Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The description of the latest Ebola epidemic sounds like the script of a dark Hollywood outbreak movie – a rising outbreak in a conflict zone, medical staff hampered by threats to physical safety, frightening indications this outbreak may become worse than previous outbreaks.
CDC director warns that Congo’s Ebola outbreak may not be containable
By Lena H. Sun
National reporter focusing on health Bio Follow
November 5Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said Monday that the Ebola outbreak in conflict-ridden Congo has become so serious that international public health experts need to consider the possibility that it cannot be brought under control and instead will become entrenched.
If that happened, it would be the first time since the deadly viral disease was first identified in 1976 that an Ebola outbreak led to the persistent presence of the disease. In all previous outbreaks, most of which took place in remote areas, the disease was contained before it spread widely. The current outbreak is entering its fourth month, with nearly 300 cases, including 186 deaths.
If Ebola becomes endemic in substantial areas of North Kivu province, in northeastern Congo, “this will mean that we’ve lost the ability to trace contacts, stop transmission chains and contain the outbreak,” said Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which hosted the briefing on Capitol Hill that featured the Ebola discussion with Redfield.
In that scenario, there would be a sustained and unpredictable spread of the deadly virus, with major implications for travel and trade, he said, noting that there are 6 million people in North Kivu. By comparison, the entire population of Liberia, one of the hardest-hit countries during the West Africa Ebola epidemic of 2014-2016, is about 4.8 million.
The outbreak is taking place in a part of Congo that is an active war zone. Dozens of armed militias operate in the area, attacking government outposts and civilians, complicating the work of Ebola response teams and putting their security at risk. Violence has escalated in recent weeks, severely hampering the response. The daily rate of new Ebola cases more than doubled in early October. In addition, there is community resistance and deep mistrust of the government.
…
Read more (paywalled): https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/11/05/cdc-director-warns-that-congos-ebola-outbreak-may-not-be-containable/
As far as I can tell, and I’m not an expert, Ebola currently has three of the four traits it requires to become a global threat.
1. The ability to spread without visible signs of illness. In some cases Ebola has a long, symptom free infectious period. People who survive the lethal infection sometimes become symptomless carriers, shedding large numbers of virus particles for months, even years after their own personal encounter with Ebola. There have been tragic cases of Ebola survivors infecting and killing family and friends.
2. Ebola is lethal – even “mild” versions of the disease are often fatal. The WHO estimates the average lethality of Ebola strains is around 50%. People who survive sometimes become an unwitting threat to others – see point one.
3. Ebola has an extremely rapid mutation rate – Ebola is very good at exploring new ways to overcome its weaknesses.
4. Ebola is NOT YET airborne – although there are concerns from time to time that Ebola is marginally airborne in humans, at least via aerosol transmission, this assertion is vigorously denied by health authorities. There are concerns that Ebola could mutate into an airborne strain, if an outbreak remains active for long enough in human populations.
From an epidemiological study in 2016;
Aerosol Transmission of Filoviruses
Berhanu Mekibib and Kevin K. Ariën
…
Although there is strong debate on the potential aerogenic transmission of filoviruses, it should be stressed that the transmission by air is not similar to influenza or other airborne infections. The viral particles are limited in the health care units and affected villages or households having direct or indirect contacts with patient(s), if it was really an airborne virus like influenza it would spread rapidly and involve wider geographic area and population. Based on the existing literature, filoviruses have very little to no capacity to be airborne (i.e., inhalation of infectious particles at a distance from the source). The virus does not transmit from an infected person to a susceptible person that is located at a distance [25,70]. First, the virus will not remain viable by the time it gets to the distant point because the aerosol is already desiccated. Secondly, the viral load or aerosol particles in the air gradually decrease with distance from the source to the extent not sufficient to induce infection. However, Chiappelli et al. [33] stated that there is a distinct possibility for EBOV to become airborne because of the customary and high mutation rates of negative sense RNA viruses. According to Brown et al. [99] although it is unclear that these mutations carry any fitness advantage or not, EBOV in western Africa is not behaving differently than what has previously been reported [100]. There is no change in route of transmission, no suggestion of airborne spread, no significant differences in disease presentation. Besides, none of the 23 viruses that cause serious disease in humans have been known to mutate in a way that changed their mode of infection
…
Read more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4885103/
Obviously there is every chance the latest outbreak will fizzle be contained like all the previous outbreaks. But we shouldn’t be complacent, we shouldn’t keep counting on luck to keep us safe.
At any moment, an unknowing Ebola carrier, the sole survivor of an outbreak which killed their family and friends, a carrier with no visible signs of illness, might decide to build a new life in another country. The potential consequences of such a carrier successfully reaching one of the Western World’s less sanitary cities, triggering a lethal outbreak amongst homeless people and people with compromised immune systems, an outbreak which could pass to the general population of that city, are too horrible to contemplate.
Update (EW): Zig Zag Wanderer and Kip Hansen point out that previous outbreaks didn’t “fizzle”, they were contained by courageous front line medical staff who risked and sometimes lost their lives fighting Ebola.
See also Tom Clancy’s “Executive Orders”, where Ebola is used as a bioweapon against the U.S.
Another – possible – horror story.
Certainly, this c o u l d happen.
Coming from a war zone is, it seems, a big boost to the virus – it cannot be snipped out in its incipient stages.
[Bit like forest fires, it appears].
Keep an eye on this, I think.
No need for significant concern.
Another – possible – horror story.
Certainly, this c o u l d happen.
Auto
Since the area is a conflict zone, it is likely that combatants from both sides could be infected. Callous me says that decimating both sides could quiet the zone considerably.
No, I would not welcome asylum seekers from this area.
There is a Hawaiian Judge out there with a ruling that they must be admitted to the US or its racism.
I was thinking that when travel restrictions are put in place as they invariably will be (and should be), President Trump will falsely be called a racist again.
Didn’t the last president refuse to put in travel restrictions for these very reasons?
Why yes, yes he did. Then he actively imported people from multiple war zones and told us it was for our own good.
Also the UN is to make migration a human right via an agreement to be signed next month by member nations; fortunately the US will be abstaining:-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13263/un-migration-human-right
Have you heard the joke about ebola?… You won’t get it.
Yes, we deniers must be aware that alarmism is fully justified at times.
Some alarms are justified. Some aren’t.
Smart skeptics are willing to examine each claim independently.
That’s almost guaranteed. Patients do escape quarantine. link
OMG! Something that serious, you post armed guards.
Look up “Typhoid Mary”.
