The bad news –Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said the disease was still out of control. Thanks to the mistake with a plane, a few US schools have closed, and whole neighborhoods are being roped off. How fast does a 19Kb string of information spread? Outside Africa, Norway has one case, Germany has had one death, one survivor, and one case. Spain has lost two, and is treating one. France and the UK have a survivor each. Today, at least, Senegal has been declared free of Ebola.
The WHO organization has admitted it botched the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
“In a draft internal document obtained by The Associated Press, the agency says “nearly everyone” involved in the response failed to notice the potential for Ebola’s explosive spread.
The agency acknowledged that its own bureaucracy was a problem, pointing out that the heads of WHO country offices in Africa are “politically motivated appointments” made by the WHO regional director for Africa.”
The good news – CSL have said they will develop a plasma product from survivor’s blood. At the moment this is the most pragmatic possible treatment. There are 3000+ survivors who have antibodies, which appear to save the lives of victims (Brantly, Writebol, an American journalist, and hopefully the Texan nurses). It could still take a long time to produce, and it all hinges on how fast it can be done. It could save the medical staff who are so at risk and so important. That would mean more medical staff and other volunteers would be happy to volunteer. Then it could be provided to some patients and their sole carer to potentially stop transmission from wiping out whole families, or leaving children orphaned, and importantly reduce the Ro rate.
CSL say the biggest problem is getting blood of survivors. Dare I suggest: pay them, and the free market will provide. The survivors will benefit. The GDP per capita in these West African nations is $400 – $800 US a year. Our money makes much more difference there than waiting to spend it on victims here. Stop it at the source.
What will stop this if we don’t?
Evolution of viruses on a continent of one billion people and countless billion animals that may act as reservoirs and future carriers is a risk we don’t want to run. The exponential curve is relentless — there are ten million people in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and while the disease has only afflicted a tiny 0.2% of their populations so far, the only thing stopping that growing to 100% is the West. As Albert Einstein said, compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. The number of cases doubles every 3 to 4 weeks. We may be twelve eleven doublings away from wiping out 7 million people and unleashing who-knows-what mutation on the world. Does anyone think that border control will keep that carnage within their national boundaries? Ebola has been detected in rats, chimps, antelopes, monkeys, dogs and bats. They won’t stop at the border checkpoint.
The West is already surely a magnet for any potentially exposed people in West Africa who have a passport to get to there. If you had the means, and knew you were at risk, would you stay in Monrovia?
The latest UN Situation report – 15 October 2014 listed around 600 new cases a week in Liberia as of a few weeks ago. Ominously, the statistics are falling, but no one is happy, because it’s believed the real numbers are getting worse and the reporting is falling rather than the infections. There are around 500 new cases in Sierra Leone each week, and 200 new cases in Guinea. Approximately half the new cases are from the capitals — showing the virus is now well established in Monrovia and Freetown. There a pockets of good news. “There does appear to have been a genuine fall in the number of cases in Lofa district…”
The Australian — CSL, the Australian maker of blood-plasma therapeutics, has been asked by Bill Gates to explore whether it can develop a plasma product to treat Ebola.
Chief executive Paul Perreault said he formed a small team to assess the feasibility at the request of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation a few weeks ago.
He called it a “highly unusual” request, but said CSL responded right away. CSL wasn’t previously exploring an Ebola treatment.
CSL (CSL) also said earlier this week it was in talks with the World Health Organisation over a treatment for Ebola.
The idea would be to collect antibody-rich plasma from people who have recovered from Ebola, purify it and develop it into a “hyper-immune” product that can be transfused into patients.
“Technically, we can do it, “ Mr Perreault said. The hope is that antibodies from the recovered patient would help others fight the virus.
But it is apparently still a long way from being reality.
CSL would supply the finished product to West Africans if it ultimately makes such a product. “If people were collecting plasma in Africa and sending it to us, we’d send it back to Africa,” he said.
Mr Perreault said CSL responded right away to the Gates Foundation request, but said it’s “early days” and the company still hasn’t decided on a plan. If CSL does decide to try to develop a product, the company would look to recover its costs, but not to make money, he said.
“We’re prepared to step in and do what we can,” he said. “We can’t do anything unless we get the plasma. That’s the biggest logistic issue.”
