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CDC: Ebola Cases Could Reach 1.4 Million In 4 Months
mdsolar sends this report from the NY Times:
Yet another set of ominous projections about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa was released Tuesday, in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that gave worst- and best-case estimates for Liberia and Sierra Leone based on computer modeling. In the worst-case scenario, Liberia and Sierra Leone could have 21,000 cases of Ebola by Sept. 30 and 1.4 million cases by Jan. 20 if the disease keeps spreading without effective methods to contain it. These figures take into account the fact that many cases go undetected, and estimate that there are actually 2.5 times as many as reported. ... In the best-case model — which assumes that the dead are buried safely and that 70 percent of patients are treated in settings that reduce the risk of transmission — the epidemic in both countries would be 'almost ended' by Jan. 20, the report said.
Some Hollywood-style end of world scenario right here.
There are only 4M inhabitants in Liberia, so 1.5M means half of them dead. There will be "unusual effects" of such a situation, namely that everybody will run for their life to get out of the country (and into the neighbor countries). I'd be interested if this is included in the simulation.
In the worst-case scenario, Liberia and Sierra Leone could have 21,000 cases of Ebola by Sept. 30 and 1.4 million cases by Jan. 20
ok, so considering that Sep 30 is one week away, I think it's unlikely that the disease will spread four-fold in that tiem.
Because that just means the virus has a longer horizon to hop somewhere else.. like Mumbai.
"Please send aid money to Africa where Africans (not foreigners) can deal with it themselves."
Hell no.
You want our help/money? We control how it gets spent.
You want control? Earn the money yourself.
Considering there was the recent killings of doctors who were trying to educate the unwashed masses on how to prevent or mitigate the spread of Ebola, along with the other attacks and general mistrust of health workers, letting the disease spread might not be a bad option.
Those who don't want to listen to experts die off, those who are too panicked to touch the dead bodies live, and things work themselves out.
Cruel? Maybe. But when you're already putting your life on the line trying to help people and those people attack and kill you, sometimes you have to make the tough decision to let nature take its course.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
1.2 million? I call BS. When things start to look really bad people will voluntarily stay at home, dramatically reducing transmission. And this is before we consider government action. This already happened during the swine flu scare in Mexico where everyone stayed home for a week and then on top of that the government ordered restaurants, schools and other businesses closed.
Many of these places have everyone bathing and drinking from the same water supply, and there are cultural practices like touching the dead before burial. Additionally there is a lack of trust in western medical practices.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
From my experience, CDC estimates should be taken with a grain of salt, as they often seem dubious at best.
Then again, I suppose that should apply to any estimate, especially when the estimator is using ceteris paribus in order to reach a certain conclusion...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Assuming that the dead are buried safely just isn't going to happen. When you have that many people dying, nobody's going to be in a rush to join them by burying them. "Let someone else do it." And eventually, there just won't be enough people to bury all the dead even if they were willing. They'd be spending way too much time meeting their own basic survival needs in countries that are falling apart.
Nobody's going to be running to the local clinic for examination when they know that they can't even be fed there if it's confirmed they have the disease - and that's already happening.
The patient escaped from Monrovia's Elwa hospital, which last month was so crowded with cases of the deadly disease that it had to turn people away.
One woman at the scene said: "The patients are hungry, they are starving. No food, no water.
More and more, it appears the "best-case" scenario is that the disease burns itself out while being contained to only a few countries. And please keep in mind, even the UN agrees that we're going to see more of this once more diseases gain antibiotic resistance.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Please write to your governments and have these sorts of people punished. Please send aid money to Africa where Africans (not foreigners) can deal with it themselves.
Wait, are you a Prince? Do you need my help to reclaim your inheritance?
At lot of the mistrust of outside people in those regions is very, very well deserved. Even when it's their own "government".
And your sentiment isn't really a new idea it's pretty much how the world has treated most of Africa for a really long time, the same Africa most of the world has exploited for long periods at one time or another.
The death toll of the disease is 80% of all persons infected.
While the disease increases exponentially, the ratio of infected / dead is around 55% currently. But that still means that 80% will be dead three weeks later.
Source: http://healthmap.org/site/dise...
From The Onion, America's Finest News Source:
http://www.theonion.com/articl...
Your concern for micromanagement by your own country's unelected bureaucrats is more important to you than the lives of literally millions of people.
I don't care how justified you think you are, but right now you're getting up there with "voting national socialist in 1935" levels of awful.