Everyone my age has heard of Typhoid Mary. We probably heard about her from older relatives. She lived until 1938 so both of my parents were teenagers when she died and they would have read about it in the news.
She was a real scum bag because she took aliases and continued cooking after she knew she should not do so. That’s the reason we should not take a soft approach to quarantine.
I’m guessing that no young people today have heard of Typhoid Mary. Too bad. She provided a seriously needed lesson.
And of course, they’ve already “connected” Ebola with “climate change”. So, cure “climate change” and you are also helping cure Ebola. Simples!
And MSM’s parrots already are churning out fear-mongering messages again about “the deadly Ebola virus”, hawking this drivel like a bunch of carney midway barkers, their message being: “. . . Be afraid! . . . Be very afraid! . . . But don’t lose hope! We have an antidote and vaccine on the way!”
This kind of media propaganda and disinformation is deliberately embedded in the public’s mind; the ultimate aphrodisiac in a game called The Big Scare played by the Wizards of Oz (aka the boys behind the curtain) at “thinning” populations and making billions off vaccines.
Did you know Ebola didn’t exist in the 18th and 19th centuries and didn’t appear in the 20th until 1976 in Sudan and Zaire; then again in 1989 from infected monkeys—so the public was told—imported into Reston, Virginia, from Mindanao in the Philippines; then finally in Cote d’Ivoire in 1994? That they’ve never figured out where Ebola came from? Where/what its natural reservoir was/is? Is it a sub-zero-and-fire proof space traveler carried here on a fist-sized meteorite that crashed in Africa? You know, like AIDS that “ . . .just appeared in Africa one day?” Near a volcano, they said. From monkeys, the pre-Internet public was told.
Regardless, here that wascal comes! Again.
The Dark Continent seems to attract diseases that cry out for antidotal drugs.
Oz’s end-game is martial law using the current “Ebola outbreak”. . . to stop a dangerous pandemic capable of destroying the planet!”
Their next step would be an attempt to force humanity to take the “Ebola Jab” like they did the “Swine Flu” jab. Which the government paid billions for and wound up not being able to give it away.
But, should the Ebola shot make you sterile, sick, cross-eyed, breakout in night sweats, give you diarrhea, addle your mind, or incapacitate you, it could be caused by Ebola antigens—or even the virus itself.
Contact your doctor immediately if you experience any of these symptoms.
https://dublinsmick.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/us-bioweapons-lab-with-links-to-the-bill-and-melinda-gates-foundation-at-core-of-ebola-epidemic/
And without being infected with anything some people just are fools.
while i havent read that particular link
its NOT actually that “off ”
they were trialling an ebala vax stage 2 trials a canadian linked company with us mil tie ins, IN the area where the prior outbreak occurred and the variant typed wasnt the usual wild type.
so dont diss it as impossible that it may well have been an unplanned release via a not quite killed vaccine.
inactivated does not mean every cell is dead at all.
biolab level 4 accident have occurred, and live viruses have been released by mistake before this. the swineflu vax that luckily was checked before handing out in EU a few yrs ago would have harmed many.
The urge to find explanations seems to be a property of the human mind. Sometimes, quite often really, that desire is so strong that people latch on to some “explanation” for the simple reason that it satisfies that urge, regardless of how little sense it makes. The phenomenon is far more widespread than most people realize as it is disguised by groupthink. People with nutty explanations are often more distinguished from their fellows by their egregiousness than the implausibility of their explanations of what is going on in the world around them.
ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standards in matters of thought and conduct. To be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. – Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
How would you know whether Ebola did not exist in the 18th & 19th centuries? We are talking about Africa where communications was almost non existant and white man barely penetrated the Congo basin. Just another deluded conspiracy theorist.
Climate Change™©® makes money, Ebola doesn’t – unless you nefariously link it to Climate Change™©® and sell the snake-oil through drug companies.
They did not ‘fizzle’, they were contained with a huge amount of effort and risk. This is like putting out a fire with an extinguisher, rather than letting a fire fizzle out.
If such efforts are hindered this time, it could be a lot worse.
If I remember right, we were in the process of building hundreds of temporary hospitals to handle the projected explosion of illnesses when the last outbreak fizzled out. Many of the facilities were never used. There has to be more to it than just “effort and risk.” Only a fraction of the population received medical treatment. Maybe this illness is like the flu. It becomes epidemic for a time and then fades away. If medical treatment cannot reach war zones, and the ebola outbreak persists or eventually fades on its own, we will get our answer.
Liberia is almost 1000 miles away, and the temp structures and people were just that…Temporary….And this SO NOT like the flu……
I have rarely seen such a naive opinion of ebola posited. Please read more about it.
And comparing it to the flu is not possible. Firstly read about Spanish Flu, then consider what may happen if ebola became an airborne pathogen, which it could well do.
it used to fade out on its own by the simple reason it killed entire villages before the days of faster transport allowing people fleeing it to get far.
now its a whole different problem with vehicles making transmision so much faster and further from the initial sources.
yes it will probably remove a lot of the active fighters but refugees seeking safe haven are going to be a massive vector and risk
Earlier Ebola outbreaks did not fizzle out. They were contained and stamped out by extraordinarily brave doctors and nurses, many of whom gave their lives in the process.
Ebola is a terrifyingly dangerous disease — and this outbreak in a war zone has public health officials running scared and rightly so — the larger the area the outbreak achieves, the less chance of containing it. It is the nightmare of doctors throughout Africa.
Carriers of Ebola will flee the outbreak and the fighting — they will flee in all directions and will resist being traced and tracked which is necessary to contain the outbreak.
So far it is a tunnel without light at the end.
Kip,
Given the size of the globe today, Ebola (or something even more virulent) could spread very quickly.
By the time that travel restrictions are announced, it may be too late…
Not so much the size of the globe, but the ease and speed with which people travel around it. I guess that’s what you mean.
If Spanish Flu happened again, much of the developing world would die. The developed world at lesst has better facilities, but many of the old and young would probably die.
The scariest part of that is that flu itself is only just over a hundred years old, as I understand it. Any virus could leap out and kill millions or even billions in a few decades. From working at the WHO, I know people are currently planning for such threats.
The lethality of the Spanish Flu pandemic was greatly enhanced by the widespread low-grade malnutrition that followed the 4 years of WWI. Most of Europe and much of the US populations had been on short rations for much of the war — the troops themselves were not much better fed either. Conditions on the troop ships bringing them home were pretty nasty — overcrowded, poorly ventilated, ideal for the transmission of flu.
Then there was public transport — most people traveled by train or bus, more chances to spread infection widely than with everyone in their own car.
