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Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola
Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to have been diagnosed in the U.S. with Ebola, and who subsequently died of the disease, was treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. Now, in a second diagnosis for the U.S, an unidentified health-care worker from the hospital has tested positive for Ebola as well. According to the linked Reuters story, Texas officials did not identify the worker or give any details about the person, but CNN said it was a woman nurse.
The worker was wearing full protective gear when in contact with Duncan, Texas Health Resources chief clinical officer Dan Varga told a news conference.
"We are very concerned," Varga said. "We don't have a full analysis of all of the care. We are going through that right now."
...
The worker was self-monitoring and has not worked during the last two days, Varga said.
The worker was taking their own temperature twice a day and, as a result of the monitoring, the worker informed the hospital of a fever and was isolated immediately upon their arrival, the hospital said in a statement.
(Also covered by the Associated Press, as carried by the Boston Globe, which notes that "If the preliminary diagnosis is confirmed, it would be the first known case of the disease being contracted or transmitted in the U.S.")
well no, I bet a dollar there was a tear in his suit. Simplest explanation is always right.
One thing these outbreaks in Europe and the US show - we don't know enough about Ebola.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
We have robots for ridding explosive ordinance. Considering the humber of healthcare workers that contracted this disease so far, hopefully some remotely controlled robot doctor/nurses would help further quarantine the situation.
We are far from autonomous humanoid robots, but since this isn't a labor saving measure, it should be much easier, as they are rather more like walking drones, how far is current tech from making this possible?
USA Records Its Second Ebola Case
http://www.mobloaded.com/usa-records-second-ebola-case.html
Probably didn't take it off correctly.
...than they're letting on.
I understand though that admitting this would cause a panic, especially since there is no working vaccine. But it's beginning to look like the "direct contact with bodily fluids only." thing is not entirely true. Unless the amount of fluids needed is small enough to be transmitted via a sneeze, cough or something similar.
Oh dear god lets get as sensational and stupid as possible. If this disease had gone airborne there would be a LOT more cases than 2. You were bound to have one or two extra cases from direct contact with the original case in Texas, thats not that surprising. What would be surprising is if someone who was COMPLETELY unrelated and unconnected to the health workers in Africa fighting the outbreak caught the virus, but that hasn't happened and won't happen so long as hospitals containing the currently infected follow the best practices. The media is trying to make more out of this than there actually is. Stop adding to the fear machine slashdot. I'd say that sort of thing was below you but we all know you've sunk to epic lows as of late. This website is only a shadow of its former self. A shadow that apparently has lost the ability to spell and grammar check their posts (Or even do simple proofreads). Often times stories submitted to slashdot are put on the front page without looking it over and correcting spelling/grammar errors. And if the people who filter the submissions can't even be bothered to look for basic spelling errors how can we expect them to vet stories to be sure they were actually factual in nature.
"Human infections caused by Ebola-Reston virus in the US in 1990"
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd...
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Yeah. Pigs and monkeys. And in the US and Philippines. Enjoy your day!
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
But last week it was reported that Sgt. Michael Monning contracted ebola while trying to get the quarantine order signed.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/10/08/1737237/texas-ebola-patient-dies
Was the diagnosis of Sgt. Monning ever confirmed? Did the Boston Globe just forget to count him?
Does anyone know how the virus can penetrate a hermetically sealed suit?
The fact that the nurse in Spain, and the one in Dallas both contracted the disease despite wearing full protective gear - and in full knowledge that the patient was infectious - is pretty scarey. You have to imagine that both of those people were fully aware of how dangerous the situation was and were doing their very best to avoid doing anything to compromise their own safety. Clearly we either need better suits or better training, or some kind of a 'buddy system' where two people watch each other to ensure that they don't accidentally do something wrong.
There was a piece on NPR a few days ago that said that the Doctors Without Borders people use a buddy system like this - and despite having hundreds of people on the ground in Africa for a month or more, have only had three staff infections.
Without some improved level of protection, asking doctors and nurses to expose themselves to a disease with a 70% mortality rate (latest WHO estimate...up from 60%), no immunization and no known cure, is asking a lot. Clearly we aren't going to be able to make a vaccine or a cure in any reasonable timescale - so we really need to be working hard to improve protection. The idea of using robots for at least some of the jobs is interesting - but probably impractical for all but the simplest tasks.
