Ebola Surveillance Thread

Free Republic Threads ^ | August 10, 2014 | Legion

[Black Agnes]

http://www.smh.com.au/world/ebola-overwhelming-african-health-services-20140910-10f6xf.html

“Ebola overwhelming African health services”

[Black Agnes]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2749687/Ebola-seriously-threatens-Liberias-national-existence-minister.html

“Ebola is threatening Liberia’s ‘national existence’ says defence minister… and now the first suspected case of the disease reaches Italy”

[Covenantor]

Was reading PFI posts just now regarding this.

Another Getty Photo of same scene

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/liberian-street-artist-stephen-doe-paints-on-september-8-news-photo/454961816

What's the first thing you notice at left of wall?

I think the reference is to the PBS film Dark Wing mentioned.

PFI- Pixcie's post:

"And did you notice - one of Fallah's early symptoms was that he was coughing.

That's not good. That's not supposed to happen either.

The documentary was filmed in July."

http://singtomeohmuse.com/viewtopic.php?t=5725&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=2055

Clearly the graphic shows the danger of ebola transmission via coughing droplets, as the vomiting warning is next.

Certainly makes one wonder, about short distance aerosol spread when film and graphics are taken together. Then again Fallah may have had a concurrent ailment as PFI poster notes.

[Ken H]

What the WHO, CDC et al are all trying to understand is that “RO” is now a completely meaningless concept.

What is 'RO'?

[Oorang]

Thank you

[Black Agnes]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

[Smokin' Joe]

Thanks, Dark Wing. I will watch it as soon as I have bandwidth and time enough. A few of us have been warning of the potential for fomites to be a huge problem in urban environments for a while now. It is high time the 'experts' realized the hazard.

The only way this has ever been stopped, is to contain the infected and isolate them from the rest of humanity.

There is no cure, only 'hope' of finding one. Supportive care only works if there is enough to go around. Hope and Ebola can coexist in a host, until the Ebola prevails.

Usually, containment has been achieved by the location of the outbreak in small rural populations, and the fact that those infected lived or died before it could spread beyond that small group.

Never before has the virus had such opportunity to spread, nor such a large and incredibly mobile population to infect.

That pool of possibilities just keeps getting deeper because of the actions of the host, failing to contain the virus to a region, a nation, or even a continent.

It is up to humans to stop it: The virus is just doing what a virus does--it's replicating. We have to limit the opportunity for it to do so.

Now, if we can just get the people in denial to let go of the idea that somehow our surfaces are different from other surfaces, that people who depend on taxis, whether it be in Monrovia or New York City will be at risk of exposure if the disease is present, that public transportation and common contact surfaces here are just as much a potential vector as they are there, and that this is just a lethal virus.

It doesn't care who you are, what you make a year, how educated you are, what language you speak, whether you are a couch potato or work out every day at the gym (the latter may be at higher exposure risk, actually), it just replicates when it finds a host.

It doesn't matter if you are pretty and the cameras swoon at your sight, or are ugly enough to stop a clock, you are food. Raw materials...and a potential vector.

I keep seeing the theme that somehow, by virtue of education, technology, or some other discerning factor, that our society will stop this in its tracks if it gets here.

NO. It just doesn't work that way. That's not how any of this works.

Our medical system gets overrun in the city ERs on a hot August night and a full moon. Cold and Flu season put a strain on things, and they don't require level 4 biocontainment.

From the start of this thread, I have been trying to walk the razor's edge between adequate concern and panic, and that path seems to be getting narrower.

I want people to start thinking of what they do, playing 'what if' that surface was contaminated, examining their unconscious habits to see what might kill them and perhaps changing those habits before they get a chance to get infected.

Don't let it stress you to insanity, but make a game of it, like 'cooties' used to be when we were kids--only pick a surface other people touch...

How many times did you touch one of those surfaces and rub an eye, pick at something caught in your teeth, make contact with a mucous membrane or food you were consuming?

I was shocked to find I got "killed" half a dozen times in the first hour the first time--usually by rubbing an eye, once dealing with a moustache hair that didn't simply fall free when it reached the end of its service life... (I guess an instant advantage of full-face respirators is that it makes that harder to do.)

But by paying attention, I'm down to once an hour...

Play the game, people.

It might end up saving you from a cold some day, or save your life.

We need to become really conscious of the little habits we all have that might kill us if this gets loose here.

And, being conscious of the vulnerabilities inherent in human behaviour, we need to push our government, and indeed the governments of the world to take steps to contain the disease. We can ship the basics there, to where it isn't completely out of control, to the neighboring countries, we can send people if they choose. What is folly is to bring the disease to us and give it unprecedented opportunity in a population never before exposed.

[Smokin' Joe]

The link is somewhere in this thread. I recall seeing that the virus would survive indefinitely at -70 C. Colder temperatures, darkness, both contribute to longer viability. Heat and sunlight break the virus down.

