COVID-19 and Other Pandemics | Anarchy in the USA

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Typhoon
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Typhoon »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:The idea that autism is not related to vaccines is an argument from silence. Non-US courts see this more clearly.
http://healthimpactnews.com/2015/u-s-me ... se-autism/
The same court system, Italy, that prosecuted scientists for not having predicted an earthquake?

Well, I'll take science over alleged judicial silence:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25562790

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257990/
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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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

manolo wrote:Folks,

The Beeb announced on radio last night that President Obama has defeated ebola in Africa and is bringing all US personnel home.

How does he do it? :o

Alex.
You already posted this here Alex and I responded How do you do it?


viewtopic.php?p=85455#p85455
"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

Post by Doc »

Measles has not effected at least a generation of Americans to any great degree. SO younger generations have no first hand knowledge of it or many other dangerous diseases.

http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/02/ ... -politics/
Poll: Divide on vaccines about age, not politics
"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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Typhoon
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Typhoon »

Doc wrote:Measles has not effected at least a generation of Americans to any great degree. SO younger generations have no first hand knowledge of it or many other dangerous diseases.

http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/02/ ... -politics/
Poll: Divide on vaccines about age, not politics
Makes sense.

When I was a kid, my friend's older sister walked with a noticeable limp. She was a polio survivor - one of the lucky ones:

Image
Let me tell you a story. In the early Fifties, polio was a nightmare for parents.
Lots of children clunked around in braces or sat forever in wheel chairs.
In summer, the epidemic season, our mothers wouldn’t let us go to public swimming pools because
they were thought to be focuses of infection.

One day a fellow named Salk came out of a laboratory somewhere and said,
“Hey, I’ve got this vaccine….”
A bit later, a guy named Sabin came out of another laboratory, and said, “
Hey, if we do thus and so and put it on sugar cubes, see, it will be oral….”
You can’t imagine how welcome that vaccine was.
Parents grabbed their children by the hair and sprinted through doors, sometimes not bothering to open them,
to get to the clinic.
Polio just flat disappeared.

~ Fred
How times have changed.

Today, in the industrialized world, with many children physically/materially better off and
leading safer and more healthy* lives than at any other time in history,
it is as if some parents have to imagine non-existent dangers in order to believe that they are keeping their precious little snowflakes safe.

* With probably the biggest danger to their health being obesity.
Too much food, rather than too little.
Too little exercise, rather than too much [16 hours days of hard physical work in a sweatshop].

The fact that a standard google search on any health/medical subject will turn up countless sites run by charlatans and/or morons probably does not help.
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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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Vaccines are not all the same. Polio or smallpox vax does not the same risk/benefit ratio as Gardacil or a flu vax.

There is hysteria on all sides. Somehow educating parents properly and getting the mercury out of the vaccines does not seem to be on anyone's menu.
“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
manolo
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by manolo »

Doc wrote:
manolo wrote:
Doc wrote: The statistics I cited are just the projections from what had already occurred up to the point in this outbreak.
Doc and folks,

The Beeb announced last night that President Obama has defeated ebola in Africa and is bringing all the US personnel back home.

How does he do it?

Alex.
By not caring. An ebola outbreak is over when there are no new cases for 21 days. This has not happened as of yet and is very similar to what the WHO did at the beginning of this outbreak which has lead to as of yesterday 9,152 deaths up 150 from three days ago. Which means it is getting worse not better and your guy is bugging out.

So you tell me "How does he do it?"
Doc,

http://www.whitehouse.gov/ebola-response

Alex.
Simple Minded

Re: Ebola fears

Post by Simple Minded »

Typhoon wrote:
How times have changed.

Today, in the industrialized world, with many children physically/materially better off and
leading safer and more healthy* lives than at any other time in history,
it is as if some parents have to imagine non-existent dangers in order to believe that they are keeping their precious little snowflakes safe.

* With probably the biggest danger to their health being obesity.
Too much food, rather than too little.
Too little exercise, rather than too much [16 hours days of hard physical work in a sweatshop].

