Ebola

[Mt_Rider]

The CDC has been including coughing, etc in their advisories for a long time now. Again....spewing, spurting, and violent exhalations of droplets are the whole reason for face shields. And other websites have been smugly trying to "prove" that pigs and Ebola can fly. [yeah...it's a cow, not a pig]

 

 

Research these terms yourself. The difference between this Pigs Can Fly announcement and truly being AIRBORNE is.....ABSOLUTELY HORRIFIC! The transfer of this disease would increase EXPONENTIALLY!!!!! That is why we cannot allow misuse of terms here....where we are trying to be informed accurately. If people do not know this difference yet....then MrsS is a good place to get accurate information.

 

 

MtRider ...please! Pray that it NEVER, EVER goes truly "Airborne"!!!!!!! .....and for now, stay outta anyone else's spewing, coughing!

 

Edited to add: If it DOES every go truly AIRBORNE....it is time to go to ground! If it would maintain these high mortality rates and long incubation periods [before you know they're sick]...airborne would instantly make this a civilization death knell like Europe's Plague era. Go to ground and stay there....be ready to go to ground. Hopefully, it won't get to that.

Edited November 1, 2014 by Mt_Rider

[sassenach]

Of course I pray it never does. Probably be the end of things for sure.

[sassenach]

Article from two weeks ago, WHO statement on cases.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-deaths-near-4-500-virus-spreads-w-080757634.html

[Twilight]

(Nurse)Agent EIS Hickox

 

 

http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2014/10/oopsie-pres-obolas-sticky-fingerprints.html

[sassenach]

Oh, the ties that bind.......... Twilight......

[Jeepers]

Thousands break Ebola quarantine to find food

 

Nov 4th 2014 2:49PM

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - Thousands of people in Sierra Leone are being forced to violate Ebola quarantines to find food because deliveries are not reaching them, aid agencies said.

 

Large swaths of the West African country have been sealed off to prevent the spread of Ebola, and within those areas many people have been ordered to stay in their homes.

 

The government, with help from the U.N.'s World Food Program, is tasked with delivering food and other services to those people. But there are many "nooks and crannies" in the country that are being missed, Jeanne Kamara, Christian Aid's Sierra Leone representative, said Tuesday.

 

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed nearly 5,000 people, and authorities have gone to extreme lengths to bring it under control, including the quarantines in Sierra Leone. Similar restrictions have also been used in Liberia and Guinea, the two other countries hardest hit by the epidemic.

 

Some efforts have begun to show progress. The situation is Guinea is improving, as is the quality of care for Ebola patients, thanks to international aid, said Aboubakar Sidiki Diakite, an official with the country's Health Ministry, who was visiting Paris on Tuesday.

 

But more treatment centers and medical teams are still needed, the World Health Organization said at a news conference in Geneva on Tuesday. There are currently 16 treatment centers up and running and 58 more planned. To staff those centers, 500 foreign health care workers and 4,000 national ones are still needed.

 

In an address to political leaders in Sierra Leone, President Ernest Bai Koroma said ordinary people also have to do more. He defended the stringent measures he has imposed and called on all citizens to stop dangerous behavior that has fueled Ebola's spread, such as secret burials where corpses are washed or even people touching the sick.

 

"We have to take the sick out and take the responsibility with firmness," he said. "We must end Ebola now."

 

While public health authorities have said heavy restrictions may be necessary to bring under control an Ebola outbreak unlike any other, the Disasters Emergency Committee, an umbrella organization for aid organizations, warned on Monday that they were cutting off food to thousands of people.

 

"The quarantine of Kenema, the third largest town in Sierra Leone, is having a devastating impact on trade - travel is restricted so trucks carrying food cannot freely drive around," the committee said in a statement. "Food is becoming scarce, which has led to prices increasing beyond the reach of ordinary people."

 

Because services are not reaching them, people who are being monitored for signs of Ebola - and should be staying at home - are venturing out to markets to look for food, potentially contaminating many others, said Kamara of Christian Aid.

 

When houses are put under quarantine, teams are supposed to go to them to identify their needs, she said: How many people are living there? Are there pregnant women or sick people with special needs?

 

But Kamara said that with the infections still increasing quickly, it was difficult for the government to keep up with the number of people being monitored for the disease. The outbreak in Sierra Leone has been shifting in recent weeks, with the number of new cases ballooning in the country's western and northern districts, far from where the outbreak began, in the country's east.

 

In October, the World Food Program fed more than 450,000 people in Sierra Leone, including people who are under quarantine or being treated for Ebola, said Alexis Masciarelli, a spokesman for the agency in Dakar, Senegal. The distribution of food has been difficult, he said, since it has required bringing food to remote areas by poor roads.

