HEALTH MAIN EBOLA DISCUSSION THREAD -09/01/14 - 09/15/14

[ittybit]

Another thing to consider is how governments and people in general will react when the threat of this disease is much closer to home. Here are a few things to think about and how these things would effect society:

1) A quarantine of 21 days would seem to be a prudent period

2) How many people travel from Africa to the US per day, let's call it 10,000 inbound

3) You would need facilities to quarantine up to 210,000 people before they could be allowed to travel in the USA. Let's call it 105,000 due to multiple testing regimes proving the person is 'negative' in half the period of time

4) Of those 105,000 who are released early let's assume the tests produced 1% false negatives, ie - 1,050 are released who actually have Ebola, but the tests said they didn't

5) Switching the what ifs over to "spontaneous" cases in the US.

6) Since governments and the public will become extremely sensitized to detecting "initial symptoms" - diarrhea and vomiting, and considering the total mess this would make of healthcare systems if suspected Ebola cases all congregated at hospitals, one would conjecture that early on household quarantining of suspected cases would become the norm.

7) using home health visiting nurses and mobile lab collection stations to collect and process test samples would also seem to be called for.

8) what capacity do we have, even in the first world, to shelter in place for 21 days and conduct the standard testing regimes needed to clear people?

9) Then we are back to the false negatives situation above where 1% (or more) of suspected cases are flagged as clean when they in fact are infectious.

You can see this disease and it's behaviors in the general population, is far beyond the current methods we would employ for standard pandemic scenarios.

How many truck drivers do we have in this country (US)? What if a significant portion of them became infected and died?? What would be the result if we quarantined 25% of all truck drivers at any one time in order to determine their health status?? That would pretty much be the death of interstate commerce (assuming that some of the truckers decide to abandon their jobs just to keep from being exposed to potential contagion).

 

[ittybit]

And at what point do people simply 'volunteer' to not show up for work hoping the storm will blow over and pass them by? How many healthcare workers, and the staff that support them, will decide that taking care of their own families by not exposing themselves to the potential of contagion is the perferred course of action?

 

[Kris Gandillon]

One of the reasons the current CFR is "only" 51% is because of the trailing nature of the deaths in relationship to the new cases which are exploding the numbers. If you took the current 4700 of which 2350 where new cases from the most recent two week period, many of those newly confirmed cases have not yet had time to reach terminus either as recovered or dead. From another chart I have seen using a standard statistical adjustment the current CFR is about 80% give or take. On that chart the number has ranged from 70% to 90% over the past few months.

And one has to review and consider that a doubling of cases every 2 weeks means an R0 of 4 M-O-M. Just last week the discussed doubling period as 3 weeks, now (a week later) its two weeks. At some point we have to ask if a new transmission route has emerged (airborne). This will probably be the ONLY hint that it has gone airborne (ie - a sudden explosion in the 'second derivative' behavior - or a continuing upward change in the rate of change).

That "trailing" method is just what I call "fun with stats and graphs". It only matters when you truly know how much to "trail" the numbers and we do not have the info to accurately guestimate that. You have to track INDIVIDUALS from infection to recovery or death to properly determine that number. We do not know if the "trail" factor should be 8, 12, 14, 16, 18 or 21 days?

And at the end of the day it doesn't matter and rarely changes the actual CFR value.

The "final CFR" for every outbreak is simply how many were infected vs. how many died. And the WHO is at least consistent with how they decide when an outbreak is over and calculating that CFR.

An outbreak is not declared "over" until is has been at least 2 cycles (21 x 2) i.e. at least 42 days since the last known infection or last known death, whichever comes last, in that region. That gives that last patient time to recover or die and then no new infections to spring up.


ETA: Here are the final CFR percentages for the prior outbreaks:


1976 Zaire Outbreak - 88%
1976 Sudan Outbreak - 53%
1979 Sudan Outbreak - 65%
1994 Gabon Outbreak - 51%
1995 Kikwit Outbreak - 79%
1996 Gabon Outbreak #1 - 68%
1996 Gabon Outbreak #2 - 75%
2000 Uganda Outbreak - 53%
2001 Gabon Outbreak - 82%
2001 Rep of Congo Outbreak - 76%
2002 Gabon Outbreak - 100%
2002 Rep of Congo Outbreak - 89%
2003 Rep of Congo Outbreak - 90%


The average CFR was 70% across all prior outbreaks.

 

[BREWER]

And at what point do people simply 'volunteer' to not show up for work hoping the storm will blow over and pass them by? How many healthcare workers, and the staff that support them, will decide that taking care of their own families by not exposing themselves to the potential of contagion is the preferred course of action?

Greetings, ittybit: Since this article [below] came out I'd imagine HCW's will very quickly decide that unless the PPE's are maximum, rather than minimum protection,
the risk could be too great. BTW, I like your reasoning in the 9 points above too. Just-In-time-Inventory and Just-In-Time-Shipping will not hold up well under the coming circumstances. I wonder how long the electricity will hold out, too. Take care. BREWER

Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2...-expert-claims

Ebola: WHO guidelines risk healthcare workers’ lives, expert claims
Epidemiologist criticizes official precautions recommending use of only goggles and masks as ‘lethally inadequate’

Melissa Davey
theguardian.com, Tuesday 9 September 2014 02.45 EDT


An Australian infectious diseases expert has accused the World Health Organization of playing Russian roulette with the lives of healthcare workers fighting the Ebola outbreak in west Africa.

Raina MacIntyre, a professor of Infectious Diseases Epidemiology at the University of New South Wales, questioned health worker protection guidelines issued by the WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control in a co-authored editorial in the International Journal of Nursing Studies on Tuesday.

The guidelines recommend medical staff treating Ebola patients wear goggles and masks, but because the virus is largely transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids and not airborne particles, they do not recommend using higher-level protective equipment like respirators.
ETA: The CDC did recognize that Ebola can be transmitted via 'droplets'. So why doesn't this 'fact' get recognized more ofter?

But in controversial comments MacIntyre said this was a mistake, with 120 healthcare worker deaths reported during the ongoing outbreak so far, which is also the worst recorded.

“I have conducted the world’s largest randomized control trial of respirators and surgical masks, and it is concerning to me that we are dealing with a disease which has a fatality rate of up to 90% and yet we are not taking the most cautious approach,” she said.

“If our healthcare workers die we have no hope of controlling the outbreak. There has been no criticism of the guidelines but lots of commentary supporting them. But they’re playing Russian roulette with frontline health workers’ lives.”

Laboratory workers researching Ebola were required to wear full protective gear, yet face masks and goggles had been deemed adequate for healthcare workers, MacIntyre said.

It was “outrageous” that scientists had one set of guidelines and healthcare workers had another, she said. ETA: Does anyone smell a rat here?

“It’s like they have no concept of what the clinical setting is like,” MacIntyre said. {WHO? oh yes they do, and yet...}

“The hospital is an unpredictable, highly contaminated setting which poses higher risk of Ebola transmission.”

Her comments come as medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières accused world leaders of turning their backs on west Africa and described the international Ebola response as “lethally inadequate”.

However, MacIntyre’s comments are controversial. A recent piece in the highly respected international medical journal, the Lancet, said a rational and efficient approach to healthcare worker protection was needed. ETA: Is it only a matter of clinicians in-the-trenches vis-a-vis administrators?

“Excessive precautions could offer reassurance to those responding to Ebola, yet complete respiratory protection is expensive, uncomfortable and unaffordable for countries that are the most affected,” the authors wrote.

“Worse, such an approach suggests that the only defence is individual protective equipment, which is inaccessible to the general population.

“Goggles and masks might not even be necessary to speak with conscious patients, as long as a distance of one to two metres is maintained.”

It’s a view that Allen Cheng, an associate professor with the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at Melbourne’s Monash university, agrees with.

“The issue is whether Ebola can spread via an aerosol route, and the overwhelming weight of evidence is that it doesn’t,” Cheng said.

“There has been quite a lot of experience from people who have dealt with Ebola outbreaks that came before this one, and while this one does seem to be a little bit unusual in terms of the number of deaths, there are a lot of other explanations for why healthcare workers are so affected.”

It could be that medical staff were not removing their masks or goggles correctly and were contaminating themselves in the process, he said, or were poorly trained.

