Posted on 10/02/2014 5:35:28 PM PDT by servo1969
A photo posted to Twitter by New York Post web editorial assistant Connor Ryan shows an unprotected family member delivering food to the quarantined Texas family of the Liberian man hospitalized with Ebola.
Red Cross worker delivers supplies to quarantined family of Ebola victim in Dallas. http://t.co/KL8jrwAJBg pic.twitter.com/cw9frK9tJK
— Connor Ryan (@connortryan) October 2, 2014
Photo: James Breeden/Splash News
In the photo, a quarantined family member is bringing in supplies left at the apartment door by Red Cross volunteers.
More… The media also released these shocking photos today:
WFAA image of individuals pressure washing Mr. Duncan’s ebola laced vomit from the pavement/sidewalk. The men are not wearing any biohazard protective clothing or gear and there is a woman walking through the liquid in the parking lot wearing sandles. (wtd)
Here’s another photo of the unprotected worker cleaning up Ebola vomit on the sidewalk with a power washer.
A worker power washes the sidewalk in front of the apartment unit at The Ivy Apartments where a man diagnosed with the Ebola virus was staying in Dallas, Texas October 2, 2014. Up to 100 people may have had direct or indirect contact with the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, and four people have been quarantined in a Dallas apartment, health officials said on Thursday. (REUTERS/Mike Stone)
Good news, LIVs are at greater risk for contracting Ebola.
The virus itself has not changed significantly. If anything, it is less fatal than other outbreaks. But the mode of transmission is the same, the course of disease is the same.
The difference here is that a “perfect storm” of unfortunate events have conspired to spread the virus. It had never been seen in that part of Africa before, so it was spreading for months before anyone figured out what it was. And during that time, it got into some fairly populated areas. There were a lot of cases by then, in countries that have inadequate health care systems and poor infrastructures due to the civil wars that went on for decades.
One good thing that may come of this is that drugs and vaccines might finally be tested—efficacy can only be tested by challenge with the disease, and there certainly are enough disease-challenged people right now.
I would like to write a grant proposal soon, to do my own study...
No I don’t know...but I understand they’ve pulled the entire crew out and bringing them all home. The camerman had been working in the area for three years so it wasn’t like he wasn’t familiar with the ground he was walking there.
Maybe check you tube and specify dates then it will bring up those you might have seen then.
Excuse me, what did I do???
err uuhh this is the first case in the US. They should have been there 5 days ago, in their hazmat suits, cleaning up the vomit and the dirty sheets.
Think of all the ways the germs have been tracked around for 5 days. Cats, dogs, mice, bats, kids, people, bikes...
I have ZERO confidence in “them” to handle this.
Post was to the topic...not you. As to what did you do...who knows?
The outbreak had been identified in December, 2013, iirc. by MSF (Doctors Without Borders).
Here's an article link from March 2014, where the outbreak had spread from Guinea to Sierra Leone from March, and the cry for help went out then. Fears Guinea Ebola outbreak has spread to Sierra Leone and another from March where the virus had reached the capital in Guinea: Ebola epidemic reaches Guinea capital, UNICEF says
Considering UNICEF was saying anything about the outbreak, the UN and the WHO should have been fully aware at least seven months and thousands of deaths ago what was going on.
There has been ample time to 'do something', the problem has been known, and yet this has been treated with the 'past outbreaks burned themselves out and this will too' complacency which has cost thousands of lives so far, and will likely cost thousands more.
The virus has also mutated roughly 400 times since the outbreak, and that is what is believed to have caused false negatives in tests for the disease. Variance from Ebola Zaire has been enough that I have seen this referred to as Ebola Guinea. (The links are in the Surveillance Thread, and I just do not have time to dig them out, feel free to browse there if you do not recall this yourself.)
Not all mutations are beneficial for the organism, obviously, but there has been change with the unprecedented number of replications that have occurred in an unprecedented number of vicitms.
(There is a possibility the infected had not progressed far enough for the virus to be detectable, but if that is the case, the tests need revamping.)