 

He acknowledged that getting good information about where people need help is difficult, but he said WFP asks smaller organizations, with deep connections to the communities, to help them keep track of a fast-moving situation.

 

Also as part of the effort to control the epidemic, Liberia has ordered that the bodies of all Ebola victims in and around the capital be cremated. Ebola is transmitted through the bodily fluids of infected people, and secretions from dead bodies are among the most infectious.

 

But the neighborhood around the crematorium on the outskirts of Monrovia, called Boys Town, is now demanding that the government move the facility elsewhere. Residents say the ash is polluting the area and the stigma surrounding Ebola is rubbing off on them, with people pointing them out in the market.

 

The residents are threatening to hold a protest Thursday that would block cremations if the government doesn't move the facility.

 

 

http://www.aol.com/article/2014/11/04/thousands-break-ebola-quarantine-to-find-food/20988633/?icid=maing-grid7%7Caol20-s%7Cdl37%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D557579

[Mt_Rider]

Y'know, some of these E stories are pointing out something. You don't have to have E to be rejected/shunned.

 

Which means....as has always been the case [but I sometimes forget this] ....BALD TRUTH sometimes is shoved aside.... ........and.....

 

RUMOR and INNUENDO and SUPERSTITION [not just 3rd world folks; all of us have it a bit] ...and GUILT BY ASSOCIATION or by SURVIVAL .... can be far stronger than Bald Truth. In essence, they create their own reality. It becomes a form of "psuedo-truth" as people react as tho it IS truth. Sometimes merely high emotion makes an untruth into "pseudo-truth" that can defy the laws of science, common sense, or basic decency. Fear/pain turning to anger is verrrrry powerful and explosive.

 

 

My leaning is so strongly 'cognitive' that I have trouble taking this into account with my prepping. I would have trouble reacting quickly in the face of folks taking an obvious UNTRUTH and treating it as reality. [like: mob mentality has never made any sense to me.....even when I was in Jr. High where mob mentality is first taught, sort of...] If I can't compute the danger forming from one or more people believing untruths, I can be vulnerable. I need to plant this firmly into my prepping brain:

 

A thought or idea doesn't have to be true to become dangerous....to affect change....to cause consequences.....

 

 

[like: the survivors of E being shunned. like: the crematorium causing social problems for some unfortunate folks nearby.....like: you and yours don't have the right to eat the food you saved because now I'm hungry and I didn't save food cuz I needed vacations.....]

 

 

MtRider [and I'm not sayin' I have never experienced the irrationality of fear, panic, or anger.... Just that I don't recognize irrationality quickly in others cuz theirs doesn't make sense to me. ]

Edited November 5, 2014 by Mt_Rider
fixin'

[kully]

each of us have our own little corner of the world and it is never perfect , but to deal with what those poor people are dealing with is just horrible to think about. To have sick hungry people having to go looking for food, food that they can't afford because it's so expensive. And in many cases there is no food anyway.

 

I don't think I could deal with that.

[Jeepers]

It is heartbreaking Kully.

 

I know what you mean Mt.Rider.

 

Unintended Consequences:

Remember when the nurse came to Ohio from Texas to plan her wedding. And then came down with Ebola? I heard on the radio just today that the place where she bought her bridal gown is about to 'go under' financially. The reason is because no one wants to buy any of her dresses because the nurse (sorry, wish I could remember her name) might have tried one of the dresses. She has marked most of her inventory down to cost. But it doesn't matter because people won't go in her store now. Another sad reality often not considered.

[sassenach]

This is part of the whole domino affect, kully, they are experiencing it first hand and they really have little means to buy ahead, they are still very dependent on basically shopping every day or so to have something to eat, many many of them. It is much harder to get it there and certainly to find drivers for any truck deliveries with E going through the country. People are afraid. As for stigma, it is a national issue, because they still operate socially on a superstition based level, basically, but we have our own stigmas here, new ones get used all the time...... for myself, I am dang tired of it , and I stand up to it, for myself. Remember, they have to learn to stand up to the BS , or they won't get the chance to keep going, personally and never evolve and use the newer ideas that would help everyone.

 

Right now, it compounds things ...... but I can tell you, stigma baiting is a big time entertainment for many here in the US on so many levels. It's a distraction and hurtful no matter where you are. It is based on someone else's assumed ignorance as well. And it is truly mean hearted. Adults are even better at it than their kids in school. Its 'cool' to do it. Yea, well we see how that goes periodically now.