“The other way of looking at this is there is a very limited pot of money for dealing with Ebola and we want to maximize the amount of masks and other equipment that is out there,” he said.
ETA:O.K. There it is in black and white, "The bottom line is The bottom-line...money..money they don't either have or simply don't want to spend. Take that HCW's! Go to work and deal with a Bio Level 4 pathogen, but you don't get adequate PPE's. So this begs the question..."How long do you [HCW's] continue to go to work inadequately protected from potentially infected Ebola patients, and then go home to your families?

“I am also concerned that by criticising the guidelines people may not trust them, which could also be a real problem.” {Pixie: And if the guidelines themselves are dangerous and foolhardy?}

 

[BREWER]

Pixie: A really quite excellent "risk communications" piece.

Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://wvxu.org/post/how-do-you-catc...sweat-or-water

How Do You Catch Ebola: By Air, Sweat Or Water?

Originally published on Fri September 12, 2014 6:49 pm


There's no question Ebola is one of the most terrifying diseases out there. It causes a painful death, typically kills more than 50 percent of those infected and essentially has no cure.

But if you compare how contagious the Ebola virus is to, say SARS or the measles, Ebola just doesn't stack up. In fact, the virus is harder to catch than the common cold.

That's because there has been no evidence that Ebola spreads between people through the air. Health experts repeatedly emphasize that human-to-human transmission requires direct contact with infected bodily fluids, including blood, vomit and feces.

And to infect, those fluids have to reach a break in the skin or the mucous membranes found around your eyes, mouth and nose.

But that hasn't stopped two-thirds of Americans from thinking that the virus spreads "easily," a poll from Harvard School of Public Health found in August. Almost 40 percent of the 1,025 people surveyed said they worry about an Ebola epidemic in the U.S. More than a quarter were concerned about catching the virus themselves.

Many questions still linger. Is Ebola really not airborne? Can it spread through contaminated water? What about through a drop of blood left behind on a table?

So we took those questions to two virologists: Alan Schmaljohn at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Jean-Paul Gonzalez at Metabiota, a company that tracks global infectious diseases.

Is the Ebola virus really not airborne?

With airborne illnesses, like influenza or tuberculosis, you can easily get sick by inhaling tiny pathogenic particles floating around in the air. But with Ebola, large droplets — which neither travel very far nor hang in the air for long — are the real risk factors.

That means an Ebola-infected person would likely have to cough or sneeze up blood or other bodily fluids directly in your face for you to catch the virus, Schmaljohn says. If that drop of blood doesn't land on your face, it will just fall to the ground. It won't be swimming in the air, waiting to be breathed in by an unsuspecting passerby.

During the 1995 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention followed 173 family members of 27 people infected with the virus. Seventy-eight people had no direct contact with an infected person, but they could have been exposed to Ebola through the air. None got infected.

The 28 family members who did get sick all had some sort of physical contact with an ill person.

"We've known for years that Ebola can be transmitted through direct contact with infected bodily fluids," Gonzalez says. "This is very clear, only direct contact."

So why does the question of airborne transmission keep coming up?

Well, "airborne" is a broad term that simply means "transported by air." If a drop of infected blood is sprayed directly from a needle to a person, then yes that contagious droplet was technically carried through the air.

But there is "no convincing epidemiological evidence that airborne transmission occurs from an infected person to a nearby non-infected person," Schmaljohn says.

The confusion surrounding this topic, he adds, is well-deserved, in part because health officials often try to simplify their messages. So they don't spend much time fleshing out "exceptions and extraordinary possibilities," he says.

"As they simplify it, they start to sound like an absolute," Schmaljohn says. "And people are smart enough to disbelieve absolutes."

He says to think about the methods of Ebola transmission as high-risk or low-risk. There's a high risk, for example, of catching Ebola if you shake hands with an infected patient and a very low one if that same person coughs or sneezes around you.

[Note: A study in 2012 showed infected pigs passed on the Ebola to monkeys without touching them. Besides the fact that people aren't pigs or monkeys, the lead author has pointed out it's possible the monkeys caught the virus when droplets from the pigs splashed into their cage during cleaning.

The authors also noted that pigs can generate large infectious droplets better than any other animal. And airborne transmission of Ebola between monkeys has never been observed.]

Although it's clear that Ebola is passed through bodily fluids, are some fluids more effective transmitters than others?

The virus is most abundant in blood and diarrhea. In fact, a milliliter of blood typically carries about a million infectious particles. And in a controlled lab, just a small drop of blood from an infected monkey can be strong enough to kill a million of its companions, Schmaljohn says.

A CDC study in 2007 found that Ebola is shed through other bodily fluids during the illness, such as saliva, breast milk and semen. In most cases, these fluids were not visibly contaminated by blood, but they still contained the virus. That study didn't look at sweat, but another one suggested that Ebola could be passed on through sweat.

Researchers suspect the amount of Ebola in these other fluids, like saliva and sweat, to be much lower.

How long can Ebola virus particles survive in a drop of blood on a surface outside the body?

A drop of blood can remain contagious outside the body. And virus particles can survive for days or weeks, depending on the environment. Ultraviolet light, heat and exposure to oxygen gradually deactivate the virus, while cooler temperatures and humidity help keep it active.

"Blood, once it's outside the body, contains all the virus it's ever going to contain," Schmaljohn adds. "It's all downhill from there [for Ebola]."

So yes, there's a risk you can catch Ebola from a drop of blood on a table. But that risk diminishes over time as the blood dries up. Still, he stresses, surface decontamination is necessary in practice.

Can Ebola be spread through a drop of water or carried through the water system?

"[The virus] will not remain for a long time in the water," Gonzalez says. "It's not a very rich medium to protect the virus."

It's important, he adds, to remember that viruses aren't as resistant outside the body as bacteria are. Rather, they depend heavily on the cells of their host — animal or human — for survival.

In water, the Ebola virus would be deactivated in a matter of minutes, Schmaljohn says. That's because each Ebola virus is encased in an envelope taken from the outer surface, or membrane, of a host cell.

So what about cells in water that are infected with Ebola? Could you get the virus from infected cells in contaminated water?

Infected cells don't live long inside a liquid that doesn't have the same salt concentration as in our bodily fluids.

Drinking water has a lower salt concentration than that found inside human cells. As water rushes inside the cell to balance the salt concentration, pressure builds ups. Eventually the cell bursts, killing the virus in the process.

How long does an infected corpse remain contagious?

A long time — although it's still unknown exactly how long.

Remember, virus particles can last for days and even weeks in a drop of blood. So inside the entire body of the deceased patient, the virus can probably remain active for several months, Gonzalez says.

"That's why it's very important to [perform] the burial as soon as possible," he adds. And to be extremely careful while doing it.

 

[BREWER]

Posted for fair use and discussion. H/t Pixie
Emphasis mine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/africa/us-scientists-see-long-fight-against-ebola.html

U.S. Scientists See Long Fight Against Ebola

DENISE GRADY, New York Times
Updated: September 12, 2014 - 8:37 PM


The deadly Ebola outbreak sweeping across three countries in West Africa is likely to last 12 to 18 months more, much longer than anticipated, and could infect hundreds of thousands of people before it is brought under control, say scientists mapping its spread for the federal government.

“We hope we’re wrong,” said Bryan Lewis, an epidemiologist at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech.

Both the time the model says it will take to control the epidemic and the number of cases it forecasts far exceed estimates by the World Health Organization, which said in August that it hoped to control the outbreak within nine months and predicted 20,000 total cases. The organization is sticking by its estimates, a WHO spokesman said Friday.

But researchers at various universities say that at the virus’ present rate of growth, there could easily be close to 20,000 cases in one month, not in nine. Some of the leading U.S. epidemiologists, with long experience in tracking diseases such as influenza, have been creating computer models of the Ebola epidemic at the request of the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declined to comment on the projections. But the CDC director, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, has warned that the epidemic is worsening, and on Sept. 2 he described it as “spiraling out of control.”

While previous outbreaks have been largely confined to rural areas, the current epidemic, the largest ever, has reached densely populated, impoverished cities — including Monrovia, the capital of Liberia — gravely complicating efforts to control the spread of the disease. Alessandro Vespignani, a professor of computational sciences at Northeastern University who has been involved in the computer modeling of Ebola’s spread, said that if the case count reaches hundreds of thousands, “there will be little we can do.”

What worries public health officials most is that the epidemic has begun to grow exponentially in Liberia. In the most recent week reported, Liberia had nearly 400 new cases, almost double the number reported the week before. Another grave concern, the WHO said, is “evidence of substantial underreporting of cases and deaths.” WHO said Friday that the number of cases as of Sept. 7 was 4,366, including 2,218 deaths.

