The Ebola Thread

[MalaspinaGold]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/31/atlanta-hospital-to-receive-ebola-patient/13434883/

Looks like they're bringing an ebola patient to Atlanta.

[Beet]

2012 Canadian study that infected macaques with ebola even with no direct contact

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[Tender Branson]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/31/atlanta-hospital-to-receive-ebola-patient/13434883/

Looks like they're bringing an ebola patient to Atlanta.

This makes me want to watch this 1995 movie again (which I have not seen for quite a few years now):

Outbreak

Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgZ5goJibn0

[Beet]

I've created a Google spreadsheet that charts the number of cases per day, based on the Wiki entry, below:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k_LJLH_mSqZ_LDnDJRKZjkcwoRz_ofJ8F5DWkeISAIs/edit#gid=0

As you can see, the number of cases per day has been steadily increasing since early June through July 30.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Ebola seems to be a large part of why the western gorilla is listed as critically endangered. There are 95,000 western gorillas. There are only around 6000 eastern gorillas, but they are listed as endangered, one tier better.

[Beet]

Ebola seems to be a large part of why the western gorilla is listed as critically endangered. There are 95,000 western gorillas. There are only around 6000 eastern gorillas, but they are listed as endangered, one tier better.

Indeed, evidence suggests the virus devastates primate populations
http://www.4apes.com/news/general/item/602-What-Ebola-virus-means-for-primate-popul-20121207/602-What-Ebola-virus-means-for-primate-popul-20121207

Edit:

And speaking of monkeys, a November 2012 Nature article provided evidence of airborne transmission of ebola. Canadian researchers put ebola-infested hogs (in hogs, ebola only affects the respiratory system) in a room with four macaques, separated by wire fences 20 cm apart. In a supplementary PDF file, they provide a photograph of the setup. Two of the macaques were on the ground level with the hogs, and two of them were one level up. All four macaques came down with ebola, although they never had direct contact with the hogs.

Meanwhile, a U.S. doctor from Morristown, Tennessee has placed himself under voluntary quarantine after returning from treating ebola patients in Liberia. In the opinion of this medical professional and hero, the risks to him warrant such a quarantine. But he had to contact the C.D.C. of his own accord. Why are we rely on such voluntary effort - what about the plane load of people he flew in with? And what if he had developed symptoms mid flight?

Honestly I think the best thing the average person can do is to call those airlines still flying out of Lungi International Airport (Sierra Leone) and Roberts International Airport (Liberia) and get them to pull flights. Mention that Emirates Air, Gambia Bird and Arik Air have already pulled out.

British Airways Customer Service 1 (800) 247-9297
Air France Customer Service 1 (800) 992-3932 (Lungi only)
Delta Customer Service 1 (800) 455-2720 (they terminate flights Aug. 31, but should sooner)
Brussels Airlines Customer Service 1 (866) 308-2230
Air Côte d'Ivoire Customer Service 011 (<-- if in the U.S.) +225 20 25 10 30

Once some major airlines start pulling out the remaining ones will come under increasing pressure to do so, like a sack of dominoes.

[Beet]

Ebola patients break out of ward, hospital & city thrown into panic

Tokpa Tarnue, a local journalist on the scene told FrontPageAfrica Wednesday that the majority of the suspected patients were in a holding room at the Tellewoyan Memorial Hospital while awaiting their departure for a treatment and isolation center in Foya when they abruptly left their room and moved into other wards that later resulted to all health workers escaping the hospital compound in deep fear.

According to the journalist, the suspected patients managed to leave the hospital premises and ran into various homes and streets, a situation that caused severe panic among citizens and residents of Voinjama who were likewise escaping from the patients fearing not to contract the deadly Ebola virus. He told FrontPageAfrica that for several hours Voinjama was like a ghost town as many residents escaped the city while others locked themselves in their homes.

Said the local journalist: "Everybody left. They had suspected Ebola patients in a holding room that is not well equipped. They are normally kept there before they are taken to Foya. In the process of doing that, those suspected patients left their wards and stating entering the children's ward and other places while they were vomiting and releasing feces at the same time. Based on that the entire hospital staff all left including the doctors and nurses. Up to now they have not gone back to work."

http://allafrica.com/stories/201408010923.html?aa_source=acrdn-f0

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The Nature paper is interesting, but as the paper points out, pigs respond differently to Ebola than primates do making airborne spread of the virus from them far far more likely than with primates.