If getting plasma is an issue, why not offer $1,000 to each survivor who also tests free of HIV, Hep B, malaria and other major diseases? They would come from far and wide for testing (and we ought cover the costs of those who came for testing and didn’t qualify). It would be cheaper than letting this run unchecked. Do I even need to mention hospitalization costs in the West, with high-level quarantine units with negative air pressure and Class 3 Haz-mat suit protection for medical staff?
Or the human toll.
—-
Meanwhile, Obama will name Ron Klain as Ebola Czar. While other people, in more frivolous moods, think Czar is the wrong word...
Let’s look at who is the Regional Director for Africa, eh?
Dr Luis Gomes Sambo
=> http://www.who.int/dg/regional_directors/sambo/en/
=> http://www.afro.who.int/en/rdo.html
Here’s some insight…
=> http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6fd22fbcca0c47318cb178596d57dc7a/un-we-botched-response-ebola-outbreak
…Rolls eyes.
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By the way folks, it just gets better! *sarcasm*
Democrat Political Hack Named Ebola Czar
=> http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/10/17/democrat_political_hack_named_ebola_czar
The meat of the article…
Watch how Klain handles this situation. If hes bad as the head of CDC (who’s blaming the 2nd nurse for her infection), USA is not in good shape…Leadership is ill-equiped to fight anything. Let alone Ebola.
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They reap what they sow.
This should be stamped in large bold print on their tomb stone.
10
Not so much The Who then, as The Where, have they been, or The What, have they been doing.
10
To stop it is will not work. The solution is one and only adaption?
00
“The Australian – CSL, the Australian maker of blood-plasma therapeutics, has been asked by Bill Gates to explore whether it can develop a plasma product to treat Ebola. ”
With diseases like Ebola, dengue, Marburg, and others, having been around for quite a while, why are they just now being addressed? You would think they would be at the top of the list of diseases to investigate due to how nasty they are and the ease of spread. You would think that the insane bioweapons people would have already weaponized each of these and developed a cure/antidote for them.
I recall the movie ‘Outbreak’ showing how easily transmitted such viruses can be and now, 20 years later, they are going to be investigated. How in the hell can the people who are charged with tracking and studying such things have such a blaise attitude? I heard of Ebola when I was just a kid and understood how bad it was. It was over there of course so of little concern. That was over 40 years ago.
The whole thing strains credibility to me.
Davet
Sacramento, CA
90
Sorry,much of the science and hi-tech budget is currently being glommed up by the celebrity problem of
Global WarmingClimate DisruptionClimate Change or whatever it is being called this week by the activists posing as scientists.110
Davet916 — the reason is that the cost of a vaccine is not the development so much as the testing. With only small containable outbreaks previously no one wanted to spend $40m on a vaccine for a disease that that might only have 100 patients (and poor ones) every couple of years.
One group asked for $40m to test their vaccine and were knocked back. To test and deal with all the possible pandemic candidates would cost a lot more. The West could have done it, but the number is in the billions.
Even the vaccine makers were saying earlier this year that they didn’t think there would be time for them to make batches as this outbreak would be controlled before they could produce something for testing.
I think the “over there” notion has kept it out of people’s minds.
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Surely the people knowledgable in this area must have had a strong incentive for development of control measures, vaccine or other. One could almost guarantee that a virus with ample opportunity to cross species boundaries was going to develop more effective means of infecting such a prevalent new host species. Where was the WHO, where was Bill Gates in the absence of a public panic to force activity. For that matter, where were we. We still have one of the better biosecure labs in the Animal Health Labs, unless CSIRO shuts it down to pursue their scientifically embarrassing climate change agenda, and the expertise of CSL. Maybe we should have been doing some of the preparative work.
Although major reported outbreaks have been scattered I have to wonder that if WHO had been doing its job and medical staff were not being attacked as evil spirits there were not a steady stream of individual cases in villages which would have provided both a source of antibodies and of limited test subjects.
The virus has a long incubation period but epidemiology so far suggests that potential for transmission is confined to the period of symptom expression. If it develops the ability to transfer between hosts during the aysmptomatic period then the risk of development of an uncontrolled pandemic is much increased.
A final thought. In the longer term this gives us a self interest reason, if we need one in addition to simple humanitarian considerations, to improve the living standards of large slices of humanity by making cheap, reliable energy available to them. We can do this if we throw out ideologically driven climate change policy distortions and provide assistance for efficient reliable fossil fuel based generation and the transmission infrastructure to go with it.
