Easy enough really, anyone travelling back from Sierra Leone should be placed in quarantine until such times it can be established they are clear.
Job done
Was Ebola being discussed on here recently? I can't find the thread, though. Must be my imagination.
Anyway, thought this was interesting. All those reassurances.... hmm.
Video: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/new...eccessary.html
Article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...dly-virus.html
(Yes, yes, I know it's the Daily Mail...)
Last edited by markrlondon; 30th July 2014 at 20:33.
Easy enough really, anyone travelling back from Sierra Leone should be placed in quarantine until such times it can be established they are clear.
Job done
I read a great book (non fiction) last year calle The Hot Zone - buy it, read it & be terrified!
Time to get the hazmat suit!!
It's scary stuff alright. Luckily both Ireland and the UK are islands. If the correct screening/quarantine measures are put in place at airports we should be alright. A no-nonsense approach is needed definitely.
I had a debate on a prepping forum a while ago about the likely initial cause, the trigger, of social collapse.
Some kind of pandemic was my bet - rather than a trigger of an asteroid, solar flares, etc. Once a contagion reaches critical mass there are too many sick or dead (or carers and the scared staying home) for health care, transport infrastructure, power and services, industry, government, law and order, etc to work effectively resulting in chaos.
I reckon it only takes about a third of a population, a workforce, to be impacted as above and we are stuffed.
Prepare or die, you have been warned - in fact, don't prepare. Your lack of preparation greatly increase my chance of survival.
Gray
Its not that communicable to be fair.
If it mutates and gose airborne then we've pretty much had it but the chances of that are very unlikley.
Used to read Tom Clancy books years ago and it is quite scary how often the subjects of his books have become a reality. From crashing planes into buildings to Ebola (and what it could do if weaponised)... even some of the Soviet Union/Ukraine/Russia bits have been in there.
Scary stuff, but as said above it is not a hardy virus and mainly limited to spread by fluid contact.
I won't panic until I see Dustin Hoffman on TV.
It was in the paper (everything in the paper is 100% true) that border control have had virtually no training/info on this and how to deal with it :(
Has anyone played Plague Inc.? I'll start to worry if the disease spreads to Madagascar.
Incubation period is two days to three weeks so perhaps time to start 'rabies like' quarantine from those in infected areas?
How long before Shami Chakrabarti and Peter Tatchell combine get quarantine declared a human rights violation?
Ebola is not very easy to transmit so no need to panic. A new super - flu is far more of a realistic disaster situation
I watched a drama documentary recently called World War Z
This ebola business is how things like this start
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-28702356
That’s quite a development.
It's times like these that make being an Iowa corn farmer an attractive career pursuit!
Whilst it is premature in literal terms, I suspect it is the right time in psychological terms. It needs to be dealt with before it gets out of hand. My impression is that many nations are not taking it as seriously, before it gets serious for them, as they should.
So one hopes but I wonder. It could cause serious social unrest if it got loose in a supposedly 'western' nation. Think of the riots of 2011 only significantly more motivated and with a wider support base. Better, therefore, to treat the situation in west Africa as an international emergency now before it escapes to other countries.
I saw Contagion recently. Scary stuff.
I understand that Ebola vaccines have been available (three of them) for a few years. At least one of them (from Glaxo-Wellcome) is 100% protective on primates.
None of them got into Phase 1 yet (i.e. safety tests on humans) because of the possible effects, and because no Drug Company would get in a hundreds million Pounds program of testing for what was, until recently, not an international priority.
With an outbreak in Africa, priorities have changed and vaccines may be tested in small clinical trials on site. Pretty sure that in less than 12 months at least one of the vaccines will be protective to humans.
The fact they are now advocating the use of unproven vaccines is indeed quite worrying.
If Ebola gets loose and starts going global which thankfully is not likely it would be devastating.
It makes sense that they stop it in its tracks but the countries that its broken out in are extremely difficult to control for all sorts of reasons.
The WHO is obviously so concerned that they will even advocate throwing unsanctioned remedies at it.
The easiest countries for it to spread to are India and China if it ended up in there we would have serious global consequences to deal with.
Basically I think they are trying to prevent an apocalypse situation from happening and fully expect to see massive foreign aid and on the ground intervention in the coming weeks.
that can be it, don't forget to wash you hands chaps..
http://news.sky.com/story/1319678/on...d-in-container
China would implement a rapid, country-wide lockdown and the public health science would suggest this would be highly and speedily effective. The virus effectively is only spread either in hospital/healthcare facilities or among family members, and a relatively-wealthy and extremely well organised totalitarian state could shut down onward transmission in both scenarios very quickly. One might not like the simple and brutal way they'd do it, but it would work since control depends on very simple isolation procedures and reasonably cheap single-use gloves/masks/visors/gowns plus disinfectants. Viet Nam did something similar over SARS (also airborne, remember), and in many ways they halted their outbreak more quickly than the Canadians did.
