Posted on 08/14/2014 12:57:52 PM PDT by mgist
Ebola: Panic or Pandemic? – An open source investigation
This post is intended as a round-up of available information on the current Ebola outbreak from various sources around the web. Corbett Report members are encouraged to debate and discuss the situation in the commments thread below, ask questions, suggest links, and otherwise contribute to this investigation. The comments will be used to piece together an upcoming episode of The Corbett Report Podcast on this subject. [Not a Corbett Report member? Sign up today.]
Overview: Official information on Ebola virus
Ebola haemorrhagic fever is the human disease caused by the Ebola virus. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the disease has a fatality rate of up to 90% and is “one of the world’s most virulent diseases.” The disease first appeared in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks, one in the Congo (near the Ebola river) and the other in a remote area of Sudan. It transfers through close contact with blood of an infected animal (including chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines) and spreads human-to-human through direct contact with infected blood or other bodily fluids, or through contact between broken skin or mucous membranes of a healthy person and the contaminated possessions (blankets, bedclothes, needles) of an infected person.
Symptoms include “sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat” followed by “vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding.”
There is currently no licensed or authorized treatment or vaccine for Ebola virus. Serum containing antibodies from previously infected survivors of Ebola disease was used to successfully treat seven out of eight patients in the 1995 Congo outbreak (although those results have been disputed repeatedly), and other experimental treatments are currently being developed including monoclonal antibodies and prototype vaccines. Controversy has arisen in the current outbreak over the unauthorized use of an experimental treament (“Zmapp“) to treat two cases in the US (see below).
Timeline of the 2014 outbreak
On March 22 2014, an epidemic emergency is declared after an outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in southern Guinea. That day, Médecins Sans Frontières announces they have already deployed 24 nurses, doctors, logisticians and hygiene and sanitation experts to the country with 33 tons of supplies leaving France and Belgium on the way.
By March 25th, the BBC reports 62 confirmed deaths from the disease, including five people in Liberia who died “after crossing from southern Guinea for treatment.” As the BBC report notes, “It is the first time Ebola has struck Guinea, with recent outbreaks thousands of miles away, in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
On March 31st, Ebola is confirmed to have spread to Liberia where two sisters (one of whom has just returned from Guinea) are found to be carrying the disease. The death toll rises to 78 people.
In early April West Africa begins mobilizing to combat the spread of the disease, including sending health teams to border territories.
By May 27th the death toll rises to 187 and the virus is confirmed to have spread to Sierra Leone.
By mid-June, WHO data shows 333 total deaths, making this the deadliest outbreak in recorded history. The previous most deadly outbreak was the 1976 outbreak in Congo, with 280 reported deaths.
On July 3rd and 4th the WHO convenes a two-day Emergency Ministerial meeting on Ebola Virus Disease in Ghana where West African countries and various international organizations agree to adopt a strategy of “cross-border collaboration” for combating the outbreak. They also decide that the “WHO will establish a Sub-Regional Control Center in Guinea to act as a coordinating platform to consolidate technical support to West African countries by all major partners; and assist in resource mobilization” and that the WHO will be a lead organization in coordinating action on the issue.
The agreement includes resolutions to:
Convene national inter-sectoral meetings involving key government ministries, national technical committees and other stakeholders to map out a plan for immediate implementation of the strategy. Mobilise community, religious, political leaders to improve awareness, and the understanding of the disease Strengthen surveillance, case finding reporting and contact tracing Deploy additional national human resources with the relevant qualifications to key hot spots. Identify and commit additional domestic financial resources Organise cross-border consultations to facilitate exchange of information Work and share experiences with countries that have previously managed Ebola outbreaks in the spirit of south-south cooperation They also decide that the “WHO will establish a Sub-Regional Control Center in Guinea to act as a coordinating platform to consolidate technical support to West African countries by all major partners; and assist in resource mobilization.”
On July 25th the WHO confirms a probable case of Ebola in Nigeria, although an undated post on the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Health website claims to “debunk” Ebola in Nigeria, claiming that it is in fact Dengue Fever.
