Ebola Zaire Virus

Ebola is a great equalizer. It reminds the world that medical and social injustice anywhere is a threat to medical and social justice everywhere.

1. The European underdevelopment of Africa and failure to develop her
2. the unequal subsidies provided to the continent compared to Israel,
3. the decades of support for apartheid, and injustice in general
4. The West's insatiable thirst for blood diamonds that destabilizes nations
5. The past failure of the West to act quickly against an African disease
6. The provision of work visas to African nurses and doctors, a brain drain

All of these are part of the reasons there is no infrastructure to contain the spread. Ebola will reach the West. Sunni and Shia alike. Red state and blue state, Catholic and Protestant, gay and straight, Palestinian and Israeli.
It will remind us of our shared humanity. It can topple governments overnight. It can thrust us all into apocalypse.

And even if we contain this virus this time, unless we change the circumstances of the least among us internationally, we will be perpetually vulnerable. A chain is as strong as it's weakest link. Today Ebola, tomorrow Virus X.

Just too add Miss, there is a LOT more than just diamonds we have taken from Africa. Human slaves probably being the worse.

Also do not forget that "missionaries" have caused a lot of the mistrust Africans have for western medicine, doctors, and science.

Edit: hell the missionaries have enough of a hard time with western medicine, doctors, and science.

Sudan bans reporting on Ebola (Star Africa)

The Sudanese authorities have prohibited local media from covering any news related to the Ebola virus.Press sources who asked not to be mentioned for security reasons confirmed to APA on Saturday that the security authorities have circulated warning to all media outlets not to publish any news or articles related to the transmission of the Ebola virus in Sudan.

The prohibition came after local media reported on some suspected cases of Ebola in the west of Sudan.

The Minister of Health Affairs for the Darfur Regional Authority, Firdos Abdel Rahman Yousif denied reports of the deadly Ebola virus disease in El Geneina, capital of West Darfur State.

The Sudan News Agency quoted the minister as saying the suspected case had come from Abeche in Chad.

The patient suffered from hemorrhagic fever, began taking treatment from the health center, and was then transferred to a hospital in El Geneina, she claimed.

The Ebola epidemic has killed over 1, 400 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria since its outbreak in West Africa in February.

Over 2, 500 people are infected by the virus in the region according to the World Health Organization.

"The world is allowing Ebola to spin out of control."

Is it perhaps too late? Are the true current numbers of afflicted/ deaths far above what is being reported?

The world is allowing the Ebola outbreak to spin out of control, according to a leading humanitarian group helping to treat patients in West Africa.

In a separate speech, the USA's top public health official also called on global leaders to do far more to control the Ebola outbreak that has now spread to five countries.

"I could not possibly overstate the need for an emergency response," said Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who just returned from visiting Ebola treatment centers in West Africa. "There is a window of opportunity to tamp this down, but that window is closing. ... We need action now."

Separately, the missionary group SIM USA announced Tuesday that another of its workers, an American doctor, has been diagnosed with Ebola in Liberia.

Although health leaders know how to halt the spread of the virus, "the challenge is to scale it up to the massive levels needed to stop Ebola," CDC's Frieden said, noting, "Speed is key. For every day's delay, it becomes harder to stop it."

Frieden said the Ebola outbreak — the largest in the 40-year-history of the virus — is the first true Ebola epidemic, reaching widely into many countries. In the past, Ebola affected much smaller communities.

The World Health Organization reports that more than 3,000 people have been infected with Ebola in five countries of West Africa — Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal — and more than half have died.

Ebola now threatens the peace and security of the countries affected, Frieden says, noting that 70 staff from the CDC are now working in West Africa.

"This is not just a problem for Africa," Frieden said. "This is a problem for the world, and the world needs to respond."

Failing to control the virus makes it more likely that Ebola will expand to additional countries, and that Ebola could mutate in ways that make it easier to spread, Frieden said. While the risk of such mutations is low, "it's probably not zero."

Doctors Without Borders, one of the leading humanitarian agencies fighting the epidemic in West Africa, said Tuesday that "the world is losing the battle" to contain Ebola.

"Leaders are failing to come to grips with this transnational threat," said Joanne Liu, president of Doctors Without Borders, in a statement. "States have essentially joined a global coalition of inaction."

The group called on countries with the capacity to handle biological disasters — such as pandemics or bioterrorist attacks — to send more boots on the ground, in the form of trained civilian or military medical teams.

