An Ebola Outbreak Update
A few links to news stories about the West Africa Ebola outbreak, courtesy of Drudge and other sources:
- FDA OKs Another Drug for Emergency Use
- Teen quarantined in Miami, did not have virus
- Passenger on Flight from La Guardia to O’Hare Vomits, Causes Scare – Did not Have Ebola
- Researcher who discovered Ebola: “. . . now I fear an unimaginable tragedy”
- Association of Flight Attendants to members: “. . . all bodily fluids should be treated as if they are known to be contagious”
- Israel tighten border controls due to Ebola outbreak
- Nurse Catches Ebola from Patient in Spain
- Sierra Leone: 121 Deaths in One Day
- Texas Governor calls for enhanced screening, quarantines at borders
- White House: “A travel ban is not something that we’re currently considering”
And, finally:
The last linked article also has a collection of other more recent news concerning the outbreak. Most if not all of those links are not included above.
IMO, Texas Governor Rick Perry has it right. We need to impose a mandatory quarantine on all persons entering the country who have been in Africa any time during the 21 days prior to entry into the US. And we need to ban nonessential travel to the nations of West Africa where the outbreak is still raging uncontained immediately.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Barack Obama/Joe Biden
Still amazes me that this administration won’t ban all nonessential travel or quarantine those coming out of the hot zone.
Don’t want to appear racist, now.
If I were a person who subscribed to conspiracies, I would think they actually WANT to have some amount of fear and uncertainty among the public.
Never let a crisis go to waste…. wasn’t that what they said?
The links tell me everything.
One small question: just how the hell are customs agents supposed to screen people for ebola?
Oh, never mind. Is there any place on this planet where things still make sense?
Same way that they are so good about screening for weapons and bombs. Single out old white people from Kansas and let everyone else through.
The quote I read was:
“But Federal health officials say a travel ban could make the desperate situation worse in those countries. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said it was not currently under consideration.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/spain-nurse-ebola-outside-west-africa-husband-quarantined-medical-workers/
And this one is freaking awesome.
Jesse Jackson is in the mix. Guess he thinks Ebola is being racist.
http://www.myfoxdfw.com/story/26723442/jesse-jackson-heading-to-dallas-to-help-ebola-patient
Steadfast&Loyal…I feel all better and safer already. Rainbow Jesse in on the case! Man does that guy have nothing to do or what? The infected guy is probably being “shunned”, if that is really happening and not simply in the minds of his family because…HE IS INFECTED WITH EBOLA!!! Maybe Jesse can shake hands and give him a big hug, you know, for the cause. Cause it’s once again, “the man”, behind all this.
Meanwhile about your first post. Obama is so afraid of offending anyone he has NO guts to protect America and our citizens. I am sure their are still, dumb ass liberals planning a vacation to West Africa and we wouldn’t want to impede their freedoms now would we? Obama has been busy his whole tenure trying to protect American’s from themselves and everything that fits his liberal, socialist mind. So why not protect us from Ebola while we have the chance to do so? All of this, does not bode well.
So Jessie is headed down to help an non US citizen who basically came here with a fatal virus, on purpose, in order to receive better medical care. Yeah, hurry up Jesse! May I suggest a long tongue kiss upon your first meeting.
Why couldn’t it read “jesse-jackson-heading-to-africa-to-help-ebola-patients”?
I would feel SO much better then.
Well, if Jackson *really* wants to help, he can go in the room with the patient and contract the disease himself.
Was thinking the same thing. Maybe he can then give Al Sharpton and nice, big sloppy kiss.
That quote may be accurate, S&L.
However, the last time I checked the US Government’s primary duty was to protect its OWN citizens – not those of other countries.
Perhaps the current Administration needs to be reminded of that. Like maybe in about 4 weeks.
“The Last Centurion,” anyone? Where’s Bandit Six when we need him?
+1
Now, now. This is nothing like The Last Centurion. The Bitch isn’t in office, it’s not bird flu, and we aren’t in the opening of a mini ice age.
We can try to contain people coming into the country from Africa, but the fact is, the people most likely to be carrying the virus will do just what Duncan did: lie about their exposure, and divert through a country where screening isn’t as stringent, to keep from alerting officials here. You see, Duncan KNEW he had been exposed. He believed he had a better chance to be treated and survive here than there. So he lied to get here, and hid until he became ill. At that point, it’s our problem, and we have to deal with it — and Duncan knew that.
We’re doing ourselves a disservice if we don’t take the next logical step, and that is to ramp up response to deal with it when it gets here — because it will. It’s gone too far not to.
Pinto Nag: no argument with what you say. However, getting ready will take time. We’re simply not ready now for anything more than a small “onesies/twosies” outbreak.
A mandatory quarantine for anyone who’s been in Africa within the a 21-to-30 day window prior to coming into the US is indeed a stopgap. But IMO, it’s a stopgap measure that is critically needed in order to buy us the time to get our act together.