Thirdly: living conditions. Public sanitation was nothing compared with what we have today. As was low-end housing. The city tenements were overcrowded, whole families sharing a room or 2 and with the only toilet shared by several families. Very limited washing facilities — many tenements didn’t have running water. Or heat. And that was America. Much of Europe was even worse off due to war damage.
Could there be another similar pandemic? Sure. But many of the conditions that made 1918 so bad no longer exist in the developed world.
“no longer exist in the developed world” And yet are still rampant and widespread in most of the third world and in large segments of developed world, such as India, South America and parts of southeast Asia/Philippines/Malaysia. Influenza is not the primary concern when addressing pandemics, other diseases are coming to the fore, especially with the massive overuse of antibiotics worldwide.
We (I mean the Western world) are on the brink of vaccines for Ebola, so assuming it gets out and the vaccines work…it can be contained. It could do a lot of damage in the meantime. The scary scenario is it mutates, becomes airborne, and because of rapid mutation gets around the vaccines… This could be the virus that got away – one will eventually and there is going to be a lot of death, blaming, and hind-sight.
Thank goodness we have a president that is likely to take early action in containing travelers. I can’t exactly figure out when a person’s desire to travel out-weighed public health, but apparently in the previous 8 years it did.
Remember, it only takes one of those P.h.D. experts to make one mistake for this to get loose. ((or journalist which is more likely, because they seem to be generally lacking common sense).
Or let illegal or legal immigrants into your country without vetting, both medical and the process your country outlines for lawful entry.
PS I don’t know if they still give smallpox and polio vaccines. I’ve had both. I’d prefer my grandkids don’t need them or an ebola or a (name a disease from a country without cheap and dependable energy) vaccine.
+10!
without vetting….this drives me crazy
We now have diseases, parasites, and bugs popping up all over the country….that we have never had, or eliminated years ago….
..and yet, you can’t bring an animal, bird, fish, or plant into this country without quarantine
But you can bring 25+ million illegal immigrants into this country without a single one being quarantined.
If you can’t get Florida Democrats, etc., to obey the Election Laws …… then those silly “quarantine” laws don’t mean diddly poop either. And you can’t quarantine (discriminate against) an Ebola inflicted person any more than you can quarantine (discriminate against) an AIDS inflicted person.
No high ranking public employee or elected politician ever gets arrested and prosecuted for blatant disregard and/or violation of either Immigration or Election Laws.
…amazing isn’t it
and when Debbie Wasserman Schultz last ran for office….she got more votes than they had registered voters
“Debbie Wasserman Schultz …..she got more votes than they had registered voters”
“YUP”, everyone knows that’s been happening since the early 2000’s ….. and it’s the reason that Brenda Snipes, a Broward County official, …… is paid $178,000/year.
Really good employees are hard to find and she pretty much guarantees a Democrat “win”.
“A look at Broward elections chief Brenda Snipes’ long history of trouble”
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-who-is-brenda-snipes-20181109-story.html
Can’t prosecute her! That would be raysist! Just as you can’t prosecute Hitlery Clintoon, that would be sexisist!
A little of topic, but close, and I need to vent this somewhere.
Here im GA, our gubernatorial race is in limbo because the Democrats insist that since there are roughly 15k votes left to count (debatable), and the Republican only has roughly 13k more than 50%, that a runoff may still be in the cards.
No one will call the race – officials, msm, etc, for this reason. That is the terrible state of math education in this country. Since there is a 50% factor involved, you need two times that 13k to bring the Republican’s % to 50% of the total.
I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to explain it to Democrats this way:
The Republican has 1,975,162 votes as of now. For that to be only 50% of the vote, or less, there must be at least twice that many votes cast, or more than 3,950,324. The total number of votes cast stands at 3,924,658. So there must be another 25,666 votes cast, all against the Republican, to create a run-off election. They just don’t get it.
The Republicans have pointed out the error. They get it. Which candidate would you want leading the state?
smallpox vax is only mil use now i think.
the severe side effects and even the treatment for them is pretty high risk itself
last i read they stopped use in the 80s i think
I was vaccinated as a child.
A vaccination against smallpox does not last forever. Over time, your immune system “forgets” about things it has been exposed to. I was vaccinated over 50 years ago. I suspect that I am no longer immune. Given that most people are no longer immune, even if they were once upon a time, and many others never had immunity, smallpox would be a major disaster if it got out “into the wild”.
It was standard for all children to be vaccinated when I was young.
They stopped using it because the smallpox virus had been eradicated in the wild.
Eric,
Did you forget to hide your racism? You only appear to care if Ebola reaches the “western world”.
What about if it reaches Asia, or a large African city? Does that not bother you in the slightest?
Percy Jackson
Ah, the race card. Had to be produced eventually.
Can you find a non racist explaination for why Eric only cares if western cities gets infected? Rather than Asian or African ones for example?
Um, Percy, you do know that not everyone in the Western world is white? Don’t you?
Give it up with the race-baiting.
California alone (certainly part of the western world) had a population of 37,253,000 (now over 40,000,000) with 14,837,000 white and 23,000,000 minority (10,000,000 of those were emigrant) so the west is far from a White Mecca despite what lies you might have been told
“Um, Percy, you do know that not everyone in the Western world is white?”
That’s a very good point, Andrew. About 35 percent of the U.S. population is non-white, and is made up of every race, color and creed on the Earth.
Can anyone find a non bigoted explanation for why Percy only cares to throw up such a racist straw man argument?
Percy is a NPC?
(non-playable character)
What do I win?
Anybody that disagrees with or doesn’t conform to the leftist agenda, regardless of how trivial or serious the disagreement or discrepancy may be or, is perceived to be, is called some form of bigot… Unless the person happens to be from some ‘protected’ group. It is rapidly approaching the point where labeling someone with one of the various forms of bigotry has become meaningless. When everyone is deplorable, no one is deplorable.
Percy, Maybe he lives in one of those western cities. On another matter there is an equally scary disaster unfolding in France. In 3 areas in France, more than 2 dozen babies have been born recently with missing hands, arms or fingers. My 1st thought was thalidomide but the Fre ch are into their 2nd investigation of this with no cause found.
So bemoans: Percy Jackson – November 9, 2018 at 4:46 pm
If Eric’s moral, social and cultural values are similar to mine, then his 1st concern is the health, welfare, cleanliness and happiness of himself and his family before worrying about what the rest of the world is doing. Iffen they want to live in dirty, dingy, disease ridden squalor then there is nothing anyone can do about it.
