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

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I

iamaustrian

Member
mo60 said:
Yep! You are right.

http://news.yahoo.com/hospital-says-spanish-priest-ebola-dies-090427836.html
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He was also treated with the drug Zmapp according to several german and austrian news agencies.
Liberia will receive Zmapp to treat patients.

Here's the latest ebola cases chart (yellow=confirmed cases;red=deaths):
7kO5oom.jpg


edit:
I read somewhere that people that get infected and survive can still give the virus to others for 2 months after the infection.
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Ebola can remain three months in body fluids after an overcome infection.
 
I

iamaustrian

Member
Lots of (terrible) news:

Deathtoll 14th august: 1069 ; over 1800 infected.
"Ebola crisis vastly underestimated", says WHO.
The disease is everything but under control. Spreading faster than expected.
U.S. Evacuating Diplomats' Families from Sierra Leone due Ebola.
4th death of Ebola in Nigeria confirmed.
Entire villages abandoned in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone; infected people locked in houses, left to die or/and starve to death

BALLAJAH (Liberia): The only sounds in the abandoned Liberian village were the cries of a little girl, shut up with her mother's body inside the family home, starving and thirsty as she waited for death.
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'We Do Not Have Enough Teams to Bury the Bodies': Talking to a Virologist in Sierra Leone About the Ebola Crisis
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Between 10 and 11 August 2014, a total of 128 new cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) (laboratory-confirmed, probable, and suspect cases) as well as 56 deaths were reported from Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.
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“Every week, we get one or two new villages with infections,” said Anja Wolz, the Doctors Without Borders physician who was running the organization’s treatment center outside the town of Kailahun last week. “It is a disaster.”
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....

[There are tons of new pictures from said infected villages(bascily ground zero of Ebola) but I will not post them here as they are not for the faint-hearted.]

Sources (warning: some gruesome and heartbreaking stories and pictures in some links):
http://www.who.int/csr/don/2014_08_13_ebola/en/
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28798542
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/world/africa/at-heart-of-ebola-outbreak-a-village-frozen-by-fear-and-death.html?_r=0
https://news.vice.com/article/we-do-not-have-enough-teams-to-bury-the-bodies-talking-to-a-virologist-in-sierra-leone-about-the-ebola-crisis
http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-village-shunned-ebola-victims-left-die-023813543.html
http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-evacuating-diplomats-families-from-sierra-leone-due-to-ebola-1408042591
http://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/373612--nigeria-reports

note: I would post good (ebola) news too but there aren't any atm.
 
N

Nephtis

Member
ricochetguro said:
You might as well blow your brains out now.
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brian577 said:
I am of course saying there is nothing to worry about in a 1st world country with proper medical but I think you already knew that.
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I don't think we should panic, but to say there's nothing to worry about is foolish at best. Even with the best care in the world your chances of survival aren't very good. You have a better chance, but we are indeed underestimating it.
 
K

kmag

Member
Nephtis said:
I don't think we should panic, but to say there's nothing to worry about is foolish at best. Even with the best care in the world your chances of survival aren't very good. You have a better chance, but we are indeed underestimating it.
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No he's saying the chances of it rapidly spreading in a country with 1st World health infrastructure is negligible. The infected would be rapidly identified and contact traced, the actual chance of infection via casual contact is extremely low.
 
A

A Fish Aficionado

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
The flu is a greater concern than Ebola. That's just fact.

Unless, we do find a strain which is way more "successful" as a virus.
 
A

A Fish Aficionado

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
Necrovex said:
Why is that a fact? I'm curious about this tidbit.
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Way more contagious. More problematic. So far Ebola is a concern but not on a global scale as the flu. Remember in the earliest days, we did not know if it was as virulent as the 1918 epidemic.
 
