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President Obama warned world leaders at the United Nations Thursday that the international response to the Ebola crisis is "not enough," urging them to step up their efforts. "We know from experience that the response to an outbreak of this magnitude needs to be both fast and sustained — like a marathon, but run at the pace of a sprint," Obama said. "That’s only possible if every nation and every organization does its part. And everyone has to do more." Last week, the president announced the U.S. was sending 3,000 military personnel to West Africa to respond to the crisis,...

The mysterious respiratory illness enterovirus has spread to more than half the United States — with symptoms ranging from mild colds to serious breathing problems, health officials said. Since mid-August, 175 people across 27 states have been diagnosed with the sickness caused by the enterovirus D68, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The enterovirus, a more virulent strain of the virus that causes the common cold, can lead to fever, sneezing and coughing in mild cases. Hospitalization for breathing difficulties and wheezing is required in more severe cases....

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, increasing their warnings on Ebola, is advising airlines and jet staff to treat all body fluids as infectious, even on domestic flights.“Treat all body fluids as though they are infectious,” said the latest CDC update to airlines. The update notes that if Ebola is suspected, aircraft can be cleaned mid-flight. The update is apparently meant to stress the rights airlines have to block anyone who appears "ill" from boarding.The agency this week suggested that the Ebola crisis could strike 500,000 by the end of January. Others note that some 200,000 Africans from nations...

READ THIS FIRST! I already know that these numbers do not predict the future. I know that there is no way Ebola will kill 2 billion people in Liberia alone. I know that at some point the pool of uninfected people will decrease enough to slow the spread of the disease. I know that the rate of transmission will change based on weather, location, effectiveness of treatment, etc., etc., etc. I know that epidemics "don't work this way". Nevertheless, it is helpful to know what the projected numbers say to get an idea of the severity of the epidemic, why...

NOTES Before starting, let me say that I do NOT believe the Ebola epidemic will get as bad as these projections indicate. I believe it will get pretty bad, especially for those in Africa, but not as bad as the current numbers say. I think there will be a number of factors that will significantly mitigate these numbers. How much? I don't know. But no one else does, either. I am not predicting the end of humanity. I'm simply showing where the current numbers lead, should nothing change. But of course, things will change. In any case, I do believe...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Enterovirus D68 is likely coming -- if it hasn't already -- to a state near you. Since mid-August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed 140 cases of respiratory illness caused by Enterovirus D68 in 16 states: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia. New Jersey also has confirmed a case of EV-D68, according to Donna Leusner, director of communications for the New Jersey Department of Health. And "in the upcoming weeks, more states will have confirmed cases of EV-D68 infection," the CDC said in a statement...

My User Name on Free Republic is Scouter. I have been a member of Free Republic for 14 years. I don't write many vanity posts, but I consider this one to be very important. I had been working on this post for several days, and I was planning to post it tomorrow. But the Drudge Report headline CDC: PREPARE FOR EBOLA has moved up my timeline. I have developed a model for making future projections of the number of Ebola cases. I have undertaken this project for several reasons. First, out of simple professional curiosity. Second, I believe the time...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warning hospitals and doctors that “now is the time to prepare,” has issued a six-page Ebola “checklist” to help healthcare workers quickly determine if patients are infected.While the CDC does not believe that there are new cases of Ebola in the United States, the assumption in the checklist is that it is only a matter of time before the virus hits home.

… The scale of the present outbreak, together with the fear and suffering it is causing, has resulted in a burst of scientific activity to find new treatments and vaccines. Some of these medicines look promising. But to contain the spread of Ebola, scientists and health officials will have to bypass many of the existing rules that govern the delivery of new drugs, and develop potential remedies with unprecedented speed. This strategy is being endorsed widely. In August experts from the WHO concluded that, provided certain conditions are met, it would be ethical to offer unproven, experimental treatments or methods...

Tom Miles and Kate Kelland, ReutersSeptember 12,2014 West Africa's Ebola outbreak is running ahead of health authorities' ability to contain it, particularly in the three hardest-hit countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday. "The Ebola outbreak that is ravaging parts of West Africa is the largest and most complex and most severe in the almost four-decade history of this disease," the WHO's director general Margaret Chan told a news conference in Geneva. "The number of new patients is moving far faster than the capacity to manage them." (snip)

Hundreds of children have been hospitalized across several states with a respiratory illness that seems like a cold but can grow far worse, CNN reports. Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma have already called the CDC for help in tackling an enterovirus that appears to be EV-D68. The current hospitalizations may be "just the tip of the iceberg in terms of severe cases," says a CDC director. "We're in the middle of looking into this. We don't have all the answers yet." The virus itself resembles a bad cold (nasty summer colds are often...