This outbreak is also unprecedented in the sense that it is in urban areas, not just outlying villages, and that changes things. It may or may not be the same pathogen (+/-3%), but the playing field is different when it comes to proximity of potential victims, transfer time from patient to fomite to unsuspecting victim, and the raw potential for increased effectiveness of transfer that comes with the sheer number of potential hosts.
A .10% chance of infection isn't so bad when there are only one or two people, but a thousand people pretty much guarantee someone is going to get sick.
This outbreak is already more fatal than the Uganda outbreak, and the numbers are far from complete. Please also compare dead today vs total infected 2-3 weeks ago, because that is a more likely accurate measure of the kill rate.
With the number of infected doubling within the incubation period, the current pending outcomes will skew the death rate downward if you compare today's total cases with today's cumulative dead. To say otherwise is bad science.
Thanks for the ping!
pressure washer is stupidest possible thing to use …unless they poured buckets of bleach all over the area first.
You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!
The few times I saw a mess like this cleaned up on the ground they first put down a big tarp over the area. The tarp had rubber ports on it where large gauge needles were stuck through. Long, very heavy, small diameter sand bags were carefully laid down along the perimeter to hold the tarp down... I think these were full of lead shot.
Finally a hand pumped tank sprayed the entire area beneath the tarp with a hose connected to one of the ports with a solution that smelled to me a lot like the old Hexachlorophene disinfectant. The tarp itself was clear and you could readily tell if all areas beneath had been well soaked.
An hour or so later the job was done.
All these posts including the obligatory duelling replies and no one has thanked FreeRepublic’s own Kristinn Taylor for the article itself? Thanks, Kristinn, for the reporting.
I weep for my grandchildren:(
That’s back when they wanted to stem the spread of disease. Hey now it’s cool to bring it with you when you immigrate.
The outbreak started late in December 2013. Ebola was not suspected at the time, since it had never been seen in that area before and no one thought to look for it. It was believed to be Lassa, another viral hemorrhagic fever that is endemic to the region. I’m not sure how/why Ebola was finally tested for, but one story has it that a doctor (perhaps an MSF doctor) noticed hiccuping, a symptom that he had only seen manifest in Ebola patients. The Guinean ministry of health announced on 19 March that there was a viral disease that had sickened 35 and killed 23; by a week later, the disease was identified as Ebola.
This occurred in an area where public health is almost non-existent and people are highly mobile through porous borders. Guinea had, at one point eliminated the virus and was well into the 42 day wait period, when more Ebola victims came across the border from Liberia or Sierra Leone where they had apparently been hiding.
A crucial event in this outbreak was the funeral of a shaman in Sierra Leone, who had become ill while using traditional remedies to treat people. Because she was well-known, many women from different villages helped to prepare her body for the funeral, a process that involves ritual washing. This spread Ebola to several neighboring villages.
This practice of washing bodies, and of hands-on funeral rites, is responsible for a large number of cases. These people have superstitious beliefs and are mostly illiterate, so many are predisposed not to believe or understand public health messages.
I would love to address the molecular biology aspects of this that you brought up, but I need to get ready for work so I will have to address that in a later post.
Before I go, though, let me post a couple of links.
This is a documentary on a 1995 outbreak in Kikwit, DRC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miJ57LpN2Lg (47 min)
I first saw this documentary in a class I took several years ago. I think the insight it provides on various factors that promote the spread of Ebola, and measures that had to be used to control it is quite interesting. (The convalescent serum treatment they tried is not proven, and has had mixed results in actual use.)
Here is the Wikipedia entry on the current outbreak:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_Africa
It provides not only a good sequence of events, but discusses many of the challenges of trying to contain the disease. These countries until very recently were the locales of very brutal civil wars that went on for decades. They have almost no infrastructure. Their healthcare systems are grossly inadequate, even more so now that they have lost so many healthcare workers to Ebola. The people mistrust foreigners and are highly superstitious—getting them to understand basics of infectious disease transmission is incredibly challenging. They are upset and prone to rioting over the fact that people come and remove dead bodies without allowing them to give a proper burial (which involves giving an enema and washing the body). And so on.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K
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.