N

Necrovex

Member
A Fish Aficionado said:
Way more contagious. More problematic. So far Ebola is a concern but not on a global scale as the flu. Remember in the earliest days, we did not know if it was as virulent as the 1918 epidemic.
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Thanks! I can also see people (well Americans) still going to work with the flu since some probably would assume it's a cold and consider it not worth missing work due to it.
 
J

Joni

Member
Alucrid said:
If only we had a vaccine
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Flu isn't one disease. The vaccine is an educated guess on which flu will be the most common in a given year. As such, the vaccine helps but isn't foolproof. It also needs to be renewed yearly due to different strains and it needs to be administered on the right moment, which can conflict with the timing of the production. And of course, there are years like this where we actually have a summer and a winter flu.

iamaustrian said:
I don't know, man. Last time I checked I wasn't bleeding out of my eyes, ears, nose and skin when I had the flu. Plus my inner organs weren't melting as well.
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You're still more likely to die from flu than of ever getting ebola. There have been less than 5000 cases since the initial sighting of 1976. In that time frame, about 19 million people have died from the flu. You can worry about the ebola mortality rate if you ever get ebola.
 
W

wrowa

Member
A worldwide epidemic of ebola would be a hundred times more deadly than a worldwide epidemic of flu. Most people who catch a flu survive it without a problem - the same can't be said of ebola. Arguing that flu kills more people yearly than ebola is completely missing the point, since it's the possibility of ebola becoming a widespread "phenomenon" that people are afraid for. It's not about what it does now, but about what it potentially could do if it goes out of control.
 
N

Nivash

Member
iamaustrian said:
I don't know, man.
Last time I checked I wasn't bleeding out of my eyes, ears, nose and skin when I had the flu. Plus my inner organs weren't melting as well.

Ebola is a "category A" disease for a reason.
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/agentlist-category.asp
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It's a category A bioweapon. The weapon part is key. You can effectively weaponise Ebola by creating an aerosol through mechanical means despite that this doesn't occur naturally between humans. Hook a system like that up to a subway network and you'll have a surefire way of infecting hundreds all at once, if not the thousands, and will easily overwhelm local hospitals and incite a panic. Hence, category A bioterror agent. You might also notice that Smallpox is on the list as a category A agent despite the disease having been eradicated for 40 years now.

Again, this is not a natural mode of transmission for Ebola which is direct contact only. The list is not supposed to be applied to natural outbreaks, only to bioterror.
 
J

Joni

Member
wrowa said:
A worldwide epidemic of ebola would be a hundred times more deadly than a worldwide epidemic of flu. Most people who catch a flu survive it without a problem - the same can't be said of ebola. Arguing that flu kills more people yearly than ebola is completely missing the point, since it's the possibility of ebola becoming a widespread "phenomenon" that people are afraid for. It's not about what it does now, but about what it potentially could do if it goes out of control.
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A worldwide outbreak of ebola is a lot more difficult to achieve. It is terrible at spreading unlike the flu, which let's not forget is contagious before and after actually becoming sick. Combine it with different effects, symptoms that mimick the common cold and a spread of 6 feet and you have an illness that is way better at spreading. Combine it with stronger variants of flu and you have a disease that is both more probable and a lot more deadly. It is why it is one of very few diseases that have managed to cause pandemics.
 
K

Konka

Banned
wrowa said:
A worldwide epidemic of ebola would be a hundred times more deadly than a worldwide epidemic of flu. Most people who catch a flu survive it without a problem - the same can't be said of ebola. Arguing that flu kills more people yearly than ebola is completely missing the point, since it's the possibility of ebola becoming a widespread "phenomenon" that people are afraid for. It's not about what it does now, but about what it potentially could do if it goes out of control.
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Jesus. There is a reason Ebola doesn't turn into that. It's a pretty terrible virus for virus standards. Killing its host quickly and difficult to transmit compared to the flu.
 