We know that this disease can spread exponentially the "base reproduction" figure (the number of people who catch the disease from one infected person) is between 1.7 and 2.3, and it takes 2 to 3 weeks for the infected person to develop symptoms and pass it on. So there is a potential for the disease to double every 3 weeks. We have just a couple of victims in the USA right now, so in a year, we could have a million victims and 700,000 deaths. Clearly, we have to reduce that base reproduction number below 1.0 - but if...with proper protection gear and highly aware workers...both the Spanish and Dallas initial cases were able to spread to one additional victim, we're clearly not going to get anywhere close to a 1.0 rate anytime soon.
Its easy to understand why people who know that they have either contracted this virus or know that they are at high risk due to contact would lie about this. Who wants to spend the rest of their probable short life quarantined? That puts the responsibility squarely on travel checkpoints such as customs and the governments to police the freedom that potential hosts for ebola will ultimately chose to protect for their own selve's sake because it is also easy to understand that once a person has contracted this deadly virus, that person will be less likely to be concerned for the general safety of everyone else..
Because panic is always a good rational response.
We now have two cases of Ebola being contracted by health care workers in developed nations (Spain, USA), plus the many workers who have contracted it while working with patients in the affected African nations. One wonders if the pool of health care workers willing to work with these patients will start to dwindle and whether the CDC call for calm is more direct at those workers than the general public.
I never understood why the CDC scientists are drawing such a hard line on how the disease is transmitted. For example if at an early stage in lets say disease X does not get into the lungs much and then maybe even then at low concentrations, then maybe the transmission rate by air would be 1 in 200 for early stages of the disease. In looking at the data you would just have a very hard time finding this because it would show so infrequently and when it did show up you might have the situation of oh this person was living with them or treated them when they were sick so you might find an alternative explanation that was wrong.
To date, Ebola transmission has occurred only in Texas and Spain, well outside of the West African nations. If you read the news originating from the hospitals in Texas and Spain, then you'd know they were pretty seriously skull fucked. It's incompetence due to poor funding for healthcare that spreads Ebola from patient to healthcare staff.
In fact, even those West African nations have only 8000 cases after a 10 month Ebola outbreak, really not so hard to hold back the infection.
We'd an article just the other day about how we've too many postdocs in STEM fields, like chemistry and biology. Just cut a couple unimportant military projects to fund sending a few billion dollars to the ZMapp and ebola vaccine makers, so they can hire all the postdoc to make the stuff, problem solved.
War of words. Stop acting like you don't know what they're meaning, literal moron.
AIDS doesn't cause contagious blood, spit, diarrhea, and vomit to go everywhere. Ebola does.
AIDS doesn't infect health care workers who are treating patients unless there's a needlestick or sexual contact. Ebola does, with alarming frequency. Even if you DO have sex with someone with AIDS, it's not 100% that you'll get AIDS.
AIDS can't be spread by sneezing or coughing. It's possible Ebola *is*.
In terms of contagiousness, Ebola seems 10x worse. It's like saying "smallpox is no worse than chickenpox". Maybe if you put them both on a logarithmic plot and back up 50 feet!
--PM
Hospitals..... One of the most contagious places in an area. Being in an environment with the highest concentration of infected people is bad enough, but hospital employees have been known to have less than stellar hygiene. I think an entire technology product sector has had to be created just to encourage employees to wash their hands regularly.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
I know, if "you only follow procedure" this isn't supposed to be a big deal.
But what's scary is that with a very small number of patients (one) and likely a lot of attention to procedure, a healthcare worker got infected. Sure, we can blame sloppy procedure, but it happened anyway.
What would it look like though if we had a dozen patients or a hundred or a thousand? It's real easy to blame bad procedure, but what makes us think a wider outbreak would have *better* procedures and more attention to detail? We might get better at it (lack of practice may be an issue) and we might make incremental improvements to the kinds of procedures we follow but we might also get worse, lack facilities or the inevitible stress of a larger outbreak might impede vigilance, not improve it.
What scares me about Ebola is how apparently difficult it can be to contain even under ideal conditions.
Who thought that bringing Ebola patients into countries not yet infected was a smart idea? Apparently, the thought of an american dying in Africa like all those niggers was too much for someone to stand, yes? Newsflash: The virus isn't racist, it doesn't give a fuck if you're a rich american or a starving african.
