1. What Ebola?
2. EBOLA! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
3. Don't Worry, the Government has TOP. MEN. on the case.
4. The TOP. MEN. Are Idiots! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
5. Ebola is killing everyone handy in droves, but they're mostly "just Africans".
6. Continued Ebola Stories upset the editorial bias and the entrenched bureaucracy.
7. What Ebola?
Remember that governing paradigm as the stories on this outbreak wax and wane, while the number of infected and dead climbs inexorably, and right on track with any number of estimates.
There are only two or three pending milestones worthy of note:
1) Collapse of one or more of the three affected counties' governments;
2) Widespread outbreak outside the current 3 (or 4) affected countries;
(note that #1 leads inexorably to #2)
{nota bene that Mali is overripe for this, since their current mode is to assume that no one who dies or has died there anytime since September has Ebola until they're literally shitting their guts out, AND someone official deigns to take notice. Which worked out so well with Imam Ebola the Magnificent.
} 3) Any cluster of multiple cases here (or elsewhere in the "first" world) >10 cases nearly simultaneously (because that's my ballpark guess on what would overwhelm anyone's management capability, unless they revert to the West African "no actual treatment" modality, in which case 80+% die) because that's the point when the previous rosy outlook all goes to shit, and reality probably starts to kick in at the level of the average person on the street.
Any one of those takes this up another DefCon level IMHO.
The rest is merely the outbreak continuing to chew its way to one of those eventualities.
Any thoughts on why we are not seeing a greater spillover into the civilized world?
ReplyDeleteLuck -- primarily that West Africans can't afford airfare out.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately the volunteer caregivers can, and they are from all over.
ReplyDeleteOne more Dr Selfish, who really really really doesn't think he has it, and somewhere is F'd.
As long as we continue to let the potential disease vectors in we are at risk.
Also, speaking as someone living in a community with a large number of oil and gas employees, that is another potential vector. Hopefully the ex-pats are fleeing, but SOMEONE is continuing to run the industries in these sh!tholes. It mostly isn't the Africans.
nick
A possible Ebola case at mass general
ReplyDeletehttp://www.myfoxboston.com/story/27531401/mass-general-treating-possible-ebola-patient
Keep up the good work Aesop
ReplyDeleteOff Topic.
ReplyDeleteHere in Canada our Gov't, in partnership with the Canadian Red Cross, is recruiting medical personal for the Ebola fight.
It appears to be more of the "too little, too late" approach.
S.G.S.W.
Agree with Rob - those who could afford to flee, likely already fled. If it spreads sufficiently in Mali or other neighboring countries, there will likely be another wave of people running here. It would be very informative to learn just how many people are continuing to travel here from the 3 worst hit places, each week.
ReplyDeleteGood News! We're ready to roll.
ReplyDeleteThe 35 hospitals with Ebola treatment centers to date are:
• Kaiser Oakland Medical Center; Oakland, Calif.
• Kaiser South Sacramento Medical Center; Sacramento, Calif.
• University of Calif. Davis Medical Center; Sacramento, Calif.
• University of Calif. San Francisco Medical Center; San Francisco, Calif.
• Emory University Hospital; Atlanta, Ga.
• Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago; Chicago, Ill.
• Northwestern Memorial Hospital; Chicago, Ill.
• Rush University Medical Center; Chicago, Ill.
• University of Chicago Medical Center; Chicago, Ill.
• Johns Hopkins Hospital; Baltimore, Md.
• University of Maryland Medical Center; Baltimore, Md.
• National Institutes of Health Clinical Center; Bethesda, Md.
• Allina Health’s Unity Hospital; Fridley, Minn.
• Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota; St. Paul, Minn.
• Mayo Clinic Hospital; Minneapolis, Minn.
• University of Minnesota Medical Center, West Bank Campus, Minneapolis;
Rochester, Minn.
• Nebraska Medicine; Omaha, Neb.
• North Shore System LIJ/Glen Cove Hospital; Glen Cove, New York
• Montefiore Health System; New York City, New York
• New York-Presbyterian/Allen Hospital; New York City, New York
• NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation/HHC Bellevue Hospital Center; New York City, New York
• Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital; New Brunswick, New Jersey
• The Mount Sinai Hospital; New York City, New York
• Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pa.
• Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pa.
• University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; Galveston, Texas
• Methodist Hospital System in collaboration with Parkland Hospital System and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Richardson, Texas
• University of Virginia Medical Center; Charlottesville, Va.
• Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center; Richmond, Va.
• Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Milwaukee, Wis.
• Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin – Froedtert Hospital, Milwaukee; Milwaukee, Wis.
• UW Health – University of Wisconsin Hospital, Madison, and the American Family Children’s Hospital, Madison; Madison, Wis.
• MedStar Washington Hospital Center; Washington, DC
• Children's National Medical Center; Washington DC
• George Washington University Hospital; Washington DC
Hospitals to avoid assiduously.. got it, thank you geoffb!! ;)
ReplyDeleteWe only get this from an ex-reporters blog,nothing mentioned about it anywhere else lately...
ReplyDeleteCDC: More Than 1,400 People in U.S. Being Actively Monitored for Ebola
http://sharylattkisson.com/cdc-more-than-1400-people-in-u-s-being-actively-monitored-for-ebola
Thanks geoffb.
ReplyDeletePut another way:
No hospital near Honolulu;
No hospital near Seattle;
No hospital near Portland;
No hospital near Los Angeles;
No hospital near San Diego;
No hospital near Phoenix;
No hospital near Salt Lake City;
No hospital near Denver;
No hospital near El Paso;
No hospital near Houston;
No hospital near New Orleans;
No hospital near Miami;
No hospital near St. Louis;
No hospital near Detroit;
No hospital near Boston;
No hospital whatsoever in
AK, HI, WA, OR, ID, NV, UT, WY, CO, AZ, NM, OK, KS, SD, ND, IA, MO, AR, LA, MS, AL, FL, SC, NC, TN, KY, WV, MI, IN, OH, DE, CT, RI, MA, VT, NH, or ME.
So except for those 15 major metropolii including 10 major seaports and even more international airports, and the 37 states not covered at all, things are looking pretty good.
As if.
And @Nick:
I think oil workers in Africa include folks from the Philippines and Indonesia, among others, as in much of the Middle East, an object of no small concern to those countries at the moment. Anybody with better on-the-ground info, chime in.
Looks like there is possibly a case in Mass-
ReplyDeleteBOSTON (Reuters) - Massachusetts General Hospital admitted a patient possibly exposed to the Ebola virus on Tuesday, the hospital said in a statement.
http://news.yahoo.com/massachusetts-hospital-says-treating-possible-ebola-patient-022224888.html
38 states, you left out Montana. Not many hospitals at all west of the Mississippi.
ReplyDeleteMary
Might be more of a blessing than a curse.
ReplyDeleteIf ebola makes its way to Arkansas or Montana - and there's enough ebola patients that we're out of tier one beds and relying on these government deemed treatment centers - then we're already screwed and tattooed. All things considered, the best thing for those people is probably to not give the Fed any reason to ship a diseased African to Helena or Little Rock...
Well, in Boston the initial test is negative.
ReplyDeleteOfficials at Massachusetts General Hospital say the initial test for Ebola on the patient admitted Tuesday has come back negative for the virus. Instead, the patient has tested positive for malaria, according to the hospital. Doctors said they would need further diagnostic testing to definitively rule out Ebola virus disease.
Good news so far. Hopefully they will remain isolated until the second test comes back.
nick
I understand that protocol for a negative test result is for all protective gear to be tossed aside in favor of group hugs.
ReplyDeleteAh, the african protocol....
ReplyDelete@Mary 4:45
ReplyDeleteMT already has St. Patrick's biohazard isolation unit in Missoula, one of the four federally designated BL4 isolation wards, just down the road from the NIAID Rocky Mountain Lab in Hamilton. So MT is covered, not an oversight.
@Alexander
And NIAID has been playing with Ebola in Montana for years. It's a little late to worry about it "getting there" now.
Well!
ReplyDeleteReason number 4583 that I appreciate you doing what you're doing - sure aren't going to learn this stuff anywhere else...