"Funding announcements and the deployment of a few experts do not suffice," Liu said. "The clock is ticking and Ebola is winning. The time for meetings and planning is over. It is now time to act. Every day of inaction means more deaths and the slow collapse of societies."

Doctors Without Borders estimates that its hospital in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, needs another 800 beds. The hospital now has 160 beds.

"Every day, we have to turn sick people away," said Stefan Liljegren, a Doctors Without Borders coordinator in Liberia, in a statement. "I have had to tell ambulance drivers to call me before they arrive with patients, no matter how unwell they are, since we are often unable to admit them."

Frieden, who visited the Ebola wards himself, said wearing multiple layers of "personal protective equipment" — or moon suits — is "roasting hot" in the tropical climates of West Africa. "Sweat pours down into your goggles and eyes," Frieden says. Doctors wearing two sets of gloves have trouble even drawing blood, he said.

"As bad as the situation is now, everything I've seen suggests that it will get worse," Frieden says.

The World Health Organization last week announced that the Ebola outbreak could grow to 20,000 cases and take another six to nine months to contain.

"In some ways, the most upsetting thing I saw was what I didn't see," Frieden said of his trip to West Africa. "I didn't see enough beds for treatment. One facility with 36 beds, that just opened, had 63 patients. Some were laying on the ground. ... I didn't see data coming in from large parts of the country. I didn't see the rapid response that is needed to keep a single cluster from becoming a large outbreak."

A separate Ebola outbreak is occurring in the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa. Tests on the viruses in circulation there show that the outbreak is a "distinct and independent event, with no relationship to the outbreak in West Africa," the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/cdc-ebola-outbreak/14965759/

It is so sad that the appeal of a "transnational" threat has to be used to get a response.

Global health officials warn that window for bringing Ebola under control is closing fast (Wash. Post)

Leading international health officials said Tuesday that the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is accelerating and the window for getting it under control is closing.

“Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it,” Joanne Liu, international president of medical charity Doctors Without Borders, said in a briefing at the United Nations. She faulted world leaders for failing to recognize the severity of the crisis sooner and said charities and West African governments alone do not have the capacity to stem the outbreak.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden, who returned Monday from a week-long trip to the countries hardest hit by the epidemic — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — said he was shocked by how rapidly the disease is spreading.

There is widespread transmission in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and a troubling spike in cases in Guinea, which until now has had more success controlling the outbreak, he said. That increase has taken place in one community, where many have resisted preventive measures such as spraying bleach, and mistakenly believe the measures are spreading Ebola.

“There is a window of opportunity to tamp this down, but that window is closing,” Frieden said. “We need action now to scale up, and we need to scale up to massive levels .?.?. I cannot overstate the need for an urgent response,” he said.

Desperate WHO Calls Ebola Drug Summit As Crisis Worsens (Time)

More than 100 scientists and industry executives will convene this week at the WHO’s headquarters Geneva, Switzerland, in response to a spiraling Ebola crisis. Their urgent mission will be to comb through the world’s stock of experimental Ebola drugs and vaccines and agree on a plan for clinical trials.

The Sept. 4 to Sept. 5 meeting comes about a month after the WHO said that while it had a “moral duty” to conduct clinical trials, treating Ebola patients with drugs never previously tested on humans would be ethical given the severity of the crisis.

Experimental Ebola drugs – though still wildcards – have been touted as possible miracle workers in the international fight to quell the outbreak, the worst on record. The epidemic has subsumed Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, and it has appeared in Nigeria, Senegal, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

ZMapp, one of the drugs before the WHO, cured all 18 monkeys that had been infected with Ebola as part of a recent study. Even so, anecdotal evidence of its effectiveness in humans is inconclusive: it has never been tested on humans but was given to seven Ebola patients, two of which have lived, and two of which have died.

On Tuesday, U.S. health officials announced a $25 million contract with ZMapp’s supplier, Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc., to begin testing the drug, as well as to jumpstart its production, as supplies are currently exhausted. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) will also begin clinical trials of an Ebola vaccine next week, and trials of additional vaccines are set for the fall.

Meanwhile, the WHO announced last week that it has drafted a broad roadmap to “dramatically scale up the international response” to the crisis and halt Ebola’s spread within six to nine months.

Health workers have been highly critical of what they say is a lackluster international response to the emergency: after a U.N. meeting on Tuesday, Doctors without Boarders president Joanne Liu excoriated the leaders of unaffected nations for scrambling to secure their own borders against the virus, but failing to sending sufficient aid and experts into the crisis zones.

“Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it,” Liu said, calling on able countries to send bio-defense teams to West Africa. “We cannot cut off the affected countries and hope this epidemic will simply burn out. To put out this fire, we must run into the burning building.”

Liu told the U.N. much of what has been done so far to stop the virus is not working. “Riots are breaking out,” she said. “Isolation centers are overwhelmed. Health workers on the front lines are becoming infected and are dying in shocking numbers. Others have fled in fear, leaving people without care for even the most common illnesses. Entire health systems have crumbled.”

The U.N. meanwhile warned on Tuesday that the quarantines are expected to cause a food crisis in West Africa, as restrictions on movement in and out of afflicted communities are affecting food supplies, and as panic buying is jacking up the prices of ever-scare staples.

More than 1,500 people have died in West Africa – almost half of the some 3,500 cases confirmed since the disease was identified in March. The WHO predicts that around 20,000 more people will fall ill with the virus before its spread can be stopped.

"....An analysis published this week noted that 3,000 to 6,000 travelers fly from Nigeria to the U.S. every week....."

Ever since Ebola first appeared in Nigeria in July, health officials have been holding their breath. Could the country keep the virus from spreading outside its capital of Lagos?

The answer is no. The lethal virus has jumped to another major city. The outcome of a public health drama unfolding in Nigeria's oil-producing center could determine whether the world's largest Ebola outbreak is brought under control or spreads throughout West Africa and beyond.

Port Harcourt is the major oil-refining city in Nigeria and is home to the largest number of multinational companies in the country.

Nigerian officials are scrambling to identify and monitor the health of more than 200 people in Port Harcourt, an industrial city of 1.4 million about 300 miles southeast of Lagos.

"This is a really bad situation," says John Woodall, a London-based epidemiologist, who is monitoring the situation for ProMED-mail, a global disease-tracking group. "Oil is the hub of Nigeria's economy, and Port Harcourt is a city where many Nigerians and foreigners mix."

How did Ebola hop from Lagos to Port Harcourt?

It all started at the beginning of August, when a diplomat in Lagos violated a quarantine order and fled to Port Harcourt. That man infected a doctor at the port city, who then had contact with more than 200 people, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. About 60 people had what WHO calls "high-risk exposure" — they were in direct contact with the doctor or his bodily fluids.

The doctor secretly treated the diplomat in a Port Harcourt hotel room. The diplomat reportedly has survived.

The doctor developed symptoms — and thus became contagious to others — on Aug. 11. But for the next two days, he continued to treat patients in his private clinic, performing surgery on two.

As his Ebola symptoms worsened, but before he went into the hospital, the doctor had "numerous contacts" with relatives and friends who came to his home to celebrate the birth of a baby, the WHO said.

After he was hospitalized, the doctor was treated by the majority of the staff at the hospital's clinic over a six-day period, plus doctors at an outside ultrasound clinic. He also had contact with many members of his church, who visited to perform a healing ritual "said to involve the laying-on of hands," the WHO reports.

The doctor died on Aug. 22. His wife got Ebola but has survived. On Thursday the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Health reported that the doctor's sister has Ebola.

The WHO currently reports 21 cases of Ebola and seven deaths in Nigeria. According to the Nigerian Health Minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, five of these cases are in the Port Harcourt cluster, two of whom have died.

But WHO officials are very worried that Nigeria could see many more cases. "Given these multiple high-risk exposure opportunities, the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Port Harcourt has the potential to grow larger and spread faster than the one in Lagos," the WHO said.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous and richest country. Its public health system is reportedly much more robust than the systems in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia — the three countries to the west where Ebola emerged in March and still spreads out of control.

And Nigeria, by some reports, is doing a good job. Some health officials have praised the government's response to Ebola since the disease was introduced into the country in late July by a Liberian-American businessman, who fled to Lagos for treatment.

"I have to say (though I usually find very little to praise in any government in Nigeria) that the speed and efficiency with which the Lagos State authorities reacted was exemplary," Nigerian author Adewale Maja-Pearce writes Friday in The New York Times.

Nigeria has fielded 21 teams to trace contacts of Ebola cases, as well as a burial team and two teams to decontaminate potentially infected surfaces. The WHO has 15 technical experts in Nigeria.

But Woodall is not optimistic about the Nigerians' ability to contain Ebola as it spreads beyond Lagos.

