Posted on 08/13/2014 10:06:22 AM PDT by Cats Pajamas
Using a Tactic Unseen in a Century, Countries Cordon Off Ebola-Racked Areas
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is so out of control that governments there have revived a disease-fighting tactic not used in nearly a century: the “cordon sanitaire,” in which a line is drawn around the infected area and no one is allowed out.
Cordons, common in the medieval era of the Black Death, have not been seen since the border between Poland and Russia was closed in 1918 to stop typhus from spreading west. They have the potential to become brutal and inhumane. Centuries ago, in their most extreme form, everyone within the boundaries was left to die or survive, until the outbreak ended.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
any update on how many are dead now?
Change!
This is what “change” looks like.
We can only Hope.
RESIST.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
Sorry, didn’t see it. My bad.
It's unfortunate, but sometimes that is necessary in order to save a much larger number of people. Just like amputation of a man's limb to save his life.
Not surprisingly, in full blown epidemics the groups who take the biggest hit from the disease include:
1) The sick with other problems, the mentally ill, and the poor.
2) Those who minister to the sick and dispose the dead.
3) Those who smuggle and those who break quarantine going in to the quarantined area.
4) Those who attend religious gatherings hoping to pray the disease away.
5) The unlucky.
This strongly implies we have a much higher rate of infection than what is being reported.
Unfortunately, it also means things are going to get a lot works. Cordons can work, but they often don’t. It concentrates the disease, and potentially infects those guarding the cordon. It also gives a high motivation for people to flee (in order to not be locked up with sick people) which spreads the disease.
Hope they’re more motivated than our BP.
As of yesterday, over 1000, with 1850 cases outstanding. This represents, according to congressional testimony from Samaritan’s Purse, roughly 25% of what is actually happening in West Africa.
What is NOW happening in the Middle East, is unknown at this point.
I’m spreadsheeting what is coming from WHO, and trying to determine an R0. The numbers are cooked. They don’t make sense. As an estimate, in West Africa, I’d put the R0 at about 2.5 to 3.
There are dozens of bodies in the streets in four different countries in West Africa.
It ain’t pretty. How’d Obama shoot today? He fix that hook?
You forgot #6. Everybody else.
Epidemic quarantines are not a particularly good means of control, or really, there are far easier and more effective means of control than quarantines.
As far as epidemic-like control measures, there is only one international control means that applies to biological, chemical and nuclear scenarios. It was invoked by the Soviet Union a few times, and once in Italy. It amounts to building a fence around the area, optionally outprocessing everyone within, and abandoning the place.
The Italian incident, the “Seveso disaster”, is best known.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveso_disaster
I’m not sure if the Soviets activated it after Chernobyl, as it was such a grand disaster that there was no need for international notification.
The problem with using a national epidemic as a means of control is that quarantines are under the control of doctors, who while they instantly have authority over the police and even military personnel, are focused on the disease, not the control measures. This is the case even when they are acting in their most authoritarian manner.
And this tends to fly in the face of political control, so even an ordinary person can tell the difference.
a lot of people are dying of non ebola disease because they are afraid of going to a hospital. But when we had a cholera outbreak, we were told to put all cases elsewhere. We had no cases, thankGod, but a doc from another hospital used the local gradeschool for this.
and the smallpox scare after 911 had plans drawn up for a similar use of school for giving vaccine while using other public buildings for quarantine.
Bring Out Your Dead
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
The horrific potential for H5N1 resulted in some very good ideas, such as cities and towns setting up a system to do regular robo-calls to every telephone and cellphone in the city.
Providing multilingual information as well as having a push button system to gather information. For example “press 1” if nobody in your household is currently sick, “2” if one or more people are sick, “3” if someone has died and needs to be safely transported, “4” if you are in need of food or water, “5” if you need essential medicine, “6” to report dead animals in your area, etc.
Another idea is to encourage stores to have free public hand sanitizer dispensers, plastic gloves and ear loop masks at their front doors, to reduce the possibility of a sick person spreading contamination inside their store.
Thanks for the ping!
I know this is picky, and OT, but shouldn’t the word in the title have been “Wracked” not “Racked”? Doesn’t the NYTimes know anything of the English language? Don’t they have editors?
I feel like I’m living in the 1500’s when there was at least an excuse for not knowing spelling and grammar, because they hadn’t been standardized yet.
Back to serious topics like death and illness...
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