That quarantine does not necessarily have to be all that burdensome. A person can voluntarily stay home and away from others. They can check in with the local hospital by Skype. They can conduct business by Skype. If
Quarantine is simply not as onerous as it used to be.
Any responsible person will do this voluntarily.
http://www.jrn.com/now-trending/american-ebole-doctor-remains-in-isolation-in-tennessee-269861621.html
Duncan’s Texas acquaintances refused to follow quarantine and were forced into it.
It is more likely that people exposed to it will not only not recognize what has infected them, they will also NOT stay in quarantine or isolation out of the goodness of their hearts.
Bingo. Depending on people to “voluntarily quarantine themselves” is idiocy.
Because political correctness (gag) and keeping people’s feelings from getting all hurty is WAY more important than containing an ultra-deadly virus and keeping it out of our country.
Teh feels>reals. *facepalm*
screw correctness – go there, you don’t come back for a while. Anyone who has been there doesn’t come back for a while. What is so freakin’ hard to understand about that?
Someone at “low risk” (guess they didn’t actually swap spit with a patient) is presently quarantined in a hospital about two miles from the house.
Why do I have a feeling this is all going to end up with 90% of the human race dead, most of the rest hiding from daylight, and Will Smith trying to reverse the disease all by himself in deserted New York?
Because you’ve one or more of the following:
1 – Watched Brit TV series “Survivors” far too many times
2 – Read or watched ‘The Stand’ far too many times
3 – Watched WAY too much prepper stuff on panic TV
4 – Watched far too many dystopian movies.
Try something positive, instead, like a weekend trip to a local forest preserve or go hiking in back country for a few days.
PH2:
The Stand is a great story. Read it years ago.
Don’t know about that other crapola.
Ah, if I only could “get away from it all” for a while …
I’m still trying to understand this. When ONE Hamas rocket landed 5 k from the airport in Lod, Israel , the FAA immediately stopped all American based carriers from flying to Israel. They rescinded the ban after about a day; but the point is they did it. Even the Israelis felt confident reassuring them that the airport was safe.
Here we have an uncontrolled disease infecting large numbers in west Africa, but the American administration won’t restrict travel until things improve? Huh?
As for an actual outbreak on American shores: the best analyses I’ve seen and remain updated by indicate a need for caution, especially by healthcare workers; but the zombie apocalypse is not around the corner. I discuss this almost daily with competent physicians who know this stuff (many docs do not; but they’ll tell you that), and have discussed it with other clinicians I work with, and a clinician in the DFW area who is pretty close to the present action. The disease is deadly for anyone who catches it, and precautions need to be taken seriously; but it isn’t looking like a serious threat of pandemic at this point, for a number of reasons.
There’s a lot of opinion and analyses being bandied about the media and internet by people who overestimate their understanding and ability to analyze the information; and they’re scaring people in some cases way beyond what’s called for. Worst-case scenarios are useful for establishing precautions, but they shouldn’t be confused with the actual situation and prevailing likelihood.
Medic09: you are correct that it is not yet a “pandemic”. At present, it is an out-of-control regional epidemic limited to several nations in West Africa. It needs to remain limited to that area.
I believe the US could contain an outbreak here. But it would be hugely costly, both in human terms and economically. And until an effective vaccine is developed, even containment is not a 100% certainty. That is why we need to take more aggressive measures (such as mandatory arrival quarantines and the termination of elective travel to the affected area) for anyone traveling to that area recently.
And if the virus mutates to become air-transmissible such as the common cold, influenza, and (formerly) smallpox, all bets are off. Significantly, airborne transmission has been demonstrated between pigs and non-human primates. Further, Ebola Reston – the only variant that infects humans without causing serious illness – is believed to have spread through the Reston “monkey house” ventilation system.
Here, we need to err on the side of caution. The potential for a true disaster, though perhaps small, is not zero.
Hondo, I don’t substantially disagree. And I do think it may qualify as a pandemic in west Africa. The indicators seem to be that a pandemic is far less likely in a western country. But yes, we need to be appropriately aggressive about precautions. First and foremost by limiting human traffic between the pandemic area and the West.
Duncan is our test case. We really have NO information on what ebola will do in a ‘first-world’ country. We’ll begin to find out in the next twenty days or so, because as far as anyone is aware, this is the first time it’s had a real chance in the general population of a nation like ours. His family, and possibly others, came into contact with his bodily fluids (sweat, diarrhea, vomit) in that apartment complex. We should find out very soon just how infectious it is.
Pinto Nag: well, not really.
Ebola’s “first cousin” is named Marburg. It is a filovirus from the same Family as Ebola, and is similarly deadly (mortality rate in observed outbreaks has been between approx 23% and 90% – this excludes three single-infection incidents in Kenya, 1987, and the USSR, 1988 and 1990; in those incidents, 2 died and 1 recovered). It spreads the same way as, and has symptoms indistinguishable from, Ebola.
