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

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Cmagus

Member
Pretty amazing, hopefully this is a cure they can quickly mass produce and get over to west Africa. They just said both have been released full recovery according to the doctor in the press conference going on.
 
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speculawyer

Member
Stet said:
1 out of 1 humans who were in the United States and had Ebola are now successfully cured.

That's 100%!~
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I'm extremely happy for this doctor . . . . However, I wish they had kept this quiet. This is going to spark massive amounts of conspiracy theories in Africa and thus potentially make the Ebola outbreak much worse. :-(

Some people are going to say "See! They have a cure that they will use for the white people but they let us die!" or "Ebola is a hoax!"
 
N

Nivash

Member
commedieu said:
Nice their cure worked. Create it on a massive scale for free now. And do proper testing.
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"Release now" and "do proper testing first" are mutually exclusive. Proper testing would take years. This outbreak will be over long before then. As for making it free there's obviously no such thing but I would fully support the WHO funding such an effort. Sadly, I doubt they have the budget for it.
 
R

Raist

Banned
Slow day at work, so I decided to plot the data from the Wikipedia article in a different way, because it's quite telling.

So essentially Liberia and Sierra Leone are by far the main contributors to the outbreak compared to Guinea and it's particularly out of control in Liberia, although interestingly the mortality is lower in these 2 countries, especially SL.

I only plotted data from May 27th because that's when the first cases were reported in SL and Liberia.

ebbjo0j.png
 
N

Nivash

Member
Raist said:
Slow day at work, so I decided to plot the data from the Wikipedia article in a different way, because it's quite telling.

So essentially Liberia and Sierra Leone are by far the main contributors to the outbreak compared to Guinea and it's particularly out of control in Liberia, although interestingly the mortality is lower in these 2 countries, especially SL.

I only plotted data from May 27th because that's when the first cases were reported in SL and Liberia.
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Great job. I got the same impression following the updates from WHO but it's nice to see it in graphics. I think the mortality numbers are off primarily because the countries seem to use slightly different metrics for how they track and report cases.

The numbers from the WHO are divided in cases and deaths which are each divided further into the subgroups confirmed, probable and suspect cases. Here's the latest WHO report:

http://who.int/csr/don/2014_08_20_ebola/en/

Let's focus on the extremes, Guinea and Liberia. There's one huge difference here: most of Guinea's cases are confirmed with a smaller number of probable and almost no suspect cases. Liberia is almost a polar opposite with large numbers of probable and suspect cases with only a quarter of total cases being confirmed.

Now, confirmed cases are laboratory confirmed so there's little room for error there and the numbers should be comparable. Looking at these numbers, Guinea has a considerably less horrible mortality rate than Liberia: 60% vs a horrifying 87%. So with cases that are known to be Ebola, Liberia's mortality rate does fit with their much more concerning spread of infection.

There's one more thing that sticks out immediately: all of Guinea's cases listed as probable are dead. What this suggests to me is that all these cases were DOA and considered likely to be Ebola but that no tests were done because it would have been a waste of resources. If you subtract those cases from Guinea's total their mortality rate drops back down to 60% again which is almost exactly the same as Liberia's total and close enough to the outbreak average of about 55%.

Apart from that we can mostly speculate. It's possible that DOA's in Guinea but no suspect cases means that Guinea isn't reporting cases that aren't either confirmed or dead but it could also mean that they actually have the resources to test every suspect case and that those numbers really represent all there are. I'm not sure which is more likely. In Liberia, the numbers suggest that most cases are being treated without the resources to confirm and that most of the cases that are confirmed are dead by the time the results are in, but I'm not sure of that either.

My gut feeling tells me that the numbers from Guinea are legit, that their mortality rate for treated cases is the one around 60% and that Liberia is much less able to respond, resulting in less accurate statistics as well as higher mortality and infection rates. This is in line with what I've gathered from reports in the press as well. But I doubt we'll know for sure before the outbreak is dealt with.
 
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RandyBobandy

Banned
Even if his tests come back negative, was he not screened when he came back? Considering he came from a place where Ebola is particulary active.

It's poor form on his part and Ireland in general.

Anyone coming into this country from the infected countries need to at the very least be screened and placed in isolation for the incubatory period, or you'll have guys like this walking around infecting god knows who.

