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WHO Declares Ebola Outbreak An International Emergency
mdsolar (1045926) writes with news that, with the Ebola outbreak growing out of control, the WHO has declared an international health emergency. From the article: With cases rapidly mounting in four West African countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) today declared the Ebola outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), a designation that allows the agency to issue recommendations for travel restrictions but also sends a strong message that more resources need to be mobilized to bring the viral disease under control. ... This is only the third time the health agency has issued a PHEIC declaration since the new International Health Regulations (IHR), a global agreement on the control of diseases, were adopted in 2005. The previous two instances were in 2009, for the H1N1 influenza pandemic, and in May for the resurgence of polio.
Too late to become a prepper?
love the taste, hate the texture
I like preppers, they rarely, if ever, actually understand the consequences of social collapse, and falsely view increased individualism as the primary consequence of major institutional failure.
They don't consider the social structures that arise in post-governmental situations. The importance of community connectivity increases with importance as rigid social structures fail. You want a local warlord, a gang, a tribe, or some other primitive power structure, if you want to survive in a "lawless" world.
Well, in this case, hundreds of people have already died, but, sure that's "nothing". Nothing is going to happen in the US, thanks in part to large scale international public health planning of exactly this sort.
They need Doctor Who...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I like that someone modded him up, as if flu vaccines don't substantially lower fatality rate among at-risk populations, such as young children, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems.
Just because catching flu doesn't tend to kill healthy adults, they just write-off the rest of the world in the perfect mixture of selfishness and ignorance, all the while acting smugly superior about the conspiracy only they can see.
Ebola, while a horrible deadly disease is not the doom and gloom its being made out to be for anyone not living in a 3rd world country., and even for those living in 3rd world countries for that matter. more people die in 1 month from the flu in africa (over 5 K from the last article i saw ) than they die from ebola last year. to put it in prospective, less than 1000 people died from it last year.
Unless you are literally playing in a sick persons bodily fluids, the risk is almost 0
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The same thing will happen that happens every other time there's some outbreak "emergency": Nothing.
That's exactly the goal: ensure that as many people as possible continue to have nothing happen to them, rather than exciting hemorrhagic fever or Quarantine Zone.
E-bola is so 1990. it should get with the times and be called iBola. Then everyone would wait in line to get it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Am I the only one who views these things differently after playing a few hours of Plague, Inc?
I like preppers, they rarely, if ever, actually understand the consequences of social collapse, and falsely view increased individualism as the primary consequence of major institutional failure.
They don't consider the social structures that arise in post-governmental situations. The importance of community connectivity increases with importance as rigid social structures fail. You want a local warlord, a gang, a tribe, or some other primitive power structure, if you want to survive in a "lawless" world.
Oh sure, grouping up provides an immediate boost to strength, but It'll only last for so long. This australian case study from 1985 http://tinyurl.com/h4otx proved that such a social structure is only as strong as it's weakest link. A stronger individual will always appear in time and take your group apart. It's pretty much proven as the same results were witnessed in 2 previous studies. I hear they are going to run it again. I expect the same outcome.
Heres a similar sociological study demonstrating the feasibility of individual survival. It's not as targeted at catastrophic social collapse, but i think it's safe to extrapolate. http://tinyurl.com/3xpd3n
more people die in 1 month from the flu in africa (over 5 K from the last article i saw ) than they die from ebola last year.
But those people dieing of of the flue are often compromised in some other way, such as old age or malnutrition.
you might as well say that more people in africa die of old age every day than all ebola deaths combined.
The reason people fear ebola is that unlike old age, it spreads and attacks the healthy.
Unless you are literally playing in a sick persons bodily fluids, the risk is almost 0
the exact same exaggeration is true of flu. You catch flu by being in close proximity to someone with the flu or some a vector that can temporarily support the flu's transmission, just like ebola.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) has been working with WHO, MSF, and Red Cross since the outbreak began in march to map roads and villages in the affected areas. These maps are used by medical teams to move people, medicine, and equipment around, as well as to do "contact tracing" of infected people to see who they might also have infected. The maps are crowdsourced and released under a copyleft license like wikipedia uses. If you want to help out you can check out a task to work on on the HOT task manager and help improve the maps these organizations are using to do their work. There are some instructional videos on the MapGive site run by the US State Department which has donated a bunch of imagery for us to better map the affected areas.
Please take some time to learn how to help with this mapping and help these doctors do what they need to do.
-AndrewBuck
If you think Israel is evil, okay, that's what you think, but please, this is /., not some Hamas fanboi club
You wanna talk about Ebola, talk about Ebola. Why the need to drag Israel into this discussion ??
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Abbott: You have a disease outbreak in Africa.
Costello: Then WHO declares it?
Abbott: Naturally.
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: Now you've got it.
Costello: The outbreak is declared Naturally.
Abbott: No, it is declared by Who!
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: Well, that's it—say it that way.
Costello: That's what I said.
Abbott: You did not.
The judge said I wasn't allowed to do that anymore.
Wait, what? Oh, never mind, forget I said anything.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.