Pointing to the experience in other afflicted countries, he predicts people will be hard to keep under surveillance and quarantine — crucial measures to keep the virus from spreading exponentially.

"They claim they've contacted 96 percent of primary and secondary contacts of the dead doctor, but that doesn't mean those people will stay still to be quarantined," Woodall says. "Allegedly 50 people in contact with the dead doctor have gone into a neighboring state [inside Nigeria]."

"Some will run away," he says. "They don't want to be quarantined. They're scared of being quarantined. So I'm afraid it's going to spread."

Epidemiologist John Brownstein of Harvard University directs a global disease-tracking service called HealthMap. He also worries Ebola will outpace Nigeria's ability to contain it.

A further spread of Ebola in Nigeria would carry serious international implications because the nation is an important transportation hub for Africa. Thousands of people pass through Lagos' airport each day on their way to destinations around the world.

An analysis published this week noted that 3,000 to 6,000 travelers fly from Nigeria to the U.S. every week. Thousands more fly from Nigeria to the U.K., Canada, France, Germany, the United Arab Emirates and China, among other countries.

Since people can harbor Ebola virus for one to three weeks before they show symptoms and become contagious, infected travelers cannot always be screened before they disperse.

"The reason we should worry about Nigeria is because of its centrality in the African travel network," says Bryan Lewis, an epidemiologist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. "So you would expect it could spill out further."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/09/05/346033875/a-diplomat-infected-a-doctor-as-ebola-spreads-in-nigeria

Ebola Zaire has shifted into second gear.

The death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in history has risen to almost 2,300 and is accelerating, as a government minister in the worst affected country warned the disease was "devouring everything in its path".

The World Health Organisation said on Tuesday the death toll had rapidly escalated to 2,296 out of 4,293 cases in five west African countries, and was expecting thousands of new cases in Liberia over the next three weeks.

At the UN in New York, Liberia's minister of national defense, Brownie Samukai, warned that his country was facing catastrophe as it battled against the disease.

"Liberia is facing a serious threat to its national existence. The deadly Ebola virus has caused a disruption of the normal functioning of our state," he told the UN security council.

"It is now spreading like wild fire, devouring everything in its path. The already weak health infrastructure of the country has been overwhelmed," he told the 15-member council, adding that the initial international response was "less than robust".

Liberia has recorded 2,046 cases resulting in 1,224 deaths. Guinea has 862 cases and 555 deaths, Sierra Leone 1,361 cases and 509 deaths, Nigeria 21 cases and 8 deaths and Senegal 3 cases - one confirmed and two suspected.

The WHO's director of disease, Sylvie Briand, told a meeting in Geneva that it believed the figures were underestimated, especially in Liberia.

Latest data released by the WHO indicated that while the outbreak has been gathering pace for months, about 60 percent of Liberia's cases and deaths occurred within the last three weeks.

It is now spreading like wild fire, devouring everything in its path. The already weak health infrastructure of the country has been overwhelmed.

Meanwhile, the top UN envoy in Liberia says at least 160 health workers have contracted Ebola and 80 have died in the epidemic. Karin Landgren called the outbreak a "latter-day plague'' that is growing exponentially.

She told the UN that most health workers had gone for long stretches without proper protective equipment, training or pay.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from the UN in New York, said it was the first time the UNSC were discussing the matter, illustrating that Ebola was rapidly becoming a security threat.

A shortage of doctors and nurses to care for these patients is being exacerbated by the sheer number of health workers becoming infected.

But that shortage may also be the reason they are getting infected, experts say.

"The fact that people that are highly trained are getting infected is because the number of cases is bigger than the bed capacity,'' said Jorge Castilla, an epidemiologist with the European Union's Department

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/09/ebola-devouring-everything-path-201499161646914388.html

With surge in Liberia, Ebola case toll above 4,200 (Boston.com)

The outbreak sweeping West Africa is thought to have killed more than 2,200 people, and public health experts agree that it is out of control. More than 4,200 people have believed to have been sickened in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal.

The disease is spreading particularly quickly in Liberia, where WHO figures published Tuesday showed that more than 500 new cases were recorded in a week. The organization warned Monday that it expects thousands of new cases in the country in the coming weeks.

Sierra Leone said it is also expecting to uncover potentially hundreds of new cases during a three-day nationwide lockdown later this month. While people are confined to their homes, thousands of volunteers will go house to house to search for those infected, Sidie Yahya Tunis, a Health Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.