The fact that a standard google search on any health/medical subject will turn up countless sites run by charlatans and/or morons probably does not help.
Good point. The generation gap is STILL real. No wonder some many of the old farts laugh at the current dramas and traumas of the hipsters. The funny part is the old farts were the hippies of the 1960's.

"You saw my eight year old is playing with matches and knives? Good! Maybe if he cuts himself or burns himself he will learn something!"
"You slapped my eight year old for running thru your flower garden? You probably didn't hit him hard enough for him to get the point. I'll fix that when I get home."

The worries of a current first world parent..... not obesity, not their kid living on sugar, not 8 hours a day in front of a smart phone/computer/TV, not that their kid can't run, walk, stand, or even sit without looking like a polio victim, not that their teenagers won't return their phone calls on the smart phone the parents bought them, not that their 18 kid strong arms a convenient store and then tries to take a gun away from a cop, not that the 18 year old won't shovel snow when his mother asks him to......

But climate change, vaccines caused disease, and that some other adult might discipline their little barbarian. :roll:

I saw this trailer yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq49v4oJvcE

Imagine this on TV 30 years ago. People would have been laughing their asses off!

Prosperity..... :) the most devastating of adversities. :(

A poor mom is walking down the street with her son. She encounters a rich mom pushing her son in a wheelchair. They exchange pleasantries, talk for a while and the poor mom says "I am so sorry your son can't walk!" The rich mom replies "Oh he can walk. But isn't it wonderful that he doesn't have to!"
Simple Minded

Re: Ebola fears

Post by Simple Minded »

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... gners.html

for those that are interested..... as soon as the new labels arrive from the printer, I'll have Anti-Karma/Anti-Stupidity vaccines available for sale.

One week only, 15% discount price available for current subscribers to our automatic monthly purchase program of Dr. Feelgood.

Enter coupon code "My life sucks. Somebody do something, please."
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Simple Minded wrote:
Typhoon wrote:
How times have changed.

Today, in the industrialized world, with many children physically/materially better off and
leading safer and more healthy* lives than at any other time in history,
it is as if some parents have to imagine non-existent dangers in order to believe that they are keeping their precious little snowflakes safe.

* With probably the biggest danger to their health being obesity.
Too much food, rather than too little.
Too little exercise, rather than too much [16 hours days of hard physical work in a sweatshop].

The fact that a standard google search on any health/medical subject will turn up countless sites run by charlatans and/or morons probably does not help.
Good point. The generation gap is STILL real. No wonder some many of the old farts laugh at the current dramas and traumas of the hipsters. The funny part is the old farts were the hippies of the 1960's.

"You saw my eight year old is playing with matches and knives? Good! Maybe if he cuts himself or burns himself he will learn something!"
"You slapped my eight year old for running thru your flower garden? You probably didn't hit him hard enough for him to get the point. I'll fix that when I get home."

The worries of a current first world parent..... not obesity, not their kid living on sugar, not 8 hours a day in front of a smart phone/computer/TV, not that their kid can't run, walk, stand, or even sit without looking like a polio victim, not that their teenagers won't return their phone calls on the smart phone the parents bought them, not that their 18 kid strong arms a convenient store and then tries to take a gun away from a cop, not that the 18 year old won't shovel snow when his mother asks him to......

But climate change, vaccines caused disease, and that some other adult might discipline their little barbarian. :roll:

I saw this trailer yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq49v4oJvcE

Imagine this on TV 30 years ago. People would have been laughing their asses off!

Prosperity..... :) the most devastating of adversities. :(

A poor mom is walking down the street with her son. She encounters a rich mom pushing her son in a wheelchair. They exchange pleasantries, talk for a while and the poor mom says "I am so sorry your son can't walk!" The rich mom replies "Oh he can walk. But isn't it wonderful that he doesn't have to!"
The kids are alright. There is no shortage of intelligent, well-mannered teenagers.
“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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Typhoon
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Typhoon »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:Vaccines are not all the same. Polio or smallpox vax does not the same risk/benefit ratio as Gardacil or a flu vax.

There is hysteria on all sides.
I don't think so.
Nonc Hilaire wrote: Somehow educating parents properly and getting the mercury out of the vaccines does not seem to be on anyone's menu.
Probably because there is no evidence that the ethylmercury found in trace amounts in some vaccines bioaccumulates,
unlike the methylmercury found in, say, some fish.

