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.
Excellent article by Richard Preston. Thank you for the link, sent it winging to friends.
Preston’s piece very effectively underscores “virus time”, a critical part of the problem that Frieden and CDC either don’t grasp or are incapable of communicating.
Preston notes that should the vaccine become available the inoculation zone would be a closed ring miles deep from the center of the hot zones, and what is that but a form of quarantine.
Thanks to ElenaM - a MUST READ article, lengthy but well worth the read.
excerpt from:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/21-days/381901/?single_page=true
....Hamblin: And what we’re hearing most commonly is that it’s around when a person develops a fever.
Hatfill: Well, 12.5 percent of patients don’t run a fever. In that New England Journal of Medicine study, where they just looked at several thousand of these cases in West Africa, the lead author of the paper is adamant. He says, I sat there, I monitored this patient’s temperature myself until they died and they never ran a fever. Well, generating a fever is a fairly complex mechanism in your body. Neutrophils and cytokines are involved. One of the things a virus does is it inhibits neutrophil activation. Ebola’s outer glycoprotein can secrete a truncated version of it. You’ve seen the planes come over and shoot out the flares so the missile can’t get them. That’s what Ebola’s doing. It’s shooting out these little truncated bits of glycoprotein as flares. It’s masking itself. Indirectly, its inhibiting neutrophil activation, and what they release tell us to run a fever.
Hamblin: So the neutrophils attack that flare.
Hatfill: They’re getting confused by it.
Hamblin: And the immune system says, it’s not a big deal, everything’s okay.
Hatfill: And they’re not releasing pyrogens. This is our best guess. We need to get it in the lab and have a better look at it. And it’s not just the West African outbreak. The other outbreaks have reported the same thing fairly consistently. So to use this as a screening measure rather than quarantine measures becomes problematic.
Hamblin: Is there any other better screening measure that could be considered?
Hatfill: We have rapid PCR tests. Texas had them, but they’re not allowed to use them because the FDA never certified it. We have a classified set of Department of Defense primers for PCR that work great.
Hamblin: So any hospital cannot handle patients with Ebola. What do we do with the people who have it? What should be done with the future cases in the U.S.?
Hatfill: The CDC put out inadequate guidelines, and now they have to admit it. So everybody’s backtracking. The generation before me classified Ebola as BSL-4. That’s safe. We’ve been working with it for years.
Hamblin: Don’t we have facilities that can handle BSL-4 infectious disease?
Hatfill: We only have a handful, and they’re not geared up for patients. Now, USAMRIID could change it back over quickly, but the most they could handle would be one or two patients. But instead of [investing in] that, we went out and built all new research centers. We’ve wasted 120 billion dollars over the last 20 years. Nothing to show for it. We can’t even handle one patient with Ebola.....
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Comment: Consider this, 12.5 percent of patients don’t run a fever. That’s one out of eight EVD infected victims that could get passed by the pathetic thermal scans free to roam, go bowling, get soup, pizza, whatever.
Pigs are definitely susceptible to Ebola Zaire and in pigs, there is a respiratory factor. Having pigs wandering amongst Ebola-infected humans is not a good idea.
The image is around 0:0:43 in this BBC video. I made a copy and have saved the image for later use if needed.
You'd think one of the first things done would be to remove animals from the vicinity of the ETU.
A timely flashback, not at all convenient for our ‘ebola festivities’. We need to celebrate our long, winter embrace with this happy-in-the-cold virus.
Maybe it isn't just "Bushmeat" (Hmmmm... maybe I'll pass on the barbecue and have the fish instead...)
Well, here, in town, the pigs don't run wild, but imagine Ebola getting out into the farthest rural areas where there is a significant feral pig population...Pigs and dogs will both eat human corpses...
Now, the question of whether dogs can pass the virus on to humans or other animals which can needs to be answered.
5,000 Ebola Health Care Workers Needed in W Africa
New fight over Ebola quarantine looms as nurse returns to Maine
White House warns Cuomo and Christie over Ebola quarantine rules
States Rights vs. Executive fiat!
Which town do you mean? The pigs in that video looked to be wandering unimpeded to me but I may have missed something.
Now, the question of whether dogs can pass the virus on to humans or other animals which can needs to be answered.
That's the research I'm waiting for. Village dogs as intermediary hosts makes sense to me in the abstract. Much more sense than many of the hypothesized wild animal interactions I've heard posited as explanations for previous outbreaks. I hope someone is planning that research now.
There is a significant feral pig problem in most of the Continental US. IF ebola ever got into THAT population it would be a big deal. Particularly since it could circulate, mutate, and render ineffective any vaccines. Just like the flu changes from season to season. Only with a disease with 50%+ mortality.
That would suck. Bigtime.
In Africa, of course, it is different.
However, there is a feral pig problem in parts of the US, and stray dogs abound.
American dogs and hogs will eat human meat, it is just more meat to them, just like it is to their African cousins. So the question most imminently applies there, in Africa, but could be important here, too, if things get out of hand...and we haven't talked about scavenging birds and whether the virus would be spread in droppings or destroyed in the gut--or carried.