 

If we end up scavenging for food, do you think that attitude will help,,,,,,,,,,, um, no........ and it no longer stops there. It's unfortunate and it compounds a domino affect now occuring because of the chaos for supply chain affected by sincere fear and not wanting to get exposed by ships captains and cargo, freight ship owners and such.

 

I have a feeling our military will have to come up with a solution since they consider our soldiers expendable anyway. But they can certainly take care of that, but it will take time to arrange it from various safer places and to work it out to get supplies to THEM where they start from on the continent and armed guard now that things are getting worse.

This would be part of the Humanitarian stuff. They may have to do that. Guess how many tons of our stuff we may have in warehouses here will go? It puts more of a pinch on us too. It affects many more when things like this get out of hand........ Ebola has been around for decades and it got worse earlier this year. Before it started to do that, Western nations should have drawn up logistics plans and such for such an event. They have it for other stuff . But nobody was paying attention , and they have all had several years to do that. But the costs are phenomenal and we lost a lot of our stuff already with the downsizing...... so now it is much harder to even begin to step up.

So.. no matter where you look , you will find fault, one aspect or another and it adds to the difficulties of nations that all are expected to step up fast, because we are not the only country that is messed here. I can prove that .... economics is savagely failing in many many places now. What was initially tried , only lasted a bit.

 

Darlene is right with her view on things, the founder of this site and its backfiring. The so called fixes were not based on solid things, and its disappating really fast right now. So... kudos if you are brave person and can go help personally, but do volunteer and arrange to stay home inside when you come back for 21 days please. The general public is ticked at the drama of a couple who refuse to do so and their antics. I see people mentioning they wish they had a shotgun and the person in their sites. yea, that's part of mob mentality too. Things are getting really moody, so be careful and make sure you are covered when you return. You will likely survive. And it keeps you safe too from yahoo's. If you cannot afford it , can't handle abstinence which spreads it , then maybe you should not go in the first place.

 

 

Basically , most of us are not around folks likely to be infected at this time. Our own diet and hygiene and personal care and sleep routines can help us correct immunity problems, and we do at least know a few more basics about actual disinfection and hopefully we can use that and keep our own households safe. WE know we can sit still a while if it comes down to it, and there is a major quarantine. WE understand to stay away from anyone and call for and wait for help to come , if we do think we are exposed and starting symptoms....... most of this is just wisdom in action. WE keep food and water and stuff to help us get through emergencies , most of us have at least a month's worth by now. It's our responsibility as I see it to do that much , and more if we can. Then we chill at home and don't create more problems. But there are more than 85% of the population who doesn't even attempt to do so. Guess what happens then.

 

It IS imperative they get a handle on it and good treatments and eventually a reasonable vaccine in mass quantities. But all that will take time. I hope they can . It's not nice, its not designed conspiracy, it just happened, that's all. It is extremely deadly and debilitating for a long time if you do survive, which affects jobs and providing for ourselves and all our infrastructure and we have a medical personnel shortage as it is along with insurance issues going on. NOT an easy thing at all.

Edited November 5, 2014 by sassenach

[Jeepers]

Liberia village becomes a new Ebola epicenter

 

Nov 10th 2014 5:42AM

JENE-WONDE, Liberia (AP) - A schoolteacher brought his sick daughter from Liberia's capital to this small town of 300 people. Soon he was dead along with his entire family, and they are now buried in the forest nearby along with an increasing number of residents.

 

The community of Jene-Wonde in Grand Cape Mount County near the border with Sierra Leone has become a new epicenter for the deadly Ebola outbreak in Liberia, which is also hitting Sierra Leone and Guinea.

 

Momo Sheriff, who lost his son to Ebola, said there is no health care in the community and leaders have no way to manage it. The tiny town already has lost 10 percent of its population to Ebola since late September. Amid all the deaths, markets and farms nearby have been abandoned.

 

"If the government does not take action, everybody will die in this town," he said. "We are burying two dead bodies today. We don't know who it will be tomorrow. Every day we have to cry," he told an Associated Press journalist.

 

Liberia has suffered the greatest death toll in the Ebola epidemic, with 2,766 deaths blamed on the virus that had never been seen in West Africa before this year's crisis. After months of aggressive efforts to isolate the sick and safely bury the dead, the World Health Organization says Ebola appears to be declining in Liberia "although new case numbers remain high in parts of the country."

 

The number of reported cases appears to be even dropping in Liberia's capital, Monrovia. But that is little solace for the people of Jene-Wonde.

 

Juma Mansaray lost her mother and grandmother on the same day here. She said the community has been ostracized from neighboring ones.

 

"Everywhere we go the people will drive us away," she said. "We are like outcasts; we can't even go to the local market to buy pepper or food because people think we are cursed. We don't know what to do. Most of our relatives in other areas don't want to see us ... we are stuck here."