Health workers in Liberia have also paid a heavy toll; 160 have been sickened in that country, and 80 have died, according to Karin Landgren, the U.N. envoy to the country. Health workers are at particular risk because of their close contact with the sick since Ebola is only spread by contact with bodily fluids of those who have symptoms.

Oxford study predicts 15 more countries are at risk of Ebola exposure (Wash. Post)

A new model by Oxford University, published in the journal eLife, takes a look at the most likely explanation -- that Ebola's animal reservoir, fruit bats, could spread the disease in the animal kingdom and to humans through the dense forest that spans 22 countries.

Several species of fruit bats are suspected -- though not confirmed -- to carry Ebola without showing symptoms. Unlike humans and other animals who are likely to die from an Ebola infection, bats can carry the disease and infect other bats and animals, such as monkeys and rodents through migratory activities.

Bats along with other animals, such as monkeys, are also one form of "bush meat" consumed in some African countries where there have been reports of Ebola outbreaks. And though consuming cooked bush meat is unlikely to spread the virus, hunting or preparing raw meat for consumption increases the likelihood that an infection might occur.

WHAT WE'RE AFRAID TO SAY ABOUT EBOLA

"Mother Nature is the ONLY force in charge of the crisis at this time."

MINNEAPOLIS — THE Ebola epidemic in West Africa has the potential to alter history as much as any plague has ever done.

There have been more than 4,300 cases and 2,300 deaths over the past six months. Last week, the World Health Organization warned that, by early October, there may be thousands of new cases per week in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria. What is not getting said publicly, despite briefings and discussions in the inner circles of the world’s public health agencies, is that we are in totally uncharted waters and that Mother Nature is the only force in charge of the crisis at this time.

There are two possible future chapters to this story that should keep us up at night.

The first possibility is that the Ebola virus spreads from West Africa to megacities in other regions of the developing world. This outbreak is very different from the 19 that have occurred in Africa over the past 40 years. It is much easier to control Ebola infections in isolated villages. But there has been a 300 percent increase in Africa’s population over the last four decades, much of it in large city slums. What happens when an infected person yet to become ill travels by plane to Lagos, Nairobi, Kinshasa or Mogadishu — or even Karachi, Jakarta, Mexico City or Dhaka?

The second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air. You can now get Ebola only through direct contact with bodily fluids. But viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years. Each new infection represents trillions of throws of the genetic dice.

If certain mutations occurred, it would mean that just breathing would put one at risk of contracting Ebola. Infections could spread quickly to every part of the globe, as the H1N1 influenza virus did in 2009, after its birth in Mexico.

Why are public officials afraid to discuss this? They don’t want to be accused of screaming “Fire!” in a crowded theater — as I’m sure some will accuse me of doing. But the risk is real, and until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.

In 2012, a team of Canadian researchers proved that Ebola Zaire, the same virus that is causing the West Africa outbreak, could be transmitted by the respiratory route from pigs to monkeys, both of whose lungs are very similar to those of humans. Richard Preston’s 1994 best seller “The Hot Zone” chronicled a 1989 outbreak of a different strain, Ebola Reston virus, among monkeys at a quarantine station near Washington. The virus was transmitted through breathing, and the outbreak ended only when all the monkeys were euthanized. We must consider that such transmissions could happen between humans, if the virus mutates.

So what must we do that we are not doing?

First, we need someone to take over the position of “command and control.” The United Nations is the only international organization that can direct the immense amount of medical, public health and humanitarian aid that must come from many different countries and nongovernmental groups to smother this epidemic. Thus far it has played at best a collaborating role, and with everyone in charge, no one is in charge.

A Security Council resolution could give the United Nations total responsibility for controlling the outbreak, while respecting West African nations’ sovereignty as much as possible. The United Nations could, for instance, secure aircraft and landing rights. Many private airlines are refusing to fly into the affected countries, making it very difficult to deploy critical supplies and personnel. The Group of 7 countries’ military air and ground support must be brought in to ensure supply chains for medical and infection-control products, as well as food and water for quarantined areas.

The United Nations should provide whatever number of beds are needed; the World Health Organization has recommended 1,500, but we may need thousands more. It should also coordinate the recruitment and training around the world of medical and nursing staff, in particular by bringing in local residents who have survived Ebola, and are no longer at risk of infection. Many countries are pledging medical resources, but donations will not result in an effective treatment system if no single group is responsible for coordinating them.

