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.
Obama Launches Drive to Counter Quarantine Movement
Elizabeth Warren Blames Republicans for Ebola
County: 3 in county under Ebola monitoring (San Diego County, CA)
Executive Order 13295 of April 4, 2003: Revised List of Quarantinable Communicable Diseases
'You can hug me, you can shake my hand - I won't give you Ebola' (Kaci Hickox)
I was just watching an interview with Joanne Liu, President of MSF, and I was struck by the “official” case numbers at that time. She talked about 4700 cases, and this was just on September 22. The numbers have nearly tripled since then.
Of course, she also said the WHO numbers represented merely 20% of actual cases. Very sobering.
Thank you for the ping!
New info?
In stunning news, today we learn that the anti-quarantine nurse who has publicly fought to dismantle Ebola quarantines was trained as an “intelligence officer” by the CDC in a special two-year program modeled after the military:
http://www.naturalnews.com/047444_Ebola_quarantine_Kaci_Hickox_intelligence_officer.html
See:
“Ebola strains can be detected in just 30 minutes outside of the lab by a test that uses pocket-sized slips of blotting paper, a pioneering study revealed today.
By manipulating the genetic machinery of cells and embedding them in the fine matrix of paper, a prototype Ebola test has been developed using just $20 of materials.“
You know what would be really scary? A Kaci Hickox Halloween costume..
Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report
29 October, 2014
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/137376/1/roadmapsitrep_29Oct2014_eng.pdf?ua=1
There have been 13 703 EVD cases, with 4 920 deaths, up to the end of 27 October.
All districts in Liberia and Sierra Leone are now affected.
Thursday 30 October marks 30 days since the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response plan was implemented.
Mali reported its first case on 23 October.
### Data for Liberia are missing for 19, 20, 21, 26 and 27 October. ###
Kaci Hickox, Self-Absorbed Hero
Potentially startling breakthrough in quick diagnostic tests across a broad spectrum. Something that sounds as simple as litmus paper.
There are some potentially serious caveats:
* viability of test medium over time and broad ambient field conditions. That is to say shelf life.
* Real life testing in environment like west Africa where patients may present with multiple illnesses along side EVD, such as malaria, dengue fever, etc. Can a specific EVD test strip distinguish between them? At what viral load?
Other thoughts on what at first glance seem to be trivial problems but maybe not: water activation source, obviously distilled would be best, what limits and how to field test, field lab procedures, etc.
It's been presented as something so simple that they might be able to get production going quickly and conduct field tests ASAP.
However, Collins told Newsweek that the tests cannot yet be used to identify Ebola in areas where there is an epidemic. "Our work is at present limited to academic proof-of-principle demonstrations. We currently have detection into the picomolar range, but to make the system practical for field applications this will have to be improved. We have a number of technologies under development that promise to provide the boost to sensitivity that we need."
Business returns at bowling alley visited by Ebola patient, Dr. Craig Spencer
LePage backs off mandatory quarantine, suggests following CDC Ebola guidelines
CHRIS CHRISTIE FIRES BACK AT OBAMA: WE NEED LEADERSHIP ON EBOLA NOT LECTURES [Not his BFF anymore]
Your projected case number of 12,645 is almost matches WHO's 13,703 Oct 22 report.
Your 6,384 deaths compared to WHO's 4,920 Oct 22 report is the eye popper that begs closer examination of WHO's data.
WhO's Oct 22 death count is only 427 above their Oct 12 report which tallied 8,997 cases and 4,493 deaths.
So far WHO admits to a gaps for Liberia only for 19, 20, 21, 26 and 27 Oct while publicizing big reductions there albeit with caveats
Comparing your death count and WHO's results in a difference of 1,464. That's a sizeable anomaly that surely can't all be contained in the missing Liberian data. Even spread out among the three countries that 1,400 sends warning signals
The way I make my future case projections is to make specific projections of future cases on a country-by-country basis, using the rate of increase that the reported data indicates for that country. Then I add them all together.
The way I make my future death projections is to divide the most recently reported deaths by the most recently reported cases, again on a country-by-country basis, and apply that death rate to that country's future case projections.