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How right you are LightningCamel where you mention this, and I know I sometimes harp on it to the point people must get a little sick of it:
Recently Niger wanted to construct a single unit 600MW coal fired plant to add to their tiny existing power generation. They have been actively discouraged from doing this at every turn.
ONE single unit of only 600MW.
If this ONE unit does indeed come to pass, just ONE unit, it means there will only be 17 Countries in ALL of Africa generating more power than Niger, and Africa has 58 separate Countries on the Continent. This One unit will deliver more power than what is currently being generated in 21 COUNTRIES in Africa ….. COMBINED, with a population of 110 Million people.
That’s just ONE unit.
Bayswater alone has 4 units, each one bigger than the one planned for in Niger.
That’s what this Ebola scare should spur, the rapid expenditure of aid on construction of infrastructure for power grids, and electrical power to bring these people out of what we would call the primitive dark ages.
Not pi$$y wind or solar power, but REAL electricity.
No votes in that though, not from anywhere, and the UN would veto it outright.
It makes me sick that we can allow this, without being told the truth about electrical power generation.
The population of Africa is 1.15 Billion people. Probably as many as 700 Million have no access whatever to electrical power, let alone what we have.
I apologise for ranting about this every time, but until word gets out, people will shake their heads and go tut tut tut, how sad. Nothing we can do though! There is. Just go searching for the truth.
Read that and be just as horrified as you are about Ebola.
Dallas had problems with a Sate of the art Hospital. These people are treating it out of tents with no power other than maybe a small portable generator for emergencies, subject to availability of petrol to run the thing.
People need to be named and shamed for ignoring the truth here.
Tony.
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Tony,
I entirely sympathise with the level of frustration caused by having to repeat valid points because they are just ignored.
We have the usual bleaters here demanding that we should “do something”. This “something” invariably involves setting up advanced facilities, which can only be produced through access to abundant energy, then deploying these facilities at high energy cost. To make this worth anything we than have to supply consumables for all this including fuel for inefficient, small scale power generation.
Somehow, all this is preferable to enabling these countries to provide their own infrastructure which would not only make the provision of these services possible at lower energy cost but reduce the requirement for the emergency response in the first place.
30
Watch all the gullible divesters lose big time as they are Ponzied into investing in U$€£€$$ renewables.
The only money being made from wind & solar is from Taxpayer’s subsidies.
40
Don’t forget, Tony, that the editor of the British Medical Journal editorialised that “Climate Change is more dangerous than Ebola”. What crap!!!!
10
But dearest Jo, that’s not the reason the WHO are giving. They don’t have an excuse as credible as the one you give. For WHO Africa it wasn’t “over there” it was “over here“. Their excuse is they…
The “potential” of Ebola infection through inhalation rather than direct contact has been known since at least 2007 when USAMRIID figured mine workers were being infected by Marburg virus via dried bat droppings. It’s a closely related virus. You can see the potential.
This recent Ebola outbreak began over a year ago. Ridley Scott has been planning a fiction TV series about it for at least that length of time.
USAMRIID and Hollywood TV producers both “noticed the potential”, but WHO Africa didn’t. What a joke.
30
The WHO deserves a little forgiveness:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/05/we_could_have_stopped_this_ebola_virus_world_health_organization
10
Thanks for the reminder that the UN organs are intended to be forums and consultants (or “normative” as they say) and have only as much power as the member states can donate. This whole “Why didn’t WHO do something” response actually plays directly into the hands of the UN.
It’s easier to blame the UN than blame every major member state for brushing this off as an African problem despite the potential for global spread.
Having said that, I don’t see how WHO can use budget cuts as an excuse. You don’t need money to think, you only need money to act. The member nations could have had the option to act on WHO warnings if those warnings had been made sooner.
10
It would be nice to think that all governments are treating this outbreak seriously but saddly they are not. The UN and World Bank Ebola relief funds have failed to reach their target.
Governments (and probably your government) fail to see the need.
http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/UN-s-Ebola-fund-low-on-cash-as-pledges-fail-to-appear
and
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-29656417
and maybe less accurate – who knows
http://www.firstpost.com/world/ebola-un-trust-gets-just-100000-of-1-bn-needed-colombia-only-donor-in-a-month-1760789.html
20
The behaviour & competence of UN & WHO has made people suspicious of their fund raising.
