If you need more: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/en/.
Made I laaf.
(credit: Private Eye, naturally...)
If you need more: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/en/.
It's time to quietly start stock piling bottled water, canned food and shotgun shells, I think.
Ah.
Btw. ever thought of elevator buttons or door bell buttons of the medical centre and say.... the Rolex AD?
Today took my love to a popular vantage point and the corresponding elevator buttons were worn smooth. Jarred my mind.
Like nobody thinks of using a bit of paper to close the tap after washing one´s hands in a restaurant toilet or to open the door upon leaving.
Just one minor clarification from the below - pee is not a problem. You cannot catch Ebola from pee.
- - - Updated - - -
......which must have Bear Grylls sighing with relief!
So in the US the 2nd Dallas health care worker to catch ebola, just happened to take a flight two days before her fever kicked in. The CDC have requested all 132 passengers on that flight contact them for interview.
Keep Calm and Carry On.;)
3000 US soldiers to pass through the US base in Andalucia underway to Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Not medical personel ofcourse noooooo....
I'm just about to test the screening procedure(s) at Eurostar terminal in London :) No sign of screening at Brussels Midi so far, quite civilised and orderly affair today btw, suits and odd dizzy tourist or two..
EDIT: no temperature checks / medical screening I could spot in London whatsoever, apart of usual UKBA personnel..
Last edited by VDG; 15th October 2014 at 23:21.
Err...according to the US Navy: Naval Station Rota, Spain (NAVSTA Rota) is "situated on a 6,100-acre Spanish Navy base": link.
And let's be honest, you need the rent.
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
- Bender Bending Rodríguez
I remember it being called hemorrhagic fever in the 1970s and was thought to be caused by the practice of eating bush meat
Forty years later and people are still exposing themselves to a known cause of infection.To the foreign eye, it looks like a flattened, blackened lump of unidentifiable animal parts. To many Africans, however, bush meat — the cooked, dried or smoked remains of a host of wild animals, from rats and bats to monkeys — is not only the food of their forefathers, it is life-sustaining protein where nutrition is scarce.
And as it has been during past Ebola outbreaks, bush meat is once again suspected to have been the bridge that caused the deadly disease to go from the animal world to the human one. All it takes is a single transmission event from animal to human — handling an uncooked bat with the virus, for example — to create an epidemic. Human-to-human contact then becomes the primary source of infection.
“If you know that the Ebola virus is introduced in one area, it’s probably an extra good time to stop eating bush meat,” said Daniel Bausch, an associate professor of tropical medicine at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Apparently Ebola is just one of many, see Viral hemorrhagic fever. What's next, Marburg? And...will we be any better prepared?
Yeah, its human nature to do daft things and its the same the world over.
Have a think about which might prevent the most deaths: stopping humans exceeding the motoring speed limit, smoking, drinking alcohol, drinking unpasteurised dairy products or eating bush meat?
or or spitting, not covering your nose and mouth when sneezzing or coughing in public, not washing hands after the loo or before examining patients ;) not changing gloves between patients, list goes on..
I am sure that was a joke, but it is actually a very interesting topic. To me, at least ;)
Obviously (I hope) the duty to protect an individual's civil liberties does not extend to risking public health.
I don't believe Liberty have ever weighed in on the complexities of this (though I am sure they have a Position) but the ACLU have taken legal action several times in the past over people in imposed medical quarantine situations - not to force these people to be released, but rather to clarify what procedures must be followed and by whom to protect the rights of the patient as far as practicable given the situation.
You should respect the individual, but you have to protect society - this is the same precept that allows us to deprive criminals of their liberty and to detain mental patients if it is believed they will a risk to themselves or others.
Taking the thread back on topic , just heard that Pooley is returning to Africa to continue his work there after recovering from the disease ... that is someone with courage and resilience . It's the front liners who deserve our respect and support .
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
I'd imagine he'd be immune now, yes.
morgan
Risk "much reduced" you mean? :-)
Good questions! It hadn't occurred to me that he might have gained immunity.
I'm sure there are some medics here who can confirm (apologies to morgandk if you are a medic and the above is a confirmation) but I just DuckDuckGo'd this:
U.S. Ebola Survivors Are Likely Now Immune To Virus Strain, Experts Say
All that said, it seems to me that if you've just recovered from a very serious illness, your immune system is going to be somewhat battered, so you may be at increased risk from other illnesses!The two American Ebola patients who recovered and left the hospital this week are now thought to be immune to the strain of the virus that infected them, experts say. Ebola survivors are generally believed to be immune to future infection with the virus strain that made them sick.
"There is strong epidemiological evidence that once an individual has resolved an Ebola virus infection, they are immune to that strain," Dr. Bruce Ribner, director of the infectious disease unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, told reporters Thursday (Aug. 21).
[...]
However, no one has tested what really happens if a survivor is exposed to the virus for a second time. Ribner said it is not clear whether survivors become immune to all strains of the Ebola virus or only the one that infected them, nor is it clear how long this immunity lasts.
As an aside, I also found this: Many in West Africa May Be Immune to Ebola Virus
Interesting academic study on this sort of thing in Ghana (a bit of a heavy read...):
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/u...-from-bat-meat
In case it's of interest:
^^^ Interesting, thanks.
'US withdrawing most troops fighting Ebola in West Africa'
Feb 10th 2015 8:23PM
By JOSH LEDERMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is preparing to withdraw nearly all of its troops fighting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the White House said Tuesday, as the global health crisis recedes amid a sharp decline in Ebola cases.
Of the 2,800 troops the U.S. deployed, just 100 will remain in West Africa after April 30, officials said. About 1,500 of those troops have already returned home. Those staying in West Africa will work with Liberia's military, regional partners and U.S. civilians to continue fighting Ebola.