So my projections are just that... projections based on past performance. How it plays out in reality will be different. The projections can be affected by many things, including the accuracy of reported cases and deaths (which fluctuates), improvements in care, changes in population behavior, perhaps even by things that one might not immediately think of, such as the effect of the weather on social interactions. A rainy week may result in fewer transmissions or deaths, or it could result in more. I can't say. But it is plausible that it would have some effect.
As I understand it, the most recent WHO numbers are considered more accurate due to a thorough review of all the relevant databases. Thus, we see that on October 19 they reported 2,705 deaths in Liberia, but six days later they reported only 2,413 deaths, a difference of almost 300.
Ahhh.....thank you.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/21-days/381901/?single_page=true
"… Ebola is the prototype of an emerging infectious disease in that it is, importantly, a zoonotic virus (transmitted from animals to people). This is the route of introduction of the world’s most virulent new pathogens. During the past 30 years, to Hatfill’s knowledge, 41 new infectious organisms or strains have crossed from animal hosts into humans. The period between 2010 and 2014 alone saw the advent of the MERS Coronavirus, the Bas-Congo Rhabdovirus (which causes a hemorrhagic fever, similar to Ebola), ongoing Monkeypox outbreaks, and a rash of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in addition to the ongoing West African Ebola outbreak.… The risk for human infection by these viruses depends, initially, on human-animal interactions. Bats are a prime example of a reservoir for RNA viruses that cross between species and infect people. Those the sub-order that include the now-notorious fruit bats have been implicated in RNA-viral outbreaks among the most lethal infectious diseases: Ebola, Marburg, Hendra, Hipah, SARS, MERS, and the Australian lyssaviruses. Those interactions are driven by the expanding human population (which has doubled worldwide in the past three decades). They are also driven by animal-habitat fragmentation, losses in biodiversity, and war.
Many of the deadly emerging RNA viruses arise, as Hatfill makes clear in his work, from biodiversity hotspots—regions that house at least 1,500 species of vascular plants and have lost at least 70 percent of their vegetation. These biodiversity hotspots are home to more than half of the world's plant and non-fish animal species, as well as more than a billion of the world’s poorest people. The regions also involve more than 90 percent of recent armed conflict. Refugees hunt for meat and build remote encampments, increasing pressure on local resources and interfering with wildlife, drawing people into the line of fire between the viruses and their animal reservoirs. And so it is there that Hatfill believes efforts to manage inevitable future outbreaks must focus.
… Hatfill: … People that have been trapping bats and other animals in these high biodiversity areas are finding viral sequences, and we don't know what they're from. This is not in the GenBank database. So there are things lurking out there we don't have a clue about. How do you get a rabies virus that causes hemorrhagic fever? Well, going back through the literature, there's a fish virus that can cause hemorrhagic septicemia. The frequency that these things are happening is very disturbing. Just remember, our population's doubled in 27 years. So you encroach on animal habitats, or you fragment those animal habitats, you disrupt the ecology, the normal food sources.
At the moment, it's the fruit bats. And their range extends way past Africa, the ones that are transmitting this. We found Ebola Zaire antibodies in bats in Bangladesh, and as far over as Borneo, although that paper needs some reassessment. [Ed: There is evidence that filoviruses (Ebola among them) may be harbored across a larger geographic range than some previously assumed. Contested evidence of Ebola Zaire has been reported in orangutans in Borneo.] So that's a huge swath of land down into northern Australia, India, and over. So the more these habitats become fragmented, and the bats move closer to humans—the fruit bats, especially. You cut down their forest, you build orchards, where are they going to go? To the orchards. And these bats are carrying everything from the Hendra virus in Australia, that unusual outbreak in the mid-90s, to the Nipah virus in Malaysia. And we're going to put 4,000 troops in the middle of this habitat. Are you going to tell the bats not to poop on the soldiers?
… Hatfill: … Chikungunya is Swahili for “walks bent over.” It attacks the synovial membranes in your joints. It's agonizing. In fact, you're afraid you won't die. But most people get through it. It was, a hundred years ago, a fairly benign disease. There was a lot of travel between India and Durban in South Africa. Commerce, personnel, people, immigrants, back and forth. And the population density ramped up. It’s an RNA virus—you won't find an RNA virus that has more than about 10 genes or so, because any more than that it's made so many mistakes as it's replicated its genome, it's nonfunctional. So it doesn't get propagated. Some time over the last 100 years, one of these strains had a single mutation that enabled it to replicate to a higher titer inside the mosquito, and now that's the dominant form, which means these patients are getting a higher dose of virus. As with any infectious disease agent, the bigger dose you're exposed to, the quicker and more severe are going to be your symptoms.
