Remain calm! ALL IS WELL!!!
h/t to commenter mike 18xx
So much for 4 cases: Mali is sitting on 42 Ebola cases, all essentially the downstream result of washing the Ebola-laden corpse of a dead grand imam in capitol Bamako (Pop. 2M). And actually, more "While they were whistling past the graveyard" rather than "overnight" strictly speaking. You can now cancel Christmas there, as the contacts of 42 people, versus 4, and now at one to three weeks downstream, means any hope for getting ahead of this in that country is weeks away, if they ever even can get ahead of it.
If they fail, Mali has 16M people, in essentially the same situation as the first three affected nations, except they have no outside aid, no outside reserves available to deploy, and oh, BTW, they're still engaged with an active rebel insurgency.
If you get in a balloon, and take binoculars, you might be able to still see how far beyond "F***ED" Mali is.
And lest we forget, no one is screening passengers from Mali, and there are no flight restrictions or international quarantines on travelers from there as of yet, here or in any other country in the world (except for Mauritania, to the west, and Uzbekistan).
Mali government report pdf en Francais
Mali SitRep en Englais:
"If you pointy-headed idjits wasn't fondling Ebola-infected dead people, ya wouldn't all be crapping your guts out, now wouldja?"
UPDATE: Hey, look, someone at the CDC was working on the weekend:
Nov 16 (Reuters) - The United States will begin enhanced screening for travelers whose trips started in the African nation of Mali, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Homeland Security said on Sunday.
The CDC recommended adding Mali to the list of countries whose travelers undergo heightened screening because there had been a number of confirmed cases of Ebola there in recent days, the agencies said in a statement. Travelers from Mali will face the same screening as those from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
16 comments:
I *think* the 38 included the other 4(?)
...oh well; I'm sure whatever the number is, it'll be obsolete soon enough.
(Keep an eye on http://www.reddit.com/r/ebola/ -- it regularly leads the news by up to a day, especially for non-English sources.)
Bookmarked for myself mike, thank you! Like Aesop said, we're not SUPPOSED to know what's going on, and we don't because the government and a complicit media are making sure of that, but some extrapolation is helpful here (to me at least), and preparation :) Any little tidbits of news can be telling.
And hey, there was some good news in there also at least for CA:
http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/entry/new-ca-ebola-mandate-inspired-by-nnu-appeal-to-gov-brown-sets-nat-model/
Hopefully all CA hospitals comply and comply hard. No I'm not being a Pollyanna Aesop, but it's a step in the right direction, thumbing a nose at the CDC and their ridiculous shortcomings in PPE requirements. Now if CA would have mandatory quarantines for everyone coming in from the original Ebola countries and Mali now, I'd feel a lot better, but a step at a time.
From that link which you apparently could not be bothered to read yourself:
"Actually, the report says that they collected samples from 38 suspected cases of which 33 were NEGATIVE, 4 positive, and 1 awaiting results.
The current tally of 4 cases includes 1. The toddler in Kayes; 2. Issa keita; 3. The nurse at Clinique Pasteur; and 4. The Dr. at Clinique Pasteur.
There's alot of rumors floating around - and malijet and maliweb tend to jump on those quickly before they are confirmed, so be careful of using them as a source. I (and I am in Bamako) wait for the WHO reports for confirmation."
But hey, don't let that get in the way of a good dose of fearmongering.
Ebola imports have proven to be wildly unpopular and a major political liability. Most likely many positive cases are being actively hidden so well that even the patient doesn't know they have ebola. It easy to do when several cures are already available.
Anonymous @5:49 AM:
First tests are usually negative early on, they'll need to follow up to determine the actual number of cases. Meanwhile, since you're in Bamako, this is definitely not happy news for you in any case.
I hope people stop washing dead people really soon or it could get out of hand ridiculously fast though. That's NOT fear mongering, that's reality. You don't wash dead Ebola victims, you cremate them, and to hell with religion at that point.
Fearmongering???
Ah, the old cry. So no one should be reporting on suspected cases? Later in the report it mentions over 250 MORE people under observation, so the 38 are definitely more involved than peripherally. I'm just guessing here, but in a country that is familiar with the virus, you have to be a pretty good match before you get the expensive test, and have a history that shows it is likely. They don't have the resource to test everyone that ever sat in the same bus seat, for example. So they're only going to test the one's they are pretty sure about. And first tests often come back negative, thus the requirement for a second test.
So back to the charge of fearmongering. This outbreak has the potential to become a local, if not global apocalypse. It is IMPOSSIBLE to overstate how seriously this should be taken. The only way to get ahead of it is to respond quickly and with overwhelming resources and stop it while it IS "just a few cases." If you wait, or respond slowly, the power of exponential growth will overcome your ability to respond. Note bene- Liberia and Sierra Leon.
To reiterate: responding with the equivalent of "it's just a few cases, not the end of the world, no need to overreact" is the exact OPPOSITE of the correct response "OH SHIT, we better JUMP on this and shut it down, WHILE IT'S JUST A FEW CASES, AND WE STILL CAN.
It's counter-intuitive, but demonstrably correct.
This is the medical equivalent of "a stitch in time saves nine." Rapid reaction now will save the need for a HUGE effort later.