Only in desperation do many now give money to UN or WHO when they cann’t find more effective organisations to support directly on the ground, like MSF , SCF and church missions.
60
Hi. I’m thinking Mad Cow disease and HIV/Aids, the second virus being similar to Ebola, at least in transmission vectors. In both cases there were some deaths, which have reduced in number as the condition(s) have been understood and measures taken which prevent the spread of the disease. As you so rightly point out, the development of a vaccine against ebola was not made economically viable. Maybe the WHO had more important things to do than act to protect the world’s poorest from such a killer. The frustrating thing is that a fraction of the money hosed at Gore-Bull warming would have probably have solved the problem before the virus had a chance to mutate in numbers.
20
Canada supposedly shipping an experimental vaccine to WHO this week.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/despite-assurances-on-ebola-obama-reportedly-angry-with-government-response/article21155882/
00
Top-jobs-for-the-boys bureaucrats are a burden on all economies. Political appointees rarely have the competence they are supposed to have and we all end up having to pay for it.
Africa just happens to be a bit/lot worse for for corruption and incompetence than most places.
Then, of course, there are the great economy-numbing bureaucracies of the United Nations and the European Union, but when you get leftist idealism running riot such as in Venezuela, or the UK and Australia’s last government, it really is a case of the big lumps rising to the top, just like in cess pits.
In emergencies, such as in wars or disease outbreaks like the current ebola one, eventually competent people are appointed to take over from the career bureaucrats and take charge, for the simple reason there is no other choice.
90
Sadly, we should not forget The Seven Rules of Bureaucracy Although these are obviously much more relevant in the unreal world of the ‘climate change’ bureaucracies, than to the global and national responses to the ebola outbreak. They do help explain why the initial response was so feeble and undirected – career bureaucrats (especially of the political appointee type) are incapable of responding well to crises; eventually competent individuals have to be appointed to do the job – and this looks like it is now finally happening.
Rule #1: Maintain the problem at all costs! The problem is the basis of power, perks, privileges, and security.
Rule #2: Use crisis and perceived crisis to increase your power and control.
Rule #3: If there are not enough crises, manufacture them, even from nature, where none exist.
Rule #4: Control the flow and release of information while feigning openness.
Rule #5: Maximize public-relations exposure by creating a cover story that appeals to the universal need to help people.
Rule #6: Create vested support groups by distributing concentrated benefits and/or entitlements to these special interests, while distributing the costs broadly to one’s political opponents.
Rule #7: Demonize the truth tellers who have the temerity to say, “The emperor has no clothes.”
260
I would add to the list my Three Laws of Administration:
1. The calm of the head Administrator shall be maintained at all times.
2. Administrative policy shall be strictly adhered to.
3. Should the second law be violated, the first law takes full effect and the violator of the second law will be eliminated by any means necessary. No exceptions! That is except for the favored few. Namely the Head Administrator and his *sacred* staff.
There is a work around that is very dangerous to use. I found that it works at least once in each administrative context.
The Workaround: If you must violate the second law, do so in such an in your face and public way so that the head administrator is focused on calming you down rather than maintaining his own calm.
PS: The best plan is to stay away from Head Administrators and Bureaucracies as humanly possible. I find Head Administrators and Bureaucracies are harmful to the living in almost every respect.
80
WHO may be lazy and inept, but they cannot easily solve the real problem here, which is intractable poverty of a megaslum. Megaslums probably more resemble medieval cities than anything else, with some sprinklings of modernity. Epidemics will burn there brightly, with vaccines the only long term solutions. Even without vaccines the epidemic will burn out though possibly with large loss of life, as they did in medieval times. Otherwise we would not be here.
40
The epidemic will burn out when it runs out of new victims.
Can you explain why you think it will burn out without vaccines?
What factors will slow the Ro below 1.?
10
Well, on one level I hate to compare people to rabbits, but what about myxomatosis or calicivirus. These both started out with high mortality levels and rapidly changed to being an epizootic, in the population but just chugging along in there, not doing any real damage.
So maybe the future will not be in reducing the Ro below 1 but in the virus becoming less aggressive.
Can we withstand the initial mortality and can we then use the time to limit the effects of the “chronic” phase.
