• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Ebola: Doctors told to prep for global outbreak after victim allowed on two planes

Status
Not open for further replies.
C

Coins

Banned
mario_O said:
Any link for that?
Click to expand...

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/30/health/ebola-american-aid-workers/index.html?c=homepage-t

The dangers are so real that some humanitarian organizations are pulling out to protect their own.

Samaritan's Purse -- an international evangelical Christian humanitarian agency -- and the missionary group Serving in Mission have recalled all nonessential personnel from Liberia.

The Peace Corps announced Wednesday it is doing the same, removing its 340 volunteers from that country, as well as Sierre Leone and Guinea.
Click to expand...

Bart Janssens, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders, said that those figures likely understate how bad things are, noting "there are many places where people are infected, but we don't know about it."

"This epidemic is without precedent," said Janssens, whose group also is known as Médecins Sans Frontières. "It's absolutely not under control, and the situation keeps worsening."
Click to expand...

Baby, can you dig your man? He's a righteous man.

If only Carrie Underwood would sing that.
 
R

robochimp

Member
luxarific said:
Climate change (and our refusal to do anything about it) and our continued rapid destruction of our biosphere unfortunately make this an untrue statement.
Click to expand...

We aren't even close to the point where climate change looks like a real threat to the average person.
 
L

luxarific

Nork unification denier
Cloud Strife said:
Not yet.
Click to expand...

We're going to blow past 2 degrees and we're on track for 6 degrees by the end of the century.

Ebola will be the least of our problems.

robochimp said:
We aren't even close to the point where climate change looks like a real threat to the average person.
Click to expand...

The problem in a nutshell. By the time it does, it'll be too late to stop (or at least hold to levels that will not be too devastating).
 
D

Dryk

Member
robochimp said:
We aren't even close to the point where climate change looks like a real threat to the average person.
Click to expand...
Yeah but climate change effects have a 20-50 year lead time. If humanity was good about doing things before they got to be a problem more people in Africa would be educated about disease and this outbreak probably wouldn't be as bad as it is.

I guarantee the same thing will happen if it gets out too. By the time it hits another continent people will have started to panic and it will be too late to teach them what to do about it. It won't be as bad as we've been seeing but it'll still cost lives.
 
R

Raist

Banned
v1oz said:
Ebola won't nearly be as fatal in Europe or America as it is in Africa. Because Europeans and their descendants have a much greater immune system resistance to viruses as a result of surviving through several plagues over the centuries. Europeans also have a higher resistance to HIV.

I don't think there is too much cause for concern really. Bird flu is several times more contagious than ebola for example, a far greater risk of outbreak, but the fatality rate was far lower than predicted when it did spread (even though Tammiflu was found to be useless against it!). Ebola is fairly easy to quarantine.
Click to expand...

This has nothing to do with a "superior" immune system. There is a mutation that makes carriers resistant to some HIV strains, and it's not 100% clear yet when or what made that mutation spread in the european population. That mutation is not entirely without effect, because while carriers seem healthy, they are more susceptible to other infections (such as West Nile Virus).

Similarly, there is a mutation potentially making one resistant to Ebola. The bad news is that it is also responsible for a whole bunch of neurological problems.

So yeah, it doesn't have anything to do with the immune system per se, it's something akin to the resistance of people affected with sickle cell disease to malaria.
 
I

iamaustrian

Member
One of the deadliest viruses on this planet is (confirmed to be) completely out of control(no Ebola outbreak before was "out of control"), spreading for the first time ever across 4 countries and organizations pulling out their personal left to right.

The virus was transmitted by monkey- or fruitbat meat which still can be bought everywhere in african countries. although it was banned by the goverments.
Apparently the people there do not care about the virus at all.
It seems rather pointless to endanger medical staff to fight the virus if you can't get rid of the source of the problem: the widespread consumption of bushmeat


I'm not calling for panic mode at all but it's getting really a bit out of hand. don't you think?
 
A

A Fish Aficionado

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
No. It's a worry due to the spotty infrastructure, healthcare and superstitions of the populations. It isn't anything like a global pandemic.
 
A

Amir0x

Banned
Ebola is a terrible candidate for any genuinely widescale epidemic of, say, the Spanish Flu variety, so I'm not really concerned.
 
P

Philippo

Member
Not trying to be racist or anything, just haven't got much medical knowledge, but i was wondering: i live in Italy, where in the last years we've had some serious immigration issues from Africa (as in we get boats with 400 immigrants basically once a week and then stay stuck in our country), do you think this could eventually lead to the virus expanding here too?
 
