Posted on 09/17/2014 3:51:45 PM PDT by Kartographer
Despite the best efforts of the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders, Ebola is expected to rage on in West Africa for another 12-18 months, with 20,000 cases predicted. Without coordination of relief efforts, the ability to contain the disease is limited and has been labeled a “failure” to date. Countries are sending supplies and equipment in piecemeal fashion. The U.S., for example, is setting up a 25 bed hospital for its part. Unfortunately, it’s far too little to make a dent in the epidemic.
It’s difficult for a person in a developed country to believe that medical systems, economies, even governments, might fail as a result of a virus. The average U.S. citizen suffers from what we call “Normalcy Bias”. This is the tendency to be believe that, since things have been just fine, everything will always remain so. This is foolhardy thinking at best, and dangerous thinking at worst. One wonders what the effect of normalcy bias was in 1918 when the Spanish Flu hit America.
(Excerpt) Read more at doomandbloom.net ...
Ping!
Preppers’ PING!!
Also from Joe Alton, M.D., aka Dr. Bones :
For general information on Ebola, see this article: http://www.doomandbloom.net/ebola-the-next-great-pandemic/
It is your choice you can prep or you can stand around on a bridge waiting for FEMA to bring you a bottle of water, a MRE, a warm blanket and a kiss for your boo-boo and maybe you can even get your picture as you stand there on the national news.
The world is dry tinder just awaiting the right spark maybe mother nature has decided it is time to shuffle the deck.
So listen to what the bible says: A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it. NIV Proverbs 22:3
Selco covers this in this article many times people just can not except that a breakdown is occurring even as they watch it happening before their eyes. Why don’t they realize it? It’s caused by a condition called ‘Normalcy Bias’ a mental state people enter when facing a disaster.
It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
A good article on ‘Normalcy Bias’ is on our own ChocChipCookies Blog The Survival Mom:
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/12/29/normalcy-bias/
You either prepare and stand on your own beholden to no one or you become dependent on others to provide your basic needs and become their ‘serf’. Me I don’t want to be beholden to anyone for providing what is needed for me and mine. I certainly don’t want to have to kiss some ‘gubberment’ third class bureaucratic to try and coax some help from them, I don’t want some ‘jack booted’ thug herding me in line and telling me where to stand, sit, eat or sleep. And last but not least I don’t want to be shut up in with a bunch of ‘zombies’ and have to worry about not only trying to get basic necessities but having to fight to keep what I manage to get.
Just getting started or an old hand you might find my Preparedness Manual helpful. You can download the manual at:
http://tomeaker.com/kart/Preparedness1j.pdf NOTE! THIS IS A FREE DOWNLOAD. I DO NOT MAKE ONE CENT OFF MY PREPAREDNESS MANUAL!
For those of you who haven’t started already it’s time to prepare almost past time maybe. You needed to be stocking up on food guns, ammo, basic household supplies like soap, papergoods, cleaning supplies, good sturdy clothes including extra socks, underwear and extra shoes and boots, cash (I myself have been putting up change for the past few years both for the metal content and the fact that using change places to make what purchases you can will move you down the the list of possible marks during shtf), tools, things you buy everyday start buying two and put one up.
As the LDS say “When the emergency is upon us the time for preparedness has past.”
Again I like to recomend FReeper’s ChocoChipCookie Blog The Survival Mom (Please Blog Police let this one slide!) Where you can get lots of useful information like:
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2011/11/20/8-morale-boosters-for-any-worst-case-scenario/
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/02/02/survival-priorities-the-rule-of-three/
And More
Also there is Ferfal’s Blog a survivor of Argentina’s first collapse:
And there is Selco’s Blog a Bosnian War survivor at:
“There is no greater disaster than to underestimate danger. Underestimation can be fatal.”
Truthfully, until Ebola gets into the 100,000 fatalities a day league, it is small potatoes. About the only contender in mortality like that is a “killer” influenza.
Still, it is good to that if 1 million people a day died, it would be about 2 years and 9 months to kill a billion people, and there are an estimated 7 billion on Earth.
And abortion.
Bump!
That is certainly an interesting perspective. Thanks.
“20,000 cases predicted” is an absurd number. There is no realistic mathematical model I know of that can produce so few cases in 12-18 months. This will be much, MUCH bigger than 20k cases, and we’re unlikely to stay below that number even for this year.
Note: the largest previous outbreak was 425 cases back in 2,000-2001, and we’re already ten times that number and still growing exponentially with no detectable decrease in the rate of exponential growth.
Is anyone militarily and morally prepared to enforce a lethal quarantine of all of West Africa?
If not, Ebola is coming to a Grade School near you....
I’m not going to say I don’t care, but an ebola outbreak in the US ranks somewhere in the low part of my top 100 things I worry about in the course of a week.
Winter is coming, as they say in GoT, and as the article very succinctly pointed out, ebola thrives in warm, wet climes. As a Floridian, sure it concerns me, but everyone from the Farmer’s Almanac to NOAA is predicting a brutally cold winter in the northern hemisphere. That coupled with healthcare facilities that are, for now, top notch, the containment of an outbreak would likely be swift.
If this is going to happen, it’s going to start in a major city or somewhere near a coastline. If you live in the Midwest, esp. in the upper Midwest, you should be more concerned with stockpiling warm clothes and fire wood than if ebola is going to come creeping into your neighborhood in the next 6 - 12 months.
It's also possible to suffer from "catastrophe bias". Such that everyday life is seen as a potential ongoing disaster, since there's always a threat somewhere in the world theoretically threatening us. I'm not saying Ebola is not a threat -- it is -- but some people on FR are continuously in duck and cover mode even without any imminent threat. Such a preoccupation is not helpful when it becomes an obsession and interferes with ordinary life.
it’s going to start in a major city or somewhere near a coastline.
Oh, like New Orleans?
Ebola can’t spread in the winter?
With all those people cooped up in over heated buildings?
I certainly hope it can be contained but have my doubts.
We’ll see where it is in 3 to 6 months....also the Hajj
is next month so we should know something by the end of
October or at least by November/December.
I’d say some posters to FR sell prepper supplies.
“Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
H.L. Mencken
You care to name some? I’d like to check their prices.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
You think I’m incorrect?
I think that if you have proof of such you should take it to the Admins immediately.
Great resource; thanks for posting.
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