“There has been no indication of any downturn in the epidemic in the three countries that have widespread and intense transmission,” it said, referring to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Scientists who produced the models cautioned that their predictions were based on the virus’ current uncontrolled spread and said the picture could improve if public health efforts start to work.

Lewis said that a group of scientists collaborating on Ebola modeling as part of an NIH-sponsored project had come to a consensus on the projected 12- to 18-month duration and high case count.

Another participant, Jeffrey Shaman, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, agreed.

“Ebola has a simple trajectory because it’s growing exponentially,” Shaman said.

Lone Simonsen, a research professor of global health at George Washington University who was not involved in the modeling, said the WHO estimates seemed conservative and the higher projections more reasonable.

“The final death toll may be far higher than any of those estimates unless an effective vaccine or therapy becomes available on a large scale or many more hospital beds are supplied,” she said in an email.

Dr. Vespignani said that the W.H.O. figures would be reasonable if there were an effective campaign to stop the epidemic now, but that there is not.

The modeling estimates are based on the observed growth rate of cases and on factors like how many people each patient infects. The researchers use the past data to make projections. They can test their methods by, for instance, taking the figures from June, plugging them into the model to predict the number of cases in July, and then comparing the results with what actually happened in July.

Dr. Shaman’s research team created a model that estimated the number of cases through Oct. 12, with different predictions based on whether control of the epidemic stays about the same, improves or gets worse. If control stays the same, according to the model, the case count by Oct. 12 will be 18,406. If control improves, it will be 7,861. If control worsens, it will soar to 54,895.

Before this epidemic, the largest Ebola outbreak was in Uganda from 2000 to 2001, and it involved only 425 cases. Scientists say the current epidemic surged out of control because it began near the borders of three countries where people traveled a lot, and they carried the disease to densely populated city slums. In addition, the weak health systems in these poor countries were not equipped to handle the disease, and much of the international response has been slow and disorganized.

But questions have also been raised about whether there could be something different about this strain of Ebola that makes it more contagious than previous ones.

Researchers are doubtful, but Thomas W. Geisbert, an Ebola expert at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said it was important to keep an open mind about the possibility. During vaccine tests expected to start next month in monkeys, he said, he and his colleagues will monitor infected animals to see if they develop unusually high virus levels early in the disease that might amplify its infectiousness.

Some scientists have also suggested that as the outbreak continues and the virus spreads from person to person, it will have more opportunities to mutate and perhaps become even more dangerous or contagious. But Stuart T. Nichol, chief of the C.D.C.’s Viral Special Pathogens Branch, said that so far, researchers monitoring the mutations had seen no such changes.
ETA: Now compare this last sentence with the article below which states there have been 300 'mutations'.

 

[BREWER]

Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/12/health/ebola-airborne/

Ebola in the air? A nightmare that could happen

By Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Medical Correspondent
updated 9:04 PM EDT, Fri September 12, 2014


(CNN) -- 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."

 

[Kris Gandillon]

Dr. Shaman’s research team created a model that estimated the number of cases through Oct. 12, with different predictions based on whether control of the epidemic stays about the same, improves or gets worse. If control stays the same, according to the model, the case count by Oct. 12 will be 18,406. If control improves, it will be 7,861. If control worsens, it will soar to 54,895.

Amazing!

I am sitting here with an Excel spreadsheet and graphs (previously posted here) that say the same thing! Here are my current "end of the month" projections for Sep and Oct. October 12th would indeed be right around 18,000 assuming the 2.785 R0 infection rate continues.


Sep-14 10,263

Oct-14 28,582

 

[BREWER]

Amazing!

I am sitting here with an Excel spreadsheet and graphs (previously posted here) that say the same thing!

Greetings, Kris: You are doing yeomans work my friend. Thank you. Take care. BREWER

 

[BREWER]

Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://beforeitsnews.com/health/201...-could-kill-millions-go-airborne-2549556.html

US State Dept Orders 160,000 Ebola HAZMAT Suits – What Do They Know That We Don’t Know?
Friday, September 12, 2014 12:11

(Before It's News)
According to this new press release excerpted below from Lakeland Industries, released just hours ago, the US State Department has just ordered 160,000 Ebola HAZMAT suits, leading conspiracy theorists to ask, what does the US State Department knows that we don’t know?

The newly released video below from Paul Joseph Watson and PrisonPlanetLive answers that question succinctly; according to top virologists and doctors, Ebola could go airborne, killing millions.

Top Virologist: “It’s Too Late, Ebola Will Kill 5 Million”


RONKONKOMA, N.Y., Sept. 12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ – Lakeland Industries, Inc. (LAKE), a leading global manufacturer of industrial protective clothing for industry, municipalities, healthcare and to first responders on the federal, state and local levels, today announced the global availability of its protective apparel for use in handling the Ebola virus.

“Lakeland stands ready to join the fight against the spread of Ebola,” said Christopher J. Ryan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lakeland Industries. “We understand the difficulty of getting appropriate products through a procurement system that in times of crisis favors availability over specification, and we hope our added capacity will help alleviate that problem. With the U.S. State Department alone putting out a bid for 160,000 suits, we encourage all protective apparel companies to increase their manufacturing capacity for sealed seam garments so that our industry can do its part in addressing this threat to global health.

 

[Kris Gandillon]

Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://beforeitsnews.com/health/201...-could-kill-millions-go-airborne-2549556.html

US State Dept Orders 160,000 Ebola HAZMAT Suits – What Do They Know That We Don’t Know?

Each suited up worker, doctor, etc. supposedly goes through (or would go through if they had them available) several suits EACH day.

If we assume they would use only 4 suits a day, and assume there are 500 people in those countries needing to be suited up. 160,000 suits is only 80 days worth. 2 suits a day gets you 160 days.

Doesn't seem a bit unreasonable to me if we are donating said suits to the cause.

 

[Kris Gandillon]

The newly released video below from Paul Joseph Watson and PrisonPlanetLive answers that question succinctly; according to top virologists and doctors, Ebola could go airborne, killing millions.

Top Virologist: “It’s Too Late, Ebola Will Kill 5 Million”

Whether it goes airborne or not is almost irrelevant. If things continue as they have for the last 6 months, for the next 7 months, we hit 5 Million deaths in Western Africa by mid-April.

And this is typical PrisonPlanet and Paul Joseph Watson fear-mongering in regards to Ebola going airborne. While it is obviously POSSIBLE for it to do so (almost anything is "possible") it is NOT PROBABLE that it will do so.

There are tons of other "top virologists and doctors" who will point out that you will be hard pressed to find any evidence that any other virus that we know of has mutated its method of transmission to airborne when it wasn't airborne before.

 

[Countrymouse]

The most INSANE, COUNTERPRODUCTIVE to our American security, but "politically correct" decision that has been made but not yet carried out IS THE PLAN TO SEND UP TO THOUSANDS OF (untrained) AMERICAN SOLDIERS INTO THESE "hot zones" to "assist" in responding to the Epidemic in a non-medical capacity!

THE ABSOLUTE ONLY THING THAT WILL ACCOMPLISH is to BRING BACK AN UNMANAGEABLE NUMBER OF INFECTED AMERICAN SOLDIER EBOLA CASES, INTO THE UNITED STATES.

It will threaten the readiness and strength of our military as it spreads through Ships, army, Navy, and Air Force bases, a plague that could even sink a Submarine if essential crew members suddenly died, it could close Military Hospitals stateside to nothing but Ebola cases and spread like wildfire throughout close contact military environs like basic training camps and other close quarters work situations. INJECTING AT LEAST HUNDREDS, IF NOT THOUSANDS OF EBOLA INFECTED INTO OUR MILITARY IS BEYOND ILL CONCEIVED, IT HAS TO BE AN ENEMY TRAITOR PUSHING FOR THIS ULTIMATE FOOLISHNESS! There is NO WAY this will NOT bring uncontrolled Ebola into the American streets!! AND, for all the death and plague it will bring to OUR PEOPLE, IT WILL NOT NOTICEABLY HELP DEFEAT EBOLA IN WEST AFRICA!

Obama HATES our military, as he hates all things "American", and would willingly and deliberately expose our soldiers to bring about JUST such an outcome.

Those who have seen "Obama's America" can easily understand his mindset and how he could gladly do this and believe he had done a "good" thing by doing so.