I'm surprised nobody noticed that virtually all the Ebola centers are located in liberal hellholes:
ReplyDeleteNorthern California
NYC
New Jersey
Chicago
Washington DC/Baltimore
Minnesota
Milwaukee/Madison
Those areas account for all but a handful of the centers.
I guess the Ebola czar is looking out for his own.
BB,
ReplyDeleteConsidering how many doctors and Nurses are infected by their patients, is the Ebola Czar looking out for them?
It is said, in the piece, that those were picked because they are where most people from the three nations have as their destinations. Now since these five airports...
ReplyDeleteJohn F. Kennedy International Airport in New York; Washington Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C.; O’Hare International Airport in Chicago; Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta; and Newark Liberty International Airport near New York.
...are where all arrivals are supposed to land then some of them fit the reason given.
However I would be more inclined to see this as a way to funnel money and jobs to selected Congressional districts which is an old practice.
In the end if we have enough cases that the three main centers are overloaded then we will quite likely have more than these others can handle too. Naming them is just a PR move to give the perception that the Top Men have it all well in hand. And perception is reality, until reality stomps it flat.
Ok, here are some interesting quotes from Bloomberg articles....
ReplyDelete"The Red Cross is meeting resistance in Waterloo, just east of Freetown, according to Pattison. In the capital, the government plans to start a 14-day house-to-house search because “people are hiding the sick in their homes and continue to wash bodies and bury them at night,” Brima Kargbo, the country’s chief medical officer, said on Dec. 1. "
So, people are hiding sick and burying the dead. Undeniable evidence that the official numbers are too small.
"A single funeral in May, where crowds gathered to bid farewell to a respected traditional healer, was linked to as many as 365 deaths. At least 20 percent of infections could still be traced to unsafe burials."
So the 20% is down from 60% of KNOWN infections. And a particularly bad one led to over 300 deaths. How many deaths do you think are coming from EACH of these midnight burials? Lots I bet.
"In some parts of the country, if the deceased was an Islamic scholar, the water used to wash the body was collected and young boys were told to wash their faces with it. "
OMFG. Words fail me.
And this is why A) no one there cared much about a few ebola deaths, and B)it's hard to get anything done:
"Sierra Leone’s civil war ended in 2002 leaving more than 50,000 dead, and Liberia’s a year later after 250,000 people were killed. Sierra Leone ranks 183rd out of 187 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures indicators such as income, literacy and health care. Liberia is 175th and Guinea 179th. "
A few thousand dead from ebola kinda pales compared to a quarter million...
And it looks like we're rolling the dice again:
"An American health-care worker who may have been exposed to the Ebola virus in West Africa is headed to a U.S. hospital for evaluation and possible treatment.
The unidentified person is being transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which has successfully treated four other Ebola patients, the hospital said in an e-mail. "
Yi-fricken-haw.
nick
A tiny oddity.
ReplyDeleteThe latest WHO report has the same numbers that the Wiki page reports except for one. Who reports deaths in Sierra Leone, numbers which are supposed to be from the Sierra Leone government, as
Suspected 35
Probable 174
Confirmed 1374
Total 1583
The Sierra Leone government however reports
[pdf]
Suspected 158
Probable 208
Confirmed 1549
Total 1915
A difference of 332.
@geoffb,
ReplyDeletemaybe it falls under the same sort of wordplay as "more than 5000 deaths." We hear a lot about "more than xxx deaths."
Well, 10,000 is "more than 5000 deaths." So is 20,000.
Once you start lying and obfuscating, it's hard to keep it straight.
nick
Or.... it could be like the US economic data. "January preliminary numbers are UP 320,000" in January, but in February we get "the dept. revised January's numbers to -127,345" and it's only mentioned in the last 2 lines of the article. maybe SL hasn't had a chance to get their numbers in line with the party line....
Like you say Aesop, its inevitable.
ReplyDeleteWithout a vaccine, how else can it be stopped from spreading?
The truth is really that simple, right?
I'd think once it reaches the Islamic world of the middle east it spreads wildfire.
Boon, considering the third world distrust of liberal first world organizations, I don't they'd accept a vaccine. In view of history, can't say I blame them.