It's sad I have to say let's just hope he died of malaria
 
A

afternoon delight

Member
If you haven't had enough conspiracy fun with Ebola yet, I (do not) suggest looking into theories that Ebola is a weaponized disease used to destabilize Africa as a proxy war with China.

It was an interesting click-hole for at least an hour or two.
 
S

spwolf

Member
RandyBobandy said:
Even if his tests come back negative, was he not screened when he came back? Considering he came from a place where Ebola is particulary active.

It's poor form on his part and Ireland in general.

Anyone coming into this country from the infected countries need to at the very least be screened and placed in isolation for the incubatory period, or you'll have guys like this walking around infecting god knows who.

It's sad I have to say let's just hope he died of malaria
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What is sad is that Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people more per year than Ebola ever will, and 90% of them being in Africa...

627,000 deaths by malaria in 2012 alone... take note of that number.

http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/
 
M

marrec

Banned
RandyBobandy said:
Even if his tests come back negative, was he not screened when he came back? Considering he came from a place where Ebola is particulary active.

It's poor form on his part and Ireland in general.

Anyone coming into this country from the infected countries need to at the very least be screened and placed in isolation for the incubatory period, or you'll have guys like this walking around infecting god knows who.

It's sad I have to say let's just hope he died of malaria
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Ebola tests are much more expensive than normal screenings would be and if he wasn't presenting any symptoms then there would be no reason to test him.
 
R

Raist

Banned
So, there might be the start of a SUDV outbreak in Northern DRC.
Hopefully they'll contain that one better than the current trainwreck in Liberia.
 
L

LogicStep

Member
brian577 said:
This really needs to be posted at the top of every page.

infographic.jpg


The amount of ignorance here is staggering.
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Quick question. You can get it from bodily fluids right? What if someone coughs and spit hits you. Does that count? I would think it does. Does that mean you can get it through the air or getting something through the air different to what I'm thinking?
 
A

Alucrid

Banned
zazrx said:
Quick question. You can get it from bodily fluids right? What if someone coughs and spit hits you. Does that count? I would think it does. Does that mean you can get it through the air or getting something through the air different to what I'm thinking?
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No, because the virus isn't airborne, it's the bodily fluids that contain it.
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
zazrx said:
Quick question. You can get it from bodily fluids right? What if someone coughs and spit hits you. Does that count? I would think it does. Does that mean you can get it through the air or getting something through the air different to what I'm thinking?
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The viral load isn't big enough and environmental conditions can kill the virus or reduce the load. The world isn't a isolated lab.

Technically yes but that doesn't happen.
 
E

exmachina64

Banned
Screaming Meat said:
That's really useful. Thank you.



This, not so much.
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To be fair, when I followed the thread more actively a few weeks ago, there were people suggesting that we should kill suspected ebola patients en masse (ignoring that they could survive) and that an ebola epidemic occurring in the U.S. was imminent (this was immediately after Patrick Sawyer died).

The fact is that many of us were ignorant of the realities of ebola's transmission before entering this thread, causing some members to suggest actions that were neither necessary nor humane.
 
C

commedieu

Banned
N

Nivash

Member
Alcoremortis said:
Actually, the MSDS for ebola states that aerosolized particles can carry the active virus short distances.

And there's also the Reston strain, which was airborne and lethal to monkeys, but apparently non-pathogenic to humans.

Link: http://www.msdsonline.com/resources/msds-resources/free-safety-data-sheet-index/ebola-virus.aspx
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That's a very odd claim from the MSDS and I'd really like to see the primary source for it. There are numbers that seem to refer to sources in the MSDS but I can't see any way to find the source list. In any case, conventional understanding of Ebola Zaire is that it's a strictly contact spread disease. The only way Ebola is considered to be aerosolized as far as I'm aware is through mechanical means as a bioweapon. As for Reston, it's interesting to note that the airborne transmission was strictly from pigs to monkeys - not between the monkeys themselves. The study is typically understood as demonstrating that the transmission had to do with some property of the pig's respiratory system rather than directly applicable to human-human transmission.
 
T

TheDrizzlerJ11

Member
zazrx said:
Quick question. You can get it from bodily fluids right? What if someone coughs and spit hits you. Does that count? I would think it does. Does that mean you can get it through the air or getting something through the air different to what I'm thinking?
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I think they'd have to spit or cough into your mouth / an open cut?
 
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