Ebola Epidemic Most Likely Much Larger Than Reported, W.H.O. Says

West Africa’s deadly Ebola epidemic is probably much worse than the world realizes, with health centers on the front lines warning that the actual numbers of deaths and illnesses are significantly higher than the official estimates, the World Health Organization said.

So far, 2,127 cases of the disease and 1,145 deaths have been reported in four nations — Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone — the W.H.O announced Friday. But the organization has also warned that the actual number is almost certainly higher, perhaps by a very considerable margin.

“Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak,” the group said in a statement on Thursday. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage

A warning in Ivory Coast. The illness has appeared in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria.

Health Officials Try to Quell Fear of Ebola Spreading by Air TravelAUG. 14, 2014

Health workers in protective clothing screened people for Ebola on Saturday at the government hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone.

The epidemic is still growing faster than efforts to keep up with it, and it will take months before governments and health workers in the region can get the upper hand, Joanne Liu, the president of Doctors Without Borders, said on Friday, calling conditions on the ground “like a war.”

Ran across this today .... the original link requires you to join, so this is an excerpt of it on a blog and I’ll put the blog link at the bottom - there is an “Ebola Resources” list of links on the far right columnn of the blog, too - might be interesting looking through some of that.

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Garrett: You are not nearly scared enough about Ebola

Via ForeignPolicy.com, Laurie Garrett writes: You Are Not Nearly Scared Enough about Ebola. Excerpt:

Last week, my brilliant Council on Foreign Relations colleague John Campbell, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, warned that spread of the virus inside Lagos — which has a population of 22 million — would instantly transform this situation into a worldwide crisis, thanks to the chaos, size, density, and mobility of not only that city but dozens of others in the enormous, oil-rich nation.

Add to the Nigerian scenario civil war, national elections, Boko Haram terrorists, and a country-wide doctors’ strike — all of which are real and current — and you have a scenario so overwrought and frightening that I could not have concocted it even when I advised screenwriter Scott Burns on his Contagion script.

Inside the United States, politicians, gadflies, and much of the media are focused on wildly experimental drugs and vaccines, and equally wild notions of “keeping the virus out” by barring travelers and “screening at airports.”

Let’s be clear: Absolutely no drug or vaccine has been proven effective against the Ebola virus in human beings. To date, only one person — Dr. Kent Brantly — has apparently recovered after receiving one of the three prominent putative drugs, and there is no proof that the drug was key to his improvement.

None of the potential vaccines has even undergone Phase One safety trials in humans, though at least two are scheduled to enter that stage before December of this year. And Phase One is the swiftest, easiest part of new vaccine trials — the two stages of clinical trials aimed at proving that vaccines actually work will be difficult, if not impossible, to ethically and safely execute.

If one of the vaccines is ready to be used in Africa sometime in 2015, the measure will be executed without prior evidence that it can work, which in turn will require massive public education to ensure that people who receive the vaccination do not change their behaviors in ways that might put them in contract with Ebola — because they mistakenly believe they are immune to the virus.

We are in for a very long haul with this extremely deadly disease — it has killed more than 50 percent of those laboratory-confirmed infections, and possibly more than 70 percent of the infected populations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Nigeria is struggling to ensure that no secondary spread of Ebola comes from one of the people already infected by Liberian traveler Patrick Sawyer — two of whom have died so far.

That effort expanded on Wednesday, when Nigerian health authorities announced that a nurse who had treated Sawyer escaped her quarantine confinement in Lagos and traveled to Enugu a city that, as of 2006, has a population of about three million. Though the nurse has not shown symptoms of the disease, the incubation time for infection, which is up to 21 days, hasn’t elapsed.

Since the Ebola outbreak began in March there have been many reports of isolated cases of the disease in travelers to other countries. None have resulted, so far, in secondary spread, establishing new epidemic focuses of the disease. As I write this, such a case is thought to have occurred Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, and another suspected case reportedly died in isolation in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, prompting the kingdom to issue special Ebola warnings for the upcoming hajj.

It’s only a matter of time before one of these isolated cases spreads, possibly in a chaotic urban center far larger than the ones in which it is now claiming lives: Conakry, Guinea; Monrovia, Liberia; and Freetown, Sierra Leone.

The Saudi and South African cases she mentions have very recently tested negative, but Garrett’s point remains valid.