I have not seen anything which maintains that the virus does not survive in dried out secretions, at least for a few hours, depending on UV exposure and temperature. . It would be easier to pick up a liquid or wet patch with the virus in it on fabrics or skin than the dried crust, but with an ID50 of one to ten virons, moist tissue or material (food, for instance, dropped on a counter or table and picked up and eaten) should be able to transfer enough virus to infect if introduced to any opening in the skin or mucous membrane or the eyes.

Whether this can survive long enough and be sufficiently carried in dust to cause infection is anyone's guess. I simply do not know.

[Ken H]

Ah, now I get his point. Thanks.

[Smokin' Joe]

I wonder if they have Enterovirus 68 over there, too?

[PA Engineer]

Good post and important. I remember when the news was first covering this and the CDC narrative teams came out immediately with perception control. The first CDC teleconference showed an agency that was incompetent at best.

The initial narrative was we are the "West" and we have better healthcare. That made me sick. I realized the politicians have risen to the top of every government agency. Perfect ideologues. You cannot work all day as a politician and be competent enough to handle the honesty required with this pandemic.

When Obama was pushing the CDC to take over the gun control as a public health issue (at the same time as the Fast and Furious Operation), I knew the agency was finished.

Now we are told that we are different and better. Yes we are different, but not better. In many ways we are worse off than hospitals made of concrete, block and resin furniture. Those can be decontaminated quickly as well as a bare bones ambulances.

Ebola hates bleach, but loves carpeting, cloth curtains, fabric chairs, vending machines, door handles, triage counters, tables, old magazines and door knobs. Everything according to the CDC that makes western medicine better. Heck, they even claimed we could use a standard private hospital room with level 1 safety to treat our sick because we are better.

Incompetence or Evil? I don't know. I'm sure the CDC understands Fomites. If that removes incompetence then what are we left with?

Winter and the flu season are not far away. Our hospitals, offices, schools and shopping centers will be filling with people who are symptomatic with the flu virus. The same symptoms as the ebola virus. Add open boarders to the mix and the situation is the perfect incubator for the spread of one of mankind's most insipid viruses.

I had first forgiven the CDC perception control as panic management, but that is obviously the opposite of what is required. The average LIV american has no idea what the word ebola is. I have talked to people. Smart people. There is an admission that they just don't pay attention to the news and don't have any idea what the virus is. Panic control? We need to begin informing people. Why would our government and the CDC in particular want to continue perception management when the average american is not even paying attention?

There will be panic when the first index patients appear in our urban centers. There will be the nonsense that it is under control. There will be the next Ferguson to divert attention. The infections and dead will begin to add up. The media will lie and downplay it while this government will announce that new miracle weapons are imminent to defeat the virus. There will be none because there is no way to stop infection once we go from person to person, to Fomite to person.

What is the endgame? The endgame is many preventable deaths will occur while our institutional power structures struggle to hold on. Anything and everything they will do just to push this further down the road. Human nature. They will try to control an uncontrollable situation. They are all politicians first. Power, pensions, prestige and what other perversion of honesty there is. Those will come first before human life.

End of my rant for now. Thanks for the post.

[exDemMom]

That is terribly unfortunate. I read one journal article where infectious virus was isolated from semen 82 days after symptom onset.

I wonder what kind of discharge instruction is given to patients upon discharge? Maybe they should be provided with condoms?

[Smokin' Joe]

Good rant, and I agree. The pols will eventually lock things down not out of fear for the disease, but of fear for their personal safety.

[ElenaM]

R0 is how many people an infected person infects. So if a patient infects 3 others, that patient’s R0 is 3. It’s a statistic used to determine whether a communicable disease is spreading (R0 greater than 1), steady (R0 = 1) or receding (R0 less than 1).

[ElenaM]

The WHO is included in your analysis. Read the internally incoherent advice regarding travel and transportation they’ve released. It’s absurd.

http://www.who.int/ith/updates/20140421/en/

[palmer]

Does the virus have the ability to go into 'suspended animation' in freezing temperatures , and then re-annimate ?

Yes: http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/196/Supplement_2/S142.long

Virus was detected by culture .... which to me means the virus survived the freezing and was able to be cultured.

[palmer]

A few of us have been warning of the potential for fomites to be a huge problem in urban environments for a while now. It is high time the 'experts' realized the hazard.

See my previous link. The fomites collected and analyzed by that study were not seen to be a very viable vector. Howeer, some were a vector. The other problem is that gathering and storing the fomites for that study was imprecise and probably flawed.

[greeneyes]

IIRC, it is known to survive at -70 degrees.

[Shelayne]

This is bad. Very, very bad.

[Shelayne]

I saw that same discussion on PFI. As the posters there noted, the people in Africa are well aware of what the symptoms are. This is very unnerving. Also, I was reading a quote (or was it on the special? Everything is running together) from a MSF doctor, which said that when they (the Drs) are talking with someone, they make sure they are standing 2 meters away and to the side of the person, when they are not wearing protective clothing.

Yeah, that sounds as if it’s really “hard to catch”, doesn’t it? *smh*