Ebola Toll Tops 2,000, Cases Near 4,000 2014-09-05 22:28 Geneva - More than 2 000 people have died in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the World Health Organisation said on Friday, out of about 4 000 patients thought to have been infected in the three countries worst hit by the disease. The death toll in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone totalled 2 097 as at 5 Sept, out of 3 944 cases, a WHO document said. The data did not include patients in Nigeria or Senegal, which have also been affected, nor Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been...

"The largest outbreak of the deadly disease Ebola was caused by an infected bat biting a toddler say a group of international researchers. The 17-strong team of European and African tropical disease researchers, ecologists and anthropologists have spent three weeks investigating the outbreak of the disease in Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Nigeria. The researchers captured the bats and other creatures near the village of Meliandoua in remote eastern Guinea, where the present epidemic began in December 2013."

Ebola virus disease, West Africa – update 19 August 2014 Epidemiology and surveillance Between 14 and 16 August 2014, a total of 113 new cases of Ebola virus disease (laboratory-confirmed, probable, and suspect cases) as well as 84 deaths were reported from Guinea, Liberia*, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Health sector response The response of WHO and other partners to the Ebola Virus outbreak is continuing to grow in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. To reduce the likelihood that those who are infected will carry the disease outside their communities, the governments have set up quarantine zones in areas of...

Experimental drugs and airport screenings will do nothing to stop this plague. If Ebola hits Lagos, we're in real trouble. Attention, World: You just don't get it. You think there are magic bullets in some rich country's freezers that will instantly stop the relentless spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa? You think airport security guards in Los Angeles can look a traveler in the eyes and see infection, blocking that jet passenger's entry into La-la-land? You believe novelist Dan Brown's utterly absurd description of a World Health Organization that has a private C5-A military transport jet and disease...

Minister of Health and Sanitation, Miatta Kargbo yesterday disclosed to the leadership of Parliament that while Kailahun district is recording downward trend in the Ebola virus cases, the Western Area, Bo and Port Loko districts are recording high cases of the Ebola virus in the country. She was speaking at an emergency meeting summoned by the leadership of the House of Parliament at Committee Room No. 1. The Minister accompanied by senior health officials, unraveled government’s latest strategy in the fight against the Ebola menace. While establishing the fact that Kenema district remains the most Ebola ravaged spot so far,...

The medical charity MSF has warned that western Africa's Ebola crisis is "moving faster" than medics can cope with. Its warning follows a WHO admission that the epidemic requires "extraordinary measures." The head of Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Joanne Liu -- fresh from a visit to western Africa -- said in Geneva on Friday that more experts were needed in the hard-hit region. "It is deteriorating faster, and moving faster, than we can respond to," Liu told reporters. "Like in a war time, we have a total collapse of infrastructure," she added. Lui said the world community needed to get...

With an ill-equipped healthcare system, poor hygeine and crowded streets, Nigerians living in the country's biggest city are understandably anxious about the deadly Ebola outbreak... Our mediocre, ill-equipped healthcare system hardly gives much cause for confidence. Nor the fact that doctors in state run hospitals happen to be currently on strike....

Dr Kevin De Cock, of the US Centre for Disease Control, says the situation in Liberia is "extremely severe" The scale of the west African Ebola outbreak in Liberia is completely overwhelming the capacity of specialist isolation units that treat victims, a senior US health official assessing the crisis has warned. De Kevin De Cock, the director for global health at America's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said one of the country’s two main treatment clinics, in Lofa County, currently had 80 patients in a 20-bed unit...

Ebola virus disease, West Africa – update 11 August 2014 Epidemiology and surveillance Between 7 and 9 August 2014, a total of 69 new cases of Ebola virus disease (laboratory-confirmed, probable, and suspect cases) as well as 52 deaths were reported from Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Health sector response The recent treatment of two health workers, who were infected with EVD, with an experimental medicine has raised important questions about whether medicines or treatments that have never been tested or shown to be safe in humans should be used in this outbreak. Currently, quantities of the medicine are...