Posted on 08/30/2014 9:41:35 PM PDT by BenLurkin
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — The dreaded Ebola virus came to the children’s hospital in the form of a 4-year-old boy.
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The boy died. The 30 doctors and nurses who had contact with him were placed in quarantine, forced to nervously wait out the 21 days it can take for the virus to emerge. And remaining staff so far have refused to return to work.
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Ebola is now spreading from the remote provinces and into the teeming cities such as Freetown, where 1.2 million people jostle for space. Previous outbreaks had been limited to remote villages, where containment was aided by geography. The thought of Ebola taking hold in a major city such as Freetown or Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, is a virological nightmare
Odds of survival stand at about 50-50. Detection is difficult because early symptoms are hard to distinguish from those of malaria or typhoid, common ailments during the rainy season. While Ebola is not transmitted through the air like the flu, it does spread by close contact with bodily fluids such as blood, saliva and sweat — even something as innocent as a tainted tear.
And so now it is headed to Freetown, where the streets hum with low-level panic. People long ago stopped shaking hands. Hugs are unheard of. Plastic buckets filled with a diluted chlorine solution are posted outside many businesses to encourage hand-washing. Some of these homemade solutions tingle and burn; others smell like aromatic cleansers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Safest way to handle food? Can vegetables be washed in a weak bleach solution? Produces is touched all the way from the field to the grocery store... is that a problem?
Any ideas on how to survive until the virus blows through?
Thanks for the ping!
You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!
As far as you can from concentrations of drug abusers as you can manage.
Drug abusers looking for a fix are fundamentally irrational in that they are slaves to their cravings. That makes them two legged Ebola vectors in a epidemic situation.
The easiest way to spot areas with a lot of drug abusers are electronic maps of high crime areas. There are a number of web sites and smart phone ‘Apps’ that will give you that information.
Good one... thanks.
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...
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