 

[rummer]

Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://beforeitsnews.com/health/201...-could-kill-millions-go-airborne-2549556.html

US State Dept Orders 160,000 Ebola HAZMAT Suits – What Do They Know That We Don’t Know?
Friday, September 12, 2014 12:11

(Before It's News)
According to this new press release excerpted below from Lakeland Industries, released just hours ago, the US State Department has just ordered 160,000 Ebola HAZMAT suits, leading conspiracy theorists to ask, what does the US State Department knows that we don’t know?

The newly released video below from Paul Joseph Watson and PrisonPlanetLive answers that question succinctly; according to top virologists and doctors, Ebola could go airborne, killing millions.

Top Virologist: “It’s Too Late, Ebola Will Kill 5 Million”


RONKONKOMA, N.Y., Sept. 12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ – Lakeland Industries, Inc. (LAKE), a leading global manufacturer of industrial protective clothing for industry, municipalities, healthcare and to first responders on the federal, state and local levels, today announced the global availability of its protective apparel for use in handling the Ebola virus.

“Lakeland stands ready to join the fight against the spread of Ebola,” said Christopher J. Ryan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lakeland Industries. “We understand the difficulty of getting appropriate products through a procurement system that in times of crisis favors availability over specification, and we hope our added capacity will help alleviate that problem. With the U.S. State Department alone putting out a bid for 160,000 suits, we encourage all protective apparel companies to increase their manufacturing capacity for sealed seam garments so that our industry can do its part in addressing this threat to global health.

That is from one of the fake info sites.

 

[Countrymouse]

Pixie: A really quite excellent "risk communications" piece.

Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://wvxu.org/post/how-do-you-catc...sweat-or-water

How Do You Catch Ebola: By Air, Sweat Or Water?

Originally published on Fri September 12, 2014 6:49 pm


There's no question Ebola is one of the most terrifying diseases out there. It causes a painful death, typically kills more than 50 percent of those infected and essentially has no cure.

But if you compare how contagious the Ebola virus is to, say SARS or the measles, Ebola just doesn't stack up. In fact, the virus is harder to catch than the common cold.

That's because there has been no evidence that Ebola spreads between people through the air. Health experts repeatedly emphasize that human-to-human transmission requires direct contact with infected bodily fluids, including blood, vomit and feces.

And to infect, those fluids have to reach a break in the skin or the mucous membranes found around your eyes, mouth and nose.

But that hasn't stopped two-thirds of Americans from thinking that the virus spreads "easily," a poll from Harvard School of Public Health found in August. Almost 40 percent of the 1,025 people surveyed said they worry about an Ebola epidemic in the U.S. More than a quarter were concerned about catching the virus themselves.

Many questions still linger. Is Ebola really not airborne? Can it spread through contaminated water? What about through a drop of blood left behind on a table?

So we took those questions to two virologists: Alan Schmaljohn at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Jean-Paul Gonzalez at Metabiota, a company that tracks global infectious diseases.

Is the Ebola virus really not airborne?

With airborne illnesses, like influenza or tuberculosis, you can easily get sick by inhaling tiny pathogenic particles floating around in the air. But with Ebola, large droplets — which neither travel very far nor hang in the air for long — are the real risk factors.

That means an Ebola-infected person would likely have to cough or sneeze up blood or other bodily fluids directly in your face for you to catch the virus, Schmaljohn says. If that drop of blood doesn't land on your face, it will just fall to the ground. It won't be swimming in the air, waiting to be breathed in by an unsuspecting passerby.

During the 1995 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention followed 173 family members of 27 people infected with the virus. Seventy-eight people had no direct contact with an infected person, but they could have been exposed to Ebola through the air. None got infected.

The 28 family members who did get sick all had some sort of physical contact with an ill person.

"We've known for years that Ebola can be transmitted through direct contact with infected bodily fluids," Gonzalez says. "This is very clear, only direct contact."

So why does the question of airborne transmission keep coming up?

Well, "airborne" is a broad term that simply means "transported by air." If a drop of infected blood is sprayed directly from a needle to a person, then yes that contagious droplet was technically carried through the air.

But there is "no convincing epidemiological evidence that airborne transmission occurs from an infected person to a nearby non-infected person," Schmaljohn says.

The confusion surrounding this topic, he adds, is well-deserved, in part because health officials often try to simplify their messages. So they don't spend much time fleshing out "exceptions and extraordinary possibilities," he says.

"As they simplify it, they start to sound like an absolute," Schmaljohn says. "And people are smart enough to disbelieve absolutes."

He says to think about the methods of Ebola transmission as high-risk or low-risk. There's a high risk, for example, of catching Ebola if you shake hands with an infected patient and a very low one if that same person coughs or sneezes around you.

[Note: A study in 2012 showed infected pigs passed on the Ebola to monkeys without touching them. Besides the fact that people aren't pigs or monkeys, the lead author has pointed out it's possible the monkeys caught the virus when droplets from the pigs splashed into their cage during cleaning.

The authors also noted that pigs can generate large infectious droplets better than any other animal. And airborne transmission of Ebola between monkeys has never been observed.]

Although it's clear that Ebola is passed through bodily fluids, are some fluids more effective transmitters than others?

The virus is most abundant in blood and diarrhea. In fact, a milliliter of blood typically carries about a million infectious particles. And in a controlled lab, just a small drop of blood from an infected monkey can be strong enough to kill a million of its companions, Schmaljohn says.

A CDC study in 2007 found that Ebola is shed through other bodily fluids during the illness, such as saliva, breast milk and semen. In most cases, these fluids were not visibly contaminated by blood, but they still contained the virus. That study didn't look at sweat, but another one suggested that Ebola could be passed on through sweat.

Researchers suspect the amount of Ebola in these other fluids, like saliva and sweat, to be much lower.

How long can Ebola virus particles survive in a drop of blood on a surface outside the body?

A drop of blood can remain contagious outside the body. And virus particles can survive for days or weeks, depending on the environment. Ultraviolet light, heat and exposure to oxygen gradually deactivate the virus, while cooler temperatures and humidity help keep it active.

"Blood, once it's outside the body, contains all the virus it's ever going to contain," Schmaljohn adds. "It's all downhill from there [for Ebola]."

So yes, there's a risk you can catch Ebola from a drop of blood on a table. But that risk diminishes over time as the blood dries up. Still, he stresses, surface decontamination is necessary in practice.

Can Ebola be spread through a drop of water or carried through the water system?

"[The virus] will not remain for a long time in the water," Gonzalez says. "It's not a very rich medium to protect the virus."

It's important, he adds, to remember that viruses aren't as resistant outside the body as bacteria are. Rather, they depend heavily on the cells of their host — animal or human — for survival.

In water, the Ebola virus would be deactivated in a matter of minutes, Schmaljohn says. That's because each Ebola virus is encased in an envelope taken from the outer surface, or membrane, of a host cell.

So what about cells in water that are infected with Ebola? Could you get the virus from infected cells in contaminated water?

Infected cells don't live long inside a liquid that doesn't have the same salt concentration as in our bodily fluids.

Drinking water has a lower salt concentration than that found inside human cells. As water rushes inside the cell to balance the salt concentration, pressure builds ups. Eventually the cell bursts, killing the virus in the process.

How long does an infected corpse remain contagious?

A long time — although it's still unknown exactly how long.

Remember, virus particles can last for days and even weeks in a drop of blood. So inside the entire body of the deceased patient, the virus can probably remain active for several months, Gonzalez says.

"That's why it's very important to [perform] the burial as soon as possible," he adds. And to be extremely careful while doing it.

He left out one vector---

Riding in a TAXI with or just after an infected person has used it.

That method seems to work really well in Nigeria.

 

[Kris Gandillon]

That is from one of the fake info sites.

Good catch, Rummer! HOWEVER...the Lakeland Industries press release is legit as is the State Department order for 160,000 PPE suits so that makes the questions legit.


The "beforeitsnews" Sorcha Faal spin is using the above "truth" and then spinning up the "what if it goes airborne" fear-mongering. A common facet of that web site: a little truth mixed with error (or lies).

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lakeland-industries-announces-global-availability-142200024.html

Lakeland Industries Announces Global Availability of Hazmat Suits for Ebola

Manufacturing Capacity Expanded on Product Lines Using Unique Sealed Seam Technology for Added Protection
PR Newswire
Lakeland Industries, Inc.
15 hours ago


RONKONKOMA, N.Y., Sept. 12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Lakeland Industries, Inc. (LAKE), a leading global manufacturer of industrial protective clothing for industry, municipalities, healthcare and to first responders on the federal, state and local levels, today announced the global availability of its protective apparel for use in handling the Ebola virus. In response to the increasing demand for specialty protective suits to be worm by healthcare workers and others being exposed to Ebola, Lakeland is increasing its manufacturing capacity for these garments and includes proprietary processes for specialized seam sealing, a far superior technology for protecting against viral hazards than non-sealed products.