We have the same in Europe. At least one health care worker here has been infected and will probably die because someone thought it's smart to bring people infected with a 90% lethality virus home for treatment. Good job.
We cannot contain these viruses, and our assumption that we in the west are better than those primitives in Africa and we will certain contain it to the hospital wards has been smashed. Like basically anyone who's not an idiot could have guessed.
(and for the mentally challenged readers: Of course my use of "niggers" and "primitives" is to outline the very hubris I criticise. If you think I'm a racist, you're projecting too much of yourself into my words...)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
He took the idiots words very accurately...
You seems upset with a idiot being called on being a idiot though....
Dear Texas,
After careful consideration, we do actually think that your secession plans make sense after all!
With Best Regards,
The Other 49 States
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
First aids and now this. Time to send you all back to africa.
Oh my, and when WASPs start getting Ebola are you going to send them all to Europe ? We don't want them.
What a divine irony it would be for native americans to be immune to this virus and everybody else no.
Do You wear that klan hood in public or just masturbate with it?
Last I saw, that debate wasn't split on party lines. Some of each party said both. Oh, but no, let's just treat every single event that ever happens like one US political party is always right and the other wrong. Because when you get elected in one party you become a god. They're not at all just people with their own opinions and ideas who make mistakes. And when you get elected to the other party, you sit around wringing your hands trying to think about how to screw up. Because they too aren't just people trying to stumble through awesome responsibilities.
Behold the brilliance of American politics. Nothing in the world is more important than choosing which group you'll worship.
When Taylor Swift has been dumped more times than X, X is laughable in an argument.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
You know, I've heard that many times now, yet Ebola continues spreading.
And it is still correct. There is no need to panic. Ebola gets WAY more press than the severity of the actual risk justifies.
Basically stop freaking the hell out. The people that can and will deal with this outbreak are dealing with it. Panic will accomplish nothing productive. Quite the opposite in fact.
So perhaps it would be better to panic and spend some serious dough to crush the outbreak while it's still possible, rather than wait for it to turn into the doomsday scenario a deadly and highly contagious disease has every potential to become?
First off, ebola is NOT "highly contagious". It's actually rather hard to get. Unless you have been in direct contact with the sweat, blood, tears, feces or other bodily fluids of a symptomatic ebola patient then you have nothing to worry about. Medical personnel who are treating such patients directly are at highest risk for obvious reasons. This is nothing shocking though it probably means someone made a mistake.
It is incorrect that "every" pathogen has to potential to become a "deadly and highly contagious disease". Go talk to an infectious disease doctor and they will tell you that the biology of most viruses and bacteria prevents them from ever becoming a threat to humans. It's actually quite hard for that to happen even in a rapidly mutating virus which ebola is not. What you are suggesting is almost as unlikely as all the air in the room suddenly deciding to be on just one side of the room because, hey, it's theoretically possible. The real world probability of most viruses and bacteria mutating into something harmful to humans is actually vanishingly small if not actually zero.
The evidence is continued exponential growth of Ebola to recent past.
Be careful of extrapolation.
So, 3 sick patients leads to 1 sick healthcare worker. That isn't a particularly good ratio. If we had 100 people with Ebola then you'd expect 33 sick healthcare workers, and then you'd expect those to go on an infect another 11, then another 4, and then one more for good measure. If you're keeping count that is 50 healthcare workers in total, from treating 100 sick people.
Extrapolation from small numbers is rarely a sensible idea.
She thinks she may have touched her face with a glove. Nobody is really sure. However, if she did that would show that Ebola is way more contagious than the CDC thinks. That implies transdermal transmission.
He wears it while blowing the grand dragon.
You are an order of magnitudes more likely to be killed by a gun than Ebola in the US....
The CDC and respective officials around the world train and plan for this stuff. Sure, some political idiocy always exists and sometimes makes problems worse (or blows them out of proportion) but overall the experts are making informed reasonable decisions. Naturally, propagandists twist anything to their own ends and the armchair critics who have way more confidence then competence (which BTW, is a big problem in the USA...go find the studies which prove it.)
Europe isn't banning relations with whole nations. If there was an easier way to screen for it, don't you think they would be doing that already?