Nah, he's merely pointing out that Africans who "know how African diseases work" is obviously not working, and that throwing money at a solution that doesn't work will not turn it into one that does.
I can't find a proper reference at the moment but, I have heard several comments about the funerary practices in some of the affected areas. Some cultures still practice ritual washing as part of the burial process. If this is in fact the case, it's a very bad news when pared with a bug like Ebola. While much of what I've read above seems to be hype or "fear of the white man" syndrome (full, disclosure, yes I'm white) the effects of Ebola are horrible bordering on the horrific and it has generated a lot of fear. Marry that with areas that aren't comfortable with modern (western) medicine and see that the treatment, which is mostly comfort measures and preventing the spread of the disease, doesn't cure anyone and, well let your imagination run a bit and you should be able to paint a pretty picture.
"Please send aid money to Africa where Africans (not foreigners) can deal with it themselves. They know how African diseases work and can fight it much more effectively than westerners can."
I can't tell if you are trolling or just ignorant. Half the problem is the villagers think the CDC and WHO are the ones causing them to die. They run away and hide with their families, who then contract the virus, repeat.
"They don't cure anyone."
There is no "cure" for Ebola. Keeping the patient hydrated help, though.
"They only keep them away from their families"
The doctors keep the INFECTIOUS patients away from healthy people? How dare they! It's like they don't want the disease to spread, or something!!
"Instead of quarantines, we need to treat it at a regular hospital and treat the people with respect." ...which apparently means 'let them catch it from their sick relatives, and bring it home'.
I just read the Excel model that you can download as part of the article:
- It uses the parameters of previous Ebola outbreaks as a base.
These outbreaks happened in remote and sparsely populated regions. In contrast, the outbreak in Monrovia has hit slum like neighborhoods. This is a completely different base.
- The Excel model uses a "flat" model of population that doesn't take into account geographical distribution.
Infectiousness in slums will be a lot higher than in previous outbreaks because of the density of population.
- The model talks about keeping 70% of the infected population at home or in hospitals in order to reduce the infection rate. This way, the epidemic will slowly decrease.
However, there is widespread fear of hospitalization and the mortality rate of Ebola (80%) basically means that people will distrust any doctors, hospital etc. So I can't see how this should happen.
- In the history of Ebola there was no outbreak of this size.
In the past there were plenty (relatively) of workers per case. But now patients will outnumber the helpers.
Summary: I can't see why the exponential development could be slowed down as indicated in the model...
That might be an option if their governments hadn't shown repeatedly in the past that they are going to take the money for themselves.
Instead of quarantines, we need to treat it at a regular hospital and treat the people with respect.
There's a great idea, let's put a highly infectious virus with a 50% kill rate into a hospital and not quarantine those known to be infected.
That's simply insane.
Yes, the whole situation on the ground is fucked up, but not recognizing that the ONLY way to contain Ebola is by quarantine is going to make things worse not better.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Your concern for micromanagement by your own country's unelected bureaucrats is more important to you than the lives of literally millions of people.
Sierra Leone, Liberia, and some other West African countries have not proved to be reliable to apply aid money where it's intended.
There are, indeed, African countries to be trusted, even in West Africa, but last time I checked Ebola had not spread to Cape Verde.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
AC, there are several things going on at once, which are complicating the issue. One is that clean and running water is difficult to find, so there isn't enough hand-sanitizing. Another problem is that local customs often demand a hands-on funeral ceremony, as many cultures going back to the ancient Greeks commonly have. Yet another problem is the comparatively long incubation time of the disease, during which symptoms are mild or undetectable. Still another factor is that travel between porous borders has permitted a great number of people to become exposed at funeral ceremonies, then to travel back home without visible symptoms. Healthy-looking people are far more likely to talk or bribe their way into and out of restricted areas, though in at least one case, force was also used to effect a break-out from a hospital.
Disease detectives hot on the heels of the infected funeral attendees have likely been showing up in villages before the infected themselves begin to show symptoms, thus leading to an easy confusion of cause and effect and false correlation (something to which (Saddam Hussein) Americans (Osama bin Laden) are particularly vulnerable).
The locals are lied to and taken advantage of by everyone from their corrupt and bribe-able local officials to the corrupt multinational corporations which are offloading the area's mineral and ecological wealth before the people can gain enough political power to prevent it. From their point of view, white folks are showing up, people are crashing out in bloody messes all around town within hours or days of their arrival, and the next village over shot at some aid workers and haven't had a single outbreak. What would you think, if the lives of your children depended on it, and The Man had never once done you right?