And iffen you don’t believe me then buy yourself an airplane ticket and get the ell over to the country of your choice …….. and convert them to your way of thinking.
That’s easy that even a troll should be able to figure it out on it’s own.
The phrase Western world has come to mean the developed world, where ever you find it.
Perhaps because HE does not live there?
You see, there is this thing called SELF-PRESERVATION. You should try it sometime. It isn’t racism. I am sure he would be upset if the Malthusians got their wish an EBOLA or some other disease knocked the world population down to the required 600 million people, but he would be very glad if he, his friends, and his family were among those 600 million.
I find it amazing though that the way to produce a treatment for this virus is to cultivate inoculated TOBACCO plants from which to extract the serum. There were anti-smoking activists who protested that field and wanted it burned because it represented a positive association with health and tobacco. Imagine, these people WANTED PEOPLE TO DIE to keep their crusade going.
It is the responsibility of Asian and African countries to protect themselves from diseases entering their borders, not ours, pinhead. You racists on the political left are the ones killing innocent people, we on the right keep telling them to stop doing the things that kill them. Racism, bulwark of leftist political ideology.
Right you are, …… 2hotel9, …. and remind the “pinhead” that it was “the-likes-of-him” that is responsible for the deaths of millions of African people ……. because they were responsible for the worldwide ban on the manufacture and use of DDT.
There is a bridge in Pittsburgh named for that lying piece of crap Rachel Carson.
Because if it gets loose in a Western City, we’ll be far too busy saving those people to help anyone else.
Which is why doing a quarantine for Ebola is so hard. Some SJW will claim that there is racism, and requiring anyone who has been in the Congo to pass a medical check is based on suspicion of all black people, and some jurisdictions in the US or Europe will refuse to quarantine such travelers.
As my Forward Observer Instructor said, snake&nape discriminates against all equally. Someone has a highly contagious communicable disease, they refuse to keep it to themselves, only one option left.
Tom, I live in the midwest US, and when I go for my 6 month check-up they ask me if I have been out of the country since my last visit. I hope they do this nationwide and check people who have visited hot areas.
PP, I used to live in northern California, and I can easily see the local politicians refusing to check travelers from the Congo. They had a very limited response to anything as they were quite politically orthodox.
PJ,
You left out house cats and polar bears and penguins. Are you going to aim your race baiting shrill cries only to humans? Have you no concern for the poor defenseless animals.
Obama hasn’t uttered a word on the subject. Have you fired off a letter accusing him of no concern for the human species?
Gee Percy, wonder what you would have said, had I said “unsanitary Asian or Arab city”?
If you said that Eric, I’d say you are ignorant of how Ebola is transmitted.
Aha!
The NPC shrieks “YOU RAYSIS!”
{For those who do not know, the term NPC is from computer gaming. It means Non Player Character. The NPC is a computer controlled character to provide color for the game or advance the plot line. As such it is very limited in it’s dialog and actions. As a result the NPC is very predictable}
It was only a matter of time before an NPC showed up here.
I have in the past had an interest in issues around Public Health. Usually it was quite non-controversial as most people consider things like vector borne diseases to be an arcane topic.
No longer. All I have to do these days is say “Public Health” and someone jumps to a connection about illegal immigration and starts screeching “RACIST! BIGOT! HATER!”
From a Public Health standpoint, this is decidedly unhelpful. Alas, the NPCs are out in force.
As pointed out previously, if you move the NPC (Percy) one step further left it turns into a MOB.
Actually, the term NPC came about from the days of Dungeons & Dragons and similar games…before PC’s became widespread.
True, D&D provided the template that most of the major, story-driven, character-based games are built upon. In D&D the NPC was there so the Dungeon Master (DM – person who runs the game for those not enmeshed in geek culture of the 70s and 80s) could impart important story or plot information to the player’s characters or buy their loot from the last adventure, or send them off on their next adventure. The DM usually didn’t make the NPCs too complicated because they had to provide their dialog and not give any secrets away since it would be easy to make a mistake. In computer games, the NPC serves the same purpose – advancing the player on to his next adventure, buying his loot, selling him weapons, or providing him training on skills.
OK, now that I’ve outed myself as a complete geek (though one who found that being a responsible adult severely cut into available game time) I guess I should go back to working on my tractor.
Eric,
You are now in full charge of providing policy to protect Asia, and large African cities.
(But be careful, if you follow through with this charge, Percy (reminds me of the wardens nephew in the Green Mile) will criticize you for being racist enough to assume that you know more than the Asians and Africans)
Percy, get real. This kind of thing is coherent with any plan to trim the global population to target levels. Yes the club of Rome considers Africans expendable. That’s why we fight that school of thought here.
We all cringe at being called racists. I see a volleyball game and comment “They’re all women.” Is that sexism? A simple statement of fact is not racism. The one who assumes racism is the racist.
Did you forget to hide your racism?…..
Liberals see race in everything….anyone else would be accused of racism if they did that
Liberals assume that minorities are incapable of helping themselves and must be protected by white liberals.
At the same time, liberals declare that anyone who believes that minorities are capable of standing on their own is a racist.
Poor Percy, has to fixate on a common turn of phrase.
Yet more evidence that even Percy knows that he has nothing of merit to offer anyone.
Has there been any update on the properties of Ebola following the fiasco in Dallas? The patient who died managed to infect two nurses. After some high profile treatment in out of state facilities, they both survived. The first patient was also in close contact with family and neighbors. Where there any further infections? At one point, the landlord was videoed pressure washing the sidewalk where the patient had lived. Was that a good idea? What did “we” learn from that episode?
“What did “we” learn from that episode?”
We learned that we should NOT import infected people.
Hmmm….. This is from a journalist for the WP is it not?
I understand the sceptical community don’t trust journalists in general far less ones from the WP.
Colour me sceptical, but I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced journalist’s wouldn’t misrepresent an Ebola outbreak in much the same way they mis represent climate change. They all get paid for thei stories so it’s worth making them as lurid as possible.
And for what it’s worth, I haven’t seen anything about this on the BBC and they are usually the first to run around with their pants on fire to bolster the viewing figures.
Climate change is a favourite, and they were well into the Ebola outbreak which saw a nurse travel back to Scotland whilst contaminated. Our government, in it’s infinite wisdom, sought to prosecute her for doing so.
oh no its real and serious. I have been following it for some weeks casually.
you need to read alt news to find out whats happening…or wait around 2 to 3 weeks for mainstream lamenews to catch up.
theres a couple? three vaccines one seems to be effective at least, all are still in short supply/experimental stages. but this sort of event is a made for pharma excuse to get past slower trials stages “in extremis” as for side effects…theyre not mentioned…yet
alt news, another opportunity for journalist’s to present a story for cash or fame?
