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Ebola Quarantine Center In Liberia Looted
An anonymous reader writes The BBC and other outlets are reporting that a major quarantine center for patients who have been infected with the Ebola virus in Liberia has been looted and ransacked. Reports vary on the motive of the attack, but officials have confirmed that the Ebola patients are missing and that the quarantine center's medical supplies have been stolen. Officials say that the looters are highly likely to contract the virus themselves and worsen the epidemic further, as the WHO counts 1000+ lives claimed by the virus total."
That's all.
They're niggers. Real old school, straight up ignorant, superstitious, violent and self destructive. Fuck em all. Die you fuckers.
â¦I don't know what is.
Start mass-producing the Darwin Awards.
I just hope this isn't a deliberate attempt to spread the virus, remove medical supplies and become martyrs
Maybe we can create group Award, now that Darwinism has become a team sport!
As the quarantine centre has been looted, maybe they should try to contain the outbreak by extending the quarantine to the whole city. Declare martial law and not allow anyone to enter or leave the city.
but that would be callous because , unfortunately potentially the looter might contaminate other innocent people and worsen the epidemic. And also they are making it worst by destroying the (already strapped) existing infrastructure to treat epidemic. Unfortunately with some people thinking the doctor spread Ebola, and the funerary practice and belief winning over simple science and hygiene, my expectation of the locals are low. Fortunately due to our own procedure ebola is unlikely to become an epidemic in our region.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's probably easier to let these people die of ebola than it is to change the mind of someone who stubbornly believes in things that are false. There have been many information campaigns about the causes and prevention of transmission of ebola, up to and including rap songs, and yet they can't help themselves.
... it's totally worth saving this population...
Don't attribute to malice, what can be adequately explained by stupidity. Probably illiterates, so they didn't get the meaning of the big posters and other warnings. The only ill will here is "lets plunder the new governmental facility; no security we can't overcome". Who would have tought an ebola facility needed a security guard?
So the looters got what they wanted. Lots of nice second hand bedsheets that only need some blood washed off. Nice for those who normally can't afford any sheets at all. Those who can read and afford stuff, probably stay as far away from the ebola facility as possible.
Letting the stubborn and stupid kill themselves is an option with ebola - protection is easy enough for those that understand. But lets hope they don't get an airborne pandemy there . . .
You loved that developmenJt models task. Research play Area Try not
I think it's necessary to understand what's going on Liberia. People there are uneducated, prone to superstition and there's a lot of ignorance about the Ebola outbreak over there, however people are acting rationally based on what they see. What they've seen is that when people go to one of these facilities, they tend to end up dead. If you're living there, ignorance of modern medicine and viruses and whatnot and you witness a loved one being taken to a hospital, it's understandable why people will not take it willingly.
A lot of people think this is some "white-man's poison" that's infecting and killing folks. There's enough bad history with westerners fucking around with Africa that you can't really blame them for being predisposed to being suspicious at what doctor's are doing. Of course, that doesn't mean the situation is great for all concerned - it just isn't that surprising giving the environment.
Anyone trying to breach a quarantine center should be shot.
Unfortunately this is the sort of event that can make this virus' infections rates soar beyond control.
Because of a small group of idiots the majority will suffer needlessly.
I see some say "fuck 'em" and some have this attitude of not our problem - for lack of understanding that their problem can become our problem. If that's not a case for a reason to put more resources into education I don't know what is.
It's everyone's problem when some person in Liberia, is now scared for his life and flees without knowing he is carrying the virus. In 48 hours he might be sitting next to you on a bus! -what are you going to say when people start bleeding their internal organs out of all orifices?
You want to give out Darwin awards? start by considering you may get one yourself with such an attitude.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
it's just scare mongering for the upcoming Ebola vaccine
Do you really believe that a culture/tribe/village/group can develop such stupid rituals to deal with the dead and diseased and survive to this day? Do you really think that `primitive' people don't know anything about quarantaine or other measures against infectious diseases? Do you really think that a group of people that has just seen some of their own die in a horrible way will quietly slink off to meditate on their sins rather than seek (quite possibly rough) justice for this? But you're not one of the RFSP, right?
It is quite possible that this attack was stupid, but clearly we're not getting all of the story here.
Hate on the Bubonic plague. I mean after all it's the black death of white people! :)
Sounds as though it is time to quote Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like [sniffing, pondering] victory. Someday this war is going to end."
They don't think it's Ebola but they want to be sure:
http://www.kob.com/article/sto...
And this is just ONE person! Even if this one is not the one, statistics says a plane or boat full of carriers is coming sooner or later. May be time to stock up on Tyvek suits and bleach, for starters...
Call it eBola and we'll have another bubble
He da man who can take care of this problem.
For our sins we may be punished in the next life. For our stupidity we shall certainly suffer in this one (Schopenhauer).
These people will be able to test both parts quite soon.
I'd say at least half of them have some kind of scene where panicked/ignorant locals ignore the medical experts and raid the quarantine centers. And usually it's one of those turning point moments in the narrative with disastrous consequences.