Marburg is so named because it was first recognized, isolated, and named in Marburg, West Germany, in 1967. A group of grivets (Old World monkeys native to Eastern sub-Saharan Africa) was brought there. They died, but not before causing an outbreak that infected 31 people and killed 7 in Marburg, Frankfurt am Main, and Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
I’ve read about Marburg. My point is that, this time, a human brought it in, incubated it among humans here, and now we get to see where it goes. Our medical experts say we can contain it. I’m sure we’ll all be interested to see if that’s true.
Precisely that happened with Marburg in Frankfurt am Main and Belgrade.
And yes: we all have a stake in this. We’d best pray that those medical experts are right, or we’ll be burying/burning a lot of corpses here also.
It’s really too bad that the Progressive’s Kool Aid offers no protection from Ebola. Their PC BS is going to potentially kill a lot of innocent folks.
A plague…
I kind of hope that Insipid and Obamagirl are reading this, because YOU are the idiots who voted for THAT idiot, not me, not us – no, it was YOU.
I have difficulty with the out of touch response that jackass in the White House is taking with this. The disease IS a problem, one that is growing and despite the success of trials on two people, that does NOT mean it will work on everyone who becomes infected with it.
But running from an infected zone and lying about not having contact with infected people goes beyond reprehensible. Liberia has alreayd said the government will punish Duncan for what he did, but if he doesn’t survive, what then?
Furthermore, as Hondo has pointed out, the mutation factor to make it airborne has not yet been determined.
Viruses are well-known to mutate quickly and adapt to new hosts on an as-needed basis. They are also known to engage in natural recombinant mutation in the wild, as happened with H5N1 – swine/human/bird flu.
Ignorance about the disease as well as rumors about it don’t help, but it’s best to be VERY aware of it, the harm it can do, and the fact that it spreads so rapidly. At least its incubation period – 21 days – is well-known. It’s best to be alert and pay attention to the news, and not panic.
Emergency approved drug to fight ebola? Sounds like the catalyst for the zombie apocalypse….
Did that little shit that came to the United States knowing he was infected survive? If so he needs to be charged with WMD use.
re: charges — And do what, execute him? I think he already took care of that issue all by himself. When someone buys an airplane ticket, it starts somewhere and ends somewhere. It would be trivially easy to examine the ticket for every person on a US bound ticket for (a) their country of origin and (b) the place that their trip started from. If the country of origin was in West Africa, they need to be interviewed and maybe pass a blood test. If their trip started in Africa, maybe a 21-day quarantine period. This will not catch everyone. I could buy a ticket from The Congo to Frankfurt. When I arrived, buy a ticket from Frankfurt to New York. If those were separate trips, that might not be caught. But such a process would catch a lot of people who need to stay outside the US. And it could be improved by checking for the two-step ticketing — not a perfect system but if we cut down the number of risky people that makes things easier. I am not convinced that a person is not infectious until they show symptoms. How can that be? If there are more than zero filaments in their system there is some risk that those filaments will reproduce. There has to be a point where the virus is prevalent in their spit, tears, blood, urine, etc but the person is not symptomatic. The argument goes that until they have a fever — the fever is to fight off the infection. If they are infected today and have a fever, how is it possible that they were not infectious yesterday? I understand the probabilities but even a 10% probability is more than I want to deal with. So … if Bob flies from the Congo to Frankfurt but never flies to the US, why is it impossible for Bob to talk to someone in Frankfurt and infect them before THEY fly to the US? Ebola is a rotten little SOB and we don’t know enough about it to be making life-and-death decisions without a… Read more »
Richard would checking his passport show the 2 ticket travel ? What about the seat that he sat and sweated on? Is there a chemical spray that would kill the virus ? Joe
So I’m driving home today and listening to the local news when I hear that The Rev. Jesse Jackson his here to make sure Mr. Duncan’s human rights are respected and he is not treated like a criminal.
Okay.
What do we call a guy that knows he is HIV or HepC positive and has unprotected sex with uninformed partners? Back in my day, we called them “a criminal”.
And another thing. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said that Duncan’s family was living in deplorable conditions. Well Mr. Mayor, who made them deplorable? I’ll tell you who. The fucking liberals did. Witness the great war on poverty, you jackass. It’s a god damned square mile of street ho’s, section 12 vouchers, and EBT cards. And now ebola, congratulations.
If Mr. Duncan survives this, and I think he will… I predict that he will be sitting next to Mooshelle at the next State of The Union Address and Obama will recognize him as some sort of hero. I won’t be there. I’ll be working overtime so I can “pay my fair share”. //END RANT
Duncan has died.
And the lawsuits will now begin.
And somehow it will be everyone’s fault BUT Duncan’s.
Four people in Spain have been isolated. In addition, a dog belonging to the nursing assistant who had contact with those four people has been euthanized. There is some evidence that dogs can contract and carry ebola, but no word on how they would transmit it.
Slobber and/or other bodily fluids, perhaps?