00
The Black Death is famous for ravaging Europe in the 1340s. Which particular year it “arrived” depends on one’s geographical perspective. Italian cities, trading with the East, experienced the plague before France, Spain, Switzerland, or Germany (it had already cut a swathe through Asia). The pestilence reached England via Weymouth and the Scots, only very recently humiliated by their defeat at the Battle of Neville’s Cross (1346), rejoiced at the divine retribution visited upon the Sassenachs – until the Black Death inexorably made its way north of the Border. What is less well remembered is the fact that the Black Death kept coming back, about once a generation. Those who had survived it before survived it again, but children and young adults, with no acquired immunity to the plague, succumbed in huge numbers, in a repeated pattern.
70
Well said. England had outbreaks of plague until 1665 (a warm dry summer, by the way).It came in from Holland by ship.
The Great Fire of London in 1666 seems to have cleared the slums and there were no further outbreaks there, although minor outbreaks elsewhere.
See http://urbanrim.org.uk/plague%20list.htm for a list of outbreaks.
10
The Great Fire of London…killed large numbers of rats,the Black Plague was carried by their fleas…hence the plague was controlled..
10
Is Ebola the same virus as the Black Death?
00
NO.
10
Ebola originated from bats ….wild animals were the carriers…native people killed the various animals for food…and become infected…
Why people like bats I have never understood ..they carry many dangerous viruses and yet the “greenies” are always trying to protect their numbers..”idiots” !!
00
We now know the Black Death as Bubonic Plague.You have just managed to ask a question to which the answer is”NO” and therefore probably have Honorary Life Membership of the Guardian.! 🙂
10
Follow the link Kevin. IT IS NOT MY QUESTION, but the Heading Of The Article. Some people here sound like climate scientists when alternate views are dismissed out of hand.
Researchers, Christopher Duncan and Susan Scott of the University of Liverpool say that the flea-borne bubonic plague could not have torn across Europe the way the Black Death did.
“If you look at the way it spreads, it was spreading at a rate of around 30 miles in two to three days,” says Duncan. “Bubonic plague moves at a pace of around 100 yards a year.”
Maybe we should call Duncan & Scott, DENIERS!(sarc)
And, Kevin, referring to your last sarcastic remark: Actually I prefer the Daily Mail for the images.
Finally, I have no medical background, but just a humble geoscientist with an open mind who questions science dogma constantly. I even hold sceptical views on the current Plate Tectonic Theory which relies on the questionable magnetic reversal stripes for validity and where the postulated age of mountain building doesn’t fit the Geomorphical evidence.
PS: one of the reviews of Duncan & Scott’s Book.
“…compelling…Scott and Duncan offer evidence that will convince readers and provoke historians to test their conclusions through additional research. This is an outstanding and complex book that not only makes a significant contribution to many different scholarly fields, but it reads like a detective story and is difficult to put down…this work is a key reinterpretation that will influence future research and the teaching of European and world history.”
Canadian Bulletin of Medical History
10
What a pity those who have wasted their careers on climate science cann’t be turned to something more productive now the need arises.
Would they be able to function under the pressure of it really getting worse than we thought tho. ?
90
May I suggest they could be used as guinea pigs to test new ebola vaccines and then exposed to the virus.
At least they could then say they had done something useful with their lives.
21
Voluntarily like everyone else of course. We don’t wish harm on them. Only that they be deprived of the means of doing any more damage.
30
though they seem to wish harm on skeptics.
10
Mostly they are just misguided – albeit en masse. They can’t help themselves, poor dears. Tend to be the more impressionable and easily led. Need help to think for themselves.
10
Folie a deux, trois, quatre, cinq……………………..
00
They’d have to do real science and would therefore be totally lost. Maybe parcelling them up and sending them to help in west Africa would enable the survivors to become useful.
10
True. They’ve proven to be inept and stupid, don’t let them anywhere near ebola, or money.
00
Eco- terrorism?
I mean the first place you’d go is the Pentagon , wouldn’t you?
Hah , probably Ronald McDonalds or the Colonels . . .
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-17/officials-responding-possible-ebola-situation-near-pentagon
20
The WHO seems to be saying that the incubation period has been as long as 42 days. So if any eco terrorists infected someone that went to the climate2014 summit then all those delegates are potential walking bio hazards that have no doubt spread it through the UN and many climate research organisations.
