I don't want to panic anyone, but Ebola may be coming to a town near you

[Skyy God]

At least we won't have to slog through another 7-9 Chiefs season....

Now there are American casualties.

Not in Gaza, and not on the ill-fated Malaysian airliner. Now there are American casualties in another war very far away so maybe, goddammit, somebody should start paying more attention to it.

Kent Brantly, 33, an American doctor who has been working in Liberia since October for the North Carolina-based aid organization Samaritan's Purse, is receiving intensive medical treatment after he was infected with Ebola, according to a spokeswoman for the group. Melissa Strickland said Brantly, who is married and has two children, was talking with his doctors and working on his computer while being treated. A second U.S. citizen, Nancy Writebol, also has tested positive for Ebola, Samaritan's Purse said. Writebol is employed by mission group SIM in Liberia and was helping a joint SIM/Samaritan's Purse team treating Ebola patients in Monrovia. Writebol is married with two children, the organization said. "Both of them tonight are in stable condition," Ken Isaacs, Samaritan Purse's vice president of programs and government relations, said Sunday. "But they are not out of the woods yet."

That's some serious Damien-at-Molokai hero stuff right there, still being at your computer while you're being treated for one of the most vicious diseases on the planet. Other medical professionals, alas, are not as lucky.

A Liberian government official said Sunday that one of that country's highest-profile doctors has died in what the World Health Organization (WHO) calls the largest recorded outbreak of the disease...The first Liberian doctor to die of the disease was identified as Samuel Brisbane. He was working as a consultant with the internal medicine unit at the country's largest hospital, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in Monrovia. Brisbane, who once was a medical adviser to former Liberian President Charles Taylor, was taken to a treatment center on the outskirts of the capital after falling ill with Ebola and died there, said Tolbert Nyenswah, an assistant health minister. He said another doctor who had been working in Liberia's central Bong County also was being treated for Ebola at the same center where Brisbane died. The situation "is getting more and more scary," Nyenswah said.

Yes, you could say that. The disease is now in both Nigeria and Liberia, and not in the backwater places any more, either, but in the capital cities. The ones with millions of people. And airports.

Over the weekend, health officials in Nigeria raced to stop the spread of Ebola after a man sick with the disease arrived on a flight in Lagos, Africa's largest city with 21 million people. He later died. The man's ability to board an international flight raised new fears that other passengers could carry the disease beyond Africa because of weak passenger inspection and the fact that Ebola's initial symptoms can resemble those of other illnesses. Isaacs said in an interview that "where it gets really scary" is that the disease, which was previously seen only "in very remote, small villages in Africa" is now being contracted by people in the capital cities of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. "Now the disease has been introduced into the big urban areas with millions of people," he said. "In the big cities, people can get on an airplane and fly out." Isaacs does not believe this outbreak his peaked. "I think the worst is yet to come," he said. "I hope I'm wrong."

Meanwhile, the local customs aren't helping a lot, either.

Koroma, 32, a resident of the densely populated Wellington district, had been admitted to an isolation ward while blood samples were tested for the virus, said Sidi Yahya Tunis, a health ministry spokesman. The results came back on Thursday. "The family of the patient stormed the hospital and forcefully removed her and took her away," Tunis said. "We are searching for her."

Jesus save us. I don't mean to sound like a cultural imperialist -- although I seriously doubt that the people in rural Sierra Leone are acting out of what they know about the Tuskegee experiments, or what happened in Guatemala in the 1940's -- but snatching an Ebola patient out of the hospital doesn't sound like a very good way to fight the disease, family networks notwithstanding. (The purloined patient eventually died.) This thing is one airplane flight away from being an international catastrophe, but there is no boom-boom, and without boom-boom, there is no news. However, you know, Americans are getting sick now. Hey, Wolf! Over here?

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politic...Ebola_Outbreak

[Hog's Gone Fishin]

Like I said before, We have more than enough chicken Noodle soup to cover any ebola issues in the US.

Plus to contract it in the first place you literally have to have an infected person bust a nut all over your face.

[kepp]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Those caused outbreaks, right?

So you're OK with them leaving those things laying around as long as there's only a small chance of an outbreak?

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by kepp

So you're OK with them leaving those things laying around as long as there's only a small chance of an outbreak?

There are safety controls in place to prevent outbreaks. A minor issue inside a controlled facility has nothing to do with the broader environment.

[kepp]

Originally Posted by DaFace

There are safety controls in place to prevent outbreaks. A minor issue inside a controlled facility has nothing to do with the broader environment.

Those incidents happened because safety protocols were not followed. And the anthrax incident involved unsafe shipping of active samples between labs. It wasn't contained to one controlled facility.