You can't realistically quarantine whole nations as if that would actually work. It only takes 1 person sneaking bye -- and instead of thinking of that man who brought it to the USA as a massive failure, you should realize the obvious: they identified the man who brought it in rather quickly... he could have gone around spreading it until his death on some sidewalk somewhere.
It's not highly contagious and we have more deadly diseases in the USA already which don't get this kind of attention; no media reporting on those. Some are born right here as a result of industrial farming... (which is part of the reason it won't be hyped until more than a million die per year... or 1 celebrity.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
In the USA, about 630 people die every week in motor vehicle accidents. An additional 2,250,000 are injured. Nonetheless, the 24 hour news channels are going batshit because a couple of people have contracted a horrible disease.
Perhaps the smart thing to do is turn off the TV and step away from news sites. Oh, and remember to wear your seatbelt.
This thing could already be air borne. If so, we're all fucked. It's like watching a train wreck happening in ultra slow motion, and there's nothing that can stop the inevitable. Dear God I hope I'm wrong!
Life is not for the lazy.
But they said!!! absolutely 0 % chance!
Take a deep breath. You are wrong. If you're like me then you really appreciate the times when that's a good thing.
Ebola is spread via bodily fluids, and it needs an opening to the body to be contracted. There's a nurse who caught it because she touched her face after working with a patient. The face has openings to the body. Getting an infected someone's blood, urine, or saliva on a cut is a surefire way to catch it. So, it's not as communicable as Captain Trips from The Stand, but don't let that inspire complacency either.
Medical workers responding to the outbreak in Liberia have been photographed burning the belongings of ebola victims, and sanitizing with pure chlorine anything that can't be burned. Think about your sheets and mattress. You sleep on those, so it's inevitable that bodily fluids will come into contract with them. Now think of the number of people who don't wash their hands after using a public bathroom. How many people use a public bathroom and some time later rub their eyes?
So, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that with careful hygiene and quarantine with appropriate protective equipment used and all procedures properly followed, an outbreak can be prevented. The bad news is that if there is an outbreak, it's almost guaranteed to be an epidemic because people won't do what they have to in order to prevent further infections. They simply won't listen, guaranteed.
I really wish that hospitals would consult with the US Army regarding proper procedures when dealing with NBC contaminants because from what I've read, the current procedures are lacking in proper rigidity or are otherwise not followed properly. They need to start with replacing their ridiculous protective equipment. That flimsy crap is made on the cheap, sold at a stupid markup, and is simply not good enough.
..how many of us are alive, 28 weeks later.
What's all this about protective gear? Duncan's family wasn't wearing protective gear for crying out loud and they didn't come down with the disease. Something doesn't add up here.
Seastead this.
Every Ebola virus host (infected individual) is a vector for the virus to evolve. If it becomes airborne we're fucked. The world is so interconnected now that it wouldn't wipe out 50%+ of a continent, but 50%+ of the global population. We need to crush this before this virus has that chance to evolve, even if it is a low chance as the impact would be horrendous.
IMO is especially troubling as Ebola is an RNA virus. RNA viruses have short generation times and relatively high mutation rates (on the order of one point mutation or more per genome per round of replication for RNA viruses). This elevated mutation rate, when combined with natural selection, allows viruses to quickly adapt to changes in their host environment. Notable human diseases caused by RNA viruses also include SARS, influenza, and polio.
Sneaking from Africa to the US isn't exactly easy to pull off. You have to base your quarantine on geographic borders as a starting point - if you wanted to do a travel ban it would make the most sense to just ban the entire continent. Then by all means narrow it down as you get things under control on the ground. However, the current outbreak is way to big to just put a fence around it.
Just shut down all air and sea travel to the entire continent, and if other countries don't go along with it include them in the ban. Worst case you just shut down all international travel. Yes, this will cost billions of dollars, but so will an outbreak.
I think we need to get serious about this...
Check again in two months.
Blocking travel from specific countries is useless unless all,countries agree to this or we choose to block travel from any country that does not participate in the ban. Nothing would prevent someone from first flying from an infected country to a third country before flying to the US. Really the flu killed more than 50000 times the number of people this year as Ebola has. Is it really that big of an issue here? This is simply people panicking needlessly.