A

A Fish Aficionado

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
Philippo said:
Not trying to be racist or anything, just haven't got much medical knowledge, but i was wondering: i live in Italy, where in the last years we've had some serious immigration issues from Africa (as in we get boats with 400 immigrants basically once a week and then stay stuck in our country), do you think this could eventually lead to the virus expanding here too?
Click to expand...

No. The people with ebola in the affected regions would show symptoms and would be too weak to travel that far.
As for other pathogens, then it could be, which is why I would stress for a humanitarian view of immigration instead of an antagonistic one.
 
Liberty4all

Liberty4all

Banned
My worry is that now that it's such a big outbreak it mutates and goes airborne. There's no chance of that happening right?
 
T

trinest

Member
Amir0x said:
Ebola is a terrible candidate for any genuinely widescale epidemic of, say, the Spanish Flu variety, so I'm not really concerned.
Click to expand...

It's been awhile since we had a big scare like Swine flu. I thought we are due for one.

Bamelin said:
My worry is that now that it's such a big outbreak it mutates and goes airborne. There's no chance of that happening right?
Click to expand...

You have been playing to much Pandemic.
 
Liberty4all

Liberty4all

Banned
trinest said:
You have been playing to much Pandemic.
Click to expand...

I live in Toronto and went through the SARS scare. My wife is a nurse and worked in hospitals with SARS patients ... It was an unfun time.

I'm not too worried about this, but I do honestly wonder if it could mutate and go airborne (serious question).
 
P

Philippo

Member
A Fish Aficionado said:
No. The people with ebola in the affected regions would show symptoms and would be too weak to travel that far.
As for other pathogens, then it could be, which is why I would stress for a humanitarian view of immigration instead of an antagonistic one.
Click to expand...

I'm with you on this one, wasn't trying to give an antagonistic view at all, just asking if there's any real threat, since we're probably the EU country with most contacts with Africa, and thanks for the clarification.
 
E

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
I feel like this needs to be posted any time this kind of thread pops up. People need to start educating themselves about the relative levels of risk and harm associated with various threats to human life.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/08/the-death-toll-comparison-breakdown.html
The Death Toll Comparison Breakdown
One of the things about humans is that they die sometimes, and one of the things humans pay a lot of attention to is other people dying. We do a pretty good job of distracting ourselves from the whole “I’m gonna die one day” thing, but the fixation is there, underneath the surface, and one way it shows through is how riveted we are by other people’s deaths.
The news is an obvious example—just open up CNN.com and typically, at least half of the headlines are about people dying. Entertainment is another—nothing locks eyes on a screen like the death of a character.
History is a less obvious example, but it’s the parts of history that involve a lot of people dying that usually compel us the most. That’s why there are so many war movies and so few movies about critical legislation being passed.
But for a crowd so interested in death, humans know surprisingly little about the actual numbers of people that died in key moments throughout history. Most of us know that 3,000 people died on 9/11, but how many Americans know how many Katrina victims there were, or how many people died in the American Revolution. Did the Christian Crusades kill 100 times as many people as the Vietnam War? Or were they identical in their death tolls? Given how much we talk about historical human tragedies, it seems like something we should have a better handle on. So let’s take a look.
Click to expand...


disclaimer: the numbers cited in the article may not all be accurate, but I have checked some of them against other sources and they do generally seem to be in line with accepted research.
edit: also, the author fails to mention this incredibly important incident.
 
P

PS3GamerKyle

Member
luxarific said:
Climate change (and our refusal to do anything about it) and our continued rapid destruction of our biosphere unfortunately make this an untrue statement.
Click to expand...

Those are long term problems. In the face of immediate danger, I think we do OK for ourselves.

I agree with you completely, but I think that's what the original poster intended with his post
 
L

luxarific

Nork unification denier
PS3GamerKyle said:
Those are long term problems. In the face of immediate danger, I think we do OK for ourselves.

I agree with you completely, but I think that's what the original poster intended with his post
Click to expand...

Yeah, but the point I'm trying to make is that we're not good, as a species or individually, at evaluating risk. Climate change is actually an immediate threat, not a long term one - we need to make changes right now to stay under 2 degrees of warming, but these are changes that are not going to happen because we collectively (or at least those that can actually influence policymakers) have decided that we can't "afford" them.

if we delay the global emissions peak until 2025, we pretty much have to drop off a cliff afterwards to avoid 2 degrees C. Short of a meteor strike that shuts down industrial civilization, that’s unlikely.

How about 2020? Of the available scenarios for peaking in 2020, says Anderson, 13 of 18 show hitting 2 degrees C to be technically impossible. (D’oh!) The others involve on the order of 10 percent reductions a year after 2020, leading to total decarbonization by 2035-45.

