Another few “good news” stories regarding the current Ebola outbreak.
- Those “non-contact thermometers” that DHS is going to use to protect us from individuals arriving from West Africa who might be infected with Ebola? Well, experts say they don’t really work worth a damn.
- And Customs Agents in Newark say they’re not yet properly trained or prepared for doing that, anyway.
- A nurse recently returned to Australia from Sierra Leone. Initially, it also appeared she may have had a passenger on the trip. Initial tests were negative for Ebola; let’s hope that’s correct. She remains in isolation.
- HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell: Americans have to prepare for the reality that there may be more cases of Ebola in the United States (Very true, Secretary Burwell – primarily because the DC Clown Krewe in charge current Administration seems not to give a damn about controlling entry to the US from the current outbreak areas.)
- The current Ebola outbreak is taking a huge toll on medical personnel. So what happens when the doctors and nurses are all dead – or begin to refuse to treat anyone out of fear for their own lives?
- Dr. Thomas Frieden, CDC Director: US hospitals are prepared to handle Ebola. Nurses Union officials: um, Dr. Frieden . . . no we’re not. And the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital fiasco in Dallas – when a symptomatic Ebola patient who told emergency room personnel he’d been in Liberia recently, but was sent home and returned much sicker 3 days later – lends credence to those Nurses Union claims.
- A medical official with the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has tested positive for Ebola and has been evacuated to Germany for treatment. He is the second member of UNMIL to contract the disease; the first succumbed to the virus on 25 September.
As they might say in Marburg: Nun sind wir wirklich aufgeschmissen.
Ja, wir sind, und es ist eine verdammte Schande.
Indeed, a damn shame. I scratch my head.
speak English dammit.
Anglisch? Warum Anglisch? Sprechen sie nichts Deutsch? Was ist los mit Ihnen?
Where is the press 1 for English. Only Embassy guards went to Germany. Semper Fi Joe
I went to Germany, and I was a dependent.
Well, I understood that from my highschool German classes. But that was 38 years ago.
Marburg Virus is another Hemorrhagic fever. To deny this is of importance is pretty stupid. Yes Hondo, we are all screwed with this admin in charge.
The idea that Frieden is preaching that this could be another HIV crisis? I call bullshit and here’s why:
Since the first case in the US, a total of 636k+ people have died. So, from 1985 to 2010, the latest year of stats, there it is. Many people are “living” with HIV, 488k.
The difference between HIV and Ebola is
that you can develop antibodies for Ebola, but the same has not been true for HIV. The spread of HIV can be stopped with the use of a condom or abstaining from sex, or not sharing needles with infected people. It took until 2013 to show that there may be antibodies for a vaccine.
The truth matters.
The WHO shows statistics in African nations from 1976 to 2012…and the cases number about 2000. Not all died. Now, in 2014, we have had 8,033 total cases, with 4,461 confirmed by lab testing, and 3,865 total deaths.
AIDS patients survive because of drugs and hopefully avoiding secondary infections associated with their suppressed immunity. The spread cannot be stopped if the right precautions are not used.
An Ebola treatment will already come faster than it has for HIV because people have survived. And they only way they survived is that their bodies built immunity. Add up the cases of Ebola from 1976 to now. Add the deaths. Add up the survivors. As the resident cynic, Thomas Frieden is behaving irresponsibly by creating a level of hysteria that is utterly distracting from using common sense and acting with that.
Did you see the Firestone Company effectively contained an outbreak in Africa by creating a hospital campus for quarantine?
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/07/in-liberia-firestone-held-ebola-at-bay-where-governments-failed/
You win the prize, DefendUSA. That was exactly the reason I used the phrase, “As they might say in Marburg, . . . . “
DefendUSA…Thank you for the information and insight. I did not know these things.
I got nothing. I’m beyond being outraged at the lack of care this administration exhibits towards the average American. I’m just waiting for the day that Obama and crew want to start actively bringing in Ebola infected persons from Africa, because it’s like, for the children.
Ii’m stunned by the sheer stupidity and incompetence coming out of Washington and the (lack of) administration.
However, there are congress critters who are calling for a ban now on US entry by people from the affected African countries.
I truly expect, with the blighted, dimwitted ideas coming out of the White House right now, to see people purposely brought here from Africa for treatment.