Oh and what about that fella that goes around hugging and kissing health workers. Did they have 42 days or is it reasonable to suspect he is at risk?
10
Never mind, climate change is the greatest challenge.
42
I might also add, as the death toll rises; by comparison, how many deaths can be attributed to climate change since it became our greatest moral challenge?
42
A better question is “how many deaths can be attributed to climate change fanaticism?”.
40
As the epidemic can only be made worse by the absence of cheap energy thanks to Deep Green activism, the number though incalculable will be significant.
10
Why is there always one?
Sigh………….
10
Suggest you start knitting. You are going to need warm stuff soon.
20
What I am most disgusted with is that they keep moving the infected people around. This seems to me to be among the most short sighted and unintelligent decisions I can imagine. We now have the potential for multiple hot spots in the US.
Thank you, experts.
170
Mark D,
Bingo!
90
Double Bingo, Mark!
There should have been travel restrictions in place from the very first indication of Ebola. This will sound cruel and harsh. And it is. But it would be better to abandon Africa to its fate than to spread ebola all over the world. And it’s now spreading with as much as 21 days lag before we know where it next pops up.
It will only take one outbreak of ebola in Central or South America to send a flood of people north and we will be swamped by that flood if it happens.
110
Ask any farmer if it’s a good idea to move infected livestock around the district and I guarantee a very colorful answer.
“Hey mate I’ve got some cattle that look like they’re coming down with Anthrax and wonder if it’s OK to put them next to yours?, in a separate paddock of course.”
“Yeah no worries mate, if it’s an OK practice for Ebola it should be alright, I mean governments aren’t stupid right?”
The greatest threat to farming is big government, all the rest is part of the job and a joy compared to the first.
150
Yonnie,
The greatest threat is big government full stop.
70
James I concur with that, there is nowhere else to go 🙂
When I see normal intelligent people in society getting hamstrung by bureaucratic parasites I’m reminded of their plight in the words of Michael Crawford’s ‘Frank Spencer’ after a victory of sorts in court over a traffic offence.
“British justice must be done
not only done but seen,
and now I’ve seen it done to me
I know how done I’ve been.”
20
But that is the plan. They think it is time for America to experience what the third world has experience since civilization got started. Besides, a frightened, sick, and dying population is much easier to control. After all, they do not want to face a healthy, angry, and armed population intent on preserving its natural right to Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.
60
The Eugenics people must be solo excited about this one. They must be having difficulty staying seated with the excitement they will be experiencing.
Seriously, why on earth are we, the western world, putting more economic resources into this – there are now thousands of children who have survived ebola who are destitute and starving on the streets – because the locals are terrified of them.
How about the beurocrats step back and think practically for once in their lived. Round up the survivors, setup the necessary funding and resources to ensure the kids have a real future. It’s the right thing to do and who knows, maybe the survivors might actually be willing to donate a bit of plasma.
Right now, for people struggling to find enough food to eat and some westerner asked me to donate some of my blood or plasma, I can understand how they would tell the westerner to go shove it somewhere unpleasant.
40
One cannot help wondering if the UN is not merely into the same sort of scare tactics it used and still uses with ACC.
One reason for the spread of Ebola in West Africa is obviously the appallingly poor hygiene practiced which we are told includes funeral rites in which the body of the deceased is handled. Thus it seems the first need to stop the spread of Ebola is in this area.
The answer in the longer term is as suggested the development of a vaccine.
30
As the Progressives over at The Conversation peddle the unsustainable Renewable energy country attractiveness index, the real scientists at the NIH demonstrate the consequences of the funding redistribution engendered by “climate scientists.”
As the killing mounts with Ebola, it will be winter soon in the Northern Hemisphere, where the Cold Reaper is poised to do her ugly Green work in the name of Gaia on the power impoverished.
Over at The Conversation though, a new sustainable buzz word is “divestment” along with the idea of embracing the notion that “universities themselves should be doing much more to develop future leaders able to respond to climate change and sustainability challenges.”
On the contrary, shouldn’t the Australian Universities be aspiring to promote objectivity and intellectual rigour over the unsustainable Progressive confirmation bias resplendent at The Conversation?
60
The cool thing about this new climate change is that it can so easily “morph” , at the appropriate time , into something completely natural.