Perhaps not, but it seems scare stories are not confined to climate change exclusively.
Don’t let any of them out, no problem. Seal it up, EVERYBODY in the zone of contamination remains there. Period. Full stop.
Easily cured/stopped with IV vitamin C. But no pharma profit in this.
What?
Curing a viral infection with vitamins?
What madness is this?
Yes . A secret that would destroy the pharma mafia.
So secret that it doesn’t even exist.
A Dangerous lie Terry.
Only about 50% die in most the strains. But EBOV-Zaire strain though has about 80% mortality. EBOV Marburg had about 30%. The EBOV strains in the 2014 West Africa outbreak had between 50%-60% mortality. The key to those who survived was 1) a good pre-existing health and 2) access to IV fluids for hydration as the fever-wracked, bedridden phase prevented oral feeding and hydration. The addition of Vitamin C is bullshit nonsense.
Only dangerous to the big pharma profits (multi Trillion) and all the politicians pensions and investments.
What an idiotic thing to believe. If there were any truth to big pharma deliberately holding back cures of deadly diseases for profit, they certainly wouldn’t do it the way you suggest. They would combine the cure, e.g. Vitamin C, with a patentable ‘cure’, and make a fortune on a drug that was effective. Then, of course, recommend a long, expensive follow-up drug regime, then yearly boosters (Vitamin C plus whatever), to keep the virus at bay. The trick is to keep the patient alive. The longer you live, the more medicines of all types they can sell you – yearly flu shots, meds for allergies, diabetes, cholesterol, pain, blood pressure, blood thinners, antibiotics, pain, the whole enchilada.
Dead people don’t buy drugs.
“Dead people don’t buy drugs.”
But they do vote…
@AWG
Only in areas where leftists happen to be in power.
ok as of today a synthetic cannabinoids been released BY a pharma
the yearly price tag is?
try 32.5k a year!!!
tell me thats not obscene
natural products are NOT patentable therefore they fiddle and can patent
vit B6 merk i think synthesised and then lobbied to have NATURAL sources declared drugs and unptented ones in competition and wanted them banned from sale.
ps heres the cannabinoid item
GW Pharma launches Epidiolex in US, awaits EU decision
The first US FDA-approved medicine made from the cannabis plant is now available by prescription, at an average yearly list price of $32,500. Read more
For $32,000 I could grow one helluva pile of marijuana and get the same benefits they are claiming. What a scam.
Multi-trillion??????
Terry is so far from reality he’ll need a spirit guide to find his way back.
actually vit c might at least offer some protective effects to kidney and liver function
it DOES help buffer snakebite effects and IS now used in chemotherapy to buffer and boost some of the meds.
the biggest issue with ebola appears to be the massive “own body” immune system response causing massive cytokine response and organ meltdown. I dont know if theyve even tried cortisone but as someone who suffered a massive autoimmune crisis due to a virus myself..it sure helped me.
Isn’t it interesting that these clusters pop up in war zones where numbers of chronically undernourished people likely become malnourished due to social disruption. Mark my words: no functioning modernized society will see ever Ebola.
The key is a natural Ebola virus reservoir between human outbreaks, probably bats. And humans going into the jungle to harvest monkey meat (bush meat), from monkeys likely infected from the bat reservoir is how these outbreaks probably initiate. The monkeys pick up dead bats (and maybe nibbling on them) or eating half-consumed tree fruits that an infected bat has nibbled on already, the infection crosses into the monkeys. The hunters harvest sick monkeys. Humans get infected.
So yes, don’t eat the monkey meat. Not a problem in the West.
Humans, monkeys and bats are mammals that don’t synthesize vitamin C. If you’re living in the jungle and relying solely on the latter two for food, you’re not getting any vitamin C in your diet.
Well said. There is no logic in allopathic “medicine”.
The initial symptoms of Ebola are identical with those of scurvy.
Nothing wrong with eating bats as long as you have other sources of nutrition besides monkeys. People in Cote d’Ivoire do it all of the time with no problems.
Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) sits right next door to three countries that have had the largest Ebola outbreaks (Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia), yet that nation of bat chompers hasn’t had a single Ebola outbreak (as far as I know). Why? Germs don’t acknowledge national borders. Maybe because they are more educated and affluent than their neighbors.
Vitamin C is found in fruit and vegetables: jungles are not short of these. Ebola is NOT scurvy which is a chronic disease not acute.
Raw meat eaten in the Arctic is high in vitamin C. I presume its true everywhere.
https://discovermagazine.com/2004/oct/inuit-paradox/
Susan, interestingly, index cases have often been found near recently deforested areas, so much so that that factor has been explored as a contributing cause.
I hate to tell you this, but…large numbers of immigrants from these areas make it to the Western World, particularly cities like New York and London. Monkey brains are a sought after delicacy which cannot be legally obtained, so a thriving black market has been created. Many coming from those countries are smuggling that monkey meat in from infected areas.
The original infection can be from infected meat, but after that, there are several different transmission vectors. One of the more worrisome routes is via dogs. The virus does not affect them, but they become carriers. Not to worry. It’s not as if dogs go around licking the faces of people…
Never allow an animal that eats its own faeces to lick your face. That’s my firm advice.
I can never understand people who do.
all the infected bat(if it is a carrier) very likely -as they carry hendra and lissa and rabies, has to do is pee or poop on fruit and the fruit be eaten.
in Aus hendras killed horses then vets treating them, dogs get infected but dont succumb and produce antibodies both dogs with signs were murdered- because euthanasia of a non transmitting pet isnt euthanasia for kindness, but outright bloodyminded idiocy.
Lyssa virus has been transmitted to humans from bats here its a close rellie to rabies,
another variant in asian areas kills pigs people dogs and prob other species.
meanwhile we have masive amounts of bats(flying foxes) living and crapping all over parks schools and public area in aus and no one will remove them cos the green ones protest their “specialness”
Problem is there actually are people in the world who would love to introduce individuals with a sufficiently lethal form of an easily communicable disease into populations of modern functional societys. High speed mass global transit makes this an actual possibility. Airplanes and airports are quite efficient methods to do so. We see these sorts of people plying their trade every day, through car bombs, rape gangs, death squads, so on and so forth. Hell, look at the outbreaks of tropical diseases from illegal alien mass migrations. It is the world we live in.