There’s also no information yet on whether or not this form of Ebola is a shifting antigen virus. Everything is reaction.
Wir sind so’n Arsch.
Here’s the reference to the demand by the congress critters.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/09/politics/bipartisan-congressmen-urge-more-ebola-action/index.html
Note that the article specifically states that bodaprez WON’T ban travel from the stricken African countries, even through 27 African countries have long since done so.
Ex-PH2…Thank you. Great article. I only hope the WHOLE Congress could get together and put enough media pressure on Obama to get him off his butt.
I live in hope, too, Sparks, but I completely lack any hope that the jackass sitting in the Oval Office has the faintest idea what this is all about.
I would, in fact, be surprised, if he even understands that this is a no-win disease, that it spreads quickly and easily and that, as Valerie’s post below demonstrates, some people will carry it and be asymptomatic.
The comparison would be the early 20th century Typhoid Mary episode.
Maybe is isn’t stupidity and incompetence. Perhaps they are deliberately bringing Ebola and illegal immigrants in to weaken the US. This prez does seem to hate his country after all.
You all don’t realize that Obozo has MUCH MORE important things to attend to. There’s an election coming up and funds to raise and golf to play! Disease shmezese he says. Disease is for the little people. FORE!!!!
CDC and WHO have some ‘splainin’ to do:
Two well-publicised cases of Ebola exhibited a low fever (below the level defined by those worthy organizations) for a day or two before diagnosis.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/10/the-criteria-for-diagnosing-ebola/comment-page-1/#comment-546104
A published research article from 2000 shows that some ebola “carriers” may be “symptomless.”
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/062700hth-ebola.html
This is an article from 2000, and it is possible that better information has been developed. If so, that is a good answer, and the CDC has a good explanation.
Another research article says that filoviruses (marburg and ebola) are persistent on surfaces far longer that CDC says. This is a 2010 article.
Our study has shown that Lake Victoria marburgvirus (MARV) and Zaire ebolavirus (ZEBOV) can survive for long periods in different liquid media and can also be recovered from plastic and glass surfaces at low temperatures for over 3 weeks. The decay rates of ZEBOV and Reston ebolavirus (REBOV) plus MARV within a dynamic aerosol were calculated. ZEBOV and MARV had similar decay rates, whilst REBOV showed significantly better survival within an aerosol.
The definition of “low temperature” may be important, here. These viruses may be more persistent in, for example, air conditioning, which is not very common in Africa.
Thanks for that infor, Valerie.
The more we know based on facts, the better off we are.
I’ve been chewing on the discrepancies between what the CDC and WHO have been saying, and what results we are getting. These two factors might help explain why we have been losing so many medical people.
The line that this disease is as hard to catch as HIV is simply not true. HIV did not wipe out the medical people.
I found something else, too:
Co-infections are a problem.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971211000245
My takeaway from this article is, if you have a person who has another infection correctly diagnosed as something other than ebola, that person should be withdrawn from any potential risk of infection with ebola, because the co-infection could increase the danger to others in addition to the individual.
H/T HumanistRuth commenter at reddit
H/t commenter at Gateway Pundit “LiberatedCit”
The “low temperature” here was probably 4C, or around 40F. See Section IV of
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/lab-bio/res/psds-ftss/ebola-eng.php
Is the mortality rate based on the rate of infected people displaying symptoms?
I posted an article elsewhere that says the incubation period for manifestation of symptoms has changed from a 10 to 21 day period to (now) a 7 to 21 day period.
This disease seems to be progressing more rapidly than was anticipated.
Incubation period of Ebola ranges from 2 days (shortest time known between exposure and beginning of symptoms) to 21 days (max time observed between exposure and beginning of symptoms). Average incubation period for Ebola seems to be around 10 days.
Mortality rate is defined as the number of deaths from the disease divided by the total number of infected persons. It’s only knowable after an outbreak has run it’s course and ended. However, it can be estimated by the case fatality rate – which is deaths to date from the disease divided by number of known infections to date.
If I begin from the starting point that the Ebola contagion is being treated by the US Government as a political matter, everything the government is doing and not doing makes perfect sense.
That was the CDC’s history with HIV, and it led to greatly increased numbers of cases.