[thabear04]

Now there two people with Ebola

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/us...anta.html?_r=0

[Fish]

Originally Posted by kepp

I'm talking about all the recent news about CDC staff being exposed to Anthrax, and the bird flu samples found in an unsecured storage closet, etc.

There are different protocols for the different biosafety levels involved. There are measures in place to ensure that mistakes at a lower BSL cannot happen at a higher BSL. Those protocols have worked for many decades.

[TimBone]

Originally Posted by thabear04

Now there two people with Ebola

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/us...anta.html?_r=0

Man, looking at the pic in the article, there is no way that lady could ever date Donald Sterling. He'd have a stroke if that was his gf in that picture.

[Steron]

Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[Fish]

Hope for the 2 Americans infected with Ebola. Perhaps this will help some understand why we didn't simply abandon these Americans and let them die because we were scared.

Bio-high-tech treatment for Ebola may have saved two US citizens


CNN reported Monday that the two US citizens who were flown back to the states after contracting the Ebola virus were given an extremely experimental treatment, one that's still undergoing animal testing. While the treatment involves antibodies, it's not a vaccine, and it can work effectively even after an infection has started. The process that produced it is a testament to the impressive capabilities developed in the field of biotechnology.

The Ebola virus, known for its horrific symptoms and high fatality rate, currently has no established treatment. The health care workers who are fighting the disease—and are thus at high risk for becoming infected themselves—can do little more than put themselves in isolation and try to compensate for the damage the virus causes. That situation was apparently the case for two Americans who contracted the virus while working in Liberia.

In this case, however, both people were apparently given an experimental treatment developed in part by a company called Mapp Biopharmaceutical.

[...]

Mapp has been pursing that testing, starting in mice and working its way up to primates. The company has also been shifting steadily later into the infection process. Its first tests showed that the treatment could be used prophylactically, given to monkeys prior to infection. In the researchers' most recent published work, from about a year ago, they used it on macaques that were already developing fevers as a result of the infection. Nearly half of the animals survived, while the infection was completely fatal in the control group.

Notably, that paper had members of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases among its authors, suggesting that further development had a party with deep pockets willing to back the research through human trials. But it's not clear whether those trials had even started when, according to CNN, vials of the treatment were rushed to Liberia. And there's no way of telling how much, if at all, the antibodies helped the two people they were given to. We'll have to wait for larger clinical trials.

If the process described above—with infinite antibodies, cloning, mixing genes from different species, and mass production in plant cells—sounds like science fiction, it shouldn't. Every single one of those procedures is well established and has probably been used by a hundred biotech startups by now. Biotech doesn't tend to get the same attention as the work done by the people who make our processors and batteries, but it's some of the most amazing technology on the planet.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by Fish

Hope for the 2 Americans infected with Ebola. Perhaps this will help some understand why we didn't simply abandon these Americans and let them die because we were scared.

Yea, because not bringing them to the middle of the U.S. is the same as abandoning them.

Idiot.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Mr. Laz

Yea, because not bringing them to the middle of the U.S. is the same as abandoning them.

Idiot.

Yes. Yes it is.

If you think that the care they'd receive in the MIDDLE OF BUTT**** AFRICA is going to be anywhere near what they'll get here, I can't help you.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Mr. Laz

Yea, because not bringing them to the middle of the U.S. is the same as abandoning them.

Idiot.

Wow.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Mr. Laz

Yea, because not bringing them to the middle of the U.S. is the same as abandoning them.

Idiot.

If they took your advice, the patients would be dying in Africa right now instead of having hope of survival here at home in their own country. Instead, they might have found a way to save 2 American lives and produce a treatment for Ebola. Luckily there are some doctors out there who are more brave than some people here.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Fish

If they took your advice, the patients would be dying in Africa right now instead of having hope of survival here at home in their own country. Instead, they might have found a way to save 2 American lives and produce a treatment for Ebola. Luckily there are some doctors out there who are more brave than some people here.

I thought that the two Americans were given the experimental serum while they were still in Africa, though.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Yes. Yes it is.

If you think that the care they'd receive in the MIDDLE OF BUTT**** AFRICA is going to be anywhere near what they'll get here, I can't help you.

No, No it's not.

Didn't say they had to remain in the middle of Africa. But there had to be a better option than flying them to the middle of the U.S.

middle of Africa or the middle of America ... yep, the only 2 options.


Take the doctors to them.

There has to be a more remote facility than gawd dam center of the U.S.

Even Hawaii would be better than the middle of America where an outbreak would be hard as hell to control. At least on Hawaii it's surrounded by water and semi contained. Had to be a more isolated option.