Just to give you a sense of scale: The only thing that’s ever pushed emissions reductions above 1 percent a year is, in the words of the Stern Report, “recession or upheaval.” The total collapse of the USSR knocked 5 percent off its emissions. So 10 percent a year is like … well, it’s not like anything in the history of human civilization.

This, then, is the brutal logic of climate change: With immediate, concerted action at global scale, we have a slim chance to halt climate change at the extremely dangerous level of 2 degrees C. If we delay even a decade — waiting for better technology or a more amenable political situation or whatever — we will have no chance.

5. Jeez, 2 degrees C looks hard. Can we just do 4 degrees C [7.2 degrees F] instead?

It might seem that, given the extraordinary difficulty of hitting 2 degrees C, we ought to lower our sights a bit and accept that we’re going to hit 4 degrees C. It won’t be ideal, but hitting anything lower than that is just too difficult and expensive.

It’s seductive logic. After all, to hit 4 degrees C we would “only” have to peak global emissions in 2020 and decline thereafter at the relatively leisurely rate (ha ha) of around 3.5 percent per year.

Sadly, even that cold comfort is not available to us. The thing is, if 2 degrees C is extremely dangerous, 4 degrees C is absolutely catastrophic. In fact, according to the latest science, says Anderson, “a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable.”

Obviously, “incompatible with an organized global community” is what jumps out, but the last bit, “high probability of not being stable,” is equally if not more important. One of the most uncertain areas of climate science today has to do with feedbacks — processes caused by climate change that in turn accelerate (or decelerate) climate change. For instance, heat can melt the Arctic permafrost, which releases methane, which accelerates climate change, which melts more permafrost, etc.

Based on current scientific understanding, positive climate feedbacks — the ones that accelerate the process — considerably outweigh negative feedbacks. At some level of temperature rise, some of those positive feedbacks are likely to become self-reinforcing and effectively unstoppable, no matter how much emissions are cut. These are the “tipping points” you hear so much about.

But at what level? Will hitting 2 degrees C trigger runaway positive feedbacks? It’s difficult to know; this is one of the most uncertain areas of climate science. James Hansen thinks 2 degrees C will do it. Others disagree.

But the situation becomes considerably clearer around 4 degrees C. At that level, there’s good reason to believe that some positive feedbacks will become self-reinforcing. In other words, 4 degrees C would very likely be a way station on the road to much higher temperatures.
Click to expand...

Just take a look at Australia, Howard just rolled back their carbon tax. The U.S. isn't even close to implementing one and China, heh, yeah, good luck with that.
 
C

CTLance

Member
Pandemic 2 taught me that you evolve the deadly traits only later, when you've already spread to most hosts. Ebola is doing it wrong.

Tongue in cheek commentary aside,
I'm actually glad that people are panicking to some degree. That offsets the vast amounts of people that underestimate just how dangerous a true pandemic can be. Not necessarily this one, but eh. You know. Better safe than sorry.

RIP to those already dead and those who will be dying to this in the future. Scary shit. Hopefully the populace will come around and actually start to believe the doctors. Must be incredibly frustrating to see even the most basic safeguards ignored by everyone while people are dying left and right.

Harsh, but with the lethality rate being as high as it is and incubation time being as low as it is this will probably stay a low impact incident as far as all seven billion of us are concerned. Still a tremendous and cruel loss of life. Comparatively easy to avoid/lessen, as well. I think that's what really gets me in all of this. How (comparatively) easy to contain this disease could be in an ideal world where everybody do as they're told. Also where people could afford to do that, which is another problem.
 
R

Raist

Banned
Bamelin said:
I live in Toronto and went through the SARS scare. My wife is a nurse and worked in hospitals with SARS patients ... It was an unfun time.

I'm not too worried about this, but I do honestly wonder if it could mutate and go airborne (serious question).
Click to expand...

Theoretically? Yes. But this virus has been around for ages and that's not how it spreads, so the amount of mutation this would require would be ridiculous.
This being considered, you need two things for evolution:
- time
- selection pressure

Time is an issue for Ebola, because it kills its hosts so quickly.
Now, one could argue it could evolve in its resevoirs for which the virus is pretty much harmless, such as bats. There was a study a little while ago where they compared two isolates from patients infected something like 20 years apart. The 2 genomes were pretty much identical.
Being an RNA virus, it should potentially be mutating very quickly, so it's likely that it is so adapted that potential mutations are either useless or not conserved.