On July 30th, Germany agrees to a WHO request to accept two Ebola infected patients for treatment at the university clinic in Hamburg-Eppendorf. According to Deutsche Welle: “The university clinic has made six beds available in a segregated part of the facility. In this isolation unit, no liquids, gases or particles in the air can reach the outside world. Access is only possible through three airlocks. In the first, the air pressure is slightly reduced; in the second and the third even more so. That’s to ensure clean air from outside is able to come in, but contaminated air from inside is not able to go out. Up until now, the unit has only been used for training.”
On August 2nd, an infected American aid worker traveled from Liberia to the United States to receive treatment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. According to Reuters: “The facility at Emory, set up with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is one of only four in the country with the facilities to deal with such cases.” A second American aid worker, also infected in Liberia, arrived at the same facility two days later.
As of August 6th, the disease is confirmed to be spreading in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria. Suspected cases are currently being tested in Lagos, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia. The total number of confirmed cases stands at 1,711 with 932 deaths. An emergency meeting of “global health experts” has just been convened by the WHO in Geneva to address the situation.UPDATE: On August 8th, the WHO declared the current Ebola outbreak a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” This is an instrument under the International Health Regulations, a legally-binding international agreement on disease prevention and control. The declaration allows for potential international coordination of the crisis and grants the WHO powers to obtain and share information about the crisis anywhere within the IHR territories with or without the consent of the individual governments involved. According to Stephen Morrison, the director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, this potentially allows for “boots-on-the-ground” intervention by the US military or other NATO member countries to operate in these environments in terms of ground transport, supply chain, and distribution of commodities. This is only the third time a PHEIC has been declared, the first being the 2009 swine flu outbreak and the second a declaration related to polio earlier this year.
Controversies, Contradictions and Conspiracies
Despite repeated denials and downplaying of the possibility by health authorities, there is growing evidence that this strain of Ebola may be airborne (transmissible from human to human through the air, not direct contact). A 2012 study examining “Transmission of Ebola virus from pigs to non-human primates” concluded: “Our findings support the hypothesis that airborne transmission may contribute to ZEBOV spread, specifically from pigs to primates, and may need to be considered in assessing transmission from animals to humans in general.” Despite the fact that even the official CDC guidelines for how airlines should handle the Ebola crisis contains the concern tha the virus may be airborne, a concerted effort is being made online to ridicule those hypothesizing that the current Ebola outbreak represents an airborne strain of the virus:
According to Bloomberg: “Despite the deadly nature of the disease, the relative rarity of outbreaks and their confinement to primarily rural areas of poor African nations make Ebola an unattractive target for big drugmakers.” An American or German outbreak, would, of course, change that calculus, and just last month a potential treatment for the disease was put on hold by the FDA due to safety concerns. Now, controversy is arising after experimental medicine was given to the two stricken American aid workers without FDA approval. The BBC describes the medicine as a “ZMapp drug, which has only been tested on monkeys.” For many, the idea that the WHO is heavily involved in a pandemic emergency in which drug companies are looking to circumvent traditional approval processes raises eerie parallels with the 2009 swine flu scare, which followed this pattern almost exactly, and was later ruled by both the British Medical Journal and the Council of Europe to have been a sham pandemic declared by a Big Pharma-connected WHO panel on behalf of the vaccine manufacturers themselves.
Others point to the possibility that this Ebola has been weaponized, or is part of a planned bioterror release. These reports focus on Dr. Charles Arntzen, a researcher at the University of Arizona who helped develop the experimental Ebola treatment given to the two American aid workers. In 2012, Dr. Arntzen joked about using genetic modification to create a “better virus” to cull 25% of the human population:
This is in line with similar statements by fellow biologists, including Dr. Eric Pianka at the University of Texas at Austin, who eyewitnesses claim used his acceptance speech for the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist Award from the Texas Academy of Science to muse on “the elimination of 90 percent of the human population” through an airborne disease like the Ebola virus.
Some have pointed to the long, documented history of government research into biological weapons and intentional government releases of biological agents on their own citizens in the past as a sign that the current outbreak could be some form of intentional bioweapon release by a government agency or rogue actor.
Yet others argue whether the current outbreak is being deliberately downplayed to hide the severity of what is happening or deliberately overhyped to panic the public and make them acquiesce to medical martial law or other dramatic maneuvers. Some even question whether or not the entire pandemic is a hoax.
