Wednesday, October 8, 2014

What's Coming Next


So, over a few short months, I've gone from being one of the few talking about this (even on medical-related blogs, who should have known better) and way out ahead of the crowd, to being right first, to being just one of hundreds of sites and links, all tripping over the same stories (except for medical-related blogs, who should know better). The prospect of a horrible death apparently concentrates peoples' minds wonderfully. But at least people are paying attention now, which was the object of the exercise.

So the new question is, What next?

1) Ebola isn't going away in Africa anytime soon.
When I first started posting in forums, and then blogging the posts here, Ebola was at 1000 cases, and 600 or so deaths.
As of 1 October, it's nearly 7500 cases and 3500 deaths, and those are the "official" (i.e. total horseshit) numbers coming out of W. Africa, the most backwards, illiterate, corrupt hellhole on the planet nine years out of any ten, forever. The CDC was guesstimating the reality numbers may be 2.5 times higher. Only this week, Sierra Leone, whose numbers have been hanging fairly small since Liberia started driving the bus in this outbreak, announced 120+ deaths in one day. Those people didn't get sick and die overnight; they were clearly infected 3-5 weeks prior. And that one day jump took the death toll there beyond what it is in Liberia, with has 3-4 times as many infected victims. Conclusion: things there are 3-4 times higher and worse than official numbers, and probably the same for Guinea and Liberia as well.

2)  Outside help isn't accomplishing anything fast enough, and likely never will.
As already noted, because there are 3000 more dead bodies (again, "officially"), and 4000 more sick patients, in countries that were more than 2000 beds short back in late September. And we've built exactly nothing since then. Supplies sit untouched on harbor docks, because the local kleptocrats haven't had their palms greased to let them in. And no one new has been trained to staff any imaginary new care centers even if we'd built so much as one. In fact, more doctors have been evacuated back to the countries of origin, infected with Ebola, even as the patient load doubles roughly every three weeks.

Therefore:

3) The people and governments are going to be more desperate, and closer to panic and collapse, rather than less so, over time.
Duncan took a powder, and lied his way through screenings, when Liberia had but 3000 total cases. It's past 4000 now. By the end of the month, they'll have 6000 cases, and likely 12,000 before Thanksgiving. Draw your own conclusions on how much calmer the populace will be then, and how much stronger and competent the respective governments will be.
Every day, more and more people there will realize the end position on this epidemic there, and they will rush the lifeboats: more frequently, and more desperately. And the so-called guardians at the ports of exit now are illiterate peasants baffled by the complexities of a drugstore thermometer, with a long and colorful history of taking care of those with the most cash, starting with themselves, when things get sporty. Everybody cheerfully assumes that Duncan only lied to get out; when in fact, the historical odds are, he also slipped somebody a Benjamin (or there, a sawbuck), and his "exit visa" was magically provided and approved.
That's how business is transacted at most borders at most times since forever.

4) Numbers One, Two, and Three, lead inexorably to Number Four: Duncan was merely the FIRST Ebola patient we'll be getting (as long as the jacktards in charge keep the pipeline open), rather than the LAST.
Duncan's problems are over, and even the 50 people in Dallas sweating bullets until the 20th aren't the major concern.
The problem is the next 1, or 5, or 20 Duncans who get off of planes in NYC, DC, Boston, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, etc. Not if, but when, exactly as the CDC told every hospital in the country two weeks before Duncan walked into Texas Health Presbyterian, and started the party.
Flight crews on commercial airplanes are no better trained nor equipped, the "screenings", there, here, or anywhere, will do little to catch infected people, and nothing at all to stop those like Duncan in the latent incubation stage of Ebola.
Like TSA screenings of your shoes and cavity searches for underwear bombs, it's kabuki theatre to simulate action, with no real effect.
Hospitals are mostly no better off, and will respond, each time, exactly as THP did: poorly, clumsily, and while endangering the health of everyone concerned.
Everybody has to burn their hand on the stove before they really get what "hot" means.
So our troubles aren't over on Oct. 20th, or whenever the last Duncan-related contact passes from quarantine isolation precautions. They've just begun, until the last patient anywhere in the world passes out of quarantine.
And that will be like earthquakes: Only until the next time.

