Posted on 08/16/2014 1:23:08 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Experimental drugs and airport screenings will do nothing to stop this plague. If Ebola hits Lagos, we're in real trouble.
Attention, World: You just don't get it.
You think there are magic bullets in some rich country's freezers that will instantly stop the relentless spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa? You think airport security guards in Los Angeles can look a traveler in the eyes and see infection, blocking that jet passenger's entry into La-la-land? You believe novelist Dan Brown's utterly absurd description of a World Health Organization that has a private C5-A military transport jet and disease SWAT team that can swoop into outbreaks, saving the world from contagion?
Wake up, fools. What's going on in West Africa now isn't Brown's silly Inferno scenario -- it's Steven Soderbergh's movie Contagion, though without a modicum of its high-tech capacity.
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 countrywide 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....
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
If we’re all scared enough will the cumulative fear stop Ebola? When then what’s the point of getting scared. If it hits the point where it can’t be stopped well then it can’t be stopped. Getting scared ain’t gonna help nothing, except make the last days of your life suck.
So far about 1200 people have died in a land far far away. Every year in the USA 30,000 to 40,000 people die from the everyday flu virus. Every year. Year after year. How scared are you about that?
I’m not very good at statistics, so what I do is to keep a eye on the WHO numbers rather than the local reports with anecdotal information, unless of course there is a new outbreak area.
As I said some days ago, the death rate and the new infection rate had seemed to be stabilizing. I still hold that view.
It seems to me that based on the information early on, we saw a high number of new infections and a what appeared to be low number of deaths, (below 50%) initially, which actually led people to believe that the death rates would be lower than previous outbreaks, leading to other speculations as to the strain.
Over the days and weeks now that followed you see that death rate percentage increasing and following more closely the norms for this strain, (ebola Zaire).
To me, this indicates that the initial rush of new infections has stabilized and the death rate is tracking it as it should and increasing, which should mean that the new infection rate is slowing to match it.
I’m not trying to say it’s over, but it looks to me like the usual process of a slow burnout is beginning to occur. keeping in mind also that it is not in their best interests in terms of financial aid and NGO intervention to say that they feel good about the progress. Not the WHO or the local authorities.
So no, I do not now and never did see this outbreak as jumping the shark and blowing up as a worldwide pandemic.
Unless we see outbreaks traveling the length and breadth of Africa, I will continue to have that opinion.
There seems to be general agreement that Ebola going out of control in Lagos will be the signal to activate escape plans.
Let's hope that doesn't happen for six months, which will hopefully get us within 3-6 months of deployment of an Ebola vaccine.
The thing that could make this a pandemic is the ease of worldwide travel and the possibility of people deliberately infected, deliberately infecting others in closed in, crowded environments, such as malls, airplanes, and subways.
No problem, Hershel the Vet will handle it.
“Thats why I plan to immediately cut myself off from society and virtually all human contact and live on Walden Pond and kill deer and fish and eat Juniper berries and wild honey.”
Walden Pond ain’t what it used to be. :-)
It would be tough avoiding humans there.
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ebola isn’t afraid of a little sunlight. It can also ve reactived after its dried out.
How many people were killed by muslims in a land far far away last year? Do you worry about them?
Thanks for the ping!
Revivifying viruses, while certainly possible, is a chancy business and, please note, requires sophisticated laboratory equipment. Of all the things one might fear in this world, contracting haemorrhagic fever in Mecca or similar climes must be WAY down on the list. Something like #106,572, I imagine.
That is actually a major concern. If it hits during pilgrimage season, it will be worldwide in a month
I am trying to construct a rate model now from data gleaned from the CDC website. The data is relatively poor (things like cumulative cases this week lower than cumulative cases last week, an impossibility) pepper the data. I will ping you when I finish and have something to talk about. So far the data is all over the place.
This country has to do what the administration absolutely refuses to do: control who comes into to the country.
I just bought some of that. Can you take it every day? It says that you should only take it for up to 12 days on the bottle that I got.
There are people who have been taking a daily dose for 20 years or more. There are some great books on the uses of colloidal silver. I would get yourself one. Best stuff ever.
Got Hot Zone from library. Not exactly looking forward to reading it
Lifeform, huh? Ancient life forms evolved into lots of other things where does Ebola think it’s going? What does it want to turn into?
a virus is a life form and humans are just part of the food chain.
“Revivifying viruses, while certainly possible, is a chancy business and, please note, requires sophisticated laboratory equipment.”
With ebola it merely requires adding water.
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