Toxicokinetics of Mercury after Long-Term Repeated Exposure to Thimerosal-Containing Vaccine

Global Justice and the Proposed Ban on Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines*

* http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/c ... f_ipsecsha

Alternatives have been developed, however, they are more expensive and less convenient.
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Typhoon
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Typhoon »

Nonc Hilaire wrote: . . .

The kids are alright. There is no shortage of intelligent, well-mannered teenagers.
Indeed.

The older generation has been complaining about the younger since the start of recored history.
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

~ Socrates
To which I'll add, "They stare at their mobile phones, texting and otherwise absorbed in social media, while ignoring the company in their presence." :wink:
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
Simple Minded

Re: Ebola fears

Post by Simple Minded »

Typhoon wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote: . . .

The kids are alright. There is no shortage of intelligent, well-mannered teenagers.
Indeed.

The older generation has been complaining about the younger since the start of recorded history.
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

~ Socrates
To which I'll add, "They stare at their mobile phones, texting and otherwise absorbed in social media, while ignoring the company in their presence." :wink:
Nonc & Typhoon,

Interesting interpretations that I could not have imagined. I would not have guessed that anyone would think my post was a criticism of the behavior of young'uns. Over the past 30 years, I've often quoted that very quote from Socrates.

The second most interesting part of forums: interpretations one could not anticipate. :D

I thought I was clear that in first world, prosperous America, those who have no real dragons to slay, can not keep themselves from creating imaginary dragons. My post was intended to convey the changed foci of parents. Since prosperous parents have in recent decades subcontracted raising children to grandparents, daycare centers, and estranged spouses, to an extent their predecessor could not imagine, they have more time to be swayed by their imaginations and the ephemeral Apocalyptic threats of the MSM/peers/internet.

Kids are timeless. Adults are the indicators of culture that is always in flux.

All that being said, I'm well aware I am a dinosaur who was raised on a different planet. :) No one lives in the world they were born into for more than a couple decades.
noddy
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by noddy »

in australia its quite known that a small percentage of the population is allergic to the vaccines, i went to school with a kid that was a bit funny in the head because of it.

however the relative percentages of suffering and death from measels,polio,tb vs vaccine reaction are very much in favour of taking the vaccines

anyone that has visited a third world place and seen the child mortality and suffering is not in any doubt - only highly sheltered suburbanites think the 1 in 100,000 risk is unacceptable.

hardly surprising, they tend to find most of lifes risks unacceptable
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

noddy wrote:in australia its quite known that a small percentage of the population is allergic to the vaccines, i went to school with a kid that was a bit funny in the head because of it.

however the relative percentages of suffering and death from measels,polio,tb vs vaccine reaction are very much in favour of taking the vaccines

anyone that has visited a third world place and seen the child mortality and suffering is not in any doubt - only highly sheltered suburbanites think the 1 in 100,000 risk is unacceptable.

hardly surprising, they tend to find most of lifes risks unacceptable
Yeah you are quite right Noddy. I read somewhere that in silicon valley (probably the highest educated area of the US) there is the highest percentages of unvaccinated children in California. They have near perfect lives as far as they are concerned no need to take the 1 in 186,000 risk. People really do not understand risk to begin with. The other day the power ball, the semi national government lottery was at 500 million. There is a 1 in 175 million chance to win. One statistician worked out that if you drive one mile to buy a ticket you have a higher chance to die in a fatal car accident than you have to win. But people flock to the convenience stores to buy tickets anyway. Some even drive to other states from states that do not participate in the lottery to buy tickets.
"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

Post by Doc »

Now there is a new, more virulent, HIV strain


http://americanlivewire.com/2015-02-14- ... d-chicago/
New Aggressive HIV Strain Discovered in Chicago

Posted by: Enozia Vakil 1 hour ago

Talk about super-viruses, and the new HIV virus seems to have become the talk of the town. This new strain of HIV could progress to full-blown AIDS within just 3 years if left untreated, and has reportedly become an epidemic among newly infected individuals in Cuba who had unprotected sex with multiple partners, a study published by international researchers has revealed.