Finally, we have to remember that Ebola isn’t West Africa’s only problem. Tens of thousands die there each year from diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea have among the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Because people are now too afraid of contracting Ebola to go to the hospital, very few are getting basic medical care. In addition, many health care workers have been infected with Ebola, and more than 120 have died. Liberia has only 250 doctors left, for a population of four million.

This is about humanitarianism and self-interest. If we wait for vaccines and new drugs to arrive to end the Ebola epidemic, instead of taking major action now, we risk the disease’s reaching from West Africa to our own backyards.

Michael T. Osterholm is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/opinion/what-were-afraid-to-say-about-ebola.html

Well this is good, but why does this only come during an emergency? Republicans and Democrats working together:

Ebola: House Republicans Fund Obama's $88 Million Response Request In Spending Bill (IB Times)

A spending bill introduced by House Republicans on Tuesday will fulfill the White House's request to provide $88 million in new funding to aid in the fight against the Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, reportedly said Tuesday morning that he would be willing to allocate only $40 million for the effort, a source familiar with the negotiations told The Hill. But the Obama administration's request is fully funded in the final text of the bill, a so-called continuing resolution dubbed H.J. Res 124, released later Tuesday. The House of Representatives is expected to vote Thursday on the measure to fund the government through Dec. 11.

The bill would allocate $58 million to the Department of Health and Human Services for activities related to the production, development and research of Ebola therapies, and $30 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "for responses to the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Africa."

Ebola in the Air? A Nightmare that "could" happen.

Might? Could? Will? Ebola will do whatever it wants to do now that it is in charge, including the ability to mutate. Mother Nature sent it on a mission; to defend her from the greed of man and to teach him how to respect her. It was all so simple.

NEW YORK — Today, the Ebola virus spreads only through direct contact with bodily fluids, such as blood and vomit. But some of the nation’s top infectious disease experts worry that this deadly virus could mutate and be transmitted just by a cough or a sneeze.

“It’s the single greatest concern I’ve ever had in my 40-year public health career,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “I can’t imagine anything in my career — and this includes HIV — that would be more devastating to the world than a respiratory transmissible Ebola virus.”

Osterholm and other experts couldn’t think of another virus that has made the transition from non-airborne to airborne in humans. They say the chances are relatively small that Ebola will make that jump. But as the virus spreads, they warned, the likelihood increases.

Every time a new person gets Ebola, the virus gets another chance to mutate and develop new capabilities. Osterholm calls it “genetic roulette.”

As of Friday, there have been 4,784 cases of Ebola, with 2,400 deaths, according to the World Health Organization, which says the virus is spreading at a much faster rate now than it was earlier in the outbreak.

Ebola is an RNA virus, which means every time it copies itself, it makes one or two mutations. Many of those mutations mean nothing, but some of them might be able to change the way the virus behaves inside the human body.

“Imagine every time you copy an essay, you change a word or two. Eventually, it’s going to change the meaning of the essay,” said Dr. C.J. Peters, one of the heroes featured in “The Hot Zone.”

That book chronicles the 1989 outbreak of Ebola Reston, which was transmitted among monkeys by breathing. In 2012, Canadian researchers found that Ebola Zaire, which is involved in the current outbreak, was passed from pigs to monkeys in the air.

Dr. James Le Duc, the director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas, said the problem is that no one is keeping track of the mutations happening across West Africa, so no one really knows what the virus has become.

One group of researchers looked at how Ebola changed over a short period of time in just one area in Sierra Leone early on in the outbreak, before it was spreading as fast as it is now. They found more than 300 genetic changes in the virus.

“It’s frightening to look at how much this virus mutated within just three weeks,” said Dr. Pardis Sabeti, an associate professor at Harvard and senior associate member of the Broad Institute, where the research was done.

Even without becoming airborne, the virus has overwhelmed efforts to stop it.

The group Doctors Without Borders says Monrovia, Liberia, needs 1,000 beds for Ebola patients but has only 240, and it has had to turn patients away, sending them back to neighborhoods where they could infect more people.

This week, a Pentagon spokesman said the United States is sending a 25-bed field hospital to Monrovia.

“A 25-bed hospital with nobody to staff it? That’s not the scale we need to be thinking about,” Le Duc said. “It’s an absolute embarrassment. When there was a typhoon in the Philippines, the Navy was there in 48 hours and had billions of dollars in resources.”