T

Tigress

Member
Joni said:
A worldwide outbreak of ebola is a lot more difficult to achieve. It is terrible at spreading unlike the flu, which let's not forget is contagious before and after actually becoming sick. Combine it with different effects, symptoms that mimick the common cold and a spread of 6 feet and you have an illness that is way better at spreading. Combine it with stronger variants of flu and you have a disease that is both more probable and a lot more deadly. It is why it is one of very few diseases that have managed to cause pandemics.
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Actually, worse is the flu is most contagious when you aren't showing symptoms and before you know you have it. Which makes it hard to avoid people with it or to know that you need to be extra careful around them or for you to know you need to be extra careful.

wrowa said:
A worldwide epidemic of ebola would be a hundred times more deadly than a worldwide epidemic of flu. Most people who catch a flu survive it without a problem - the same can't be said of ebola. Arguing that flu kills more people yearly than ebola is completely missing the point, since it's the possibility of ebola becoming a widespread "phenomenon" that people are afraid for. It's not about what it does now, but about what it potentially could do if it goes out of control.
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No, it's not missing the point. The flu kills more people cause it is a lot more contagious and affects a lot more people (on top of that the flu mutates really easy as well so it could be a really contagious strain that's not deadly and turn deadly. Or be deadly but not contagious and turn contagious). You do realize more people have died of Malaria in Africa than Ebola *this year*? That's cause Malaria spreads a lot better and even if it doesn't have as high a death rate it affects a lot more people cause of it and has a lot more chance of killing them.

Ebola is more deadly. Ebola in general is going to kill less people cause it's going to affect a lot less people than the flu. Not only is the flu airborn, the flu is most contagious before you even know you have it. Ebola waits until you have symptoms to even be contagious. So that makes it easier for people not to spread it to other people and to avoid it.

The point is there is a much much higher chance of a flu pandemic than an ebola pandemic. Ebola is a lot easier to contain (Doesn't mean people will do the right things to contain it, look at the area affected now. But imagine in that same area ebola spread as fast as the flu? It's not affected as many people cause it is easier to contain).
 
S

speculawyer

Member
marrec said:
Actually it kills 250k-500k each year.
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But isn't this a bit misleading? The flu generally just kills very old people, babies, and people with compromised immune systems. So your average GAF poster that contracts the flu is not likely to die from it. But there is a good chance of them dying of ebola if they got it. (But of course, you are very unlikely to get ebola.)
 
T

titiklabingapat

Member
Joni said:
A worldwide outbreak of ebola is a lot more diffic ult to achieve. It is terrible at spreading unlike the flu, which let's not forget is contagious before and after actually becoming sick. Combine it with different effects, symptoms that mimick the common cold and a spread of 6 feet and you have an illness that is way better at spreading. Combine it with stronger variants of flu and you have a disease that is both more probable and a lot more deadly. It is why it is one of very few diseases that have managed to cause pandemics.
Click to expand...

There is this hypothesis that deadly and virulent viruses tend to 'mellow' out in the long run as it is more beneficial to it that it doesn't kill it's host right away. It's better for it to keep it's host alive longer so it can spread more.
 
N

Nivash

Member
titiklabingapat said:
There is this hypothesis that deadly and virulent viruses tend to 'mellow' out in the long run as it is more beneficial to it that it doesn't kill it's host right away. It's better for it to keep it's host alive longer so it can spread more.
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Sure, but we're typically talking about very long stretches of time when it's been in circulation among billions, not something that happens in a single outbreak. The thing with Ebola is that it's never around long enough to mutate. Every single outbreak ends with the strain's complete eradication among humans. It keeps resurfacing because of a very simple reason: goddamned bats.

Humans are not the target organism for Ebola. Bats are. We're coincidental. Ebola has evolved to the point where it's a perfect virus for bats - bats get infected but don't develop symptoms. They are Ebola's natural hosts. In time this outbreak will be eradicated too. When that happens Ebola will be back at square one with the same Ebola Zaire strain it has probably used for God knows how long in the bat population.
 
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