Thursday, July 2, 2015

Dewey Defeats Truman






From the fishwrap of record:

MONROVIA, Liberia — More than a month after Liberia was declared free of Ebola, at least two new cases have emerged, the first discovered when the body of a 17-year-old boy tested positive for the virus, officials said Tuesday. 
The World Health Organization declared Liberia Ebola-free on May 9, a landmark moment in the country, which has suffered more deaths from the epidemic than any other.
But on Tuesday, Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberia’s deputy minister for health, announced at a news conference here in the capital that a new case had emerged.
It occurred in a small town just outside Monrovia. The family of Abraham Memaigar, 17, who died over the weekend, called a burial team that took swabs of the body and sent them to a laboratory. It confirmed that the boy had been infected by the virus.
On Tuesday, an Ebola response team exhumed the body and had blood drawn for a more precise swab test. That test also came back positive.
Dr. Moses Massaquoi, the case manager for the response team, said the blood test was necessary because investigators could not find the source of the infection and were trying to determine whether it was an “isolated outbreak or new strain of the virus.”

Late Tuesday, a person connected to Abraham tested positive for Ebola, and tests of two other people were inconclusive, Dr. Massaquoi said.
Thirty-three people who had contact with the teenager were isolated in their homes and were being monitored, he said. Three people will be sent to a treatment unit here Wednesday, he said.
“The Ebola fight is not over, but we must not lose hope,” said Dr. Bernice Dahn, Liberia’s newly appointed minister of health. She contended that the quick response to Abraham’s case, including the rapid testing and confirmation that the boy had the virus, demonstrated Liberia’s preparedness to deal with another outbreak.
Liberia has recorded close to 5,000 lives lost to the virus.
The country reactivated an Ebola treatment unit at a time when the facilities, built with the help of the United States military, had stood empty and Liberia was beginning to close them.
Mr. Nyenswah said it was not yet known whether the infection came from Guinea or Sierra Leone, West African neighbors that still have small numbers of new Ebola cases.
Abraham, who sold used clothes at a local market, fell ill at his mother’s house a week before his death, experiencing fever, diarrhea and vomiting.
Abraham’s father, James S. Memaigar, 49, a shoe salesman, said a local clinic had told him just three days before his son’s death that Abraham had malaria. The clinic had sent him home with a handful of tablets, Mr. Memaigar said.
Abraham died Sunday in his father’s home in a community known as Smell No Taste, a few miles from his mother’s home and a short distance from Liberia’s international airport and the Firestone rubber plantation.
Mr. Memaigar had contacted the burial team and dragged his son’s body out of his room on a mattress. Abraham was buried the same day by an Ebola burial team in an overgrown cemetery a short distance from the house.
Dr. Dahn said investigators were trying to determine how the boy had become infected.

Points of note:
1) In a country ravaged by Ebola, and desperate to convince everyone they're free of it, with purportedly only one case to deal with, the crack Liberia medical care system missed the initial diagnosis. Until it had doubled. Perhaps multiple times. Stop me if you've heard this one...
2) The virus, certainly not a new strain, but the same one that's been rampant since December 2013 in West Africa, has done its main thing: it has already spread to at least one other person, and perhaps a dozen symptomatic ones and/or a hundred unsymptomatic soon-to-be diagnosed ones. A month or more later. Stop me if you've heard this one...
3) Liberia has proven competent to confirm two cases, now that they don't have people dying by the hundreds this year. Yet. But as far as stamping out the disease at such a low level, they are about as competent as the Iraqi Army against ISIS.
4) We have no idea how many other cases they've missed/mis-diagnosed since outside attention has waned.
5) With the uninterrupted media blackout of most all Ebola-related news, we never will, either there, nor here. It's frankly almost a miracle that the NYT even chose to publish this piece.

Don't worry, though.
Ebola will never ever get here from there, so there's no need for flight quarantines, and our superior health care system and dedicated medical practitioners would stop it in its tracks if it ever...oh, wait, nevermind.

15 comments:

  1. In one of the reports I saw that he had died in a village about 30 miles from the capital and looking at the name and the area it is said to be in it should be 30 miles ENE of the capital. This would put it far away from any border with Sierra Leone of Guinea though not exactly close to the capital or the airport either.

    They are putting the blame on meat but the young boy was a seller of used clothes which, to me anyways, could have been another pathway to infection.

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  2. Thank you for continuing to update us on ebola, as news of it has basically fallen out of the news and out of most forums, too. Your vigilance and comments are much appreciated.

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  3. The 17 year-old boy was "chaste", they swear.

    Under no circumstances would this teenager with disposable income desire to have sex.

    (*All* media, so far, have been utterly worthless in detailing what connections, if any, the three new cases have to each other.)