5) All of this completely ignores the people who WANT to bring Ebola here.
Anybody willing to strap 40 pounds of Semtex and hardware parts to his chest, walk into a pizzeria or schoolyard, and be a not-so-smart bomb for Allah, will have no compunction whatsoever about deliberately infecting themselves with Ebola, waiting until they turn symptomatic, and then going for daily walks at malls, movie theatres, swap meets, shows, conventions, amusement parks, sports events, concerts, or just ride all day on a commuter train, and anything else they can manage, and lying about all their contacts and visits after they collapse, because 72 virgins. That's just how they roll.
The gist of the entire asinine "Ebola isn't that big a deal" mindset depends entirely on honest and accurate contact tracing from the infected. When those who bring it here don't give a damn about helping, and actually lie about their whereabouts, it's too late for some governmental jackass Inspector Clousseau to slap his forehead and exclaim "Aha! We never thought of that clever gambit!!" (But that they will anyways is a good reason to bring back the rack, thumbscrews, hot pincers, and burning at the stake as part of the government bonus negative reinforcement plan for that sort of official stupidity.)

6) One through Five inclusive lead to a high likelihood that somewhere, sometime, a city or larger locale will be stricken and overwhelmed by Ebola. Dallas could still get there if 5-10 of those contacts become symptomatic in rapid succession. The same would be true if a dozen or so cases cropped up anyplace. Imagine someone infecting 50-100 contacts, and then not conveniently calling the CDC to alert the Usual Suspects to get cracking. Like if they just sat in some little squalorous dive and quietly died, and nobody found them for a few days, by which point patients 2 through 20 all showed up with symptoms before anyone knew there was a Reference Patient. That city would be so far from screwed at that point it would be hard to see it from where they were. And it could be my town, or yours. Tracing 2000-10,000 contacts a week later is a total fantasy.
And don't even try selling me how the crack CDC/DHS/FEMA/.GOV juggernaut would leap into action to save the day.
They're the reason Duncan got here in the first place, and there's little the government ever does right, even on their best day. Anybody trying to sell you anything else is running for office, or lobbying for a government contract, either way, entirely at your expense.
If they do anything that helps, it will be secondarily, and accidentally, as a near-certainty.

7) YOYO: You're On You're Own.
You need to pay attention to the news, both to see what they're telling you, and what they're not. (The latter, as I've demonstrated on this blog lately, will always be the larger volume.) You need to make your own plan to take care of yourself, and your family/tribe/group if you have that. Ebola is not going to low-crawl up your driveway and butt-rape you in your sleep. (Somebody desperate for your belongings might, but you knew about that already, right? Right?) So you may, as a result of future outbreak(s), need to be able to come up with food, water, and other necessities of life (sanitation, power, heat, and so on) for an extended period of time. Three days gets you Jack, except a guarantee you're in a refugee camp on Day Four. Start with a month, absolute bare minimum. Work up in increments to six. (More than that still is better.) If you can't make another plan with that 6-month to Whatever cushion to do it in, you have bigger problems than Ebola. FYI, Ebola has been going on in W.Africa since last March, with no end in sight. Ponder what that could mean if you get caught inside a county or state quarantine here, next month or next year.

And for the love of anything holy, abandon any idea that you're going to stock up on hazmat suits, masks, goggles, gloves, etc. etc., as if you were going to daily venture out amidst the problem, or as if, in a quarantine, you being out on the street at all wouldn't be carte blanche for the local constables to throw a bag on you and put you in an Ebola Quarantine/Treatment Center, where if you didn't have it when you went in, circumstances would soon solve that problem for you.
Stay your ass home, period.
The only possible exception to that is if you have a relatively secluded place to go outside the big cities (As Remus says about weekly "Avoid crowds."), and you go there beforehand. Whether or when is up to you. Five days early is better than one hour too late, but it's entirely your decision. And you still have to provide yourself all the same necessities once you get there, just likelier in a much better starting position versus someone in a condo in Georgetown or Manhattan would be.

Read, think, plan, acquire. And STFU about it. You're not "hoarding", you're prudently preparing to not be part of the problem once there is one. Your fellow citizens in the EBT-card-toting Free Shit Army are the problem, and if they think you have something they want, they'll be your problem. Stay home, and keep your head down, and if there's an outbreak and local quarantine, stay in the house, read a book, and wait for it to burn itself out.

And please, sweet suffering Shiva, vote the current @$$clowns out of office. Not because of their party, but because they're idiots. We may be just exchanging @$$clowns, but no one could do a worse job than what we've got now, and there's always a chance it will help. You've got nothing to lose for trying. Government didn't create Ebola, they're just too incompetent to do the right things about it to not make it worse. Do what you can, where you are, with what you've got, so it doesn't get worse for you.
Government is all about selfishness. You be about self-preservation and self-reliance.