Selection pressure, well there isn't a lot, because there is zero direct treatment for it, not even something poorly effective. "Treatment" of Ebola for now is limited to treating the symptoms, not targeting the virus at all.

So yeah, keep calm and carry on.

iamaustrian said:
It's not very reasonable to compare this Ebola "scare" with the swine flu scare.
Pharma industry gains nothing from ebola as there's no vaccine or treatment.
Click to expand...

nottudisushituagen.jpg
 
N

NobleGundam

Banned
Some resident evil shit except without the zombies.

Secret organization(s) will obtain both the virus and a cure.

Unleash patient zero into highly populated areas. Provide aid with containment into infected areas and sell the cure to preyed countries leaders at extreme prices.

Continue cycle in other preyed countries globally. Begin process over again.
 
D

Deleted member 102481

Unconfirmed Member
I want zombies mutate and reanimate the corpses
 
H

hydragonwarrior

Member
iamaustrian said:
One of the deadliest viruses on this planet is (confirmed to be) completely out of control(no Ebola outbreak before was "out of control"), spreading for the first time ever across 4 countries and organizations pulling out their personal left to right.

The virus was transmitted by monkey- or fruitbat meat which still can be bought everywhere in african countries. although it was banned by the goverments.
Apparently the people there do not care about the virus at all.
It seems rather pointless to endanger medical staff to fight the virus if you can't get rid of the source of the problem: the widespread consumption of bushmeat


I'm not calling for panic mode at all but it's getting really a bit out of hand. don't you think?
Click to expand...

A bit of panic is good for ratings.
 
A

ahoyle77

Member
No idea how viruses mutate, but it seems logical that if this were to spread from 1000 cases to 10000, to 100000, each step along the way the chances of mutation increases. And no one really knows what would happen with ebola in that case, as there us no other outbreak like that.
 
C

Coins

Banned
Ushojax said:
That isn't going to happen.
Click to expand...

How do you know? Canadian scientists showed it can spread without direct contact.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20341423

Canadian scientists have shown that the deadliest form of the ebola virus could be transmitted by air between species.

In experiments, they demonstrated that the virus was transmitted from pigs to monkeys without any direct contact between them.

The researchers say they believe that limited airborne transmission might be contributing to the spread of the disease in some parts of Africa.

They are concerned that pigs might be a natural host for the lethal infection.
Click to expand...
 
T

Terra

Member
Yeah. Even though I am sceptical by heart, I cannot believe all the "it isn´t gonna happen"-posts.

It IS a plausible scenario, that an infected person infects others and it starts to spread through parts of the world.

It has happened times before. Will probably happen again. Maybe this time. Maybe not.

But to just state that "it´s impossible" is just stupid. Even healthcare workers and doctors are legit worried about it spreading to Europe.

Almost 700 dead. That´s the size of the town that I live in.
 
E

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
Terra said:
Yeah. Even though I am sceptical by heart, I cannot believe all the "it isn´t gonna happen"-posts.

It IS a plausible scenario, that an infected person infects others and it starts to spread through parts of the world.

It has happened times before. Will probably happen again. Maybe this time. Maybe not.

But to just state that "it´s impossible" is just stupid. Even healthcare workers and doctors are legit worried about it spreading to Europe.

Almost 700 dead. That´s the size of the town that I live in.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, we should never discount the possibility that something could happen, right?
Better be sure to protect yourself from malaria, black plague, H1N1 influenza, cholera, yellow fever, radiation poisoning, and mutated strains of HIV transmitted through the air too.
 
A

ampere

Member
Jesus.

Ebola is one of the scariest diseases. Melting organs ugh. Hope this doesn't actually cause an outbreak.
 
B

Bam Bam Baklava

Member
efyu_lemonardo said:
Fair enough, we should never discount the possibility that something could happen, right?
Better be sure to protect yourself from malaria, black plague, H1N1 influenza, cholera, yellow fever, radiation poisoning, and mutated strains of HIV transmitted through the air too.
Click to expand...

What about solar flares?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

  • Locked
  • Poll
United Airlines violently drags a doctor off a plane so employee could take his seat
69 70 71 72 73
4K
352K
sixteen-bit replied
  • Locked
WHO Declares Ebola Outbreak Over; 0 Reported Cases in Guinea, Liberia & Sierra Leone
32
3K
Grym replied
  • Locked
Ebola victim was on his way to US
3 4 5 6 7
304
34K
rykomatsu replied
  • Locked
CDC: Ebola looks to be 'over' in Nigeria and Senegal
17
2K
freshair replied
  • Locked
Sierra Leone's chief Ebola doctor contracts the virus (Up: has passed away)
48
6K
sgjackson replied
Top Bottom