Your assumption that the unelected bureaucrats in an African kleptocracy are more responsive to the needs of millions of people (who aren't related to them) is...amusing.
And I don't care how justified you think you are....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Touching the dead can give you Ebola? That seems like an extremely easy to transmit disease. I'm surprised a worldwide Ebola apocalypse hasn't occurred already.
Or by "touching the dead" do you mean people drinking the dead man's embalming fluids?
... you should be able to paint a horrible picture.
(Sorry, I couldn't help doing that!) :-]
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
What "regular hospital"? Part of the problem is that there is NO infrastructure. Zmap is, unfortunately, hit or miss. Even despite the partial success of Zmap there isn't enough production of it since it was experimental at the beginning & even if there were enough and the distribution was there the patients would still have to rely on western doctors to get treatment.
Yeah, maybe Liberia, but I've never heard of Guinea having that problem.
It's not airborne, you do have to come into direct contact with it.
The "fun" part is it's not like you have to ingest it - literally touch is all it takes.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Touching the dead can give you Ebola? That seems like an extremely easy to transmit disease. I'm surprised a worldwide Ebola apocalypse hasn't occurred already.
Touching people who died from Ebola can give you Ebola, yes. It's an infectious disease that spreads via bodily fluids and causes bleeding. Since someone who died from it probably bled quite a lot, that means they're essentially covered in infected and infectious blood.
Additionally there is a lack of trust in western medical practices.
That's not the only problem.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Ebola is young in humans. There is no immunity to it like we have some immunity to Flu and various other diseases.
It being young is scary in other ways.
Before now, the virus had about 500 hosts in which to evolve a more spreadable version, and did not.
Even if it mutates to a version that 'only' kills 10% of the population, the truly scary thing is not global Ebola.
In western countries, Ebola in its current form would be a few cases per 'patient zero' coming from outside.
The scary thing is if it evolves, and becomes arielly transmissable.
That way lie hundreds of millions of deaths.
The New York Times Opines:
Seastead this.
Why is this comment above me rated "Insightful"? It's the most egregiously hateful thing I have read in months. The U.S. has a cure and you wouldn't share that with the folks that need it unless there was profit involved? What kind of monster are you and those that voted you up?
Your concern for micromanagement by your own country's unelected bureaucrats is more important to you than the lives of literally millions of people.
Sierra Leone, Liberia, and some other West African countries have not proved to be reliable to apply aid money where it's intended.
There are, indeed, African countries to be trusted, even in West Africa, but last time I checked Ebola had not spread to Cape Verde.
Oh, as opposed to the Iraqi and Afghan ass clowns that were given billions and get military and economic aid from the U.S., still!?!?! Maybe if there were terrorists in these African nations they'd get some aid, is that what you're going for, or is it even more racist than that?
Late-stage Ebola typically involves skin lesions. So any contact with the dead means you're touching bodily fluids.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It feels like the international medical community (or really governments) are not stepping up with timely health care and precautions.
How long until it's here?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
p>I don't care how justified you think you are, but right now you're getting up there with "voting national socialist in 1935" levels of awful.
And I don't care how you think Americans should spend their money, especially when you resort to namecalling and are too ignorant to recognize Godwin's Law, even when it's humping your pantleg.
Maybe we should contact the government of Nigeria and offer them millions in aid, but we need a little seed money to free it up from the bank account it's currently in.
As you note, the US has some experience with corrupt government embezzling aid money. Once bitten, twice shy, and all.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Ebola is 100% transmissable to humans, as is. And no, the disease is not hard to catch. As a matter of fact it's as easy to catch as the common cold. http://www.who.int/mediacentre...
There's a great idea, let's put a highly infectious virus with a 50% kill rate into a hospital and not quarantine those known to be infected.
And note that even in the US, about 75,000 people a year die from infections they acquire in hospitals, and that's just pneumonia, C. difficile, MRSA, and other things much less scary that Ebola, which you can get from touching something with just a few virus particles in it. I think the people who are claiming Ebola is only a problem in Africa due to ignorance and substandard medical care are fooling themselves: if it gets to the U.S., the hospitals here are unlikely to perform up to the standards required.
Plus, every new infection means more chances for Ebola to mutate, possibly into an airborne form.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
And before someone points it out, yes, I'm aware the mortality rate from Ebola isn't comparable to the flu, but the overblown hype about it stands.
Plus, every new infection means more chances for Ebola to mutate, possibly into an airborne form.
