Posted on 08/10/2014 12:46:23 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe
I have spent a little time compiling links to threads about the Ebola outbreak in the interest of having all the links in one thread for future reference.
Please add links to new threads and articles of interest as the situation develops.
Thank You all for you participation.
Thanks, you guys.
Reports of locals panicking as well.
Nigeria:
Ebola Scare: Residents Desert Homes In Delta
Kola Eke Ogiugo
— Sep 6, 2014
http://leadership.ng/news/383145/ebola-scare-residents-desert-homes-delta
Motorists and old persons whose houses are around the Federal Medical Centre, Asaba Delta State created a chaotic scene by hightailing it when rumours filtered into the area that a female patient and two others within the medical centre exhibited symptoms of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).
Earlier, there had been rumours of an Ebola infection in Ozoro, Ughelli, Agbor, but the state commissioner for health, Dr Joseph Otumara had dismissed the speculations as untrue, maintaining that no Ebola case had been recorded in Delta. {he meant officially and carefully said, “yet”}
But with the fear of the EVD hovering over the town, people and even some patients checked themselves out of the FMC and private clinics also became deserted as people fled for fear of contacting the disease.
However, the chief medical director of FMC, Dr Leo Erhunmwense, who spoke to our correspondent on phone, said the woman who was brought into the hospital barely a week ago, was stooling and vomiting but added that it was yet to be determined if she was infected with the Ebola Virus Disease.
According to him, “The patient who was stooling and vomiting was actually brought to the hospital with symptoms of Ebola but we need to confirm if she is suffering from the disease. We need to carry out series of tests and if she has the disease or not, people should not get panicky, the situation is under control.”
Thanks for the explanation.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-09/05/c_133624431.htm?
“China imposes stricter port inspection for precaution against Ebola”
China must be except from Margaret Chan’s ‘all airports will be open no matter the circumstances’ mandate.
I’ll add China to the list of countries where this will barely be a blip should it become a worldwide pandemic. They will enforce their borders, and they’ve got a small molecule that’s not unlike the Japanese Fujifilm one that can be given to those already infected. China has begun clinical trials with that compound already.
Meanwhile our strategy is to wait for plants to grow and pray the virus hasn’t changed enough from when the seeds were planted that the serum will work.
Laurie is slow on the uptake. It’s not being ‘blown’, it’s being ‘managed’ in such a way as to reduce African population growth. This is totally deliberate. It will be allowed to continue to burn its way through West Africa unimpeded.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/06/sierra-leone-lockdown-ebola-outbreak
“Sierra Leone’s planned Ebola lockdown could ‘spread disease further’”
And N95 masks (as if that'll help). And gloves.
This stood out from that Foreign Policy piece —
“But by early July, the RO in Sierra Leone was a hideous 2.53, so the epidemic was more than doubling in size with each round of transmission. Today in Liberia, the virus is spreading so rapidly that no RO has been computed.”
We can safely say that MSF is right in how hideously low the WHO Ebola infection data for Liberia is.
And the reason is less a matter of lying than the people accumulating the data in Liberia are sick, dying or hiding as best they can to avoid infection themselves.
WHO 3 Sept 2014 Port Harcourt, Nigeria report
http://who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/3-september-2014/en/
After onset of symptoms, on 11 August, and until 13 August, the physician continued to treat patients at his private clinic, and operated on at least two. On 13 August, his symptoms worsened; he stayed at home and was hospitalized on 16 August.
Prior to hospitalization, the physician had numerous contacts with the community, as relatives and friends visited his home to celebrate the birth of a baby.
Once hospitalized, he again had numerous contacts with the community, as members of his church visited to perform a healing ritual said to involve the laying on of hands. During his 6 day period of hospitalization, he was attended by the majority of the hospital’s health care staff.
On 21 August, he was taken to an ultrasound clinic, where 2 physicians performed an abdominal scan. He died the next day.
The additional 2 confirmed cases are his wife, also a doctor, and a patient at the same hospital where he was treated. Additional staff at the hospital are undergoing tests.
Given these multiple high-risk exposure opportunities, the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Port Harcourt has the potential to grow larger and spread faster than the one in Lagos.
The response
Nigerian health workers and WHO epidemiologists are monitoring more than 200 contacts. Of these, around 60 are considered to have had high-risk or very high-risk exposure.
The highest-risk exposures occurred in family members and in health care workers and patients at the facility where the index case was hospitalized. Church members who visited the index case while he was hospitalized are also considered at high risk”
With 200 contacts of which 60 are “High risk” there is a good reason why Foreign Oil service workers are bugging out.
Continues Ms Liu: “Health workers on the front lines are becoming infected and are dying in shocking numbers. Others have fled in fear, leaving people without care for even the most common illnesses. Entire health systems have crumbled. Ebola treatment centers are reduced in places where people go to die alone, were little more than palliative care is offered. It is impossible to keep up with the sheer number of infected people pouring into facilities. In Sierra Leone, infectious bodies are rotting in the streets.”
________________
Absolutely horrific.
It doesn't surprise me but it does infuriate me. If this idiot gets my son killed via Ebola I think I'm going to lose my mind.
See this article —
How deadly is Ebola? Statistical challenges may be inflating survival rate
By Gretchen Vogel 8 September 2014 1:00 pm
http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2014/09/how-deadly-ebola-statistical-challenges-may-be-inflating-survival-rate?
And this passage —
But that method doesn’t take into account that many living patients—recently diagnosed and very ill—will not survive. So it underestimates the death rate. And that effect is exaggerated when an outbreak is expanding quickly. The calculation also misses patients who were confirmed as Ebola cases, but then left the hospital before being discharged, says Andrew Rambaut, an evolutionary biologist who studies infectious disease at the University of Edinburgh. Many of those patients later died but are not counted in the death statistics.
Another way to calculate the rate is to ignore current patients, and count only patients who have officially recovered and been released from treatment or who are known to have died. Those numbers seem to paint a more sobering picture. According to the 7 September update from the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation, 268 patients have been treated and released, and 426 confirmed Ebola cases have died. Those numbers suggest a 61% fatality rate. But that isn’t completely accurate either, notes Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston: Survivors may have longer average hospital stays than patients who die. That would lead to a CFR that is artificially high.
A more accurate way to calculate the rate is to compare the outcomes in patients who were infected around the same time, and wait long enough until all have either recovered or died. Rambaut notes that there were 23 survivors among the 77 patients included in a recent paper looking at the evolution of the virus. That’s a CFR of 70%.
Christopher Dye, director of strategy for the WHO, says the organization is moving toward that method and is working to compile data for each patient recorded as a case. “We do need valid estimates,” Dye says. “We want to know if CFR is different in this epidemic from previous ones in central Africa, [and] whether different approaches to patient care in the current epidemic lead to different outcomes.””
I am thinking that the fatality rate is north of 70%, simply based on the Aug 8 versus Aug 31 comparison I made the other day.
btt
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