There is one heck of a lot we don't know about this disease, and for only one or two possible means of transmission to be considered leaves much to be desired...and we haven't mentioned the ubiquitous flies....
Huge Drop in Ebola Bodies Across Monrovia
News24.com
2014-10-28 16:26
Monrovia - The Red Cross said on Tuesday the weekly total of Ebola victims collected by its body disposal teams around the Liberian capital is falling dramatically, indicating a sharp drop in the spread of the epidemic.
The announcement appears at odds with an assessment by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which said last week transmission “remains intense” in the capitals of Liberia and neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Fayah Tamba, head of the Liberian Red Cross, said his workers collected 117 bodies last week from Montserrado County, which includes Monrovia, a drop of almost two-thirds from the high of 315 from 15 to 21 September.
“I am sure you don’t need a rocket scientist to tell you that the cases are dropping”, he told private radio station Sky FM.
“What does this mean for us? It is very important, for all of us, that while it is true that these numbers are reducing, we want to use this time to call on every one of us to remain very engaged because Ebola is still in Liberia.
“We should not be complacent too early and start to celebrate because we still have this enemy in our corridors.”
Tamba gave week-by-week figures for collections which rise quickly from 60 on 3 August, but the weeks after the September peak show a consistent decline.
His conclusions jar with the WHO’s update on the crisis on 22 October, which reported that case numbers “continue to be under-reported, especially from the Liberian capital Monrovia”.
Liberia has been worst hit by the outbreak, with 4 665 recorded cases and 2 705 deaths, according to the WHO, relying on figures however which are now 10 days out-of-date.
Liberia confirmed its first two Ebola cases at the end of March, but the outbreak was largely confined to the northern area bordering Guinea during the first few months of the crisis, until an explosion of cases in and around Monrovia.
Montserrado County, which accounts for more than a quarter of Liberia’s population of around four million, now sees the vast majority of new cases and deaths.
obile app helps track Ebola epidemic
Fromnews24.com
2014-10-27 20:03
Nairobi - A new mobile telephone-based mapping service has been created in a bid to track Ebola and better help communities hit by the virus in west Africa, developers said Monday.
The system, a collaboration between IBM, mobile telephone companies and academics, allows people in affected areas to send free text messages about Ebola to track problems and trends, with the program mapping the exact location from where it is sent.
“It has already brought to light specific regions with growing numbers of suspected Ebola cases which require urgent supplies like soap and electricity, as well as faster response times for body collection and burials,” IBM said.
The company claims it can create a range of maps to track needs and problems, to better allow health workers and governments tackle them.
“We saw the need to quickly develop a system to enable communities directly affected by Ebola to provide valuable insight about how to fight it,” IBM Research Africa’s chief scientist Uyi Stewart said in a statement.
“Using mobile technology, we have given them a voice and a channel to communicate their experiences directly,” Stewart said.
More than 10 000 people have contracted the deadly virus in west Africa, according to the latest World Health Organisation figures.
By using technology to engage directly with the people and communities in Sierra Leone who are directly impacted by Ebola, IBM is tapping one of the most powerful resources for fighting it.
Wonder if the locals have availed themselves of the anti-HIV meds that may work.
I can't find the original article at the moment, but this article (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11152482/Can-dogs-carry-Ebola.html) cites a 2005 study that mentions the dog risk:
A study published in 2005 pointed to a theoretical risk that dogs could pass the Ebola virus to humans through urine, faeces or saliva, but there is no evidence of this ever having happened, virologists said on Thursday.
Here it is: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/11/3/04-0981_article, entitled “Ebola Virus Antibody Prevalence in Dogs and Human Risk”
And every scientist knows that the absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.
Just because something has not been studied, peer reviewed, and published, does not mean it does not exist.
Thanks! I read that and posted about it way upthread (somewhere around post 1,000 I think.) It’s the genesis of my idea that village dogs could be an intermediary host. The dogs eat the infected primary host, then interact with villagers and pass the virus. That seems more likely than many of the hypothesized wild animal scenarios I’ve read over the past 20-odd years but the idea hasn’t been studied or researched at all.
Sorry for my confusion. That's what I thought you meant but wasn't sure.
However, there is a feral pig problem in parts of the US, and stray dogs abound.
Oh yes, I am aware of both.
There is one heck of a lot we don't know about this disease, and for only one or two possible means of transmission to be considered leaves much to be desired...and we haven't mentioned the ubiquitous flies....
The list of what we don't know, and what we don't know we don't know, is much longer than the list of what we do know. I've been saying this to family and friends since the summer and those who brushed me off as not being "up to date" on research are now asking me to explain what's happening.
I maintain that much, if not most, contemporary Ebola dogma is going to be upended before this is over.
I hope this phenomenon is indicative of Ebola burning out but how many times have we seen reports like this that turn out to be either blatantly wrong or due to unseen factors like failure to report? I really hope it’s true but I’m skeptical.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.