"Lakeland stands ready to join the fight against the spread of Ebola," said Christopher J. Ryan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lakeland Industries. "We understand the difficulty of getting appropriate products through a procurement system that in times of crisis favors availability over specification, and we hope our added capacity will help alleviate that problem. With the U.S. State Department alone putting out a bid for 160,000 suits, we encourage all protective apparel companies to increase their manufacturing capacity for sealed seam garments so that our industry can do its part in addressing this threat to global health.

Mr. Ryan continued, "With our diverse global operations and the breadth of our protective apparel line incorporating superior sealed seam technology, we are ideally situated to assist organizations worldwide as they handle Ebola. Despite reports citing the short supply of protective suits for handling hazardous materials, we believe it is very important to alert those in need around the world that Lakeland has appropriately qualified and certified suits, ample manufacturing capacity, and numerous distribution points to supply these garments."

Last Friday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon laid out plans to set up an Ebola crisis center, with a mission to halt the spread of the virus in West African countries in six to nine months. He is counting on public and private funding from around the world of some $600 million needed for supplies in West Africa. Nearly 2,300 people have died and 4,300 confirmed or probable cases of Ebola have been reported since March. Mr. Ban said in a statement, "The number of cases is rising exponentially. The disease is spreading far faster than the response. People are increasingly frustrated that it is not being controlled."

Within the past several weeks, Lakeland has provided suits that are being used by Doctors Without Borders in West Africa. Lakeland's global team worked with leaders from Doctors Without Borders to ensure that the technical data and performance specifications for Lakeland's garments exceeded the necessary protective requirements.

Two days ago, an NBC affiliate reported that PCI Global, a non-profit group with offices in Washington, DC, sent a quantity of hazmat suits to Liberia for use in the treatment of patients with Ebola. "These suits are essential to saving lives," said PCI Vice President Richard Parker in the report. "There's a very short supply around the world. We were able to procure these 276 suits through a medical supply company in California, so we bought them up as soon as we could." The suits that were procured and shipped were sealed seam garments manufactured by Lakeland Industries.

Lakeland's ChemMAX 1 garments are being used in the fight against the Ebola virus based on their certification to EN 14126, the European standard for protective clothing for use against infective agents, and ASTM F1671 certification for protection from blood-borne pathogens along with its availability in sealed seam configurations. Lakeland has the same certifications for other protective garments, including MicroMAX NS and the remaining ChemMAX product line.

For additional product information or to place an order, please visit www.lakeland.com or contact customer service:

United States at 256-350-3873
Argentina at +54-11-4897-5760
Brazil at +55-11-3613-3700
Canada at 800-489-9131
Chile at +562-551-8562
China at +010-6437-9226
India at +91-8447556757
Mexico at 800-837-9236
Russia at +7-495-775-72-64
UK at +44-14304-78140

 

[ainitfunny]

That is from one of the fake info sites.

If you bothered to go to the LINK for the information source you will see that the SOURCE is a press release from the Company.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lakeland-industries-announces-global-availability-142200024.html
IT DOES NOT appear to be fake at all. OOPS, Kris nailed it. The facts are true, the spin is what is done with them.

 

[ainitfunny]

HAS ANYONE EVER BOTHERED to allow different species of mosquitos to dine on EBOLA INFECTED MONKEYS AND THEN SQUASH THE MOSQUITO AND SEE IF IT CONTAINED EBOLA VIRUS???

Has anyone ever housed entirely ISOLATED monkeys in an environment that only permitted nothing except different species of MOSQUITOES to transfer the Ebola virus from a sick to a healthy monkey??

I can find no logical reason why mosquitoes would NOT transfer Ebola from one sick person to a healthy one.

 

[OldArcher]

Thank-you, ainitfunny, for someone finally asking what I've been wondering!!! If such transmission is possible, spread of Ebola would be a virtual certainty, outside of Arctic or desert conditions, I would guess... Please, tell me I'm wrong... I hate desert and/or prolonged cold...

Maranatha

OldArcher

 

[Medical Maven]

Whether it goes airborne or not is almost irrelevant. If things continue as they have for the last 6 months, for the next 7 months, we hit 5 Million deaths in Western Africa by mid-April.

And this is typical PrisonPlanet and Paul Joseph Watson fear-mongering in regards to Ebola going airborne. While it is obviously POSSIBLE for it to do so (almost anything is "possible") it is NOT PROBABLE that it will do so.


There are tons of other "top virologists and doctors" who will point out that you will be hard pressed to find any evidence that any other virus that we know of has mutated its method of transmission to airborne when it wasn't airborne before.

Kris,

I was just about where you are in regards to the chances of New Ebola going truly "airborne" like influenza. And I am also on the same page with you in regards to New Ebola's ability to spread worldwide even without it going "airborne".

Monotreme, the resident virologist over at PFI, just provided some clarity this morning on both issues. (We need to reconsider our first position while seeing further confirmation of our second position).

MONOTREME COMMENTS:

Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2014 5:28 am Post subject:
On the issue of whether Ebola will go airborne.

The real question is whether the virus can go airborne. Because if it can, it will. Why do I say this?

There are two aspects to evolution: Mutation and Selection. We often hear about mutation. But usually not about selection.

Mutations are mostly random. The odds that a certain mutation will make a virus change its behavior are exceedingly low. However, the longer a virus circulates and the more hosts it has, the more likely that an exceedingly rare event will happen. A one in a million occurrence is unlikely to occur if it it only has 100 chances. It is virtually certain to occur if it has a trillion chances. Multiply the number of virions in a single human host by the number of likely infected to get an idea of how many chances Ebola is getting. Many orders of magnitude more than it ever did before.

If a series of mutations do occur which make a single variant of virus which can spread via the respiratory route, then that variant will have an advantage over all other variants and will therefore, over time, become the dominant variant. Selection is a driving force of nature, not a random process.

There was a lot of concern when the AIDS pandemic began that HIV might change such that it would go airborne. This never happened. Given the scope of its opportunities, we can now say that this was likely an impossible event for the virus. HIV is a lentivirus. Afaik, no lentivirus has ever gone airborne.

Ebola is a filovirus. Has any filovirus gone airborne? Yes, it has. The Reston strain. Perhaps there is something about the Zaire strain of filovirus that makes it impossible to go airborne. But I would not care to bet my life on this assumption.
_________________
Movement Restrictions + Stockpiles = Few or No Infections
Back to top


Monotreme
Site Admin


Joined: 30 Nov 2006
Posts: 33802
Location: USA
Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2014 6:07 am Post subject:
Is airborne Ebola the only way that could Ebola could become more easily transmitted between humans?

No.

HIV is not airborne. Yet it is now endemic throughout the world. It is transmitted by sex and sharing needles. Can Ebola be transmitted these ways?

Yes.

Norovirus is not airborne. Yet it is now endemic throughout the world. It is spread by fomites from bodily fluids. Can Ebola be transmitted this way?

Yes.

Ebola now has a chance to adapt to humans that it never had before. It doesn't have to completely change its behaviour to become endemic in the human population. It only has to get better at what it already does. And it is under intense selection to do exactly that. Again, selection is NOT a random process. It is a Law of Nature.
____

 

[Sacajawea]

Then, there's the issue of victims having malaria, co-existing with ebola. Malaria test = positive... and well, that's why s/he is sick... no more testing. Not sure where the mayor got his information, but there is an awful lot of this type of quick response, and spin.

http://www.nj.com/union/index.ssf/2...luated_at_rwj_rahway_amid_ebola_concerns.html

UPDATE: Man evaluated for Ebola at RWJ Rahway actually has malaria, Roselle mayor says

RAHWAY — A sick man who traveled to Nigeria is being evaluated tonight at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in Rahway amid heightened Ebola concerns.

The man was transported to the RWJ Rahway emergency department from Roselle via local EMS service with a fever and vomiting around 7 p.m., said RWJ spokeswoman Donna Mancuso.

Mancuso said the patient was placed on contact and "droplet" precaution per CDC guidelines. Droplet precaution means that anyone within arms-length of the patient must wear a surgical mask and eye covering, Mancuso said.

Mancuso said the State Health Department has been contacted. She said no further information is available at this time.

The 2014 Ebola outbreak is the largest in history and the first in West Africa, according to the CDC's website. As of Aug. 31, the site reports 3,707 confirmed cases of Ebola in West Africa and 1,848 suspected case deaths.