Ebola punches far, far above its weight. In a region with a quarter-billion people, probably fewer than 3,000 have contracted it, even counting missed cases. Yet the disease has shaken West Africa’s economies, societies, and governments, and the rumbles are being felt around the world. If Ebola does escape from its present limits, the rumbles will become a deafening roar.

Link: http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2014/08/garrett-you-are-not-nearly-scared-enough-about-ebola.html

I posted something about the Ebola crises yesterday quoting info from Wikipedia.

You want to open your eyes? Read Wikipedia’s article about the Spanish Influenza pandemic 1918 - 1920!

Being a history major I had ran across the term but never dug into it. That one article really opened my eyes. Particularly the part about it coming in two waves. Another thing that caught my attention was how authorities down played the scope of the pandemic to keep the population from panicking. Finally there was mention about the importance of securing your international borders. Japan escaped the worse of the Spanish Flu because it rapidly closed its borders and kept them closed.

And our Southern Border is how secure today?

Am I an alarmist there?

Well, what’s better a little over reaction or suffering “The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but an estimated 10% to 20% of those who were infected died. With about a third of the world population infected, this case-fatality ratio means 3% to 6% of the entire global population died.[30] Influenza may have killed as many as 25 million people in its first 25 weeks. Older estimates say it killed 40–50 million people,[4] while current estimates say 50–100 million people worldwide were killed.[31]” to quote Wikipedia.

Interesting you bring that up. There is a very old cemetery back in the mountains that I have occasion to see now and again. We always stop and walk around - it’s a beautiful and interesting place in a somber way. A lot of the deaths occurred in & around 1918, during the ‘Spanish Flu’ epidemic. That cemetery got me interested in the subject and I have done some reading up on it.

A lot of the Ebola spreading issues in Africa ARE hygiene, culture, lack of info .... a lot of it is fear, plain & simple. The CDC is playing things down, but if Ebola gets into certain populations .... foreign communities (speak little English), illegals, ‘ferals’, low info .... you have hygiene issues AND a lot of those folks want to avoid ‘authority’ & quarantine, would be more likely to hide bodies, etc. Similar behavior - not as bad, but enough for the virus to spread. There are NO meds to ‘cure’ it, only supportive treatment - death rate is running 50-70%. The two folks at Emory, receiving experimental drugs are the exception to the rule in a big way. And then there’s the media with all their hype and hoopla ... they’ll make the fear factor worse and the info they have is often conflicting, confusing & even downright inaccurate.

For all these reasons, I don’t think you’re being alarmist. I’m not sure what the solution is - say too much or too little, either option isn’t a good thing. I DO think the southern border should be locked down pronto but we know how President Obola feels about that - even without Ebola, drug-resistant TB is a major threat and it spreads easily, plus you likely could see a resurgence of polio which has been eliminated in this country, but not others. I remember standing in line with my folks at an elementary school to get the vaccine, but I know older people who had polio and then as adults, got the ‘relapse’ or whatever they call it - my folks were terrified of it. Now we’re hearing, in our state, illegal kids are going to be considered “homeless” which means they do not have to provide health & immunization records when they go to school in the fall. Of course, all the AMERICAN CITIZEN kids do .... and will be at risk from the illegals that don’t.

The government is not doing what they should to protect us and if we do get something like an Avian flu, even Ebola & it’s epidemic, they can’t handle it & I think we’re on our own.

Perhaps ending childhood diseases (for the most part) has led us to too lax a situation concerning infectious diseases, and isolation.

I think that is part of the problem, and the era of antibiotics as we have known it is another part.

With the sense (accurate or otherwise) that virtually any bug can be defeated with a pill, I think many have become complacent about hygiene.

Then, with the whole 'germ free' thing, I still see people who will use germicidal hand cleaner touch surfaces and rub their eyes or put their fingers in their mouth...as if they don't fully understand what is going on. Maybe they don't, and just do what they do because they think it will make them 'safe'. Unfortunately, that complacency could produce unpleasant results.

But with Ebola, we are dealing with a pathogen which is lethal, easily enough communicated once the patient becomes symptomatic, and one we do not want to escape containment. The biohazard regimen and protective clothing/environment needed to keep such a patient close to supportive care, near research facilities (to learn more, and hopefully find a way to cure, or at least a vaccine) and yet isolated sufficiently are expensive, seldom needed, and would be a drain of resources on hospitals which are often financially strapped from tending to more mundane ailments with little to no compensation.

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