Terry Harnden November 9, 2018 at 4:43 pm
Easily cured/stopped with IV vitamin C. But no pharma profit in this.
normally I would say “Hello”. Do you have any idea what this sickness does to the human body?
50% death rate. Vitamins? YOU are NUTS!!!
michael
sorry all I lost it.
Perhaps we could give Terry a vitamin shot and drop him into the middle of the outbreak as control study!
I seem to recall back in the 1950s a professor of medicine believed cancer could be cured using vitamin C and when his poor wife contracted breast cancer refused to allow her any other treatment than the large doses of vitamin C he gave her. She wasn’t cured and one can only shudder at what she must have endured because of this nut job thinking.
Seems obsessive belief in magic is still confounding some people.
Linus Pauling, a rare double Nobel Laureate from California, may have been the nutjob.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/12154.php
Pauling’s second Nobel Prize was for Political Correctness, not science. That reminds me, I must buy some boxes of Crackerjack this week.
I was reliably informed it also boosts intelligence. You need a prolonged prescription of a high dose.
I was told glutamic acid would do the same thing. I took it for a year or two. Have no idea if it made me smart, but I’m hungry again a half hour later.
You watched a movie with Dustin Hoffman and Donald Sutherland in it and think you know the cure for Ebola. Too funny.
There’s only one way to be sure.
Game over, man, game over!!!!!
The key now though to stop the spread outside of the Congo conflict zones is we have vaccines that work.
Still, without the ability to vaccinate a large percentage, this is another apocalypse descending on sub-Sahara Africa – the White Horse of pestilence and disease.
The ebola Reston virus strain was clearly an airborne contagion that infected the primate colony (that was subsequently destroyed) and apparently without major symptoms of infection to the staff there.
read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus
Yuck. Maybe one unlikely co-infection away from airborne human Ebola…
If anyone wants a good book (nonfiction) to read about this, and hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola, you will want to read Robert Preston’s, “The Hot Zone.” It’s old, published in 1995, or so, but still relevant. Really good.
BTW. The last time there was an Ebola scare (a couple of years ago?) there was a lot of speculation in the drug companies working on a vaccine. Stock prices in some companies soared. I did not (and do not) have the expertise to select the company best positioned to succeed, but looked at other companies that would be impacted. I bought shares in the company Lakeland Industries (stock symbol LAKE) at $8/sh. They sell hazmat gear and had government contracts. Sold them about ten days later at $27/sh. It sells for about $13 today. I am not suggesting to buy stock in the company – I don’t own any myself. Just realize that our interest and curiosity of the world around us can provide us more than just intellectual satisfaction.
Hello,
I found this article about a NASA study. It says that the antarctica is cooling due to greenhouse the greenhouse gas “water vapor”.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/greenhouse-gases-are-warming-world-chilling-antarctica-here-s-why
On all serious matters, the Alarmist prefer to advance their threadbare theory that CO2 causes warming and all of the World’s woes, rather than face the acute medical, social and physical problems of mankind.
Ebola is very little threat and causes relatively few deaths.
But there is a lot of media hysteria because it is hollywood movie type disease.
A disease with a 50 to 80% lethality rate a minor problem? That is about the rate for Yersinia pestis, AKA The Black Death.
A disease that quickly kills its host is failing.
This indicates that man is not the natural host of Ebola.
And it is simple to take basic precautions to prevent you catching this disease.
Sure fund research and prevention.
But just saying the media coverage verges on hysterical for Ebola, out of all proportion to other bigger killers.
Not quite. Consider smallpox among the Native American population. As there were enough relatively resistant Europeans and Africans to serve as a reservoir, the death rate remained high.
Not quite. Consider smallpox among the Native American population. As there were enough relatively resistant Europeans and Africans to serve as a reservoir, the death rate remained high.
I have seen that argument before, particularly in Plagues and Peoples by McNeil, and that happens sometimes, but not reliably. Australian rabbits are not a dispositive case.
It kills quickly once symptoms appear. However the patient is infectious before symptoms appear.
If the disease is easy to spread, how quickly the patient dies becomes less relevant.
Some of the survivors become long term symptom free carriers Jeff. The “too lethal to survive” issue was my initial thought – then I looked into it a bit further.
Ebola is a triviality compared to what is coming. Third world birth rates are exploding out of control while first world birth rates collapse. Third worlders are invading the West now in their millions pretty much at will and totally unchecked. Western civilisation is finished and a new Dark Ages of unimaginable brutality begins within 20 years from which there will be no Renaissance.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/11/09/study-while-european-nations-fall-below-replacement-rate-global-birthrates-surge/
AFP — Soaring birth rates in developing nations are fuelling a global baby boom while women in dozens of richer countries aren’t producing enough children to maintain population levels there, according to figures released Friday.
A global overview of birth, death and disease rates evaluating thousands of datasets on a country-by-country basis also found that heart disease was now the single leading cause of death worldwide.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), set up at the University of Washington by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, used more than 8,000 data sources — more than 600 of them new — to compile one of the most detailed looks at global public health.
Their sources included in-country investigations, social media and open-source material.
It found that while the world’s population skyrocketed from 2.6 billion in 1950 to 7.6 billion last year, that growth was deeply uneven according to region and income.
Ninety-one nations, mainly in Europe and North and South America, weren’t producing enough children to sustain their current populations, according to the IHME study.
But in Africa and Asia fertility rates continued to grow, with the average woman in Niger giving birth to seven children during her lifetime.
Ali Mokdad, professor of Health Metrics Sciences at IHME, told AFP that the single most important factor in determining population growth was education.
“It is down to socioeconomic factors but it’s a function of a woman’s education,” he said. “The more a woman is educated, she is spending more years in school, she is delaying her pregnancies and so will have fewer babies.”
The IHME found that Cyprus was the least fertile nation on Earth, with the average woman giving birth just once in her life.
By contrast, women in Mali, Chad and Afghanistan have on average more than six babies.
– ‘Less mortality, more disability’ –
The United Nations predicts there will be more than 10 billion humans on the planet by the middle of the century, broadly in line with IHME’s projection.
This raises the question of how many people our world can support, known as Earth’s “carrying capacity”.
Mokdad said that while populations in developing nations continue to rise, so in general are their economies growing.
This typically has a knock-on effect on fertility rates over time.
“In Asia and Africa the population is still increasing and people are moving from poverty to better income — unless there are wars or unrest,” he said.
“Countries are expected to fare better economically and it’s more likely that fertility there will decline and level out.”
Not only are there now billions more of us than 70 years ago, but we are also living longer than ever before.