But then we could start using fuel-air bombs on civilians! Hours of fun for the whole family.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Ding ding ding, we have a winner.
But how many people in the U.S. acquire HIV or AIDS in a hospital setting? That's a much better comparison for how Ebola is transmitted.
But how many people in the U.S. acquire HIV or AIDS in a hospital setting? That's a much better comparison for how Ebola is transmitted.
Not at all. HIV is relatively hard to catch for various reasons. Ebola you can get from a cough or sneeze from an infected person (a small bit of saliva doesn't count as "airborne," apparently), or by touching something an infected person sweated on. It only takes a few virus particles. I read about reporters given a tour of a hospital in one infected country, and they were told "Don't touch the walls!"
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
According to the article "How Nigeria has succeeded in containing Ebola", there's hope that Ebola can be contained. The article tells how leaders including Babatunde Fashola, governor of Lagos state, have put procedures in place to stop the spread of Ebola. Nigeria is a large, populous country. But it has had only 21 cases of Ebola, and nine deaths.
And this is in a country with lots of internal problems. I really hope Boko Haram doesn't mess up their efforts.
If we are to speak bluntly: So you hate whitey and everything about him and that he does and want him to GTFO. But you still want him to give you a cure* before he goes. A cure* that he developed. For a disease which doesn't exist in whitey-land and didn't (as far as anyone knows) exist anywhere before the mid 20th century. One which he developed even though doing what you want and leaving, never to return, would be oh so much easier. Ooohhh-kay then, this seems totally reasonable!
*whereby we acknowledge that by "cure" you misspoke and meant to say "highly experimental treatment that may work and may or may not be scalable which they tried on humans far in advance of the normal testing cycle because shit, if I had ebola I'd let them inject me with whatever, too."
If we started air-dropping Ebola victims over Chinese cities.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
The callousness here is more than I can deal with, so I will deal with trivia. Look up the death of Arias, IIRC, or the plague of Athens. Ebola, like AIDS, existed long ago (AIDS cite: The Tipping Point, note about research showing AIDS-type deaths in Napoleonic era)
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Instead of quarantines, we need to treat it at a regular hospital and treat the people with respect.
There's a great idea, let's put a highly infectious virus with a 50% kill rate into a hospital and not quarantine those known to be infected.
That's simply insane.
Yes, the whole situation on the ground is fucked up, but not recognizing that the ONLY way to contain Ebola is by quarantine is going to make things worse not better.
What other way do you propose?
The problem is, quarantine is the only effective way we know to limit the spread of the disease. Even Genocide does not work as you cant kill everyone at once. A few will get away and infect a new population centre. Knowing they're going to be shot instead of treated is going to be a huge incentive for them to hide rather than seek help and they will hide in a well populated area.
Another poster foolishly linked to an fear mongering article how infections in hospitals killed 75,000 people but neglected to mention how many people die from infections that aren't from a hospital. Hospitals are always going to be hotbeds of illnesses because that's where people go when they have them but without a place to revive proper treatment, you have much higher rates of infection, deaths from infection and re-infection. Ultimately, most people contract infections from their own actions (how many people leave a bathroom without washing their hands, do you want gastro, because that is how you get gastro).
And this is the problem Africa has with Ebola and other diseases that prevents them from becoming pandemics in the west. They simply dont have the medical facilities or public services to treat a mass infection. There was a suspected case of Ebola in Australia a few weeks back, the patient was immediately quarantined and police and medical services began tracking down everyone he came in contact with. In the end the patient was cleared of Ebola but the point is, emergency services immediately sprung into action on a single suspected case. In Africa, cases go ignored or undiagnosed until there are dozens of confirmed cases.
tl;dr
Quarantine is about keeping infected patients away from an uninfected population. It's very difficult to do this in places without the infrastructure already in place.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If we started air-dropping Ebola victims over Chinese cities.
Air dropping seems a pretty ineffective way of spreading Ebola seeing as it's not airborne. No one in their right mind is going to start buggeringising around with a corpse that appears from nowhere. They'll call the authorities and let them deal with it. So worst case scenario is you have a few infected med techs who handled the corpse improperly and will be quarantined immediately after tests are run on the corpse.
Secondly, as soon as the first blood test comes back on the first corpse, Chinese authorities will notify people, they've got almost complete control of all media and communications, getting the message out not to touch any strange corpses that fall from the sky will be easy for them.