ReplyDeleteMaggie
Can you see the caliphate accepting help from western non believers? They be chopping lots of heads off.
Deletedon't should read doubt
ReplyDeleteMaggie
Some more interesting stuff out of Bloomberg coverage:
ReplyDelete"As of Dec. 2, the city’s health department was monitoring 222 people who had traveled to the city from West Africa in the previous 21 days, a precautionary measure. The department had also been keeping an eye on 114 health-care workers who treated Spencer until the monitoring period ended for the last one this week."
>>Roughly 10 passengers a day entering thru New York.
>>114 healthcare workers for ONE patient.
"New York said it had 500 staffers working full time on Ebola. The city required police and disease detectives to spend hours finding individuals who needed to be monitored, and it hired substitute health-care workers to cover for the 100 medical staffers devoted to Spencer’s care. "
>>in the big city, they were able to hire substitutes to cover for the workers taken out by ebola watch, and they needed about 400 FULL TIME workers to track and monitor the potential patients. So about 2 workers per patient, 200 health care providers per patient (direct care and subs.)
"Texas Health Resources, attributed an $8.1 million drop in net revenue to the financial impact of the Ebola case..."
>>that is a big pile of cash folks. Not many hospital systems will step up for that.
"patient volumes have returned to normal except in the emergency department"
>>they will continue to feel effects, but it might actually HELP them to reduce ER spending, much of which is probably not billable.
“Until you have this thing in your backyard it’s hard to predict how this will affect your life,” the Republican lawmaker said. “Trash collection, sewer treatment, school districts, everyone down the line was affected by this virus in our area.”
>>and everyone will undoubtedly have their hand out.
nick
Ebola politics.
ReplyDelete" Liberia has recorded the highest number of cases and deaths, but with infection rates stabilizing there, the government decided to go ahead with a Senate election this month and police agreed to allow campaign rallies and gatherings. This week, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said those events are impeding efforts to contain Ebola and banned all gatherings. The order, published Thursday, is in effect until 30 days after results of the Dec. 16 election are announced.
There are concerns that the president may be using Ebola as an excuse after a large crowd rallied in support of former soccer star Geroge Weah, who is running against Sirleaf's son, Robert, for the Monrovia area Senate seat.
"There is a clear political motive, and that political motive is in the interest of her son," said Tiawan Gongloe, a human rights lawyer who was once a member of Sirleaf's Cabinet. "And that is not good. It undermines the democratic process." "
And the Italian doctor is getting worse.
One wonders why they keep trying survivor plasma when the research on it for EBOV shows it is not likely to be useful.
713 new cases, 185 deaths, Nov.23rd - Nov 30th for Sierra Leone. Though Dec. 2nd the numbers are 952 and 237. Strangely any information after Dec. 2nd does not come up from that site where daily have been available. Report # 189 for Dec. 2nd is the last one up with none since then for now.
ReplyDeleteAesop, I had to google NIAID; never heard of it, and certainly didn't know they'd brought some Ebola to Montana to play with. How do you find out these things? And why Montana not Atlanta? Is nowhere sacred?
ReplyDeleteHey it's Friday, should be some info dumped out tonight.....
ReplyDeleteThe family that's jailed together shares Ebola together.
ReplyDeleteWow, the takeaway for me was that it is getting so out of control that the state is willing to take draconian measures.
ReplyDeleteThat means that resistance is VERY widespread.
nick
Aesop? ...No word in four days?
ReplyDeleteWeekend Good News!!
ReplyDelete"President Obama’s fix-it man is returning to Steve Case’s venture firm early next year.
With the Ebola crisis seemingly in hand, Ron Klain, the veteran political operative the White House plucked from a venture capital gig to coordinate the government’s response, is planning a late-winter return to the private sector.
Yea! We're saved!
ReplyDeleteUntil the next time.....
nick
(and then who will suppress the reporting?)
@Hillbilly G
ReplyDeleteNIAID in MT is Rocky Mountain Labs, where they pioneered research in Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever back in the 1930s.
Obviously, now they have better things to play with.
And yes, I kick ass at Trivial Pursuit too.
OMG!
ReplyDeleteKlown Klain is LEAVING?!?
ALREADY???