The study, published in The Lancet medical journal, showed male life expectancy had increased to 71 years from 48 in 1950. Women are now expected to live to 76, compared with 53 in 1950.
Living longer brings its own health problems, as we age and deteriorate and place greater burdens on our healthcare systems.
The IHME said heart disease was now the leading cause of death globally. As recently as 1990, neonatal disorders were the biggest killer, followed by lung disease and diarrhoea.
Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Azerbaijan had the highest death rates from heart disease, whereas South Korea, Japan and France had among the lowest.
“You see less mortality from infectious diseases as countries get richer, but also more disability as people are living longer,” said Mokdad.
He pointed out that although deaths from infectious diseases like malaria and tuberculosis are down significantly since 1990, new, non-communicable killers have taken their place.
“There are certain behaviours that are leading to an increase in cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Obesity is number one — it is increasing every year and our behaviour is contributing to that.”
Codetrader
Whilst the concept of educating women in methods of contraception is sound enough, there has to be motivation to use it.
Infant mortality rates are high in developing countries and there is little to no provision for elderly care. Childbirth in these countries is often to overcome infant mortality and ensure there is a large enough family to take care of the Mother and Father in their old age.
The solution seems obvious, ensure old age provision is provided then there’s no need for large families. Obviously there are other factors at play here, like education, health, nutrition and, of course, gainful employment.
Many of these problems would be addressed if investment in cheap reliable electricity were encouraged, but that would mean burning coal and gas, and the greens would rather see 120,000,000 die in developing countries by 2050 (WHO) because they are forced to cook and heat with cow shit and twigs and inhale the fumes. 1,000,000 a year will die from vitamin A deficiency which can largely be addressed by allowing them access to Golden Rice
This is the inhumanity of the greens. Happy to watch 170,000,000 people die now whilst their ideology serves to insulate their own grandchildren from climate change which, it has been estimated (although I can’t find the source again) only 250,000 might die because the planet warms.
“…Their sources included in-country investigations, social media and open-source material…”
So in other words, they looked it up on wikipedia, facebook and asked siri.
Codetrader,
Here are some interesting facts about world population and where we are headed, presented by the late lamented Hans Rosling:
“Western civilisation is finished and a new Dark Ages of unimaginable brutality begins within 20 years from which there will be no Renaissance.”
As long as we avoid a large-scale exchange of nuclear weapons* between the major powers the more likely case is that war, disease, and starvation will winnow the earth’s population and human life will flourish.
* An exchange between lesser powers is almost a given. The task for the West is to avoid being dragged in.
Third world birth rates are dropping, not exploding.
Having non-Europeans “invade” the west spells the end of civilization?
Is that what you truly believe?
Civilization requires civilized people. If you fill a civilized country with uncivilized people, you no longer have a civilization.
It’s been common throughout history for a civilization to become decadent and weak, then invite in, or be invaded by, uncivilized foreigners who destroy it (Rome, for one glaring example).
We’re now seeing that happen in real time.
“Civilization requires civilized people. If you fill a civilized country with uncivilized people, you no longer have a civilization.”
That’s why we need a wall and a Big, Beautiful Door (as Trump says). This way we can let the civilized people come in and we can keep the uncivilized people out.
The United States welcomes all civlized people who don’t burden American taxpayers. We are happy to replenish our numbers with people from around the world who share our American values of personal freedom and honest work.
Problem is Democrats have made themselves the final arbiter of who is “civilized” and are attempting to flood America with as many of our enemies as they can. When it all blows up they will sanctimoniously point their bony finger at us and say it is all our fault.
“Problem is Democrats have made themselves the final arbiter of who is “civilized””
The Democrats think themselves the final arbiter of everything.
That is the root of their power. That and so many people in America just crawling on their knees before them. More Americans have got to stand up and say no, then enforce that no by whatever means makes it stick.
Is “fizzle out” a scientific term?
I’m thinking Global Climate Change will fizzle out!
Hasn’t fizzled yet, and the hoax has been going for 30+ years.
Looking at the DNA data over the last several Ebola outbreaks it looks like the virus is becoming less virulent which is what you’d expect. The early outbreaks would result in a whole village being wiped out. That’s not a good outcome for the virus so the less violent ones tend to survive, that’s evolution.
The growing number of reports of long term carriers is a concern. It doesn’t matter if the virus kills most people very quickly, as long as there are survivors who exhibit no symptoms who can carry the virus to fresh victims.
That and the survivors seem to have compromised immune systems afterwards, leaving them open to other diseases makes me wonder if the lethality of Ebola is actually higher than 50%?
Easily cured/stopped with IV vitamin C. But no pharma profit in this.
Utter nonsense.
We already know the script: The worse the outbreak, the more they will blame it on global warming. And, boy, will it be worse (than they thought).
They may also drone on interminably about how we should expect more of the same unless we stop using fossil fuels, go back to living in caves and mud huts, commute by broomstick, paint our faces with woad, and dance naked around Stonehenge by moonlight.
The last outbreak was during the African Nations football tournament with three of the four Ebola affected nations participating, teams and fans travelling, meeting, passing through the same hotels and airports. It was an enormous opportunity for the disease to spread but it didn’t.
The main problem with ebola is dogs digging up infected corpses and a cultural tradition of touching dead realatives before their burial. Also, the bush meat trade and bush medicine men are still thriving.
Oh, good grief! The panics!! The horror!!!
1 – Spanish Flu was H1N1, avian flu originally contracted by people coming from China, where it started. It was labeled Spanish flu because most of the infections originated in Spain during World War I. Most of the deaths were due to pneumonia, from lying flat in a bed instead of semi-upright, and from dehydration.
2 – The flu pandemic in 2006 that scared the crap out of people was not identified until people at Walter Reed and CDC looked in old files and found samples with lung tissue from WWI soldiers who died of Spanish flu-related causes. The Spanish flu virus was ID’d as the same basic virus as the 2006 bird flu, with accounting for modern mutations.
3 – Flu viruses mutate constantly for survival. They are composed of RNA, not DNA. The CDC estimate on current flu vaccine is 26%+ effective against flu in general, but get the shot anyway. And get a pneumonia shot, if available.
4 – It would be nice if the panic attacks weren’t quite so obvious. Talk to someone like a doctor or nurse to try to relieve your concerns.
And:
5 – Ebola virus is carried by bats. They are immune to it. Monkeys infected by it have probably been bitten by bats. People in Congo eat bats, which are called “bush meat”, and that is how they got the ebola virus in the first place. After that, it spreads when someone dies and those idiots follow the custom of touching the bodies of the dead before burial.