We will update this story when more information becomes available.

 

[Possible Impact]

I would add to Monotreme's Comments on selection:

Does the virus have multiple species of possible animal hosts?

Yes.

Do these species have significant contact with humans?

Yes, several do! Dogs and pigs especially.

 

[Possible Impact]

Bloomberg News @BloombergNews · 15h
There's now a black market for the blood of Ebola survivors:
http://bloom.bg/1ADEtg6
pic.twitter.com/4MHwyiAEF9


Black Market in Blood Serum Emerging
Amid Ebola Outbreak

By Michelle Fay Cortez and Makiko Kitamura Sep 12, 2014 7:17 AM CT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...-recovered-ebola-doctor-used-in-new-case.html

Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) –- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Susan Desmond-
Hellmann discusses how the foundation’s donation will be put to work in combating
Ebola in West Africa. She speaks on “Street Smart.” (Source: Bloomberg) This
report originally aired on Sept. 10, 2014.

A black market for an Ebola treatment derived from the blood of
survivors is emerging in the West African countries experiencing the
worst outbreak of the virus on record, the World Health Organization
said.

The United Nations health agency will work with governments to stamp
out the illicit trade in convalescent serum, WHO Director-General
Margaret Chan told reporters today in Geneva, where the organization is
based. There is a danger that such serums could contain other infections
and wouldn’t be administered properly, Chan said.

The WHO is encouraging the use of properly obtained serum to treat
current patients and said last week it should be a priority. A third U.S.
missionary worker who was infected with Ebola in Liberia and flown to
the U.S. for medical care was treated with blood transfusions from
another American who recovered from the virus last month. Doctors
hope the virus-fighting antibodies in the blood help the 51-year-old
physician, Rick Sacra.

“We’re hoping it jump starts his immunity,” Phil Smith, medical director
of the biocontainment unit at the hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, where
Sacra is being treated, said yesterday during a conference call with
reporters. “To survive you have to build up enough antibodies to
neutralize the virus. We’re hoping to buy him some time, in other words,
to give him antibodies to help his immune system battle the Ebola virus
and let him get ahead of the curve.”

More than 300 health-care workers have been infected with the Ebola
virus, and almost half of them have died, the WHO said in a situation
report today.

Brantly’s Blood

Sacra was admitted to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha on Sept.
5. A day later, he got the first of two blood plasma transfusions from
Kent Brantly, the 33-year-old missionary doctor successfully treated for
the deadly disease after being evacuated from Africa.

Sacra was infected while delivering babies in Monrovia, Liberia, on
behalf of the Christian missionary group SIM USA. He also has been
receiving an experimental drug every night for the last several days,
said Angela Hewlett, associate medical director of the Nebraska
hospital’s biocontainment unit.

The Nebraska doctors have been asked not to disclose which
experimental drug is being given each day to Sacra, Smith said. There
isn’t enough information available on its benefits, there is a very small
supply and the doctors don’t want to encourage the belief that it may be
a cure-all, he said.

“We don’t know if this is having an effect at all,” Smith said. “We
just administered everything we had access to, honestly.”

Fourth Patient

Sacra is stronger and getting back to his normal self, Hewlett said. A
relapse is less likely, though it’s impossible to know for sure, Hewlett
said.

A fourth patient was taken to Emory University Hospital, where Brantly
was treated, this week and is being treated in the isolation unit there.
Authorities haven’t released any details on the patient. The U.S. State
Department plans to evacuate any U.S. workers in Africa who become
infected, according to an agency document.

The Ebola outbreak is the largest in history, sickening 4,784 people and
killing more than 2,400 in four West African countries, Chan said today.
In Liberia, almost 400 confirmed and probable cases have emerged in
the past week, almost double the number of newly reported cases in the
previous week, with the increase mainly in the capital, Monrovia, the
WHO said.

No Downturn

“There has been no indication of any downturn in the epidemic in the
three countries that have widespread and intense transmission,” namely,
Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the WHO said in its report.

There are no approved drugs to treat Ebola. Patients are given
intravenous fluids, blood transfusions and antibiotics to bolster their
immune systems and help fight off other infections.

The blood of survivors has natural antibodies against Ebola. Antibodies
are produced by white blood cells and bind to foreign invaders like
viruses or bacteria, either neutralizing them or flagging them for
destruction by other parts of the immune system. About half of the
people infected during the current outbreak have survived, providing a
potential pool of donors.

The WHO is helping establish a system that can be used to safely
draw blood from those who have recovered from the disease,
prepare it and re-inject it into patients. Doctors at Emory and
Nebraska are also working on lists of survivors by blood type
who could donate.

The U.S. National Institute of Health is working on an Ebola vaccine and
other treatments are in development by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp.,
Fujifilm Holdings Corp., BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Sarepta
Therapeutics Inc.

​

To contact the reporters on this story:
Michelle Fay Cortez in Minneapolis at mcortez@bloomberg.net;
Makiko Kitamura in London at mkitamura1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net Kristen Hallam, Thomas Mulier

 

[SheWoff]

Read the Roadmap document which is from AUGUST, checked the GAR and the DON reports...I STILL do not find any newer numbers or the numbers mentioned above. Can you provide a link to the document you found?

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/133073/1/roadmapsitrep3_eng.pdf?ua=1

 

[SheWoff]

Liberia: Ebola Drags Liberia's Economy Into Recession

By Julius Kanubah
Liberia's finance ministry has acknowledged that the ongoing Ebola outbreak has led to a decline of the country's economic growth. This has forced the government to slash public expenditure.

The Ebola epidemic is not just devastating the Liberian population but is also severely crippling all sectors of the country's economy: notably health, trade and education. Liberia is currently experiencing its worst ever crisis since the end of the country's brutal civil war in 2003.

Announcing the fall in projected economic growth rate, Liberia's Finance and Development Planning Minister Amara Konneh said Liberia is now in a difficult moment amid the Ebola epidemic. "In all of this, our economy is taking a hit - serious hit," the minister told reporters.

"This year we were projected to grow at 5.9 percent. Last year we grew 8.7 percent. The year before last year (2012), we grew 8.9 percent. Now, working with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government has revised its growth projection to 2.5 percent."

Desperate times, desperate measures

Amara Konneh who is charged with running Liberia's finances said compared to this year's projected economic growth, the West African nation was witnessing almost a 50 percent decline. "So, fellow Liberians our economy is now in recession. It means that we have to tighten our belts."

As a result of the recession, the country's treasury admitted that President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's government was expecting a decline in revenue by about 16 to 20 percent. That means Liberia's 530 million ($6 million, 5 million euros) budget, faces a deficit of about 120 million Liberian dollars.

Many businesses have shut down as a result of Ebola in Liberia



Faced with dwindling resources, Minister Konneh declared that the government had no option but to introduce new austerity measures. "So, those who are in the government, this is not the time to think about largesse. This is the time to be thrifty. Live within your means," Konneh said. "We need to reduce expenditure by 25 percent across the board. We need to reduce foreign travels by 40 percent and save money."

According to Konneh, a recovery plan for the economy is being designed by the government along with its development partners like the World Bank, IMF and the European Union.

Poor at risk

James Kpargoi, a Liberian public policy specialist, told DW, with Liberia already lagging behind in poverty reduction, the slumping of the economy into recession will increase the burden on poor people. "By all measures, when the economy suffers as it is suffering right now, you will find out that people means of livelihood are greatly affected," Kpargoi said. In his opinion, parents would not be able to afford to put meals on the table of their homes.

"There will be a situation of famine because agricultural activities are also being greatly affected by the Ebola crisis." The expert on public policy said he foresees an increase in unemployment because of the shutting down of foreign multi-national companies involved in the mining, construction and aviation industries.

Marie Tweh, an elderly trader in Liberia's capital Monrovia said the current economic hardship is more than the one experienced during Liberia's civil war between 1989 and 2003. "The place I am it's not easy. It is more than the war was fighting," Marie told DW in an interview. "It is affecting me because right now it is this little market I can sell for survival and send my children to school." She said since she is a widow, her children looked up to her for all their needs.

As cases of the Ebola virus continue to increase in Liberia, the recovery and rebuilding of this post-conflict fragile nation could be in jeopardy as it braces itself for the worst in the coming months.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201409130140.html

 

[Kris Gandillon]

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/133073/1/roadmapsitrep3_eng.pdf?ua=1

As I noted, that is the Roadmap document I found. I have had those numbers for a week. They are as of September 7th.