Leave North America to the indians... just be sure to lock the doors to the liquor stores on your way out or Geronimo will have a heap big hangover.
I'd put money on the guns still in 2 months...
Or quite easily go to the Internet and check actual history over the last 50 years in America And see just how many Americans have been killed by guns. The figure is staggeringly large.
And unfortunately, it's mostly people killing each other not morons like you accidentally shooting themselves in the face.
"we have more deadly diseases in the USA already"
Name one. I challenge you.
Have you never heard of a sneeze? Thought not. Mr. Duncan was shitting and puking rather spectacularly. Only ignorant morons would think that a person can't possibly aerosolize their body fluids.
Regardless of the merits of that suggestion... you do realize you need a passport to enter this country, and that this passport lists your country of origin and every country you've traveled to, right?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
This is Arizona. Lots of people here who came in without a passport. We have absolutely no idea what their medical history is. If we criticize this situation, we are automatically regarded by Washington as racists.
Well, yeah, that's unfortunately true. I feel for you folks in the southern states - it's a ridiculous situation. Of course, it's a little harder to walk across the border from Africa, and the incubation period fortunately precludes a long, roundabout trip.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Because it's impossible. How do you block travel from those countries? What if they all fly to Europe before changing planes and flying to the US? If the US stops letting people in with passport stamps from Africa, then African nations will stop stamping US passports (that was the solution to the Cuban embargo).
Because it's impossible, it's pointless to aspire to.
Learn to love Alaska
There are only 3,572 known comets, but there are many millions of asteroids.
Thus you are orders of magnitude more likely to be killed by an asteroid than a comet.
Does this mean you should go about cowering and worrying and fulminating about the possibility of your own "death by asteroid"?
Guns... same thing. If you're at high risk for a firearms injury, you probably not only know that, but you probably know why, and you probably know what you could do to reduce that risk. While "probably" is the modifier at hand, I'll tell you what's probably going to actually kill you:
Deaths per 100,000 by disease/accident (total is about 600 a year right now)
Note no comets, no asteroids, and no ebola.
Deaths per 100,000 by firearms (total averages out to well under 20. Location where the odds are worst? Alaska. Yes, Alaska. :)
So... 600 out of 100,000 die by disease or accident (and more than 50% of them from heart disease or cancer), and I bet it wouldn't take me more than a few seconds to find some smoker and/or over-eater in a crowd who spends a goodly amount of their time online pearl-clutching about firearms, when that's ~3.2% likely as compared to the other 96.8%, and where that 98.6% is LARGELY UP TO YOU, as is a GOOD BIT of your odds of dying by firearm.
Ah, but you just can't fix stupidity. Such is life. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A says: "This thing could already be air borne" in apparent (textual) tones of abject terror.
B responds: "Take a deep breath" in an attempt to reassure.
Oh, yeah. THAT's the way to go about it. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's clearly not that simple. We keep getting reports of well trained healthcare staff in full biohazard suits who still contract it, and they seem surprised every time. Either there's something they aren't telling us, or they genuinely don't know enough about Ebola to make such claims on exactly how it can be transmitted.
And what about the large fraction of people with dual passports?
It's almost as if the disease [was designed] to adapt to collapsing health care systems in impoverished nations.
Just think of all those resources in newly unpopulated areas. I'm sure you won't be the first to do so. I'm not at all sure anyone has acted on it, but we've seen similar things done for no reason we would consider worthy. I saw some lowlife run over a kitten on purpose last Wednesday. Never under-estimate the human potential for scumfuckery.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The difference is the flu only kills a small amount of the people it infects. So it may have killed what sounds like a lot until you look at how many were infected.
Ebola on the other hand, kills a great majority of those it infects.
Does anything good come out of Africa? Tantalum maybe. But the jiggers? The ignorant monkey brain eating coons. The lazy slope headed porch monkeys. The lying bank scamming liver lipped nigs. Flared nostrils like some kind of porcine barnyard critter.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is Arizona. Lots of people here who came in without a passport. We have absolutely no idea what their medical history is. If we criticize this situation, we are automatically regarded by Washington as racists.
Get a grip! It's highly unlikely you will have an epidemic of ebola crossing the border with mexican illegals. Your fears are, at best, irrational fear mongering. And I say that as someone who is currently living in New Mexico. (Before that I lived for more than a decade in Tucson.)
outbreaks?