"Just 10 months since the first U.S. government personnel deployed, we have delivered extraordinary results," said U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah, adding that Ebola cases were down 80 percent and that in hard-hit Liberia, new cases have dwindled to just one or two per day.
[...]
With all talk of us getting wiped out as a race I think I will get that 50th tv now!maybe on 0% if we ain't going to be here for me to pay it!!!!!
Two cases is now confirmed in the DRC. Will it be hadled differently (read more promptly) this time, given the benefit of the hindsight tackling previous epidemic by WHO?
Fas est ab hoste doceri
I read that more people die a year in the Uk from Flu than have died from Ebola in all of human history.
I thought that Russia had been working on a vaccine and tested it during the last outbreak.
No doubt conspiracy theorists will have a field day. A nasty,nasty virus.
There is a vaccine, not sure if Russian, which will be given to contacts and neighbours of those infected. Not the general population.
Not encouraging news, sadly.
LinkThere is a "very high" public health risk from Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the World Health Organisation has said.
The health agency has raised its earlier assessment after one patient in a major city was confirmed as having the disease.
Although the global risk of an Ebola outbreak remains low, the WHO says the risk to countries neighbouring the Congo is now "moderate".
On Thursday, a case was confirmed in Mbandaka - a city of about 1.5 million people.
The city lies about 93 miles from Bikoro, a remote area where the current outbreak was announced last week.
Now the disease has been reported in a highly populated urban area, it is expected to spread more quickly.
Fas est ab hoste doceri
It's not going well..."So far, there have been more than 420 cases and 240 deaths"...Why the Ebola outbreak in DRC has spun out of control
...Humans have tangled with the Ebola virus for centuries with deadly results. But until five months ago, Ebola had never emerged in an active war zone.
On August 1, the World Health Organization declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The virus had started spreading in cities in North Kivu, an unstable province in the Central African country, where fighting among multiple rebel and militia groups has repeatedly interrupted the painstaking work of health workers who came to respond to the outbreak.
Even though Ebola responders have never had so many tools at their disposal to fight the virus — experimental vaccines and treatments that have shown promise — the incidence of the disease has more than doubled since September. Even worse, many of the newly diagnosed cases cannot be linked to other known cases. That means there are still people spreading the disease whom health officials have not yet identified.
Due to the ongoing conflict in the region, the US government has decided it’s too dangerous to allow its top Ebola experts to work at the outbreak’s epicenter...
Here we go again. The guy who was infected with the virus somehow managed to travel to Goma, one of the major transportation hubs, died a day or two ago potentially infecting quite a few people in the process.. Depending on the virulence and lethality of the current strain we could be looking at the disease spreading beyond the DRC borders..
Zee LINKYDeadly Ebola outbreak in DR Congo 'now a global emergency
An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo now constitutes a global public health emergency, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.
Some 1,650 people have lost their lives as government officials and international aid agencies have struggled to contain the virus over the past year, with fears it could spread within a major city in the central African country.
WHO said concerns over the death of a 46-year-old pastor in Goma, which is home to 1.5 million people, had resulted in the heightened threat level.
Fas est ab hoste doceri
^^^ I heard various people on the radio saying (literally!) "there's nothing to worry about, excellent screening procedures on the borders, no need to cut off the affected country". I am only mildly surprised that they didn't say "nothing to see here, move on".
When the powers that be (or their mouthpieces) say "there's nothing to worry about" then we know that there is definitely something to worry about. ;-)
Last edited by markrlondon; 18th July 2019 at 10:54.
Fifteen seconds on the internet shows this to be false...
Over 11,000 died in just a two year period from Ebola.
There was A fairly recent year (2013-14) where more people died from 'Flu complications' (most who die are very elderly or have other health conditions) in the UK, but even that year doesn't come close to the ebola total.
The average number dying from 'Flu complications' in the UK is around 600 per year.
I know the post I respond to is a year old, but I just wanted to point out it's wrong.
More have died from Flu EVER than have been known to have died from Ebola, but that's nothing like the same thing...
M
I was surprised to hear on the news that they hadn't introduced quarantine "for fear of damaging the local economy".
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Translation: They didn't introduce quarantine in fear of widespread civil unrest.
Fas est ab hoste doceri
Yes, this (or so I believe).
Afterall, who trusts or believes powers that be, nowadays? If they were to introduce enforced quarantine, who in the quarantine zone would believe that they would be properly taken care of? It would take a leap of faith in both a governmental regime and an international regime that seems unlikely, on the balance of probabilities, to be warranted.
As usual we go barging in without widepread cultural and belief system considerations.
If we attempt to put the medicine men out of work they start to deny ebola as a threat and they have. There is so much distrust of government, so many spores of past tribal hatreds that it is always going to be an uphill battle particulary if some of the people don't believe that it is a threat anyway.
https://www.khanacademy.org/humaniti...a/nkisi-nkondi
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-48908993
I may have mentioned this before - remember SIV and the trans species mutation to HIV back in the 70/80s - bushmeat ?
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article..._1/S120/880079
https://www.dailysabah.com/environme...h-daily-claims
B
Last edited by Brian; 19th July 2019 at 09:51. Reason: Careless spelling
Good links - thanks
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(Bold added by me)
It seems to me that this isn't just a tribal thing. It would be the same here and in most countries, I suspect. There is massive distrust of government and, of course, rightly so.
I think that issues like this come down to a simple question: Is the government's idea of what is best for me congruent with my own idea of what is best for me? What's the answer going to be? To my mind it would take a wilfully naive person to conclude that they could genuinely trust their government to do what was best. We know better than to believe such fairy tales, whether it be due to tribal issues or ruling class-common people disconnects.
Last edited by markrlondon; 19th July 2019 at 04:54.