 

Abdullai Kamara, the leader of Burial Team A of Grand Cape Mount County Ebola, said the people of Jene-Wonde have been stubborn and in constant denial, which he cites as the reason the disease is still spreading.

 

Ebola is contracted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of the sick and the dead. For weeks, residents of Jene-Wonde have been chasing away safe burial teams and also have hidden the sick from outside health workers, he said.

 

"Our people played deaf ear to what was happening," Kamara said. "They denied the truth."

 

But Kamara said his team needs to take care of its own because "above all, we are still Liberians and we are Cape Mountainians. They are our people. We need people to come to their aid."

 

James Jallah Paul says people in the town are terrified to help those who are sick. On this recent day, a man in a protective suit sprayed a house with a virus-killing solution where a woman died from Ebola. Health workers carried a body into the forest for burial. Paul said more help is needed.

 

"We are begging the government to come to our rescue," he said. "If the government does not come to our rescue, we will finish (die) here; this place will be an empty space."

 

Elsewhere, Ebola continues to rise in Sierra Leone, including its capital, Freetown. There were 40 new Ebola cases in and around Freetown in the previous 24 hours, authorities there said on Monday.

 

http://www.aol.com/article/2014/11/10/liberia-village-becomes-a-new-ebola-epicenter/20991132/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D560688

[The WE2's]

I'm raising a question that we (myself & MrWE2) have discussed...the burial of these bodies. Does this disease live in a dead body? If so, for how long? Does the disease "rest" in the host's bones until those bones are unearthed? Is that land contaminated? Just wondering...

Edited November 10, 2014 by The WE2's

[Twilight]

Good question even though we know the dead bodily fluids are the most dangerous.

This site goes deeper that I understand but I believe it goes a far as they knew at the time.

 

http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/lab-bio/res/psds-ftss/ebola-eng.php

[Mt_Rider]

Interesting article, Twilight. I'll show that to DH.

 

RE: E and the dead.....I've read in various places that the "viral load" [how much virus is in the body] is heaviest right after death. But don't know how long the virus can live after the host dies. Not forever, certainly. But some days, yes. Weeks? Doubt it. Mebbe...depending on the temperature/humidity? Not so that the soil would be forever contaminated like some forms of nuclear stuff, thankfully.

 

Some scientists have a theory that live bats might be a reservoir. Ebola doesn't kill them....or not as fast....and can spread thru their feces. They aren't sure of this yet. Again....haven't heard of any data on E. remaining viable within the bodies of dead animal/bats ....another concern if some areas hunt for food. They've theorized that eating primate [monkey family] meat might be the vector that passes Ebola.

 

[note: bats are a vector (transmitting carrier) for rabies....I believe it kills them eventually but it takes so long that they can bite more people/animals before they die. I've had personal experience with THAT disease! ]

 

 

Let me add this snip from Twilight's source above:

 

 

SURVIVAL OUTSIDE HOST: Filoviruses have been reported capable to survive for weeks in blood and can also survive on contaminated surfaces, particularly at low temperatures (4°C) ^{Footnote 52Footnote 61}. One study could not recover any Ebolavirus from experimentally contaminated surfaces (plastic, metal or glass) at room temperature ^{Footnote 61}. In another study, Ebolavirus dried onto glass, polymeric silicone rubber, or painted aluminum alloy is able to survive in the dark for several hours under ambient conditions (between 20°C and 25°C and 30–40% relative humidity) (amount of virus reduced to 37% after 15.4 hours), but is less stable than some other viral hemorrhagic fevers (Lassa) ^{Footnote 53}. When dried in tissue culture media onto glass and stored at 4 °C, Zaire ebolavirus survived for over 50 days ^{Footnote 61}. This information is based on experimental findings only and not based on observations in nature. This information is intended to be used to support local risk assessments in a laboratory setting.

A study on transmission of ebolavirus from fomites in an isolation ward concludes that the risk of transmission is low when recommended infection control guidelines for viral hemorrhagic fevers are followed ^{Footnote 64}. Infection control protocols included decontamination of floors with 0.5% bleach daily and decontamination of visibly contaminated surfaces with 0.05% bleach as necessary.

 

So Ebola virus is less stable than Lassa. Notes various temperature and humidity conditions that favor specifically Ebola . Fifty days stored at 4 degrees C [that's nearly freezing, right?]

 

 

 

MtRider

Edited November 10, 2014 by Mt_Rider
Some correction based on the data article

[Jeepers]

I was going to post the same link as Twilight. Great minds!

