Short form —
1. There is an inflection point in Ebola health care where it is all a matter of being a hospice for the dying.
2. Too few health care workers (HCW) move you from providing real health care to warehousing the dying and risk avoidance for HCW.
3. When there are not enough HCW per infected, you give PPE to families, tell them to stay home an use it, and hope only 3 out of 5 rather than all five become Ebola victims.
4. Ebola is now so wide spread in Liberia and eastern parts of Sierra Leone that “contact tracing” is useless and 1-thru-3 above is all that can be done.
5. Middle and Western Sierra Leone are close to being what Liberia is now in terms of exponential Ebola spread.
6. Bausch has lots of regrets for “being too late” — as if he were responsible — and doesn't think Ebola is airborne, and it does not need to be to do what it is doing. The fomite threat of Ebola infected human fluids in an urban area is enough.
See full text at the link below.
by NPR STAFF
September 22, 201411:36 AM ET
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/09/22/349882298/dr-daniel-bausch-knows-the-ebola-virus-all-too-well?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news
The Ebola crisis in West Africa has been a “very personal outbreak for me,” says Dr. Daniel Bausch. The virologist spent “quite a few years” working on hemorrhagic fevers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Ebola as well as Marburg and Lassa fever. He knows the Ebola virus all too well, and he knows many of the people who've been deeply involved in fighting the current outbreak, including Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, a virologist in Sierra Leone who contracted Ebola himself and died this spring.
>snip<
Ebola projection from 8 Sept 2014 (post in 1650-ish range) vs 22 Sept 2014 Reality.
The WHO Ebola case data previously supported a monthly doubling trend (AKA an ~RO=3 per the Foreign Policy Ebola article from Early Sept 2012).
In black and white numbers, from May thru Sept 2014.
May 1 = 180 cases (actual reported was 243),
June 1 = 375 cases,
July 1 = 750 cases,
Aug 1 = 1500 cases (After FP article reported July RO of 2.83 for Sierra Leone),
Sept 1 = 3000 cases.
Projection for the rest of 2014 based on monthly doubling (AKA RO stays at 3.0) —
Oct 1 = 6000
Nov 1 = 12,000
Dec 1 = 24,000
We are currently at 5843 Ebola cases on 22 Sept 2014, with eight days left in Sept, and Liberia four days behind in reporting.
The Ebola case doubling time is now three weeks, and accelerating.
And MSF has just stated — officially theough its head officer — that the WHO Ebola case undercount in West Africa is now 1/5, not 1/3 or 1/4, of total Ebola case load.
Saudi Arabia: Pilgrims Being Tested For Ebola At Jeddah Airport
September 22, 2014
Pilgrims arriving at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz International Airport (KAIA) are being screened, tested and given preventive medication against the Ebola virus.
Fahd Al-Ghazwi, supervisor of the preventive center at the airport, told a local newspaper that a medical team wearing protective clothing “examines pilgrims who have flown in for Haj, especially pilgrims coming from West Africa.”
Passengers are required to fill out medical forms and are administered medication as soon as they disembark from their flights.
Excerpted
Saudi Arabia: Pilgrims Being Tested For Ebola At Jeddah Airport
"How long can the virus exist outside a human host?
The viruses can only replicate in living tissue, they commandeer certain proteins and functions of a living cell for their replication. So once any organism dies, there can be no more replication of a virus. Bacterium is different, right? If you leave the food out bacteria will grow. But a virus can't do that. And so in this virus, Ebola virus, it's not kind of an Andromeda strain-type thing where we can't kill the virus; we can kill the virus pretty easily through bleach and Lysol and alcohol, and a host of different things. And so once it gets out in the environment, it's not particularly hardy.
You can't give an exact number of hours or days because there's not been a lot of research; we need more research, and it also depends upon the conditions.
Viruses don't like heat and light, and that will inactivate what they call a lipid membrane of this virus. And so if that virus is out in an area where there's a lot of heat and light, then it's going to be inactivated relatively soon. If that virus is in a place where it's dark and cool, it'll last longer.
If you put it in a test tube and you put the test tube on the table in a cool, dark place, it'll probably last for, I don't know, weeks, maybe. But if a drop of blood on this table that dries and is out in the light and heat, we're probably talking hours to days of this virus surviving."
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