6 – Being a virus, ebola’s entire goal is to survive by mutations, which are rapid.
7 – American health care workers who picked up ebola a few years ago survived the virus, so its death rate must have something to do with healthy immune systems versus not so healthy immune systems.
8 – You’re more likely to die of pneumonia related to flu than you are ebola. You’re also more likely to die of measles than ebola, if you’re an adult whose parents were anti-vax idiots and didn’t get you the measles vax. Ditto, polio – it’s still around. Do you want that crippling disease? There are still countries that do not agree that smallpox is “gone”, and they vaccinate their populations because of that. US troops get the smallpox vax if they haven’t had it and are deploying to areas where health care in the native population is questionable. And FYI, there is no such thing as lifetime immunity to anything. Smallpox immunity fades after 10 years, and after 15 years if you got a second booster from military service.
Get your flu shots, and update your vaccinations, especially tetanus, and please back off the hysterics.
That ebola filovirus has the distinct appearance of a parasitic intestinal worm. And yes, it can mutate rapidly, as do all influenza viruses. Viruses are RNA, not DNA. They use the host’s DNA to become active and also to mutate.
Lordy!
High Spanish Flu mortality (1918) was likely due to aspirin overdosing. Bayer lost its patent in 1917, which opened the market to generics without dosage instructions or toxicity warnings.
The deaths in the Spanish Flu outbreak were primarily due to pneumonia, which was exacerbated due to the nature of that strain of flue and the lack of antibiotics at the time.
Not totally true that Viruses are all RNA…… Viruses with small DNA genomes include human papillomavirus (HPV). … Hepatitis B is another small DNA virus that infects the liver, causes hepatitis, and is associated with liver cancer. Adenovirus, herpesvirus, and poxvirus are all examples of large DNA viruses that infect humans.
Let us all NOT forget that the smartest man ever to be an American President, made the decision to import Ebola patients and distributed them around America.
We (the United States) for a long time had the best defense for preventing an Ebola outbreak:
DON’T LET PEOPLE FROM COUNTRIES WITH EBOLA OUTBREAKS IN!
If there were a ‘Like’ button, I’d click it.
The risk is further mutation, and the more people it infects the greater chance it can become more easily transmissable. Until then, this is likely a tempest in a teapot for the world but awful for those areas already undergoing pretty awful stuff. 309 infected isn’t a big deal, until it becomes 3 million. This is the same type of scare Rumsfeld made so much money off of when he was in charge by hyping the avian flu (he owned alot of stock in flu treatment companies). Eventuallly one of these will mutate and become a real worldwide killer, but the chances of any one outbreak being the “big one” is very, very low (but measurable).
HEALTH ADVISORY
DO NOT LINGER UNDER TREES TO DISCUSS AMERICAN POLITICS
WITH BATTY BIRTHING FRUITCAKE MALES
Infectious agents E. Pluribus Politicumdividus, Broward Watdefucium and E. Dr. Wassermin Scholls have been observed to lie dormant in the placentas of male Fruitcake Bats. While major outbreaks seem to occur in two and four year cycles the dormant host vector and mechanism of chronic reinfection in humans has been unknown. A prevailing theory is that the agents, which cause only mild symptoms in odd-numbered years, have evolved to follow the American political cycle. The bats birth upside down dripping placental fluid on fruit and primates below. Some of the fruit is also baked into fruitcakes which seem to provide it with an environment as conducive to long therm storage as placentas.
While there is no easy means of eradicating the wide ranging Male Fruitcake Bat, progress is being made on a vaccine for Christmas fruitcake.
The doomsdayers could make themselves useful if they wanted to-
https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-in-India-die-in-road-accidents
“Trump threatens to withhold California fire aid, citing state’s ‘gross mismanagement’ of forests”
https://www.foxnews.com/us/trump-approves-emergency-declaration-for-california-as-wildfires-rage-across-state
What do you tell a person with 2 black eyes? Nothing, they been told twice and still can’t figure it out. Cali and US DeptInterior have been mismanaging those regions since the 1970s and now people are paying the price. Will those guilty be punished? No, they will be re-elected and given larger budgets to abuse and waste.
“The potential consequences of such a carrier successfully reaching one of the Western World’s less sanitary cities, triggering a lethal outbreak amongst homeless people and people with compromised immune systems, an outbreak which could pass to the general population of that city, are too horrible to contemplate.”
Meanwhile in San Francisco ….
The consequences of it reaching a mega city in the developing world without the resources or political stability to respond effectively should sober everyone.
You would think the people running such places as Jo’burg, Cairo, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Sao Paulo etc etc would be leading the fight to keep these outbreaks locked into the places they are occurring. In US New Orleans would be the one I would consider the highest risk for rapid spread, followed by LA and San Fran.
https://www.latitudegeography.org/nature-character-and-spatial-distribution-of-megacities.html
Even a small city of 5M, would be unimaginable.
Generally smaller cities don’t have the sanitation problems that gigantic metropolitan areas have. Throw in tropical climate and iffy water cleanliness with questionable food supply sufficiency and massively inadequate medical infrastructure and something like ebola could quickly turn into a wildfire. Add to that mix “people” who would love to bring down a non-muslim population in as horrific a manner as possible and the human race has a real problem on the horizon.
Ebola travels faster than climate ever will.
Every one thought Foot and Mouth Disease could not be aerosolized … Oops
The potential consequences of such a carrier successfully reaching one of the Western World’s less sanitary cities, triggering a lethal outbreak amongst homeless people and people with compromised immune systems, an outbreak which could pass to the general population of that city, are too horrible to contemplate.
But if Trump bans travel from that country, the MSM will call him racist (again).
Hang on though – an Ebola outbreak in the US would spread mostly through the big cities, not the rural areas.
Democrat voters live mostly in the big cities, not rural areas.
GREEN CARDS FOR CONGANS!
GREEN CARDS FOR CONGANS!
COME ON OVER!
COME ON OVER!
Cattle ranchers in the Plains States like the Dakotas had not had to vaccinate their herds for anthrax until 2005, when a drought in the cornfields of the Midwest was offset by heavy rains in the Dakotas. Anthrax hibernates indefinitely in a hard shelled spore casing, in the soil. All that rain softened the shells of the anthrax bug’s hidey hole, and cattle started picking up anthrax, for the first time in 100 years. It was lying dormant in the soil all that time….
CDC said earlier this year that the current flu vax is 26%+ effective, slightly more so than last year’s flu vax. Please — get your flu shot.