You live in a country with a wildly corrupt government that repeatedly lies to you and regularly unburdens you of your basic human rights. Then one day, officials from this government force you and everyone you know at gunpoint to submit to a series of "tests." You notice that, all of a sudden, many of the most social and/or eldest (therefore vocal, therefore most likely to be community leaders/government dissenters) among you go missing and later mysteriously die. For good measure, a number of kids randomly disappear and die as well. The ones that survive tell horrible stories about the dismal conditions in which they were held, where they were injected with any number of things and only a few days later, became sick . The government (the same government that lies to you and considers you subhuman) tells you that the cultural practices that have been with your group for a thousand years are all of a sudden, just now, for reasons they don't have time to explain, causing you to get sick and die, and it just happens to selectively be wiping out the kids and the community leaders.
If it were the US doing this, I conjecture that at the very least, this comment thread would have a radically different tone. Less "these guys are idiots," and more "these guys are heroes." What we're witnessing in Liberia is a tragic consequence of a corrupt power structure attempting, maybe for the first time, to legitimately help people that it has previously subjugated. The whole thing smacks of people acting in their and their community's best interests based on many many previous data points telling them government=bad, therefore avoid government. Unfortunately, it takes time to build a relationship of trust between a government and its citizens, and in the face of the calamity that Liberia is confronting, neither the government nor its citizens have any time to spare.
Isn't this story basically the plot from Tom Clancy's Executive Order?
Okay... you are an uneducated person who's never had any experience with modern medicine before (Liberia has 250 doctors (and heavens knows if their training is any good) to serve the entire country of 4M people; the US has 834,000 doctors to serve about 100x the people.), your family member is ill, and a bunch of people in really scary outfits right out of a Hollywood movie just grabbed your sick family member and loaded him/her in a truck to a quarantine facility. You are naturally suspicious because lots of people have died in your village before, and the authorities (who have a well-earned reputation for being a bunch of useless kleptocrats) have never given a flying *bleep!* before. But you certainly do have plenty of experience with the thugs hauling your family members off in trucks, never to be seen again.
Deciding you want your family member back home is not an unreasonable thing to want to do, in the face of whatever sinister purposes you think the central government might have in mind.
That said, I'm sure more than enough of them, like many rioters and protestors everywhere, were there for the looting. Because nothing says "Fight The Man" like taking a bunch of swag.
Because otherwise I don't see the relevance of this story for a tech news web site.
"Those who can read and afford stuff, probably stay as far away from the ebola facility as possible."
So you mean whites. Might as well just come out and say it rather than trying to mask it.
It's everyone's problem and Africa is not doing anything to stop it. Truth is they have been governing themselves for a long time by now and they aren't able to do shit without killing each other and spreading diseases all over the world.
Are they genetically inferior or just culturally inferior, maybe they are just unlucky? I don't give a fucking shit because it doesn't matter.
Close all borders to and from countries with confirmed cases. Shoot down any plane and bomb any road vehicle infringing it. Instate a quarantine for citizens and visitors to countries allowing flight or fast travel from and to any of these countries.
As for the affected countries, they should block all access to cities in a similar way.
BTW If/when this shit or another monkey-rapist disease spreads to my country I'll be happy if the same measures are applied to my city instead of letting it kill everyone. Being isolated with few resources in a diseased community sucks, but do you know what sucks more than that? Being dead because nobody did anything.
what are you going to say when people start bleeding their internal organs out of all orifices?
"Ewwwwww!"
Apart from being a terrible event this is also an excellent demonstration of why education matters. A rudimentary understanding of the biological causes of disease would have told these people why their actions were extremely dangerous for themselves and their families (and likewise why traditional practices like washing the dead are also a really, really bad idea).
I hope that people who deride scientific knowledge and education in favour of religious quackery and ignorance in the west are paying close attention.
"and only a few days later, became sick" usually by the time the people are given in the hand of governmental instiuttion theyalready have been sick. Furhtermore a lot of people died at home and at some village a sizable percentage died (50 out of 500 persons was in article recently). So it is not as if people were taken and became sick afterward.
Africa's amazing level of civility is going to screw this up for everyone. I would immediately send UN armed troops there to guard it 24/7 and stop all flights and trains and buses out of Liberia as a precaution and punishment.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The 30 patients taken and the contaminated materials are now in some field being killed and or and burned. It's not unthinkable that people in the government or just scared individuals will "purge" the area of all infected individuals. I would suspect this more than anything since the areas are prone to religious superstition. They could see this as punishment and the only way to fix the solution is cleansing of the infected.
1) I imagine they do not realise the significance of this particular disease. Disease is far more prevalent there than it is here, why is this one special? How will you convince them that this is so?
2) The familiies are literally being seperated with a very high chance of never seeing their loved ones alive.
I'm sure there are other contributing factors, but do you honestly belive that you would act differently in the same circumstances?
Where is moderation: -1 False?
People who don't believe in Ebola are removed from the gene pool.
Won't do any good. Producing more stupid people is relatively easy. You simply don't educate them.
that Darwin was right.
Furthermore, people in 1st world countries are also less inclined to break people out of quarantine...