Those do not add up to the numbers that Chan has been quoting the last 3-4 days. She must have newer numbers that have not been published yet.

 

[SheWoff]

SIERRA LEONE REQUESTS FUNDS FOR EBOLA EVACUATION

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Sierra Leone has requested funds from the World Health Organization to evacuate a doctor sick with the deadly Ebola disease.

Dr. Olivet Buck is the fourth doctor from Sierra Leone to come down with Ebola, which has been blamed for 2,400 deaths in West Africa, according to the World Health Organization. Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea have recorded the vast majority of cases.

Buck, a citizen of Sierra Leone, would be the first doctor from one of the countries hit hardest by Ebola to receive treatment abroad. The other three doctors from Sierra Leone died in the country.

A letter from President Ernest Bai Koroma's office said he had approved Buck's evacuation to a hospital in Hamburg, Germany, "where they are in readiness to receive her."

The letter, sent to the WHO's country representative on Friday and seen Saturday by The Associated Press, said Buck tested positive for Ebola on Tuesday. "We have been informed that Dr. Buck is quite ill," it said.

The WHO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Because Ebola is only transmitted through contact with the bodily fluids of people showing symptoms or from dead bodies of Ebola victims, health workers have been especially vulnerable as they respond to the worst outbreak in history.

More than 135 health workers have died so far, exacerbating shortages of doctors and nurses in West African countries already hindered by shortages of health workers.

So far, only foreign aid and health workers have been evacuated abroad for treatment from Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, Sierra Leone's top Ebola doctor, was being considered for evacuation to a European country when he died of the disease in late July.

Cuba's health ministry announced Friday it will send more than 160 health workers to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone, a move that WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said would "make a significant difference."

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/sierra-leone-requests-funds-ebola-evacuation

 

[SheWoff]

Ebola toll hits 2 400 - UN

Kris, this is the best I could find on the "offical numbers" of 2400 toll that Chan has been spouting...



Geneva -

The worst-ever Ebola outbreak has killed more than 2 400 people, the UN said on Friday, as Cuba pledged the largest foreign medical team deployed so far in the west African health crisis.

World Health Organisation chief Margaret Chan warned the spiralling epidemic of the murderous tropical virus demanded a stronger, faster response from the international community.

In the three hardest-hit countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, “the number is moving faster than the capacity to manage them,” she told reporters in Geneva.

As of Friday, 4 784 people had been infected with Ebola and more than 2 400 of them had died, Chan said.

She did not specify if the figures also included Nigeria, which has reported 21 cases, eight fatal, since the deadliest Ebola outbreak on record began in Guinea at the start of the year.

Senegal has also seen one confirmed case of Ebola - a Guinean student who has recovered.

While hailing that no other cases have yet emerged, WHO cautioned on Friday that the country remains a “high risk” of further transmission.

Transmitted through bodily fluids, the tropical virus can cause fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, organ failure and internal and external bleeding, killing more than half of those infected.

There are no licenced treatments or vaccines for Ebola, but the WHO has endorsed rushing out potential cures and hopes a tentative vaccine will be available by November.

In the meantime, the UN health agency has said blood transfusions from people who have survived Ebola can be used to help boost antibody defence in those infected.

Hospital officials said Friday that an American doctor being treated for Ebola in Nebraska had been given such a blood transfusion from another American doctor who recovered from the virus.

Rick Sacra, a 51-year-old Christian missionary doctor infected with Ebola in Liberia, had been upgraded from serious to good condition, after a week of receiving plasma from recovered Ebola patient Kent Brantly and an unnamed experimental drug, they said.

While experimental treatments raise hope of eventually finding a cure, Chan stressed Friday that “the thing we need most of all is people” on the ground.

She welcomed a pledge from Cuba to send 62 doctors and 103 nurses to Sierra Leone, where more than 500 people have died.

The UN's announcement came as health officials in Sweden said they were conducting tests on a patient with a possible case of the virus.

Results are expected Saturday from the unnamed patient who “comes from a country in west Africa” affected by Ebola, a spokesman told AFP.

The WHO estimates that another 500 foreign health professionals and around 1,000 local doctors and nurses are needed to stop its deadly surge through west Africa.

The Cuban health workers will remain in the region for six months, Cuban Health Minister Roberto Morales Ojeda told the Geneva news conference.

All have “previously participated in post-catastrophe situations,” and all volunteered for the mission, he said.

Cuba, which has a long tradition of sending its world-renowned medics to help with situations around the globe, has pledged the biggest team to date to take part in the Ebola fight.

The United States has already sent some 100 medics, and the African Union has pledged to send around 100 more, while a range of other countries have pitched in with smaller teams and other aid.

WHO and the Doctors Without Borders charity meanwhile each count around 200 international medical experts on the ground in the region, while WHO has 300 more on standby.

While welcoming the push in Sierra Leone, Chan said on Friday the situation in neighbouring Liberia was especially desperate, without a single bed left to treat Ebola patients.

The UN vowed its peacekeepers, who have been there since the country emerged from 14 years of civil war in 2003, would “stay the course.”

The UN mission would “help the people of Liberia and its neighbours to get through this terrible crisis,” UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told AFP late Thursday.

The UN children's agency warned on Friday that the outbreak was already taking an especially dire toll on children in Liberia, which is expected to face an “exponential increase” in infections.

In addition to falling victim to Ebola themselves, many children are losing their caregivers, with about 2 000 orphaned in Liberia alone, said Sarah Crowe, head of UNICEF's crisis communication in Liberia.

Children who lose family members to Ebola meanwhile can face “deep stigma”, and are often rejected by the community and forced to roam the streets without proper parental care, shelter or food, she said.

Around 20 percent of children who have lost family members to Ebola in Liberia are under the age of two, according to UNICEF. - Sapa-AFP

http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/ebola-toll-hits-2-400-un-1.1750383#.VBRxpvldWl9

 

[SheWoff]

Ebola crisis: Australian doctor at frontline of outbreak says time is running out to conta

Ebola crisis: Australian doctor at frontline of outbreak says time is running out to contain disease

Updated 13 Sep 2014, 5:51pmSat 13 Sep 2014, 5:51pm

The Ebola outbreak in west Africa is already a crisis; it could very easily become a catastrophe.

Dr Ian Norton, chief of foreign medical teams with the World Health Organisation (WHO), tells the ABC about the race against time to build a number of massive field hospitals in Monrovia, Liberia,as the death toll nears 3,000.

We have only a narrow window of opportunity in which to contain this outbreak.

If we ignore it, we will find the disease much more difficult to control and can expect infection rates to escalate.

Not to put too fine a point on it: we have a closing window of perhaps weeks now before we will not be able to manage all the cases on the ground in the way that we normally would.

Already the WHO and the ministries of health of the three most affected countries are thinking of other ways to contain and manage the large numbers infected.

This is new for everybody. The only team that has built a field hospital for Ebola treatment before has been from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), and their standard operations are for only 40 people.
We are building five 100-bed field hospitals in Monrovia, in addition to the 200-bed facility which already exists there and which will soon be expanded to at least 300, perhaps 400, beds.

We are calling for foreign medical teams across the world to come and assist us.

We are not looking for huge numbers of foreign doctors and nurses and logistics staff but at least a core group of 30 to 40 who would help manage these large centres and then work alongside national medical staff and nurses.

Tragically, Liberia - which already ranks fourth-last in the world for numbers of doctors per population - has lost almost 20 doctors to Ebola. They only produce 10 doctors per year in a medical class.

They have also lost a large number of nurses, and Ebola care is all about the nursing care. There are only a couple of thousand nurses in the country and we know that at least 90 have died from the infection and another 50 or 60 have survived.

The nurses and doctors are actually willing to come back to work, with measures in place to assist them including protecting equipment, training and a payment scheme which reflects the danger of the work.

Without medical care, the mortality rate of this Ebola outbreak is about 90 per cent. While it is a devastating disease, it is not universally fatal, even with minimal care.

But with better care, and certainly with the new Ebola treatment centres and with the right number of staff treating them, we can gradually escalate the level of care and have better outcomes.

For example, we have seen in Guinea for several months that with good supportive care we can bring the mortality rate down to 30 to 50 per cent at most.

So we can see a several-fold improvement in survival if we can just get the teams in here and get these Ebola treatment centres up and running.

