8 Ebola education team members killed in Guinea
Pinto Nag sends us a link to Reuters which reports that eight members of an Ebola education team were found murdered in Guinea when they were trying to teach people how to avoid getting the deadly disease.
“The eight bodies were found in the village latrine. Three of them had their throats slit,” Damantang Albert Camara told Reuters by telephone in Conakry.
Some of the members of the team remain missing and six people have been arrested.
Fofana said the team that included local administrators, two medical officers, a preacher and three accompanying journalists, was attacked by a hostile stone-throwing crowd from the village when they tried to inform people about Ebola.
Of course, the incident happened in the same area where the disease was first discovered earlier this year. Our troops are mostly going to be in and around Monrovia in Liberia, according to the administration. However, it seems difficult to defend helping these people. I remember last month when folks attacked a hospital that was treating local victims in Monrovia. So, I’m glad I don’t have to write the ROE for this humanitarian mission upon which we are embarking.
Category: Military issues
“The White Man’s Burden” (as Kipling put it) will inevitably require us to do things that will make the SWPL types squeamish. They are sheltered little children, but unfortunately our political class is loath to try and shatter their delusions.
The alternative, of course, is to do nothing which will probably result in a bigger disaster and may mean the spread of the disease outside of Africa. But our feckless politicos would rather passively deal with that than be seen as doing anything that might be interpreted as “mean”.
Folk in that part of the world (in the views of their third world neighbors) are ignorant dumbasses dangerous to themselves and other people.
This was my original thought when the 3000 troops were mentioned. They are going there as security for the Health Care people. I would not want that deployment.
Yeah, last month’s looting and pillaging of a treatment center in Monrvia was certainly a good indication of what’s to come. And none of it is good. The Western mind has a difficult time grasping this horror. We tend to think–due to hopefulness or indoctrination–that people are essentially the same worldwide, that parents want nothing for the best for their children, that all people want freedom, if not democracy, and so forth. Experience and observation tell me otherwise. I don’t even know what our mission is in West Africa. If treatment is elective, then we may as well stay away b/c the prospect of a future death by disease and an immediate death by machete doesn’t leave the population there with much choice, does it?
So how hard would it be to set up an enforced quarantine instead? Shoot anyone that crosses a set perimeter. If they want to shoot the help, introduce them to the alternative.
Air or sea is do-able. On land? Quite difficult.
To ensure you prevented the spread of the disease outside the affected area by land quarantine, you’d have to enforce a perimeter around it. Nothing/no one comes out w/o disinfection (goods) or going into 30 days isolation (people); food and supplies go in. No exceptions.
An estimate of the distance would be the perimeter of the area formed by Sierra Leone, southern Guinea, and Liberia (Ebola is prevalent in all 3 areas, as I recall). A quick look at Google maps tells me that would be somewhere on the order of a 800-mile perimeter.
You’d have to deploy enough troops/sensors to prevent uncontrolled foot traffic across that perimeter 24/7/365. That’s a load of troops.
Unfortunately, past outbreaks have ended through “burnout”. I’m afraid that’s what will end this one as well. But this one happens to be in an area of Africa that’s reasonably highly populated and has (by African standards) good transportation networks. So here, “burnout” may involve far more than a few isolated towns and villages.
Not to mention what happens after you shoot the first person to cross the line – manpower needs raised exponentially.
If you emigrate to America, and state that you came from that part of the world, you go into 30 days of quarantine.
If you cross the border, you get immediate access to America with whatever diseases you are carrying and your children get free enrollment in school with your children without the necessity to have a health screening or any vaccinations.
Update: forget southern Guinea only. I checked the map available at the WHO (didn’t see it before), and it indicates cases there are not limited to the southern part of that nation. That means the containment perimeter would need to be on the order of 1,000 miles – not 800.
http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/resources/distribution-map-guinea-outbreak.html
One Nigerian diplomat returned home after being infected. He became ill and a doctor treated him. He died, the doctor died but not before infecting another thirty people. Nigeria may be the next hot spot. Ebola cases in the affected region double every 21 days.
The greatest fear is that the virus will mutate into an airborne vector. Viruses mutate at a fantastic rate and there is no telling where it will go. It could mutate into a less deadly disease or it could become airborne and wipe out half the population of the planet. We just don’t know.
I’m pretty sure this case was not a Nigerian diplomat, but was the US citizen working for the govt of Liberia who became ill enroute to attending a conference in Nigeria and died there as discussed here. That individual was the first American to die in the current Ebola outbreak.
As of yesterday, WHO gives the figures for Nigeria as 21 total suspect cases, 19 lab confirmed, and 8 dead. Initial infection was on 25 July, was 8 weeks ago. My guess is that incident was contained in time.
The news reports I read of the attack on the clinic, if my memory serves, said that at least one of the people attacking was telling people to go home, that they didn’t have Ebola. Maybe I’m being squishy, but I interpret that as massive case of denial of an unacceptable reality mixed in with overwhelming panic.
Could this be the same or was it just vindictiveness or robbery or just plain evil?
For over 200 years Europe and the US have pumped billions in aid, education etc. into the region and it’s still a shithole. Africa (like Detroit) will continue to be a shithole until the people themselves reform. Nothing like making corruption,stupidity,and laziness financially viable.
Thanks to obonghit and his open borders it won’t be long until this washes up here in the US. I’m surprised nobody has mentioned anything about that mysterious respiratory infection being connected to the geographic location where all those “Dreamers”are being relocated.
Remember, these are the same people that looted an Ebola treatment center of everything, including contaminated linen and blood samples. I don’t think self-reform is in their near future.
No doubt the majority of that military force being sent will be guys with guns for security. It’s going to be a clusterfuck. Hope they all make it out safely.
How much you want to bet that, God forbid, one of ours gets hurt or killed, Obama won’t even bother to offer his condolences? Can’t be cutting into the golf game, now
The media has got to be so undereporting the scope of this outbreak. The number of infections and deaths are probably at east 10-15 times what they are saying.
The backwards governments of those countries are scared to death of people backing away from the area because that means no aid.
Question…
1) What would happen if all 3000 members of this deployment would say
“unlawful order” and refused to obey said order? 2) How would the “Brass Hats” handle something of that nature?
3) Has anything of this type of situation ever happened before?
I’m really interested in knowing what you think on this possibility so I’m hoping one of you will take my questions seriously.
Thank you for ALL that you have done for this Country and its People.