Do you have any evidence of this? There hasn't been a major contagious outbreak in most of the west for decades. I predict people well break themselves and their families out of quarantine in an attempt to "save them".
... what we're dealing with here is an ignorant, uneducated population most of whom don't have access to information ...
For some reason people like to equate "ignorance" with the lack of access to information --- which I think is patently false
Those who are ignorant are ignorant not because they did not have any access to information - they DO !!
It is that the information that they rely on is false !!
who don't realize that there isn't a "them" in the Ebola battle, it's "us" that's threatened. If we hadn't been so self-centered and had worked to improve basic education and healthcare where people need it, we wouldn't be facing an epidemic that could find itself in "our" cities. Darwin awards go to the narcissistic, for sure.
Naw, for the equipped Slashdotter, you will want one of these bad boys.
Gotta cover all your bases.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Perhaps someone actually wanted a sample of ebola to use elsewhere...
I think motive is rather obvious. I would discard the idea of superstition and the like.
1) Liberia is poor, like really poor.
2) Drugs are expensive, like really expensive.
3) Drugs in a quarantine zone for a deadly epidemic are in high demand, very high demand.
4) Profit!
I think someone decided that the personal risk was worth it.
I mean, what are these communists doctors doing giving all these profitable drugs to poor people for free. Why not let the invisible hand of the market allow people to sell the expensive drugs to unaffected but scared wealthy people in the area? I mean the rising tide raises all boats, and the trickle down effect, and whatever and the like right?
At least that land of misery will receive some cleansment. As Russians say: Us too many...!
I'm sure they were part of it in some way.
Where is General Butt naked when you need him?
From their perspective, this whole thing is absurd. The 'sick' people in this place 'clinic' have mattress and sheets and get taken care of while they have so much less and not even cared for. So they see this as bullshit white people stuff. The latter have so much that stealing from them is not big deal.
Unless you have the support of to the local authority (church/drug lord/shaman), you can't stop such actions.
It is a totally different world. Things that seem so obvious and logical to you and I just can't be applied there.
Well I didn't know that, and I am supposedly smart and well education with resources available to me to even easily find that out. All I know is that some doctors have already tried an alternative experimental drug, and that the UN recently authorized the use of experimental drugs that haven't gone though human trials yet. Though it is probably too soon for large volumes of said experimental drugs to be available (or maybe not, this is an emergency).
Nobody said criminals are smart, only that they are sometimes desperate individuals.
Naw, for the equipped Slashdotter, you will want one of these bad boys.
Gotta cover all your bases.
Just what you need for any apocalyptic scenario. It has heat resistant layers, a bulletproof layer, and a layer for make you comfortable in your worktime.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
These thieves belong on the World's Dumbest Criminals TV show. It's very hard to understand some nut breaking in your home and finding powder in that fancy vase and trying to snort your grandmother's ashes. But i do think people screwed up enough to break in a medical lab and steal deadly plague materials while taking zero precautions to keep it contained may top the charts for stupidity. It is rather like Larry, Moe and Curly with a severe suicidal and homicidal personality changes. On the other hand Ebola widely distributed in the Arab nations might be the way to stop all the fussing.
When will people ever learn!
According to a report I saw (following a link from the Drudge Report yesterday):
1)The early symptoms of Ebola are very similar to those of Malaria, to the point that people with malaria are being thrown into the ebola quarantine camps. (Also: Many of the people who HAVE ebola, or their support network, may THINK thay have malaria.)
2) The camp ran out of gloves and other protective gear - leaving the staff and patients unable to clean up after and avoid contagin from the body fluid spillages of the actual ebola patients. Come in with SUSPECTED ebola and you soon have ebola for sure.
That, alone, would make it rational for someone not yet sick or mildly sick, incarcerated in the camp, to break out and hide out.
3) Stories are circulating in the area that ebola is a myth and the oppressive government factions/first worlders/take your pick of enemies are using this story, plus the odd malaria case here and there, to create death camps and commit genocide in a way that gives them plausible deniability.
That idea, of course, can lead to mass action by some of the local population to "rescue" their fellows and sabotage the camps.
The whole think is a real-world example of the cautionary tale "The Boy who Cried 'Wolf'". When the officials lie to the people for their own benefit, repeatedly, until the people come to expect it, the people won't believe them when they are telling the truth about a real threat - and all suffer.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That believes raping a virgin can cure you of AIDS.........
Set the bar low. Very low.
The jobs normally pay enough that the worker has to be a kid living at home or an adult subsidizing his/her income with a subscription to government benefits.
How is it you test for violence and impulsiveness? he wondered aloud.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The West will begin mining the harbors and cratering the airports so
nothing can leave. They will landmine the jungle. Anything that
leaves is sunk or shot. Snipers sans Frontieres. Quarantine with
extreme prejudice.
Civilization is a choice. Make it. Soon.
Or don't, and the population goes back to the under-billion level
before the West started feeding everyone...
Ebola... gets rid of african parasites like magic!
Looting isolation ward... game over.
Darwin awards... nothing else to say.