So fearmongering? Not even close.
nick
Anon @ 5:49... Paid shill? Or are you whistling past the graveyard? Or simply another ostrich "facing the unknown" by putting your head in the sand? Ebola reports, accurate or not (most likely not...) notwithstanding; to be aware of just how effed up things are on so many levels - medical/biological, economic/security, spiritual/secular... ad infinitum; and then post like that, when someone is at least trying to get the truth out - the truth that God knows you won't hear or read anywhere but the internet... let me just say that your ignorance and inflated sense of self importance is apparent.
Grandpa requests as kindly as his curmudgeonly old soul can:
shut the fuck up. We can all read, lackwit.
Another good source for daily news updates
https://www.internationalsos.com/ebola/index.cfm?content_id=407&language_id=ENG
King Ebola has invoked the National Security cloak. This is now a military operation. Only finely distilled propaganda will be released to the public.
Ebola is almost certain to continue to spread throughout Africa.
@10:37 - Thank you
This was so reassuring, really:
"WHO: The World Health Organization's latest Situation Report details 14,413 total cases across eight countries with 5177 deaths. Intense transmission continues in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone see country pages for more detail. This report also details a total of 570 healthcare workers known to have been infected with Ebola (Guinea: 93; Liberia: 332; Mali: 2; Nigeria: 11; Sierra Leone: 128; Spain: 1; United States: 3). Investigations by WHO *indicate a significant number of Ebola infections in healthcare workers occurred outside of the health care context.*"
And yes, that's what it says in the .PDF also, fear-monger @ 5:49 AM guy. I'm inclined to agree with nick, and not so prone to sticking my head in the sand.
I'm still standing by my assertion that washing dead people is a bad idea, especially in Ebola cases. You're going to have a bad time. I think Mali is about to have a bad time, especially if they keep that crap up, but even now.
"The sick man was never tested, but his case directly led to a chain of confirmed deaths from Ebola, including a 25-year-old nurse who treated him and a woman who washed his dead body.
The clinic, one of Bamako's best known and used by expatriates and the country's elite, denies any wrongdoing. It says it followed all its procedures for treating Ebola and that the imam never showed any signs of the fever.
On Tuesday last week, Mali's health minister declared there were no more confirmed cases in the country after it appeared to have successfully contained its first Ebola case of an infant girl who died last month.
But by nightfall the same day, the 25-year-old nurse from the clinic had died of the disease and authorities are now trying to trace over 400 potential fresh contacts."
The number keeps rising, from 200 to 343 to over 400.
@Anonymous 5:49
1) I actually did read the report, hence the post and the link to it.
2) Given the long-documented extreme disinclination of any one of the banana-republic governments there for publishing actual facts unflattering to themselves, and given the 359 contacts they're currently acknowledging publicly, the fact that they've bothered to perform tests at all is an ominous sign, generally indicative that they have clinical reasons for doing so in the first place.
3) The Malian Health Ministry calls them suspected Ebola cases; so until they are completely ruled out as such by follow-up negative results, I'm going with their estimation, rather than Anonymous Internet Guy's take on things.
But thanks for playing.
And maybe sign your posts: it's curious that your post pops up here within hours, right after brand-new poster tombola22 pops up on that reddit thread, saying virtually the same things verbatim in their two very first posts anywhere on reddit.
If you have actual information, feel free to cough it up.
If you're just another Baghdad Bob, you're neither helpful, nor original, and shortly to be returned to the ether from which you sprung.
And unlike you, I didn't just wake up today and start digging into this topic about five minutes ago.
But I guess you couldn't be bothered to read that either.
http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-guinea-mali-connection.html
*snort* ...I see everyone is having fun this morning. Anyway, now that the virus has made its way into the more backward parts of the Sahel (where the typical indigent's outlook is old-fashioned African sorcery overlaid with a veneer of the more rapine and salacious aspects of Islam), the future course of the plague becomes quite predictable:
It will swing up the Niger river valley and its tributaries, re-enter Nigeria from the north, and spread east into Chad, Sudan, and so on.
The situation in Liberia is about the *best* we can expect from any locale in sub-Saharan African: it has an English-speaking population, a functioning economy, an only moderately corrupt government, close ties to the US, and prioritized international medical support. Elsewhere, expect uncontrolled spread with 80%+ lethality.
I was hoping things were improving in West Africa. The sad part is that deaths from other endemic diseases in 2014 West Africa are probably still greater Ebola deaths. So Ebola will not be taken seriously in a new country until there are multiple deaths. and that means Ebola will be out of control by the time it is taken seriously.
It looks like the Gods of the Copybook Headings will not be denied. The Mali imam case is eerily similar to Duncan in Dallas. Their "preparations" were inadequate, and their execution of the "plan" was badly flawed.
International business and personal travel continues to W. Africa. That needs to be stopped now. Medical, diplomatic, and humanitarian flights into these countries should continue. But non-essential flights should stop now.
Hey, the CDC added Mali to the quarantine ad kabuki "screening" list; I'm shocked, shocked I say! that Anonymous/tombola22 didn't come here to tell us that the US .Gov is also "fear-mongering".
Actually, when you're blogging this stuff, and you come out with stuff that's consistently ahead of the curve, the word Anonymous was searching for was "prescient", and not "fear-mongering".
Dumbass.
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