The video at this link is even better. Skip over the beginning until after President Bush’s speech. Awesome!
http://www.corbettreport.com/episode-293-the-ebola-effect/
Would have appreciated investigation into the claims on the number of victims and deaths. There’s been quite a bit of speculation that the number of reported victims has been under reported to avoid having whole areas of nations shut down, and exports virtually eliminated.
It’s got to be at least somewhat higher than what is being reported - families are hiding bodies, some infected with Ebola are fleeing ‘home’ (from cities back into remote villages) etc. More than a few are avoiding hospitals, afraid of the medical workers. They can’t count what they don’t see/know about. I don’t doubt there’s under reporting going on for the reasons you mentioned as well.
Well in the video from the second post he eloquently explains why it’s a scam.
There are some things that are impossible to verify, especially since most “victims” were never named.
You are being lied to.
The only truth is that the world is being manipulated by sociopaths, with God complexes, who own the banking systems, the media, and national leaders.
Listen to the video at in the link posted above. Listen to what concerns the most powerful people in the world, and it will make sense.
Rockefellers Own Words on Population control
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ClqUcScwnn8
One company Tekmira, who has been performing Phase I clinical trials for an Ebola drug it has been working on in otherwise healthy adult patients has seen its stock skyrocket over the last two weeks, even though its experiments in humans have now been halted due to safety concerns.
Tekmira apparently has a $140 million contract with none other than the USAMRIID to work on this drug, along with a multi-million contract with biotech giant Monsanto for the same technology. The drug was granted FDA fast track status back in March. As the company’s site says, however, the drug is apparently for the Zaire strain of the virus.
So has Tekmira taken the Ebobun strain into account?
In addition, now Reuters is reporting that Ebola vaccines have been fast tracked as well, with human experiments starting as early as next month. Wow, that was fast. Will those vaccines take Ebobun into account?
The last time a vaccine was fast tracked in such a manner, it was for the purposefully overblown swine flu “pandemic” — a created “campaign of panic” basically designed to sell vaccines and grant more emergency powers.
As Aaron Dykes reported in 2010:
Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, claims that the threshold for alert was deliberately lowered at the WHO, allowing a “pandemic” to be declared despite the mildness of the ‘swine flu.’ That designation would force a demand for the vaccine, which was subsequently purchased by governments or health facilities and pushed on the public through a full-scale fear campaign in the media...
Wodarg is focusing on the motives for profit, as well as the ties between the World Health Organization (WHO), the pharmaceutical-industrial complex and research scientists, a nexus which Canada Free Press points out is eerily similar to the Climategate revelations that CRU research scientists fudged data to “hide the decline” in proxy temperatures in order to support global warming claims.
Wodarg made several disconcerting statements to the media, including:
“Never before the search for traces of a virus was carried out so broadly and intensively, besides, many cases of death that happen to coincide with seropositive H1N1 lab-findings were simply attributed to “swine-flu” and used to foster fear.”
“A group of people in the WHO is associated very closely with the pharmaceutical industry.”
“The great campaign of panic we have seen provided a golden opportunity for representatives from labs who knew they would hit the jackpot in the case of a pandemic being declared.”
In fact, that’s what CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson was set to expose, but her bosses refused to air her story. The mainstream media completely shut her down. Fear sells. The truth, by contrast, doesn’t.
“With the CDC keeping the true Swine Flu stats secret, it meant that many in the public took and gave their children an experimental vaccine that may not have been necessary,” Attkisson said. Read this piece on her 2009 interview with Jon Rappaport for more on how the CDC stopped counting cases of swine flu altogether and hyped the public into a panic that ultimately led to millions of people receiving potentially dangerous, fast-tracked vaccinations.
That’s right. Countries the world over reported many deaths and disabilities suffered in the wake of the fast-tracked H1N1 vaccine, a vaccine people scrambled to get after the hysteria over swine flu was over hyped everywhere, from government agencies to the mainstream media.
But hey, a lot of people in the military-medical-media industrial complex made a lot of money.
The only way to get a death rate percentage is to count only cases that died and cases that have passed through the sickness.
They are counting all cases including the newly reported ones against deaths. Death rate percentage is totally inaccurate and nobody calls them on it.
Ping.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
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...
Thanks for the ping!
You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.