Osterholm commended groups like Doctors Without Borders but said uncoordinated efforts by individual organizations are no match for Ebola spreading swiftly through urban areas.

“This is largely dysfunctional. Nobody’s in command, and nobody’s in charge,” he said. “It’s like not having air traffic control at an airport. The planes would just crash into each other.”

http://wtvr.com/2014/09/13/ebola-in-the-air-a-nightmare-that-could-happen/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/16/obama-ebola-atlanta-centers-for-disease-control/15691299/ ]Obama: Ebola outbreak 'demands a truly global response' (USA Today - warning autoplay video)

Calling Ebola a threat to both global health and national security, President Obama said Tuesday he is sending 3,000 troops to West Africa to help contain the deadly virus and prevent it from spreading to the United States and across the globe.

"If the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected, with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us," Obama said.

Proclaiming that "we have to act fast," Obama said that "this is a global threat, and it demands a truly global response."

While the disease is "spiraling out of control" in West Africa, Obama said the chances of an Ebola outbreak in the United States are "extremely low" and will stay that way if the U.S. acts.

The plan he outlined calls for more doctors and health care professionals; more portable hospitals, laboratories, and other medical facilities; and increased training for first responders and other medical officials throughout West Africa.

"The world knows how to fight this disease," Obama said. "It's not a mystery. We know the science."

[...]

The total cost of the administration's Ebola program is estimated at $763 million over six months, officials said, including $175 million that has already been dedicated to fight the disease that has claimed more than 2,400 lives in Africa.

I think throwing money at something should be a last resort. I believe at this point, with Ebola in Africa, we need to throw money at the problem.

Quote: NoOne:

"...I think throwing money at something should be a last resort. I believe at this point, with Ebola in Africa, we need to throw money at the problem...."

Money always seems to be the answer to resolve mans' issues and problems. But, I don't think that even tossing billions upon billions of mans' almighty dollar will even result in a dent towards alleviating this Ebola Zaire crisis, I'm afraid. The response to the outbreak was inappropriate from the onset, when containment and control of the virus might have prevented the resulting epidemic today. This dire situation arose from indifference and disinterest toward a continent that needed some help; the cry for help fell upon deaf ears, unfortunately.

Ebola Zaire doesn't worship the almighty dollar; only man does.
Swan

Ebola outbreak: Health team 'found dead' in Guinea (BBC)

'Killed in cold blood'
On Thursday night, government spokesman Albert Damantang Camara said eight bodies had been found, including those of three journalists.

He said they had been recovered from the septic tank of a primary school in the village, adding that the victims had been "killed in cold blood by the villagers".

The reason for the killings is unclear, but correspondents say many people in the region distrust health officials and have refused to co-operate with authorities, fearing that a diagnosis means certain death.

Last month, riots erupted in the area of Guinea where the health team went missing after rumours that medics who were disinfecting a market were contaminating people.

[...]

The World Health Organisation said on Thursday that more than 700 new cases of Ebola have emerged in West Africa in just a week, showing that the outbreak was accelerating.

It said there had been more than 5,300 cases in total and that half of those were recorded in the past three weeks.

The epidemic has struck Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal.

I know this is not about Ebola, but it is in the general vicinity. I would also like to mention that the mistrust the CIA caused by "vaccinating" humans to search for Bin Laden. This causes mistrust of health care workers trying to save people (hopefully) in the future with the vaccines that have been developed in the USA. Unfortunately, probably, some psycho decided to taint the vaccinations for children in syria:

15 Syrian children die after getting vaccinations

BEIRUT (AP) — At least 15 children died after receiving vaccinations in rebel-held parts of northwestern Syria, while the death toll from two days of government airstrikes on a central city climbed to nearly 50, a heavy toll even by the vicious standards of the country's civil war, activists said.

The children, some just babies, all exhibited signs of "severe allergic shock" about an hour after they were given a second round of measles vaccinations in Idlib province on Tuesday, with many suffocating to death as their bodies swelled, said physician Abdullah Ajaj, who administered the vaccinations in a medical center in the town of Jarjanaz.

It was unclear what killed the children, but Ajaj said in an interview via Skype that they all exhibited the same symptoms to varying degrees. He said it was the first time he had ever seen such a reaction to vaccinations.