I think he wants to blow town ahead of the posse, when Ebola here goes, um...viral.
Well, there's that -- but I think the real problem with Klein was his "depopulation" sound-bites from a few years wrecked his viability. The precise instant the clips hit YouTube, he was toast.
ReplyDeleteThe eugenicists massaging this epidemic couldn't afford that complication, so he was yanked away from all microphones for a cooling-off-'til-everybody-forgets period of time, to be eventually replaced by another equally repugnant tool who's managed to keep his mouth shut around an uncontrolled press.
(But they always fuck this shit up; trust that whomever they pick will be an unrepentant communazi with a long track-record of wetdreaming genocide.)
Obola is a tyrants wet dream come true. Just think ole Bill Ayer's and Vallery Jarret must be rubbing their hands with psychotic glee.
DeleteContain the virus on the dark continent, study its vectors and rates of death, use the pandemic for clandestine development of a vaccine for the elites,(lord how I hate that term, they are anything but elite the bastards), get a vaccine or treatment which is effective, then introduce it into the general population of the united states. Presto, instant fulfillment of Ayer's requirement of a minimum 25 million dead Americans he and his fellow psychopaths believe is required so they can rule with impunity.
Just think of the crisis as a means they wont waste if that shit goes down. After bleeding this country dry, too many live hand to mouth, just on the ragged verge of destitution. Obola running wild would be a disaster of biblical proportions.
Who needs race and class civil war? You dont need to force the Army to round up millions and stuff em in those FEMA camps, feed and tend them, no need to make the military fire on fellow Americans, and you have the perfect circumstances to declare Marshal Law along with rescinding a constitutional government, or what's pitifully left of it. Besides the survivors will be too busy surviving what remains to be a problem to your power to rule.
Maybe I'm being provincial, or wearing a tin foil hat, but you got to ask yourself why there is all those troops in Africa, why the media crickets are drowning out word on what's going down with obola victims, why that nasty little statist fucktard Klein was put in charge, why the schruden fraud with little miss operative special snowflake of Maine.
I think they where pulling a false flag op to gauge the useful idiots reactions, and dry run the possible unintended consequences of seriously fucking with the little folk.
Call me a wingnut, but there are no isolated unrelated events in obola's fundamentally transsexual amerika.
Glad to see you're back; thought you got hit by a truck. ;-)
ReplyDeleteCheck this out.
ReplyDelete"The result, a classic good news/bad news situation: bad news, it seems that only one-third of cases are making it to the government records; good news, this is roughly in line with what researchers had thought previously, so we may not need to radically re-assess the level of interventions needed to stamp this epidemic out...."
-- Do you all get that?
The worst-case scenario of several months ago is now the "good" news.
I.e., we likely have 50,000 cases now, but we should be thankful for, uh, something.
Well here is the news on the ground in the Philippimes.
ReplyDeleteThe department of health has posters and tvs showing commercials saying that you can NOT get Enola from casual contact. So I guess brushing up against that sweaty 19 year old on the train won't spread it, or the long jeep rides packed 30 passengers in a vehicle read for 20.
Privately they say just a matter of,time. I would take a photo of the poster but you can take photos in the train stations cause of Moslems.
Since it is now the cold and flu season the number of cases they have to monitor should explode.
ReplyDeleteIf effective containment procedures were put in effect the whole world wouldn't have to worry about ebola.
If draconian measures were taken 6 months ago the problem would be over. The failure of government leaders and experts are now responsible for the deaths of thousands. Maybe we could send in the drones.
I don't disappear, so much as I occasionally have to make some vague efforts towards paying the bills.
ReplyDeleteA tenth doctor, Aiah Solomon Konoyimahas died after contracting Ebola in Sierra Leone, the government said on Sunday, increasing alarm over the safety of medics battling the deadly epidemic.
ReplyDeleteDaily Mail article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-2864515/Tenth-Sierra-Leone-doctor-dies-Ebola.html
Boon Vick, to ensure the proper success of AmSoc (American Socialism), the Shadow Party will wait until it has rotated a RINO face in place to take all the blame when that goes down.
ReplyDelete..........Nice..^_^v............
ReplyDelete