Now, I agree that India is an entirely different proposition. Institutional chaos, ingrained corruption and mysticism, and the vast majority of the population being served by a public healthcare system that doesn't afford decent personal protective equipment for its staff is not a good base for control.
It looks unprecedented, and with the potential for very serious contagion globally if it reaches certain hubs in significant numbers. The incubation time and contagiousness during that over 2 week period is very difficult to deal with apart from rather stiff measures. Friends in Liberia are scanned when going into offices for temperature for early warning. China and HK did that for SARS several years ago.
Mutation to more virulent forms, as had happened with Ebola in the past is a major concern.
Am glad (Dr) WHO is on the case and getting tough. Their head is very good, IMHO.
If I was the sort who sees a conspiracy theory in major global disasters/acts of terror/environmental catastrophe etc., I could see this as a convenient way to not only fast-track the safety tests of any pioneering vaccine, but a free and top-notch global advertising campaign to boot.
Ebola patient flown to US..
Spain..
UK..
Roll up your sleeves chaps, we have a mild case of EVB on its way here..
I hope they know what they're doing. It doesn't bear thinking about if Ebola gets out of containment in the UK.
ROFL! Oh dear. They do seem a tad under-equipped compared to their foreign colleagues. How very British.
Oh well, a good cup of tea should see off any loose viri.
As an aside, even if the rather delicate sealed stretcher happened to spring a leak it probably wouldn't matter too much, as I understand. Unless the patient happened to sneeze at that moment...
UK..
Coming to a tube station near you soon.
I definitely in the "non-panic" camp. If you listen to the experts, Ebola simply isn't infectious enough to cause a pandemic. There have been numerous flu/SARS/etc scares over the recent years, which never really came to much - and something like flu is pretty infectious - but we're far more likely to see this sort of infection kill millions and bring down society. It's the fatility rate, and the manner in which people die that tend to stir up panic.
Ebola could mutate, but if my non-expert understanding is correct, it's a variety of virus that doesn't survive outside the host for very long, and it won't simple turn into one that does.
As others have said, if it had happened outside the Third World, it would never have even escalated to this level.
Isn't evacuating patients to the UK & USA just asking for trouble?
Andy
Wanted - Damasko DC57
I would have thought that patients, under controlled conditions, aren't really the main threat... They need to be able to work with patients like these to learn how to treat the condition effectively and presumably also Porton Down would like live virus to work with...
Yeah, yeah. Nothing like a good conspiracy theory/contagion to liven up a dull bank holiday.
Staff wearing those daft space suits are less mobile and less able to provide medical and nursing care. The only reason to wear them is to placate the ignorant and gullible that "special measures" are being taken: the NHS staff there are doing exactly what they should do for a contact-spread virus. Hopefully those in the USA won't fall over their suits and break something.
Have you ever tried wearing one of those bubble suits?
I recommend leaving speculation to the experts, folks, and returning to the Omega vs Rolex thread.
Alternatively, if you want some real Ebola information, you could do a lot worse than read this, which is correct:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...f-9688425.html
'Flu kills many more people every year and is much more difficult to contain. You can catch flu sitting inhaling the same air on a plane but Ebola needs contact with body fluids.
For anyone still interested, there are a couple of excellent and authoritative articles from the New England Journal:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1409903
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1409858
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29115298
Whenever you hear the word "exponential" in terms of disease spread then its a worry especially when its as lethal as Ebola.
Two scenarios here its burns out probably taking 10s of thousands of people ( nd lots of angels of mercy crap on the TV from the UN and US) or it spreads and needs mopping up all over the globe in isolated outbreaks for the next 20 years.
Bet there will be a report that it will take 10 years to produce 10000 doses of anti-ebola virals with a 50% success rate in the next 48 hours as a headline.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29231400
Obama says Ebola outbreak a 'global security threat'
President Barack Obama has called the West Africa Ebola outbreak "a threat to global security" as he announced a larger US role in fighting the virus.
"The world is looking to the United States," Mr Obama said, but added the outbreak required a "global response".
The measures announced included ordering 3,000 US troops to the region and building new healthcare facilities.
Ebola has killed 2,461 people this year, about half of those infected, the World Health Organization said.
[...]
Among the measures announced by Mr Obama on Tuesday:
Building 17 healthcare facilities, each with 100 beds and isolation spaces, in Liberia
Training as many as 500 health care workers a week
Developing an air bridge to get supplies into affected countries faster
Provide home health care kits to hundreds of thousands of households, including 50,000 that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) will deliver to Liberia this week
[...]