The PBS/Frontline website just posted the following:
Frontline: Ebola Outbreak - Sierra Leone
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ebola-outbreak/
It lasts 27 minutes. Watch it.
It not only depicts the obstacles of fighting this, but you see the impassible roads, how few vehicles and staff to manage this and the types of environment to treat these people, very rudiment.... Just 4 vehicles to survey a million people for this virus..says volumes. Not to mention the peoples various ‘superstitions’ get in the way and create further problems with treating and controlling this virus.
Thank you again...well worth the 27 minute viewing...
CW
Sunday Obam mentioned he is likely to dispatch “U.S. military resources” to help fight the serious outbreak of Ebola in several countries in West Africa.
I don’t like the idea at all of sending our troops on the ground there....when West Africans have so many militia’s and military people who could be doing this.
I watched it a little bit ago.
I highly recommend watching this.
Thanks for posting the link.
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.