And I don't care if you're a rabid atheist: pray for a cure.

18 comments:

  1. I appreciate your analysis!

    Peace,
    Todd

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  2. So, how DOES it feel to be the voice, crying in the wilderness?

    I hope you're wrong, but I've a sneaking suspicion that you're gonna be right to six decimal places.

    Thanks for trying, anyway!

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  3. How does it feel?

    I'll give you a glimpse tomorrow. ;)

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  4. I read your words and in my mind I hear the voice of Lewis Black the angry comedian. Your grim outlook is as scary as it gets and I don't doubt the real possibility of this happening.

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  5. Yeah tptb will kill a few of us but that's a head fake. What they really want is alot of dead Chinese. Who are after African resources

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  6. Predicting disease vectors is insanely difficult. It's 10,000 times harder than the stock market. So it could go any which way, and the odds still favor the whole thing subsiding. It feels like the Y2K imbroglio. With the Obama crowd and its serial lying and incompetence, if there's any way this COULD get exponentially worse, trust that Obozo will find it.

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  7. #5 is a strong possibility -- a certainty, in fact.

    I'm glad that I'm as old as I am -- age 62.

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  8. And if they can bribe or lie their way to the U.S., what do they expect awaits? Only the best medical care in the world, free of course, along with free housing in a gated community, free food, clothes, and all necessities while being monitored and catered to. Yep, all of this can be theirs! No admission fee!

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  9. Run for President please, and if you only get one vote, then I'll know that you voted for someone else, cuz you got mine. There is a lot more wisdom in this article than just ebola. For those of us who have worked in Africa we know the bumbling idiots that work at the ports and wear the uniforms of customs etc. We're screwed but it will be worth it if the members of the freeshitarmy will contract it. They way they swap body fluids it has to wipe most of them out quickly. What a blessing.

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  10. YOYO--I am learning the lingo. Great article.

    Plan how to get your family together around the likely quarantine perimeters (many times the Interstate beltways around a metro area). Powerline and telephone easements, and railroad tracks may bypass roadblocks. Try to cross on a curve.

    Pre-position bicycles or cars across rivers or natural barriers.

    A pre-positioned kayak on one side and a car on the other side of the river may be the difference between freedom and a FEMA camp.

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  11. If you're thinking it that far ahead, get out of the corral now, and get your whole family in a contiguous location before it's a problem. The easiest way to not be in a quarantine corral after they set one, is not to be in it before they set one. Much like prison, if you don't get yourself put in one, you don't have to come up with a plan to escape.

    Planning on breaking through quarantine lines after they go up is a good way to get shot, and not only by the authorities. Which is going to be even less fun when you realize what else they'll be treating at the hospital they'll take you to, if you live.

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  12. Just finished a book, "Ebola K" by Bobby Adair where the same scenario you paint - terrorists sending kinds to Ebola stricken areas as 'volunteers', get infected and then send them around the world...

    Just found your site via Commander Zero - great information and a ton of great ideas and wisdom. Thank you

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  13. You've overlooked a possibility. That infected virgin-hunter may cross the border wearing a suicide veat and blow himself up in a crowded mall, scattering infections material over hundreds of people. (If I can think of it, they've already thought of it.)

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  14. Those terrorists better hope I'M not one of those 72 'virginians' they meet in hell!

    Now, if you'll excuse me, I've developed this inexplicable, nagging cough.......

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  15. @joseph

    A biological version of the "dirty bomb" isn't something I've overlooked.
    But relatively, it'd be stupid and inefficient.
    Don't get me wrong, I hope they are stupid, rather than efficient.

    But splattering Jihadi Achmed all over a couple hundred people is something he can only do once, whereas by travelling around, he can randomly expose hundreds per day for several days without ever letting the authorities have a known Reference Patient to track this back to, and keep on doing that for several days. That will spread it to far more people and cause much more chaos than a simple splatter would do, and inspire more terror and chaos, which is the point of the exercise.
    And by not "singing the note" by using explosives, the enemy remains the disease, rather than someone known to be actively spreading it, which is how you end up in the starring role on an Alpha Strike package from an aircraft carrier.

    As I said, here's to hoping they're stupid.

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