 

I've read that the most dangerous time is right after a person dies because the virus has taken over the entire body at that point and is the strongest.

 

Here are a couple of other links that have some simple info;

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/qas.html

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-15/heres-everything-you-wish-you-didnt-need-know-about-ebola

https://www.internationalsos.com/ebola/index.cfm?content_id=410&

[Jeepers]

Surgeon with Ebola coming to US for care

 

Nov 14th 2014 9:48AM

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) -- A surgeon working in Sierra Leone has been diagnosed with Ebola and will be flown Saturday to the United States for treatment, officials from Sierra Leone and the United States said.

 

Dr. Martin Salia was to be taken to Omaha to be treated at the Nebraska Medical Center, Sierra Leone's chief medical officer, Dr. Brima Kargbo, told The Associated Press on Friday. The U.S. Embassy in Freetown said Salia himself was paying for the expensive evacuation. He reportedly lives in Maryland.

 

The U.S. State Department said Thursday that Salia's wife, who also lives in Maryland, has asked the State Department to investigate whether he is well enough to be flown to Nebraska.

 

Salia is a general surgeon who had been working at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown. Patients, including mothers who hours earlier had given birth, fled from the 60-bed hospital after news of the Ebola case emerged, United Methodist News reported.

 

The hospital was closed on Tuesday after Salia tested positive and he was taken to the Hastings Ebola Treatment Center near Freetown, the church news service said. Kissy hospital staffers will be quarantined for 21 days.

 

A Sierra Leone citizen, the 44-year-old lives in Maryland and is a permanent U.S. resident, according to a person in the United States with direct knowledge of the situation. The person was not authorized to release the information and spoke on condition of anonymity.

 

The doctor will be the third Ebola patient at the Omaha hospital and the 10th person with Ebola to be treated in the U.S. The last, Dr. Craig Spencer, was released from a New York hospital on Tuesday.

 

The Nebraska Medical Center said Thursday it had no official confirmation that it would be treating another patient, but that an Ebola patient in Sierra Leone would be evaluated for possible transport to the hospital. The patient would arrive Saturday afternoon.

 

Salia came down with symptoms of Ebola on Nov. 6 but test results were negative for the deadly virus. He was tested again on Monday, and he tested positive. Salia is in stable condition at an Ebola treatment center in Freetown. It wasn't clear whether he had been involved in the care of Ebola patients.

 

Kissy is not an Ebola treatment unit but Salia worked at at least three other medical facilities, United Methodist News said, citing health ministry sources.

 

Sierra Leone is one of the three West Africa nations hit hard by an Ebola epidemic this year. Five other doctors in Sierra Leone have contracted Ebola - and all have died.

 

The disease has killed more than 5,000 people in West Africa, mostly in Sierra Leona, Guinea and Liberia.

 

The hospital in Omaha is one of four U.S. hospitals with specialized treatment units for people with highly dangerous infectious diseases. It was chosen for the latest patient because workers at units at Atlanta's Emory University Hospital and the National Institutes of Health near Washington are still in a 21-day monitoring period.

 

Those two hospitals treated two Dallas nurses who were infected while caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who fell ill with Ebola shortly after arriving in the U.S. and later died.

 

The other eight Ebola patients in the U.S. recovered, including the nurses. Five were American aid workers who became infected in West Africa while helping care for patients there; one was a video journalist.

 

http://www.aol.com/article/2014/11/14/surgeon-with-ebola-coming-to-us-for-care/20993768/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl11%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D563593

[MomM]

I just read that Dr. Salia passes away this morning. So very sad.

[sassenach]

yep, noticed that too. I think he was sick too long without proper care. They did try though , once they could get to him and transport.

[Mt_Rider]

[Homesteader]

Here is one of the transportation problems the NGOs are up against in getting supplies to the villages in Liberia. The other two nations struggle with the same thing. Hope the attachment of the photos works.

 

 

[Jeepers]

They tried everything to save him. IV's, respirator, Zmapp, transfusion from an Ebola survivor, etc. They said at first he tested neg. then later pos. Wonder if that neg. test had anything to do with him dying? By that I mean waiting to get help because he didn't think he had it based on that first test. It's sure a sad sad situation.

[Twilight]

Yes said the nurses were all celebrating because he was negative...hugged him etc........

Sounded like he was very ill before even leaving and was it his family that asked if he

was well enough to be transported?

[Ambergris]

He tested negative TWICE before he tested positive.

[Mt_Rider]

He tested negative TWICE before he tested positive.

 

 

That's quite disturbing!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

MtRider Delayed his treatment.....risked further exposing others.....

[Jeepers]

Twice?! I didn't know that. Yes, very disturbing.