We have to stop this spreading beyond the point of no return.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-...ays-time-running-out-to-contain-ebola/5741858

 

[SheWoff]

It's hitting the lamestream news now esp. on NBC

EBOLA VIRUS OUTBREAK 250
STORIES
STORYLINE
Continuing coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak

 

[Countrymouse]

HAS ANYONE EVER BOTHERED to allow different species of mosquitos to dine on EBOLA INFECTED MONKEYS AND THEN SQUASH THE MOSQUITO AND SEE IF IT CONTAINED EBOLA VIRUS???

Has anyone ever housed entirely ISOLATED monkeys in an environment that only permitted nothing except different species of MOSQUITOES to transfer the Ebola virus from a sick to a healthy monkey??

I can find no logical reason why mosquitoes would NOT transfer Ebola from one sick person to a healthy one.

I asked this fairly early on once this ebola thing hit my radar (which, I have to say, wasn't until last month) since we live here in the South where mosquito-borne transfer of West Nile VIRUS is a worry every summer.

If they can transfer ONE kind of virus, I see no reason they couldn't transfer another.


Why is CDC and WHO not mentioning this?


Can't "panic" the people, you know....

 

[SheWoff]

Ebola: No more bed space to treat Liberian patients as death toll tops 2,400

The head of the World Health Organisation, Margaret Chan has warned that the spiraling tropical Ebola epidemic demands a stronger and faster response from the international community.

“In the three hardest-hit countries, the number is moving faster than the capacity to manage them,” she told reporters in Geneva.

The alarm came as the UN said its peacekeeping force in worst-affected countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone would “stay the course” against Ebola.


“As of 12 September, we are at 4,784 cases and more than 2,400 deaths,” Chan added.

She did not specify if the figures also included Nigeria, which has reported 18 cases, seven fatal, since the deadliest Ebola outbreak on record began in Guinea at the start of the year.

Another 500 foreign health professionals and about 1,000 local doctors and nurses are needed to stop its deadly surge through west Africa, the UN health agency said.

“The thing we need most of all is people,” Chan said.


In neighbouring Liberia, Chan said there is not a single bed left to treat Ebola patients.

Health workers in Liberia are reportedly being overwhelmed by new Ebola cases on Wednesday, with the WHO predicting an “exponential increase” in infections across the region.

The agency says that among Liberia’s 2,300 cases and 1,200 deaths, some 152 health workers have been infected and 79 have died.

http://dailypost.ng/2014/09/13/ebola-bed-space-treat-liberian-patients-death-toll-tops-2400/?wt=2

 

[SheWoff]

I asked this fairly early on once this ebola thing hit my radar (which, I have to say, wasn't until last month) since we live here in the South where mosquito-borne transfer of West Nile VIRUS is a worry every summer.

If they can transfer ONE kind of virus, I see no reason they couldn't transfer another.


Why is CDC and WHO not mentioning this?


Can't "panic" the people, you know....

Might want to read this in your spare time. It's from Stanford so it is legit. Dated though (1999) http://web.stanford.edu/group/virus/filo/insects.html

She

 

[SheWoff]

Not much going on out there in twitter land this morning. It's almost time for college football lol. I don't think we will see too much until tomorrows op/ed pieces hit the wires. But like they say...Breaking news changes everything lol. Sorry, gotta laugh here in camp fooked or we'll cry. Will keep the ears out though...

She

 

[bw]

gotta laugh here in camp fooked or we'll cry.

You can generally find a little humor in any situation, if you go looking for it.

 

[Freeholder]

Thank-you, ainitfunny, for someone finally asking what I've been wondering!!! If such transmission is possible, spread of Ebola would be a virtual certainty, outside of Arctic or desert conditions, I would guess... Please, tell me I'm wrong... I hate desert and/or prolonged cold...

Maranatha

OldArcher

The arctic (on land, probably not on ice floes) has plenty of mosquitoes in the summer. So do some desert areas if there is any water available. The worst mosquitoes I've seen (and I've lived in Alaska and several other places where mosquitoes are bad) were in the desert in Eastern Oregon, when we were visiting my mother and step-father at their place in Plush (40 miles ENE of Lakeview, if you want to look it up on a map). There is at least one small lake there, and irrigated alfalfa fields, plus it had rained a few days before we got there leaving water in the roadside ditches long enough for mosquito larvae to hatch. It reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds' movie -- BIG mosquitoes dive-bombing the canvas top on our truck box, where DD and I were sleeping, trying to get in!

Kathleen

 

[bw]

If such transmission is possible, spread of Ebola would be a virtual certainty, outside of Arctic or desert conditions, I would guess... Please, tell me I'm wrong... I hate desert and/or prolonged cold...

I'm in the Puget Sound area, and in my particular micro-climate mosquitoes are virtually unknown. So that's one item that won't require my precious obsession energy.

 

[Possible Impact]

You can generally find a little humor in any situation, if you go looking for it.

I'm in the Puget Sound area, and in my particular micro-climate mosquitoes are virtually unknown. So that's one item that won't require my precious obsession energy.

Secret Obsession

Or

Ordinary Obsession

 

[ittybit]

That "trailing" method is just what I call "fun with stats and graphs". It only matters when you truly know how much to "trail" the numbers and we do not have the info to accurately guestimate that.

One could get a sense about it from the R0. If the R0 is say 1.2 then the spread is pretty slow and the number of cases which resolved one way or the other is not overshadowed by the new cases. Let's say 100 initial case leading to 20 new cases in a month. So the fresh cases are a smaller percentage of the over all and do not much alter the final CFR.

In this case let's say with a R0 of 3.0 then 100 initial cases are swamped by the 200 additional cases.

We do have some information that the average time from initial symptoms to "crisis" (the point of turning in the case in terms of outcome) is about 4 days. If it's going to result in death then the crisis comes during day 3, if the result is recovery then the crisis comes later, say day 5. By day 5-6, in the case of fatal outcome,s most of the patients who are going to die are dead.

The problem is that the R0 seems to be going up and going up faster, which will tend to mean the 'wave' of new cases which have not resolved one way or the other may significantly damp down the current CFR.

Does it matter? Does it matter in Africa? Probably not. IMO our view of what is going on there will only be better told once the second or third waves of this disease have depopulated the cities, and most of the country side. But, then, who will be left to count the dead?

 

[Doomer Doug]

I think we actually have very few documented facts about Ebola. It is behaving in a manner consistent with an ongoing mutation cycle that we do not understand.

My greatest concern related to the "airborne vector" dispersal method is this. We know thousands of West Africans are headed into Saudi Arabia for the annual religious festival Muslims do annually. We also know that MERS, middle east respiratory syndrome is well entrenched in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia. My concern is what happens when a person already infected with a live Ebola virus gets infected with a live MERS virus. This is a potential way for a hybrid virus to be created. MERS is spread via the airborne method. Ebola is not, at least not yet. If MERS combines with Ebola and you get the MERS airborne vector, combined with the Ebola high kill rate, well this will cause disaster.

I said a while back that I thought the rotting corpses being fed on by dogs, insects etc would potentially create a new infection vector. I don't know that this has happened yet, but it is now in play. If Ebola gets spread by infected insects biting people, we will go to the next level, especially in Africa.

I keep looking for any potential silver lining, but I see none at all. The key number I have been focusing on, Kris is not the 1.7 to 3.5 number everybody is concerned with. The number I keep my four eyes on is the RATE OF DOUBLING OF CASES. This rate has been a 100 PERCENT INCREASE EVERY TWO WEEKS FOR THE LAST MONTH. Ebola is now growing at such a high rate it is totally out of control in Liberia especially.

All the chest thumping over sending troops, creating new treatment centers misses the point. If "they" had done this in June, perhaps it would have had a positive impact. They did not do that and we are now in free fall.

The actual and real numbers of Ebola cases are the only way to reasonably explain this 100 percent increase every two weeks. If the WHO numbers were accurate, you would not see the kind of EXPLOSIVE GROWTH in new cases we have seen in the last month or so. This is confirmation that the times four numbers are the TRUE NUMBERS. And if you start to use these numbers, plus factor in the 100 percent increase every two weeks, you can understand why several people have started issuing public statements that make Doomer Doug sound like a pollyanna.

Gang, we are facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in West Africa. The Western response has been of the too little and too late kind. I am also getting the feeling that despite that lying #$$% Chan and the WHO best spin control the objective evidence is now showing just how bad things really are.

For now, the sheeple response is the "it is over there" kind. Well, under certain conditions it will not stay over there, but come right here to the USA.

It is a simple fact of modern life that people don't care, western people don't care, how many Africans die of Ebola in their third world cesspools.