Chicken Little, is that you?
Aside from the cows, it WAS caused by Texans doing something wrong: not having proper infectious procedures, not training staff, not having proper barrier matierials, not actually following the procedures that exist or not enforcing them or not monitoring them, or something.
It's safe to say that Texans are responsible for the first Ebola infection contracted in the USA. Thank you, smug lone star idiots, for proving that we actually can't do it better in the USA.
So let me get this straight. You think it's more likely she got it from some random person than it is that she got it from one of the two known cases in the entire fucking country, one of whom she is known to have contact with?
Having worked at a nuclear power plant i know that wearing full biohazard suits will not protect you if you do not know how to take them off properly. There is loads of training at the plants on how to take them off without contaminating yourself for a reason. If the healthcare worker did not take her suit off properly then it has nothing to do with either of your 2 limited options.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Yes, right NOW Ebola isn't a common way to die. Only 8k cases.
WHO projections of an uncontrolled Ebola epidemic have the number of cases up into the millions next year.
So apparently Ebola can become one of the top ten causes of death worldwide within 1 year. It has already overtaken terrorist attacks. In a month or so, it will have overtaken lightning deaths (60k per year worldwide).
I just hope that we can do better than 'uncontrolled'. So far it has not been a happy trend.
--PM
and let them secede like they've always wanted. Then embargo the shit out of them.
Texas sucks camel anus.
"If you love someone, set them free. If they come home, set them on fire." - George Carlin
Damn. I take it back - I had no idea their "protocol" was so weak:
"that the nurse in question was wearing the recommended personal protective gear for handling an Ebola patient, including a gown, gloves, mask, and eye shield"
I thought these folks were treating this guy with full body suits, not just eyewear, gloves and a dust mask.
Whoever told them this protocol was sufficient should have to treat the next ebola patient with the same protocol.
*Looks at state flag out of window, doesnt matter what direction surely I'll find one* Yep, still in Texas. At least Dallas is 3 hours away or so from Houston. :-/
and continue it in the comment are cunts. tia.
(1) Not relevant to the question of someone getting out of the infected area. And
(2) My #1 passport contains the Muslim countries I've visited, and some of the others. My #2 passport contains American, Israeli visits and many others. The non-troublesome countries I distribute between the two passports as necessary for getting visas.
Why do you only have one passport? Don't you travel much?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Or do what some countries do to this day - put your visa stamp on a slip of paper loose inside your passport.
The visa stamp is a proof of your legal visitor status inside the country (typically including paying some sort of entry tax, and not carrying that proof is a crime punishable by a fine - which disappears into a pocket along with the constable's gun disappearing into his holster) ; outside the country, you don't need it.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The visa stamp is a proof of your legal visitor status inside the country (typically including paying some sort of entry tax, and not carrying that proof is a crime punishable by a fine - which disappears into a pocket along with the constable's gun disappearing into his holster) ; outside the country, you don't need it.
The stamps are unnecessary these days. The information is stored in the computer system. A phone or radio call and 10 seconds can confirm legal status. And from my experiences with stamps, the answer will be more clear than a smeared stamp in a passport. They are not required. I've gone in/through plenty of places that don't stamp. Even countries that normally do, people coming in "unusual" places don't get stamped. Ports, and such.
But yes, I've had places where visas are required, and the visa is "invalid" unless properly stamped.
Learn to love Alaska
You're missing the point. In some countries (not, I take it, America ; assuming you're American, I think we've had this conversation before) your entry and exit of the country is not recorded. Not on computer, not in stamps in anyone's passport, not in face recognition at non-existant border posts. It's simply not recorded.
For starters, I did (counts ...) 10 border crossings in my recent vacation. Only the ones into and out of the UK generated a border crossing datum. The rest, at best, recorded the movements of a hired car. And at least two of those crossings were in someone else's car. And that is in high-tech modern Europe. Go to most of Africa and there is still negligible border security if you're a person. (there's a bit more security if you're a 30-tonne truck, due to being rather more conspicuous and needing a reasonable road surface).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Europe is a single "border". When I went to Europe for a recent trip, my entry into the "country" of Europe was recorded Electronically. As was my exit. Sure, they stamped me with a visa, but anyone who had any question would have been able to get the information from some computer somewhere.