Hamblin: You write about the role of conflict and war in viral outbreaks.
Hatfill: Eighty percent of the conflicts fought since 1953 have been in stressed high-biodiversity areas. This is asking for trouble. … You put your troops in there and wonder why they get Korean hemorrhagic fever in Korea. I don't know where those fruit bats have gone. They're migrating at the moment. This is why there are these periodic outbreaks here and there.
Hamblin: The idea of a travel ban has been so controversial.
Hatfill: Not to other countries.
Hamblin: To the U.S. it has.
Hatfill: When the SARS epidemic happened, Singapore came very close to being wiped out. People don't realize this. And over there, if you chew gum or spit on the street, they cane you. Singapore had this under control overnight, and all their contact tracings were confined to their house, to the point where they would phone you every hour and you'd better answer the phone or the cops came by to arrest you. And they stopped it.
Hamblin: So you think this is a tip-of-the-iceberg situation, this outbreak?
Hatfill: Here's a very good example. In 1993, 1994 somewhere I think in that timeframe, we almost lost every lion in the Serengeti. The Distemper virus jumped from the wild African dogs into the great cats and it slaughtered them. They had no immunity. And they had to go in and vaccinate wild lions.
Hamblin: They did that with darts?
Hatfill: I forget how they did it.
Hamblin: They could tranquilize them.
Hatfill: I heard rumors of infected meat. I don't know how that would work. But 80, 90 percent of the population crashed. Mother Nature tends to do that. We're not there yet. But when's our next doubling time for population?
Hamblin: It's not long. I know the over-65 population in the U.S. is doubling in the next 25 years.
Hatfill: With poor immune systems because they're older, susceptible to all sorts of stuff. And now China's moving everybody into high-density urban areas. They built these huge cities, million person cities, and there's nobody in there. And they're going to relocate their rural population. Why? Because it stimulates consumer spending and provides jobs. This is their grand plan. Well this is where all the flu viruses mix and come from. God knows what that will generate. This is a serious problem. It's not something that can be ignored any longer."
This caught my eye—
http://www.koco.com/news/tulsa-health-department-monitoring-possible-ebola-patient/29446960
[snip]
The health department has been monitoring the patient over the 21-day surveillance period recommended by the Center for Disease Control and Oklahoma State Department of Health. Thursday night they learned the patient had developed a fever.
The patient is a male and, being classified as low risk and being held at OSU Medical Center in Tulsa. Testing is currently underway and there is no time frame on when the results of the tests will be announced, the Tulsa Health Department said.
___________
It is the beginning of flu season...
Uh Oh. Let’s hope it is just some minor illness. I haven’t heard anything about what Oklahoma is doing with respect to treatment of Ebola patients before this. Thanks for posting.
Louisiana tells anyone who's been exposed to Ebola: Stay away
Intelligence???? LOL
*
Delaware TV gets the hottest U.S. Senate campaign ad: Chris Coons Ebola Zone!
Ebola Battle Led by Larry, Curly, and Moe?
Just let Kaci Hickox have a pizza (The Left's New Poster Girl)
Democratic Rep: This Kaci Hickox dustup is just like the Terri Schiavo case
Not sure where they get that. No one is killing Hickox, and Terry wasn't possibly carrying something that could kill others.
Spanish Intelligence Intercepts Plot to Weaponise Ebola
North Korea to quarantine all foreigners because of Ebola fears (for 21 days)
The article mentions how nurse’s linkedin page was scrubbed, but here is what was found:
From the article:
http://www.naturalnews.com/047444_Ebola_quarantine_Kaci_Hickox_intelligence_officer.html
As you can see from the document below, Hickox graduated from a two-year CDC intelligence officer training program in 2012.
The official intelligence designation granted to Nurse Hickox by the CDC was “Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer,” and she is a graduate of the 2012 EIS program according to this CDC document (PDF). (See page 138 - 139 for her name and photo, or view photo below.)
http://www.naturalnews.com/files/PDF-2013-EIS-Conference.pdf
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