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  4. The statists, the state, I repeat myself, are the disease, and we must contend with this epidemic, the true pandemic upon our culture, society, and yes our very lives. It must be eradicated no less than Ebola itself.
    Until we get our act together and become a plurality of people who will not be denied our rightful liberty, we might as well be injecting ourselves with the fresh blood of Ebola victims.
    The disease which threatens the human race is the psychopaths who are running things. They infect every facet of our lives with their virulant pandemic of slavery to their hubris and lust for power.
    The truth is hidden from us not because we will panic because a virus is so deadly, but because it is a component of crisis as a means to control us. Because if we knew the truth of how incompetent and what a collection of complete and utter fools those who have appointed themselves our betters really are, they can not foist an illusion of legitimacy they desperately require to put up a front of legitimate power over us to maintain that illegitimate power.
    It is why threat of violence and use of force, coercion and punishment for refusing to comply with these idiots in charge is employed to begin with.
    Just as sure as the sun rises, if Ebola was to come to America and spread, you can be sure euphemisms like "quarantine and national emergency" would be employed in a New York minute, not to protect us, but to use a crisis as a ,eans to deny us our liberty and self determination.
    When you get down to it, we are for the better part of us very intelligent resourceful people. We would have little trouble dealing with Ebola or any pandemic rationally and with common sense perfectly well on our own by our own druthers. The state is so corrupt and by nature incompetent it is unable to deal with such things in a honest helpful manner. Like everything it touches, it infects with its tyranny.

    Those running things exist now to survive their corruption, their illegitimacy, their complicity in their human extinction movement.
    That is the human disease we must inoculate ourselves from before we can deal effectively with things like Ebola.

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  5. Um, no.

    It is not necessary to burn the entire forest to the ground to boil a cup of water either.

    But that was a great rant, man.
    ROWYBS

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  6. "Liberia confirms new Ebola case as outbreak spreads"

    The sister of one of the earlier infected persons. It would seem that their contact tracking is lacking. Or maybe the model is as the sister's contact with her infected brother was said to be before he was showing any symptoms.

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  7. U.N.'s Nabarro: Ebola Infection Rate Still Includes 'Surprise Cases'

    With an average of 30 patients still being diagnosed with Ebola each week, the outbreak is still not close to being over, United Nations Special Envoy for Ebola David Nabarro has said.

    Under normal circumstances, an infection rate of 30 people a week would be considered "a major, major outbreak," Nabarro said at a conference in Cape Town, South Africa, on Monday.

    "Probably about one third of these people are not coming from the contact list, which means they are surprise cases, and that's a big worry," he said.


    From http://allafrica.com/stories/201507150252.html

    nick

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  8. @ Aesop: That WAS a good rant, but I don't think Doug implied the extent of overreaction that you inferred - or rather - I don't think you understand the extent of the current predicament we find ourselves in. Doug's take is spot on and it would be far more dangerous to under-react to this scourge of leadership than to over-react. STUPID PEOPLE ARE RUNNING THINGS. Unless we do something to change that, THEY WILL KILL US!! YOU... ME... OUR KIDS... EVERYONE!

    Think about the folks you see in the media every day who "represent" us. Senators, Congressmen, Administrators, Mayors, AGs, Judges, etc. etc. etc. I ask 2 things when I watch this clown show:
    1 - Are these the best humans we have?? (for such important positions)
    2 - Are these idiots (and they ARE) truly representing the best interests of we as a people??

    I don't know the last time that both of those questions weren't answered 'no'. (Maybe it was back in the Reagan administration)

    PS: KEEP INFORMING US RACONTEUR!! YOU ARE THE BEST SOURCE OF INFO FOR THIS IMPORTANT TOPIC ON THE PLANET!!! THAT IS A TRUE STATEMENT, AND IT SPEAKS TO MY TWO QUESTIONS (that a blogger is our best source of such important news & info)

    Good luck all, & God bless.

    -Shepherd Crook

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  9. Hi Aesop. Not sure if you are monitoring this anymore but here's a link from drudge today

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AF_SIERRA_LEONE_EBOLA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-07-30-12-59-46

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    Replies
    1. Use this link instead

      http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-faces-ebola-setback-500-under-quarantine-165948352.html

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  10. I'm still monitoring things, but the dearth of information makes it a once-in-an-occasionally proposition.

    In obeisance to Hopey Dopey and TPTB, the media has withdrawn even cursory reportage or review of the figures from the "official" kleptocracies involved (also because reporters getting Ebola is scary to the reporters, duh), so it's pretty much an ongoing exercise in agnosticism.

    The only thing saving us is that 99.9999% of those poor bastards can't afford an airplane ticket out to the world. So far. (A bus ticket to Nairobi, Capetown, or Cairo may become another thing entirely.)

    Except for all the do-gooder doctors, nurses, and ancillary staff, who come and go at will.

    What could possibly go wrong with that?

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  11. "Ebola’s Not Done With West Africa" says Wired.

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  12. Round two:
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3185804/Nine-people-monitored-Ebola-symptoms-Alabama-patient-traveled-West-Africa-struck-fever.html

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