Beyond this, you need to keep the virus alive long enough to fly it to the destination and drop it, this means the aircrew loading the corpses are going to be most at risk and most likely to be infected (and take it home to their families if they aren't quarantined after the flight). Ebola doesn't die with the victim, but it does die, the virus is not self perpetuating without a living host.
Given that Ebola is blood borne, not air, food or water borne it makes a pretty crappy biological weapon. You'd do more damage dropping the common cold in.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
And how many people from Guinea have you spoken too in the last 5 years? Ive met several, but not met one with a good word for their government.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
How is the impending Ebola pandemic my fault, you ask? Because I have the worst luck in the whole world.
For some reason, every industry I work in suffers some sort of bizarre, unprecedented calamity. It's not something I cause directly; it just seems to happen.
My previous job involved working for the government. What could be more stable and secure than a government job? So my bad luck had to manifest and come up with something called "sequestration", never before seen in the history of the U.S. government, and boom, I was out on my ass.
Now I work in aerospace. The world is more connected than ever before, air travel is more affordable than ever before, so what could possibly go wrong? How about a global pandemic that eventually causes air travel to get shut down as a precautionary measure? It'll happen. And it'll be my rotten luck that causes it.
Back in 2000, I was working in the defense field, in a research-and-development position. The world wasn't becoming safer any time soon, so it seemed like I had a stable career. Then 9/11 happened, and military spending shifted away from R&D, and into the actual bombs, bullets, and other materiel of fighting a live war. I'm out of a job again.
I could go on, but this sort of thing has been happening to me for years.
Maybe I should go work for al-Qaeda. They won't survive a year with my bad luck bringing them down.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Rampant corruption and poverty is only part of the problem.
Botswana is widely considered the least corrupt country in Africa, and the most prosperous sub-Saharan country.
But they have been completely unable to control the AIDS epidemic, with up to a quarter of the country infected.
Botswana has gone from having one of the highest sub-Saharan life expectancies to one of the lowest.
Unhealthy habits can be very hard to change, even in a relatively prosperous and well-governed country.
Given the sad history of AIDS in Africa, it is hard to be optimistic about ebola control.
It is said that the bodies of the ebola victims are filled with ebola virus, and the bodies were buried. Isn't this akin to merely "hide" the problem, and not eliminate it?
By burying the dead bodies which are filled with the ebola virus, they are allowing the virus to flow out of the decaying bodies which were buried in the burial grounds and thus contaminate the underground waters
As there aren't a lot of tap water infrastructure available in that part of the world, many people still rely on water they obtain from rivers and from wells - and when the virus contaminate the underground water more people are going to be infected with that virus
Why can't they burn the dead bodies instead?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
They know how African diseases work and can fight it much more effectively than westerners can.
Are you saying that "Africans" (whatever that means) are not Homo Sapiens Sapiens, and are not subject to the same diseases as the rest of us?
Or are you referring to specific people, like, say, SAR president Jacob Zuma, who said that he does not worry about contracting HIV from a HIV-positive woman that he fucked, because he washed his dick afterwards?
It is not drinking embalming fluids, it is drinking the water used to wash the corpse.
And after the ritual washing the relatives drink the water used.
The problem is not only "hands-on" ceremony, but being part of the ritual drinking the water used to wash the corpse.
At least tap water --- if properly supplied --- has gone through the chlorination process
And according to WHO, chlorination kills the ebola virus
But in Africa, and in many other third world countries, especially the rural area,they take the water from the well and streams, and use it
Of course many of them do boil water before they drink it. But my point being, the water that they take from the streams / well might have been contaminated by the ebola virus, and that might become a vector for spreading the disease
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Africa has far more resources than anybody else. The problem is there is not education, infra-structure, nor industry to so speak of, nor willing to work to profit of that resources. There is no wonder why babanas are their main staple or why papayas are so easily found in the market stalls, it is because they do not need to be cared of or tended.
An African country not having a problem with corruption, badly employment money and making out of proportions claims for foreign aid as an effective cashing-in industry? Must be the joke of the year.
No, you're just plain wrong. Overpopulation is not Africa's biggest problem by a long way.
[FUCK BETA]
So... basically, all you have is stereotypes? That informs the entirety of your worldview? Sad. Real sad.
Americans, however, can't stop talking about awesomely efficient their government is...
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
No he is a government bureaucrat that wants to send his family to Disneyworld
You must mean the death of 'Arius'. Arius' death however was most likely poisoning, as there were not hundreds of other people around him that died in the same way (not contagious) - it was considered highly 'unusual'.