[Beet]

Amazing first-hand blog post of the situation in Kenema. Some of the other photos on the site aren't too shabby either, really helps humanize the people of Sierra Leone.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Amazing first-hand blog post of the situation in Kenema. Some of the other photos on the site aren't too shabby either, really helps humanize the people of Sierra Leone.

Poor Sierra Leone already had the shortest life expectancy in the world at 47.5 years.

[Beet]

Good lord. The number of cases / day has jumped from 39 to 81 in just the past two days!

[Simfan34]

Oh great, now it's right across the park. Are they telling me that I may have passed a man with Ebola on the bus?

[Beet]

Oh great, now it's right across the park. Are they telling me that I may have passed a man with Ebola on the bus?

I would wait to see if it's a confirmed case.

Recently, we have had three more suspected cases in Nigeria (including a doctor who treated Patrick Sawyer) and a confirmed case in Morocco. Morocco is a regional air hub for West African flights. That would make it the sixth country with a confirmed case in this outbreak (the United States being fifth).

Incidentally, a gargantuan conference of around 50 African heads of state is taking place in D.C. with president Obama ATM. The United States is playing catch up after years in which China has been providing infrastructure loans, and building mines and factories in Africa, which has helped the continent's economic growth to the fastest since the 1970s. What better way for the U.S. to show value in Africa than an effective response to the ebola epidemic?

[Beet]

There are a number of updates now coming in from all over the world - one thing I am glad to say is that I called British Airways on Saturday, the person on the line was helpful and promised to pass my message onto his manager, and this week they have announced they are suspending flights through the end of the month.

For now I just wanted to comment on a photo from the New York Times:



Here's how the green bucket works:
(1) A person infected with virus on his hands goes to the bucket and turns that yellow tap to open the disinfectant, thus infecting the tap with the virus.
(2) The person washes the virus off their hands.
(3) The person turns the yellow tap to stop the flow of the disinfectant, in the process re-infecting his hand with the virus due to the fact that he had earlier infected the tap.
(4) The next person goes to the bucket, turns the yellow tap, and infects themselves.
(5) Rinse and repeat steps 2-3.
(6) Rinse and repeat with the next 100 people.

Some of these measures just don't make sense.

[Beet]

Liberian soldiers have set up a blockade stopping people from western regions affected by the Ebola outbreak from entering the capital, Monrovia.

...

In neighbouring Sierra Leone, the head of the police in the east of the country said police and soldiers had imposed a "complete blockade" of the Kenema and Kailahun districts.

"No vehicles or persons will be allowed in or out of the districts" except those with essential food and medicines, he said.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28690799

New cases temporal regression trends in Sierra Leone:

http://i.imgur.com/e2m3sml.png

http://imgur.com/eGxXMPG

[Beet]

A Google Maps of affected countries.

Strangely enough, I don't see Morocco on there, even though they confirmed one person died of ebola there.

[Beet]

Meanwhile, as coverage has slowed, the rate of new infections continues to accelerate in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The current rate of infection by country,
1. Liberia
2. Sierra Leone
...
3. Guinea
4. Nigeria (all due to Patrick Sawyer)

An educational tune

[Beet]

The World Health Organization has said that "Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases [1,975] and deaths [1,069] vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak."

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/overview-20140814/en/

The World Food Programme is using its well-developed logistics to deliver food to the more than one million people locked down in the quarantine zones, where the borders of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone intersect.

This is a war effort going on here, a war against a natural enemy. There are rockets being fired, there are people trapped on hilltops and starving to death, there are government ministers shaking in their boots, and the army is being called out. But it's not other human beings that are the enemy this time, and killing people isn't the answer. This time, the enemy takes the form of a virus...

[Beet]

http://www.punchng.com/news/lagos-ebola-patients-neglected-critically-ill-relatives-colleagues/

A description of ramshackle conditions in Nigeria's isolation unit, where the patients are being neglected and an American doctor resorted to personally footing the bill for basic medical supplies. To me, this is far more concerning than the reports of hospital meltdowns in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Although I'm sure in the American mind all African countries are really just one big country, they really aren't. Nigeria collects billions in oil revenues as the world's 10th largest producer, and there are pockets of real wealth in that country. They should not be lacking for anything. In terms of population it is also over 40 times the size of Liberia and 30 times the size of Sierra Leone. The fact that they only have 10 people sick, all tied to the same known man, and they can't handle 10 patients in the whole guddamned country, they can't find enough people brave enough for care for these people... this is disturbing. This is sick. God help them all of this thing really breaks out over there.

[Joe Republic]

Louie Gohmert is deeply, deeply concerned that Ebola might be carried across the border into the US by "undocumented Democrats".

[MaxQue]

Louie Gohmert is deeply, deeply concerned that Ebola might be carried across the border into the US by "undocumented Democrats".

And many people are deeply, deeply concerned than Ignorance might be carried across the boundaires of US states by "insane Republicans".

[Beet]

Guys, as much as I appreciate that someone besides me deigns to post in here, this us about the ebola catastrophe, an emerging health disaster in one of the poorest areas of the world. not US domestic politics. There are 100 other threads to castigate political parties.

[Beet]

Fascinating article on the preparation guidelines the C.D.C. is issuing to U.S. hospitals for ebola. Article points out there may actually be drawbacks to full body suits, as they are more complicated to take off and clean, than more lightweight suits recommended by the C.D.C. Other guidelines, for washing and disposal are still under development. C.D.C. director has said ebola spread to U.S. is "inevitable."

Meanwhile, prominent science writer Laurie Garrett has written a scathing Foreign Policy article on the 'outside' world's indifference the epidemic. She points out that there are only 50 doctors involved in clinical care for all of Liberia's 4 million people. Her recommendations and those of MSF director Dr. Bart Janssens are right and critical.

It's important to recognize the difference here between amateurish scaremongering and legitimate concern. The World Health Organization, Medicins Sans Frontieres, and those who have been professionals in this area for decades, such as Garrett, are not a part of the former. W.H.O. has admitted they were wrong and did not take this seriously enough before late July. MSF has been saying the same for months.

* As an aside, health care for non-ebola care has all but broken down. Women giving birth, people with broken legs, those with treatable diseases such as malaria, simply can't get treatment anymore. Imagine living in a country with no doctors and no hospitals. If you're hurt you're on your own. This is what these people are going through now.

[Beet]

A mob chanting the ebola is a myth destroys an ebola treatment center in the Monrovia suburb of West Point only two days after it opens. Police are on the scene but too intimidated to do anything, and nurses cannot escape patients from fleeing.

The Ministry of Health says the entire suburb, located on a peninsula with a population of 75,000, is to be quarantined. A report by United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that there are four public toilets in the area.[4] Pay toilets exist, but residents cannot afford them, and thus public defecation is common

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jinamoore/two-days-after-it-opens-mob-destroys-ebola-center-in-liberia#4lc9sas

A 12 year old girl locked in a windowless hut with the rotting corpse of her mother, could be heard begging for food and water for days, but the villagers ignored her until she died.

"They were crying all day and all night, begging their neighbors to give them food but everyone was afraid."

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/93259/in-liberia-village-shunned-ebola-victims-left-to-die

[Beet]

Some photos from the suburb of West Point, Monrovia, Liberia (not to be confused with the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York).



"There are no sanitation facilities in West Point.  Which translates as 'everybody poops in the sea'.  With horrendous consequences for community health." - a visitor.



"'If you come from West Point, people might not take you to be a good person, criminals come from there, rogues, thieves. But a lot of good people live there, a lot of families. They feel like they are outcasts, like nobody pays attention to them'" - Liberian hip-hop artist.



“What brought me to West Point is food. I was so hungry," says Kulah Borbor, recalling why and how she left her hometown in Grand Cape Mount County in western Liberia. Borbor fled heavy fighting in the interior during Liberia’s civil war. With her husband and four young children in tow, she walked for two days before finally settling here in West Point on the edge of the ocean, one of Monrovia’s largest slums.







"As you can probably imagine, health care in Liberia is not the best. Kids often go to school on an empty stomach; if it is Monday, they may not have eaten for a day or two. Still, they go to school without complaint. It is not uncommon to see people with open wounds that desperately need stitches, but who go about their normal business selling goods or carting around over-stuffed wheel barrows. While I was in Monrovia I was worried about malaria. A friend I had dinner with told me, “malaria here is like the flu in the U.S., everyone gets it. It’s just out there.”" - Aid worker