This strain of the HIV virus is a combination of three different subtypes of the virus, and progresses so fast that the researchers have started to worry that the affected patients might not even get time to seek antiretroviral therapy until it is too late.

The findings of this study are published in the journal EBioMedicine, and they raise many concerns among researchers who are worrying about mutated HIV viruses that are difficult to diagnose, which may also become resistant to therapy and could become a challenge.

In small study, aggressive HIV strain identified in Cuba
In small study, aggressive HIV strain identified in Cuba

Hector Bolivar, a physician and infectious disease specialist with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said “HIV research community has long known about the virus’ capacity to mutate and create new versions. More than 60 strains of HIV type 1 exist in the world because of mutations.”

The researchers recruited patients from an Institute in Havana who had tested negative for HIV around three years before getting diagnosed, and had not received antiretroviral therapy.

The researchers studied the blood of 73 patients infected with HIV of which 52 were diagnosed with AIDS while 21 were not diagnosed with AIDS. They then compared these results with the blood samples of patients who had progressed to AIDS after living with HIV for more than 3 years.

They found that the patients who were infected with the mutated strain of HIV developed AIDS within just 3 years, while on an average, infected people develop AIDS within 6-10 years.

The researchers stress that individuals who engage in unprotected sex with multiple partners could increase their risk of being contracted by multiple HIV strains that could mutate into a new strain once they enter the host
"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
noddy
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by noddy »

Doc wrote:There is a 1 in 175 million chance to win. One statistician worked out that if you drive one mile to buy a ticket you have a higher chance to die in a fatal car accident than you have to win. But people flock to the convenience stores to buy tickets anyway. Some even drive to other states from states that do not participate in the lottery to buy tickets.
heh.


one other thing id add to the anti-vax/freedom arguments that showed up in my extended family is that the mothers that have the right not to vax get upset coming up against the mothers who think they are have the right to keep anti-vaxed people away from their newborns.

which ties in quite nicely with your "risk" sentiment above.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

"Measles has not effected at least a generation of Americans to any great degree. SO younger generations have no first hand knowledge of it or many other dangerous diseases. "

Measles's mortality rate was already in great decline before the vaccine. We went from averaging ~8000 deaths a year at the turn of the 20th century to about ~500 kids a year in the 1950s.
noddy
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by noddy »

do you know any carefully selective inoculators with an accurate grasp on all the stats for each disease ?

it tends to be all or nothing in my experience, with the exception of the flu shots, they have a reputation for not working
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

noddy wrote:do you know any carefully selective inoculators with an accurate grasp on all the stats for each disease ?

it tends to be all or nothing in my experience, with the exception of the flu shots, they have a reputation for not working
ah, but that's the thing ain't it.

You can't nurse a child through rabies, cholera, typhoid, polio, tuberculosis, yellow fever, tick-borne encephalitis or a bad case of tetanus.

And then you have a case like someone who I'll call X, who came down with mumps as an adult before the vaccination, shortly after the birth of his first child. The illness left him sterile.

Everything is a statistical point until it happens to you.
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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

Think of the vaccine issue like this People have what they fear is a deadly disease and they don't trust the hospitals as they appear only the place that people are sent to, to die. Or maybe worse a place where people are sent to where they catch a deadly disease. The reaction to vaccines in the West is similar to treatment of a highly fatal disease in Africa. SO who is the more superstitious?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/ ... WQ20150228
Sierra Leone vice president places himself in Ebola quarantine

FREETOWN Sat Feb 28, 2015 2:42pm EST

(Reuters) - Sierra Leone's Vice President Samuel Sam-Sumana said on Saturday that he had placed himself in a 21-day quarantine after one of his bodyguards died of Ebola amid a worrying recent surge in new infections in the West African nation.

Cases of Ebola, which has killed nearly 10,000 people in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea during a year-long epidemic, have fallen off sharply in recent weeks.

Of 99 new confirmed Ebola cases in the region during the week to Feb. 22, however, 63 were in Sierra Leone according to the World Health Organization's weekly report.

Sam-Sumana's bodyguard John Koroma died early this week.

"I have decided to be put under quarantine because I do not want to take chances and I want to lead by example," the vice president told Reuters. "I am very well and showing no signs of illness."

Sam-Sumana said his entire staff will also be placed under observation and anyone showing symptoms of the disease would be tested.

The vice president is the country's first senior government figure to subject himself to a voluntary quarantine. However, officials in neighboring Liberia, including the chief medical officer and transport minister, were placed under observation late last year.

Faced with a wave of new infections, particularly in the capital Freetown and some districts in the north, the government reintroduced a number of restrictions that had been lifted earlier this year as the epidemic appeared to ease.

A statement from President Ernest Bai Koroma's office late on Friday ordered public transport operators to reduce capacity by 25 percent to limit physical contact between passengers.

The government also placed a night-time curfew on unloading goods from commercial vehicles and limited the movements of water transport.
"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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Typhoon
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Typhoon »

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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Typhoon
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Typhoon »

LIberia is declared Ebola free
The World Health Organization announces the end of Ebola in Liberia, but the epidemic continues in nearby Sierra Leone and Guinea.
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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Doc
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Re: Ebola fears

Post by Doc »

Typhoon wrote:LIberia is declared Ebola free
The World Health Organization announces the end of Ebola in Liberia, but the epidemic continues in nearby Sierra Leone and Guinea.
While it is not over that is certainly good news. But has the lesson been learned? It was only controlled by those in the countries effected not by the rest of the world. It was controlled only because the local people changed their every day behavior because they did not want to die.

According to the Doctors without borders representative to Guinea the WHO was worthless.

nW5pFYvot9k

http://apps.frontline.org/ebola-alarm/
The WHO considered declaring an international health emergency, but officials were concerned about causing panic.

On June 21, MSF warned it had reached the limits of what its teams could do and said that controlling the Ebola epidemic would require "a massive deployment of resources by governments in West Africa and aid organizations."
The epidemic is out of control... With the appearance of new sites in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, there is a real risk of it spreading to other areas... We have reached our limits."

– Dr. Bart Janssens, director of operations, Doctors Without Borders, June 21, 2014
The WHO's excuse was they didn't want to cause a panic
YdC1DZsZohE
"I’ve been telling the world for the last few months that it’s an unprecedented out of control Ebola epidemic... People don’t listen to me but you, as the WHO, you need to step up to the plate and declare it because you have the authority and you have the legitimacy."

– Joanne Liu, president, Doctors Without Borders
On Aug. 8., the WHO declared an international emergency, putting a high-level team in Geneva in charge of the response.

By this point, Ebola had reached West Point, a densely packed slum in Liberia’s capital. Officials decided to isolate sick and suspected patients in a holding center, but four days after it opened, the facility was overrun. Rumors spread that Ebola was a hoax. Looters grabbed contaminated mattresses and sick patients disappeared back into the community.
On Aug. 19, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf imposed a quarantine on West Point. It backfired, igniting violent protests. The infected had nowhere to go but the streets. The virus spread more quickly.
"This is the largest, most severe, most complex outbreak in the nearly four-decade history of the disease... I am declaring the current outbreak of the Ebola virus disease a public health emergency of international concern..."

– Dr. Margaret Chan, director general, WHO, Aug. 8, 2014
Lacking enough medics, authority and budget to deal with the outbreak, the WHO asked wealthy countries for assistance. MSF, dealing with an exponentially rising number of cases across West Africa, made a direct plea to the U.S. for soldiers to help isolate and treat the sick.

Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, visited West Africa in late August. Frieden said he told President Barack Obama, “This isn’t about the response in the next three months, it’s about the response in the next three days that matters.”

Epilogue

Nearly a year and a half after the Ebola outbreak began, the disease has reached nine nations in total, but the number of infections is slowly winding down thanks to an influx of aid, as well as efforts by the citizens of West Africa to change how they lived their lives, nursed their sick and buried their dead. Liberia has not reported any confirmed cases of the disease in five weeks. Guinea and Sierra Leone continue to report new cases of Ebola, but they are far below the levels seen during the height of the crisis.