Bill Clinton gets involved, speaks out on The Daily Show (not the whole show, just the interview)

Part 1 of the interview (talks about Ebola)

Part 2 of the interview (talks about ISIS)

Everyone must have read this latest report by now, since it has been all over the news. Up until today, the real numbers of infected and dead have been greatly underestimated. Now we are facing numbers that can no longer be trickled down to be comprehended; the question asked is how much of an underestimation will 550,000 to 1,400,000 persons affected with Ebola Zaire Virus be? And how do these countries treat millions of Ebola Zaire infected individuals? Could even the U.S master that feat?
Swan

The Latest Ebola Projections Are Absolutely Horrifying:

Dire new estimates show that people who contract the deadly Ebola virus have a 70.8% chance of dying — and the disease is on course to spread even more rapidly than ever. The latest projections propose a worst-case scenario in which 1.4 million new cases will emerge in the next four months.

The death rate for those infected with the virus is only one among many grim facts revealed in reports released today in the New England Journal of Medicine and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as a separate assessment by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

The CDC report offers the most dire predictions, according to the New York Times, saying that as many as 550,000 to 1.4 million cases of the Ebola virus could emerge in Liberia and Sierra Leone alone, in four months. The CDC calculations are based, in part, on the assumption that cases have been dramatically underreported.

Today marks six months since WHO was notified of an Ebola outbreak in Guinea, although officials estimate that the outbreak actually began nine months ago. A slow response to the disease is partly behind the rapid spread of the outbreak, according to the study's authors.

True Numbers May Be Higher

So far, more than 5,800 people have been infected with the virus and 2,800 have died from it, according to the WHO's latest official figures. Since many more deaths have likely gone unreported, the agency's researchers acknowledge that "the true numbers of cases and deaths are certainly higher."

The WHO report estimates that the toll could quadruple by the end of October and reach over 20,000 confirmed and suspected cases by November 2. The new cases are expected to break down this way: 5,740 in Guinea, 9,890 in Liberia, and 5,000 in Sierra Leone.

"Without drastic improvements in control measures, the numbers and cases and deaths from are expected to continue increasing from hundreds to thousands per week in coming months," the researchers said.

Other data in the study show that the disease is equally deadly for males and females. While the 70.8 percent death rate is startling, the chances of a patient surviving are much better among those who receive good health care quickly.

In one positive note, the authors write that the outbreaks of Ebola in Senegal and Nigeria have been "pretty much contained," with no new cases of Ebola for more than 21 days.

http://io9.com/the-latest-ebola-projections-are-absolutely-horrifying-1638168471

well, that is quite the scare

Has Ebola Zaire been escorted to the U.S.?

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, TX has admitted an individual who is showing signs of Ebola Zaire Virus. In addition, the person just returned from visiting Africa. The glaring question arises: If (once) proven positive for Ebola Virus, how many individuals did he infect on his journey from Africa to the U.S., including home? And, where are they?
Swan

A Dallas hospital expects preliminary test results Tuesday that may confirm whether a patient there has Ebola.

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas placed the patient into “strict isolation” after the person’s symptoms and recent travel history raised concerns, spokeswoman Candace White said in a written statement Monday.

The name and other details about the patient were not released.

The hospital said it is following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations to ensure the safety of patients, staff members and visitors.

No Ebola cases have been confirmed in the United States, though several aid workers who contracted the disease in West Africa have returned to the U.S. for treatment.

http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2014/09/dallas-texas-health-presbyterian-hospital-monitoring-patient-for-possible-ebola.html/

Ebola Zaire has arrived in the U.S. via a recent visitor to Africa. (He/ she felt ill after being home for several days prior to going to the hospital):
Swan

CDC: Ebola Confirmed In Dallas Patient.

A patient in a Dallas hospital has been confirmed to have the Ebola virus, News 8 has learned.

DALLAS — A patient in a Dallas hospital has been confirmed to have the deadly Ebola virus, News 8 has learned.

That person has been held in "strict isolation" as he or she was evaluated for possible exposure to the virus.

This is the first case of Ebola confirmed in the United States.

In a statement issued Tuesday night, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas said the patient was admitted based on symptoms and "recent travel history."

The hospital, located at Greenville Avenue and Walnut Hill Lane in northeast Dallas, said it's complying with all recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and the Texas Department of Health to ensure the safety of other patients and medical staff.

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/health/2014/09/29/dallas-presbyterian-hospital-ebola-patient-isolation/16460629/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTRx_BLDymE&index=1&list=UUbApMEJs3deNs3W1zwERb7Q

scary