"If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care." --Nelson Mandela
Casteism
http://xkcd.com/605/
Simplistic extrapolation will provide you with a simplistic answer.
We worked hard for our money, maybe Africans (or any other nation)should try it.
Spoken like someone who has never left the country he lives in and only associates with people of his own economic status, i.e., an asshole. I hope you live a long and meaningless life and die alone with all your money. Just because people are poor doesn't mean they don't work hard, long hours in less than human conditions, you jerk. It means they are not paid a living wage and their "leaders" are disgusting, greedy tyrants.
Bleeding from all orifices is actually one of the less common symptoms. It's just a headline grabber.
On the WHO site, it's listed as the last of possible symptoms with language indicating that it only occurs in some patients.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
America has it's own problems and poor and suffering, we need to take care of our own FIRST.
Let the African nations start acting responsibly and pulling their act together first.
Nice how you're an even bigger asshole, so free with everyone else's money....
America has it's own problems and poor and suffering, we need to take care of our own FIRST.
Let the African nations start acting responsibly and pulling their act together first.
Nice how you're an even bigger asshole, so free with everyone else's money....
I won't argue that we should be taking care of our own problems, but to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others and to ignore a disease that has the potential to spread across the world and decimate the world's population (including the U.S.) is not only un-American it's just downright immoral. And btw, it's OUR money and we all get a say in how it's spent, whether you like it or not! Now, I'm done with you. Go back to your selfish interests and myopic nationalism.
It got nothing of sad. I lived in Africa for almost a decade, and I do not enjoy being political correctness ad naseaum. Donation, whether in the 1st or the 3rd world, are an entirely industry of their own.
Or are you going to claim that there are not large numbers of neo-Nazi fuckwits in America? Are you going to claim that on Slashdot? In a thread sparked by an (American, judging from his comments) neo-Nazi fuckwit?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Closer to 70% than 50%, in this West African outbreak (the Congolese outbreak seems a less virulent strain).
Can we build the hospitals first? The literally do not exist.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
When the Ebola outbreak spread to Nigeria, we enacted our ship's policy (decided some years previously) of not accepting any staff on board originating from that country or travelling through it. We're leaving our own colleagues and friends (two of the people I've been supervising for the last year included) in that country and will not be hiring them again until the outbreak is over. Totally cold-hearted and callous.
With 180 people on board the ship, we are not going to take the risk of letting that disease on board. We have no illusions about how fast disease can spread aboard, despite the best efforts of our medical staff. If that means that we've got to be callous, callous we will be.
We've already lost several days of operations because of delays in sourcing replacement staff. That's cost us (western operating companies) several million dollars - I don't have the exact figures because I'm not on the vessel at the moment.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Blah blah blah.
You don't get a say in how the government spends your money. Otherwise this would be a VERY different country.
And note that even in the US, about 75,000 people a year die from infections they acquire in hospitals
How many people die driving each year? No one is afraid of driving.
If you ask medically trained people (doctors, nurses, etc..) where they would want to be cared for in the case of an outbreak, they are all going to say "in a hospital".
You are right that some of the new highly resistant stuff caught (and continues to catch) some hospitals off guard. But Hospitals are modifying their procedures as needed to deal with those new threats.
In the case of known, highly deadly, contagious diseases, hospitals already have procedures in place. I would feel much safer in a modern US hospital vs being out on the street during an outbreak.
Plus, every new infection means more chances for Ebola to mutate, possibly into an airborne form.
Technically...kinda true. But that is Hollywood scaremongering. Think of all the contagious diseases currently known right now. How many can you name that became airborne in the last 100 years? If you count the man-made influenza virus, specifically crafted to be airborne, then I think the answer is 1, right?
Quarantine and Hospital are not mutually exclusive.
I can't speak for the level of professionalism in hospitals in any African countries, but if Ebola broke out in a big way in the US, quarantines inside hospitals would be the best and safest way to help and contain the infected.
Hospitals have well documented, practiced, quarantine procedures. I worked in IT for a hospital years back. Even the IT folks got to participate in practice drills on things like natural disasters and outbreaks. For instance, my job during one practice, was helping to keep the media out of quarantine areas. I stood in the parking lot, radioing-in to security if I saw any people climbing fences or otherwise trying to bypass checkpoints.
But Hospitals are modifying their procedures as needed to deal with those new threats.
The Dallas hospital with the Ebola patient had recently been trained for Ebola, but a guy shows up from Liberia and they sent him home with antibiotics for two days before he came back and they realized what he had. This does not reassure me.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot