The Ebola Thread

[Beet]

Beet, do you have any particular feelings on Samaritan's Purse as an organization? I've donated to them recently cause it seemed like they've been doing good work in northwestern Africa (among other places) in the midst of this epidemic.

But if there are other NGOs you think are doing a better job or are more worthy of donations I'd definitely like to know.

I donated to them when Brantly and Writebol got sick. What I liked what was unlike M.S.F. (who have their own reasons), Samaritan's Purse allows you to earmark your donation for your cause of choice. I have a high opinion of any relief agency that has been active in responding to Ebola in West Africa, given that few of them are, or at least very few of them were until recently.

[Beet]

Well, there it is. The billion mark is finally being mentioned.

It looks like a major announcement is coming tomorrow.

[Beet]

8 Ebola health care workers / journalists were found hacked to death in a gruesome manner and their bodies dumped in a septic tank in or near Wome village in N'zérékoré prefecture, Guinea.

"According to our source, the eight bodies found include: the sub-prefect of Wome, the prefectural health director of the regional hospital N'zérékoré, deputy director of the regional hospital center head Health Womé, an evangelist pastor of the health center Zao, two trainee technicians rural radio journalist and a private radio Zali Fm."

http://guineenews.org/violences-a-womey-huit-corps-exhumes-six-interpellations-et-une-declaration-du-pm-attendue/

"This is likely the greatest peacetime challenge that the United Nations and its agencies have ever faced," - U.N. health chief Dr. Margaret Chan

"If the international community does not stand up, we will be wiped out," - Jackson Naimah, a team leader for Doctors Without Borders at a treatment center in the Liberian capital Monrovia

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/chief-calls-billion-fight-ebola-25603216

[Beet]

Thought this might be interesting to a forum full of map enthusiasts

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/health/sns-rt-us-foundation-ebola-maps-20140917,0,6565204.story

[MalaspinaGold]

3000 dead:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-29382412

[Beet]

My estimate from Sept. 4, when as of Aug. 30 there had been 3,700 cases, would be about 7,400 cases by Sept. 24. As of Sept. 23, there are 6,554/6,574 cases. That puts me over by about 700-800. Accordingly, I am revising my projections. Per my calculations, the doubling time has increased from 24 to 27 days.

[Sol]

The only qualm I have with Samaritan's Purse is that they are noted for their strong support of socon-itude.

[Tirnam]

My estimate from Sept. 4, when as of Aug. 30 there had been 3,700 cases, would be about 7,400 cases by Sept. 24. As of Sept. 23, there are 6,554/6,574 cases. That puts me over by about 700-800. Accordingly, I am revising my projections. Per my calculations, the doubling time has increased from 24 to 27 days.

Your projections from Sept. 4 still seem correct, in line with those of the CDC: between 500,000 and 1.4 million cases by January...

[Beet]

CDC is using a factor of ~2.5 to account for underreported cases, and this is how they reach 1.4 million. I am only looking at confirmed, probable and suspected cases. Their 550k remains a worst case scenario and CDC director Tom Friedan has said he does not think it will come about. Let's hope.

[Beet]

There is some chatter that the current suspected ebola case in Dallas County may be more than what you usually get with this story. Supposedly the CDC is sending teams, and that's unusual.

[Frodo]

Nigeria appears to have contained this outbreak:

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[Beet]

If Africa's largest economy could not have contained a single case that was identified almost as soon as he stepped out of the airport, the implications would have been too horrid to contemplate. But a win is a win, so a tentative congratulations (against the outside chance there's still any unidentified patients) to Nigeria then.

The below comment has no wider political implications whatsoever.

"MAKENI, Sierra Leone — “Where’s the corpse?” the burial-team worker shouted, kicking open the door of the isolation ward at the government hospital here. The body was right in front of him, a solidly built young man sprawled out on the floor all night, his right hand twisted in an awkward clench.

The other patients, normally padlocked inside, were too sick to look up as the body was hauled away. Nurses, some not wearing gloves and others in street clothes, clustered by the door as pools of the patients’ bodily fluids spread to the threshold. A worker kicked another man on the floor to see if he was still alive. The man’s foot moved and the team kept going. It was 1:30 in the afternoon.

In the next ward, a 4-year-old girl lay on the floor in urine, motionless, bleeding from her mouth, her eyes open. A corpse lay in the corner — a young woman, legs akimbo, who had died overnight. A small child stood in a cot watching as the team took the body away, stepping around a little boy lying immobile next to black buckets of vomit. They sprayed the body, and the little girl on the floor, with chlorine as they left."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/africa/ebola-spreading-in-west-africa.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=2

[Storebought]

The first confirmed case of EVD in the US has been identified in, where else?, Texas.

In this case, the Dallas hospital was far less competent than the Nigerian hospital -- at least they didn't send home a patient displaying active symptoms with a bottle of antibiotics.

[Famous Mortimer]

I never understand why these stories are so popular. Some people are sick. It's bad. I hope we don't get sick here. That's literally the whole story.

[Beet]

I never understand why these stories are so popular. Some people are sick. It's bad. I hope we don't get sick here. That's literally the whole story.

Some people are killing each other in the Middle East. It's far away from us. I hope gas prices don't go up.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

So I heard a story from Israel by word-of-mouth that the guy in Texas that had Ebola is dead; but is reported as alive in the United States. What's the deal there?

[Beet]

A Spanish nurse has been confirmed to have contracted ebola, after treating a Spanish priest at the end of September. She was working in a facility especially designed by Spain to handle ebola patients and (the facility) had treated another Spanish priest back in August. They are not sure how the nurse contracted ebola. She had entered the patient's room twice: once while he was still alive, and once after his death. After his death, the nurse went on vacation. She had a fever for several days while on vacation before being isolated. She is 44 years old and married with no children. There is no confirmation of how many people she had contact with.

[Beet]

This is far bigger news than the Dallas case. Dallas... I mean come on, it was just a matter of time. You have 10,000 people from the affected region that were coming in by commercial airplane every 3 months. The experts conceded as much.

This... is a genuine surprise. Otherwise, the authorities would never have let this woman go on vacation. Look at the precautions they were taking:

[Niemeyerite]

People is reeeally scared here. My mum would pick the first flight to Brazil if I let her.

[Tender Branson]

Ebola in my state now ?

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http://www.thelocal.at/20141006/salzburg-activates-ebola-emergency-plan

[Beet]

"El Mundo reported that it was the nurse who asked to be tested for Ebola, having to insist repeatedly on being tested before it was done on Monday"

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/07/ebola-crisis-substandard-equipment-nurse-positive-spain

Once again, proactive people = win, bureaucracy = fail.

[Beet]

So, the world is finally waking up to the severity of the Ebola problem. The problem now is that there is no coordinated response. If we had a single world government, this would be easy. But instead we have all these different organizations each "contributing". In an environment such as this, with such a scary disease, it's easy for individual organizations like the US govt, WHO, MSF, to get caught up in a hero complex, the idea that we're already doing more than 99% of people out there, so let's pat ourselves on the back. Because it's true. They are heroes.

But a problem needs more than just a series of contributions, it needs a solution. Particularly, as we've seen, since the world is not prepared for a large scale response to this. Any large scale response will take months to get into gear. This is akin to a military mobilization for a type of war we've never fought before. There needs to be one comprehensive plan of how to defeat this ebola epidemic from start to finish. There needs to be a single, centralized command structure, international in nature, that will take control and implement this plan. It must have authority to coordinate all actors, including governments, NGOs, and international bodies. And it must be competently and efficiently run. One would think the genesis of such a headquarters would be in the United Nations, but WHO seems out of its depth and not in charge. The U.S. has contributed a lot. Russia, China, Japan, India, etc. have contributed far less. The response seems ad-hoc, almost as if the former colonial masters are being asked into each country to handle each one separately. No one is in charge, so ships full of supplies sit in dock for weeks.

This is all going to have to change. The sooner the better.

[Tender Branson]

Ebola in my state now ?

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It's not Ebola after all ...

[Beet]

Thomas Duncan has died.

[Beet]

Meanwhile, some Ebola patients in Liberia are coming back to life, after having died of Ebola.