Ebola outbreak: WHO declares emergency, US restricts travel, American infected
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poke 532810
Ars Praetorian
If you want to read an interesting and informative book about Ebola, take a look at Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC. Please, stay away from The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. It is inaccurate and sensationalist.
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Africa CDC stated that delayed detection played a role in the outbreak.
I wonder how much Trump's pulling funding for WHO and about $4.3B for various Global Health Programs played a role in this?
I wonder how much Trump's pulling funding for WHO and about $4.3B for various Global Health Programs played a role in this?
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What? Individual patients can be isolated so they don't infect anyone else and moving them to Germany gets them the proper care. In other words, it's a whole lot easier to safely move the patients than to try an set up a hospital in DRC. We know how to safely isolate this number of people, it is not a health threat to Germany.
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Rammstein Air Base's 86th Medical Group supporting the mission of USAFE-AFAFRICA.
Germany accepts the humanitarian risk associated, of course that was before Trump blasting NATO and Germany specifically.
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While I have no faith or confidence in the current CDC, this isn't wrong.
The issue with Ebola is that it's extremely deadly. It's also very hard to catch if you're using the minimum precautions. It requires contact with body fluids. If you never come into contact with their bodily fluids, you don't get it. Like the flu, it doesn't survive for long outside of the body, either, but, like the flu, it can spread from surfaces as long as the virus is still viable.
Unfortunately, given the times, the risk to the public, while normally low, is not as low as it otherwise would be.
It CAN be an ENORMOUS risk to the American public if modern containment practices are not enforced. Given the reality we live in, a lack of that enforcement is a real possibility. The risk is otherwise low. But if it gets out of containment, the risk increases when the people who are supposed to stop it don't believe in the way it spreads in the first place, won't take the necessary steps to contain it, and wouldn't develop a vaccine for it even if they could.
I'd venture to guess that it's in states controlled by the fuckwits in charge today who are at most existential risk, since they'll slow-walk or ignore the whole thing until it's out of control. For proof of that assertion, look at 2020, who was in charge, and how long it took for the government to give a shit about it. Ebola will be the same, only killing a lot more people - assuming it makes it into the wild in the US. There will be bastions of safety, but travel and trade will be restricted and the economy will tank even more should it happen.
So low risk yes. But unacceptably higher than it used to be, and very much depending on where it emerges.
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I would assume much better medical care than what they can receive in country. As to Germany, likely to the medical facilities at the US Ramstein AFB. It has some of the best medical facilities in Europe (even compared to premier European facilities). Ramstein is also (or has previously been) setup with quarantine facilities.
I doubt they are being airlifted to a random German hospital. Not that those might not be excellent, but in this case, specialized medical care at a quarantine facility designed to handle level 4 threats. Ramstein medical facilities have been previously used for Ebola medical evacuations during the last big outbreak in 2013-2014 that was mentioned.
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It most certainly did.
I wonder how long before Trump claims this outbreak of Ebola was manufactured in a lab by citizens of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to attack the United States. It's the same thing he did for COVID and China....
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I may be evil, but I had a sudden vision of someone trying to play down their Ebola infection the way some people played down their COVID infection.
Not likely to reach that kind of emergency, though. People tend to take things a bit more seriously when they start bleeding from all their orifices.
Not likely to reach that kind of emergency, though. People tend to take things a bit more seriously when they start bleeding from all their orifices.
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Given that they suspended maternity care because woke woman problems are not 'the primary mission'; it still seems entirely possible that it will be the Americans rather than the Germans who end up suspending treatment for anything you didn't get from an IED like a real warfighter.
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If an old fogey's memories of old PBS NOVA episodes is anything to go by, Germany has long been a major center for research on ebola and similar hemorrhagic diseases.
In fact, what is now known as the Marburg virus (as in Marburg, Germany) used to be considered a strain of ebola (and apparently Marburg and Ebola are "clinically indistinguishable").
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Ebola transmission occurs via bodily fluids (blood, saliva, vomit, sweat) and CONTAMINTED OBJECTS!!!
*Yes, this requires the person to already be inflected and showing symptoms (in most cases) to pass along Ebola.
Given Africa isn't known for best sanitation practices within segments of the population, and the prevalence of sexual disease transmission in consentual and non-consentual situations; there's more infection out there than currently known.
It's nothing to joke about, for Africa this has serious concerns.
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The delayed detection was largely due to the fact that while there are no field ready diagnostic tests for Zaire Ebola, there are not for the strain of Ebola driving this outbreak. So rather than an immediate confirmation in the field with a readily available test, samples had to be sent back to the capital for more advanced sequencing work.
Defunding foreign aid can’t have helped but I don’t hear anyone actually in the field pinning the delays on that.
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Nature has no opinion on the matter. Pandemics are problems of our own making. In this case, quite possibly the defunding of USAID. We'll have to wait to find out.Hmmm, it's almost as if nature is trying to kill us. I wonder why.
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It's a fluid and touch based transmission, very different from airborne. Ebola is on the other end with high fatality and fairly low transmission, assuming you don't have people touching stuff without knowing there's an outbreak.
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It's not that simple--bad government policies can make almost anything worse, but I'm in Boston, which had one of the early COVID superspreader events. New York City was also badly affected early in 2020.
In general, being an international travel hub is a risk factor (as New York also saw in 2009 with the H1N1 flu outbreak).
I'm not very worried right now, having read what Dr. Jeremy Faust (who blogs at Inside Medicine) said about risks to Americans generally, based on how ebola does and doesn't spread.
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poke 532810
Ars Praetorian
I’m not sure you’d want Ebola patients in the US right now. There are nutters in the MAGA/MAHA cult who’d want to have Ebola parties to boost their immune systems and then when they got sick try to cure it with horse dewormer paste, UV suppositories, and bleach.
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" public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC),"
With such a convoluted acronym, did no one pronounce that afterward? In this day of accusations of "fake news"?
With such a convoluted acronym, did no one pronounce that afterward? In this day of accusations of "fake news"?
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The risk should be low. The US has built significant medical facilities on its bases in Germany. Normally they function as a first stop point to treat mass troop casualties. They are very well equipped to handle this.
Biological warfare is one of the things that US has to think about and plan for in a conflict. So they are going to be better equipped probably than most civilian hospitals for just this problem.
As for Trump‘s unfortunate comments, I can’t do anything about that. I can try to apologize, but it won’t stop him. I would hope that Europeans can look at his record low approval ratings, worse than any president in US history, as evidence that he’s no longer speaking or representing anyone’s interests, but his own.
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I am actually wondering why they chose not to send the Americans back, but I wonder if that is because the quarantine facilities (as opposed to the biocontainment treatment units) are currently occupied by people from that cruise ship who were exposed to Andes strain hantavirus.
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Well... we're better than that and no, most of America don't hate Europeans.
We're just going through a phase of loud obnoxious and/or misinformed people repeating the nonsense of propagandists. Because they want to distract them from other things and if that weakens Europe a bit its a bonus to them.
If you think its USA vs EU... you give them exactly what they want.
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Not sure it's the best idea to publish that image, with names and numbers in the clear.
While I'm sure the contacts there are happy to be contacted by people reading that notice board, they probably will be less happy to be called by fraudsters finding their details from an internet post.
While I'm sure the contacts there are happy to be contacted by people reading that notice board, they probably will be less happy to be called by fraudsters finding their details from an internet post.
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If you think you have been exposed to ebola perhaps you could seek a personal interview with the head of HHS and ask his opinion of the germs. Hopefully he can escort you to the God Emperor in Mar a Lago for a laying on of hands type cure...
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