And I travel some. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand scanned my passport on entry and exit. I can only presume that the scans were stored for more than the 3 seconds necessary to compare my name to the list of bad guys. Crossing borders *within* Europe are theoretically uncontrolled, but many (especially the UK) use border crossings as a way of double-checking that the people entering were in Europe legally in the first place, though a person in the EU legally would get no stamp for a visit to England from the mainland.
Learn to love Alaska
Consider some-American-one who goes to ... CAR for business (of whatever sort), and in the process crosses many borders, then returns to the US. (I ignore the question of who gets fuck ed on the way) Since CAR is a long way from the at - risk areas, he should not raise any alarms.
Beyond one degree of separation, border controls are not effective.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Consider some-American-one who goes to ... CAR for business (of whatever sort), and in the process crosses many borders, then returns to the US. (I ignore the question of who gets fuck ed on the way) Since CAR is a long way from the at - risk areas, he should not raise any alarms.
An American generally has only one passport (About 1% to 5% have more, and most estimates are at the lower of that range). So when he re-enters, they'll see the stamp from Ebola-ville, if they are stamping there. To get US money and visitors, if people returning to the US are turned away for having that stamp, they'll stop stamping.
That and international law prevents the US from blocking US citizens from re-entering anyway.
I think you are trying so hard to show off that you travel that you aren't staying on topic. The question was about whether stamps are necessary, and what information, if any, could be determined from a passport (both in-country and after the fact).
Learn to love Alaska
Well,if you think that will make you impervious, enjoy.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
What are you talking about? I don't think you even read the posts you are replying to.
I was originally stating that tracking people through passports is impossible, and people who agreed with my premise argued about specific points. And you come in arguing about everything until you don't even know what you were objecting to.
Great, you proved yourself an asshole. But why did you bother to respond? You obviously don't even understand what my stance was.
Learn to love Alaska
OK
I hinted to antibiotic immune bacteria when I alluded to how we are creating new diseases with industrialized farming we are not allowed to criticize, regulate, etc (it's even against the law to criticize it, remember Oprah? she only got off on a technicality.) If you are unaware of the problem, I suggest you educate yourself about it. There is not just 1 kind of bacteria and as we continue what we are doing there will be new kinds (because evolution is real and it works.) I knew a nurse at a hospital which routinely found such bacteria and as a result they greatly increased their procedures. I myself was almost killed by a common bacterial infection where some new drug was the only thing we had time to try out... obviously it worked, but conventional drugs did not and luckily they knew this beforehand because I'd be dead by the time we ran thru all of those.
I was infected simply by walking around outside barefoot... not near a factory farm either. No foreigners required.
I should rant about cancer... but I won't other than to say in the USA you have a 50% chance of getting it and we DO NOT KNOW clear cut causes for it! No sick foreigners; simply owning a Chinese made product where they dumped radioactive waste into the plastic vat... (that has happened, but i can't disclose the details.) Or it could be many things which impact industries bottom lines so they'll keep it under FUD for decades just like easier problems like LEAD poisoning, tobacco, global warming etc. Plus you don't beat cancer-- you mitigate it; the numbers are quite bad when it comes to getting it back again... you "win" if you don't get it back in 5 years but the odds for your lifespan are so much worse than the baselines they commonly refer to that you'll probably get it back and die eventually--- unless you mitigate it until something else kills you 1st. (a friend who died last year got a new kind of terminal cancer as a result of the "safe" treatment of the 1st cancer she "beat." That isn't winning, it is mitigation; at best.)
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BTW, since we are talking about a virus from Africa, why not mention the obvious one:
AIDS. We can delay it for a long long time but we can't cure it yet. 100% death (although it doesn't directly kill you does it??)
At least with this one you get a fever and it doesn't incubate for many years while you spread around your bodily fluids...
Swine flu was weaker but more contagious; it probably will kill more people in the USA. How deadly is not just death odds but how many people can be infected. We have plenty of incurable unsurvivable diseases which thankfully are RARE. On the other side we have the common flu kills plenty of older weaker people every year...
Don't forget about Hepatitis... B has a vaccine but it still kills millions per year... (likely to go up due to anti-vaccination people) C has no cure but is the cause for liver transplants-- it's slow which is why like a quarter billion people have it already.
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