The WHO announced in April 2015 that the Ebola outbreak continues to be a public health emergency of international concern. On April 16, the WHO released a statement acknowledging that the Ebola outbreak “served as a reminder that the world, including WHO, is ill-prepared for a large and sustained disease outbreak.”

"There are going to be more of these, no matter what we think. More and more new diseases are emerging. We’ve seen pandemic flu. We’ve seen SARS. We’ve seen Ebola like this. And we are not prepared," WHO’s Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward warned. "Ebola was not an exception, Ebola is a precedent."
MORE
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... -epidemic/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... ak-sooner/
Could there have been a chance to stop the disease before it claimed more than 10,000 lives?
LKLJPlCPSpQ

What it is like in an Ebola hospital
LFC211NUajg
"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

Post by Doc »


Ebola Virus Lives on Hospital Surfaces for Days

by Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer | May 06, 2015 03:58pm ET


The Ebola virus can live on surfaces in hospitals for nearly two weeks, a new study suggests.

Researchers tested how long the Ebola virus could survive on plastic, stainless steel and Tyvek, a material used in Ebola suits. The researchers also simulated different environmental conditions, including a climate-controlled hospital at 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) and 40 percent humidity, and the typical environment of West Africa, at 80 F (27 C) and 80 percent humidity.

In general, the virus survived on surfaces for a longer time when in the climate-controlled conditions than in the West African environment, the study found. Under hospital-like conditions, the virus lived for 11 days on Tyvek, eight days on plastic and four days on stainless steel. The longest the virus was able to survive in the tropical conditions of the West African environment was three days, on Tyvek.

"Given the unprecedented [number] of health care professionals who became infected with Ebola virus during the outbreak, we are trying to elucidate all potential routes of transmission and potential for persistence of the virus," said study researcher Vincent Munster, chief of the Virus Ecology Unit at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana.

"We found that [the Ebola virus] can persist on surfaces" in hospitals, so it's very important that workers follow protocols for thoroughly disinfecting and removing protective gear when leaving an Ebola treatment unit, the researchers wrote in their study. [Where Did Ebola Come From?]

The higher heat and humidity of the tropical conditions may be harmful to the virus, but the researchers still need to test whether it is the temperature, the humidity or a combination of the two that is causing the virus to degrade more quickly, Munster said.

The study also found that the Ebola virus could survive in water for up to six days. The potential for the virus to be spread through wastewater remains unknown, but the new finding "warrants further investigation into the persistence of the virus in aqueous environments, such as in wastewater or sewage canals," the researchers said.

Finally, the study found that the virus could survive in dried blood for up to five days, and in liquid blood (outside the body) for as long as 14 days.

The study shows that, in a blood sample from an Ebola patient, "the virus would remain viable for a long time, Munster said. "Appropriate measures should be taken to safely dispose of these samples," he added.

The researchers noted that their experiment conditions were sterile, but in "real world" settings, contaminants, such as chemicals and bacteria, on surfaces could influence how long the Ebola virus survives.

The study will be published in the July issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
http://www.livescience.com/50758-ebola- ... faces.html
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Typhoon
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Re: The Pandemic | Ebola, MERS, and other fears

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Science Mag | 'Superspreading event' triggers MERS explosion in South Korea
SEOUL—Authorities in South Korea are scrambling to contain an outbreak of the deadly Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS). At least 25 people have been infected—including one patient who traveled to China—and two have died in what is already the biggest outbreak of MERS outside the Arabian Peninsula. Scientists are wondering how a single imported case could have led to so many secondary infections.

The outbreak started when a 68-year-old man who returned from a business trip to four Middle Eastern countries on 4 May fell ill a week later. He was treated at several clinics before being diagnosed with MERS on 20 May.
So far, Korea has quarantined close to 700 people to stop the spread of the virus. But a 44-year-old man who fell ill after visiting his hospitalized relatives in Seoul ignored quarantine orders and flew to Hong Kong on 26 May, after which he traveled by bus to Huizhou in China's Guangdong province. Alerted by the Korean government that the man had been in close contact with a MERS patient, local health authorities found him and placed him in isolation in Huizhou Municipal Central Hospital on 27 May. He tested positive for MERS on 29 May.
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