many poor workers from India for example work in West Africa. Imagine if Ebola got loose in the slums of Calcutta.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Zack Morris
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Re: Ebola fears

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All you've done is post updates with no commentary except to bag on Obama, the CDC, and now the WHO. It's totally transparent: you are blaming big government and the much-hated "experts" for this but can point to no superior model. Big and inefficient bureaucracies are easy to pick on but what would you rather have? A decentralized response? Nothing at all? Until you and your peeps drop your relentless cynicism and foaming-at-the-mouth outrage at everything the government and international organizations do, and propose a specific vision of how international society should be structured, you'll have to endure my mockery.

I fart in your general direction!
noddy
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Re: Ebola fears

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yet again the doomer pron lets me down.
ultracrepidarian
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