Not a problem 🙂
30
Don’t be silly. Australia have a Rhodes Scholar as PM, trained in intellectual rigour and objectivity, and look where it’s got you!
Just in case, /sarc. I’m envious of you with your PM.
10
When you read that even the US military struggles to but up a 24 bed ebola isolation tent unit because of the appalling conditions ( no runways cargo planes can land on, no roads capable of handling anything other than off road tactical military vehicles, no electricity, no water…)
Then it is quite clear that this thing will not get stopped until there is a vaccine. That will take time even of primate testing goes well. And with a 70 percent mortality rate and Ro near 2, it is quite clear that even setting up a hundred 24 bed isolation units is insufficient, even assuming those could be staffed. This is unfortunately going to get exponentially worse for a long time.
And with up to a 21 day incubation period, passenger screening is ineffectual– the Dallas Duncan case shows that. So it will spread through more of Africa. And possibly into places like India that have extensive business and travel connections with Africa, weak health infrastructure, and similar living conditions for the majority of the population.
50
With all due respect to everyone and having due regard for the suffering of those directly affected, I suspect this will just be another SARS-bird flu-swine flu type beat-up.
It is charged with all the alarmist language that, for example, we associate with our global warming alarmist comrades – ‘could double’, ‘a million by next year’ and so on. Like the global warming scare, the language is all about what might happen at some point in the future.
The fact is that the latest outbreak (and what happened to all the earlier outbreaks!) was reported initially as much as six months ago. If people are talking about logarithmic growth in numbers, why are there fewer than 10,000 cases six months down the track.
50
Barry, with all due respect, you are wrong. Pun intended, dead wrong.
SARS was contained by very agressive patient tracking, and the fact that simple face masks intercepted the aerosol route of transmission. It was a coronavirus, a family responsible for about 30% of the ‘common cold’ to which many have some transitory immunity.
Bird Flu H1N1 in 2009 only had about a 5% fatality rate in the strain that went international. We were extremely lucky that a simple easily made variation on conventional flu vaccine proved effective, and that adjuvants and double doses were not necessary. my company was close to ground zero on that, submitting a ‘soft’ EUA to the FDA under the guidance of Dr. Tony Fauci of NIH. We also lost our regulatory expert in July2009- he died of H1N1 complications while on holiday with his family. That hits home hard in a small company.
This is different. Contact transmission in African slums is inevitable for poor people trying to care for their sick family members. There is no vaccine precedent. There is no easy way to intercept contact transmission, as the Infected Dallas nurses show. Jo’s comcern is if anything understated. A false alarm this is most definitely not. The world got lucky with SARS and H1N1. Probably not this time.
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Will it be like SARS or like Smallpox? The answers lie in the Ebola numbers.
It’s not logarithmic. It’s exponential.
http://www.geert.io/exponential-growth-of-ebola.html
The rate is slowing on his graph probably because carers in Liberia are too overwhelmed to keep up with the new cases. No one on the ground in Monrovia thinks numbers are really falling.
Following that curve:
SARS had a 10% fatality rate, killed 775 people — mostly in Southern China and Hong Kong. Influenza vaccines offered partial weak protection – reducing the severity of the disease. SARS occurred in places where aggressive tracking and isolation was possible and organized. (China got international help).
Cases in Ebola are already far higher, the fatality rate is 70%. The medical systems are collapsing in countries where it has struck. Liberia only had 50 doctors for a country of 4 million.
30
Jo, based on the poor handling and links to WHO officials to companies that made bird flu vaccines, I’d consider most things the WHO say with some scepticism. Given 30000 people in the USA died from flu related issues that 4000 in the whole of Africa is small, without degrading the awful loss of human life.
Now I watched a video of the Ebola victim turning up in Spain where military types with gloves or masks etc opened the aircraft door and then the place swarmed with people in biohazard suits.
I am starting to think that the fear of Ebola is what’s being pedalled here, as it reeks of hype and poor attention to detail…..
21
Sorry , that should say ” military types without gloves or masks…..”
This whole thing is another bird flu meme of fear mongering.
If Ebola developed as the breathless msm would have you believe, the west is done for.
But – the NWO crowd are white a rayan supremacists, so will sacrifice Africa and any non white race.
Fear allows for more draconian laws to be passed – that is what this is all about.
Doubt it not.
20
Again, with the greatest of respect to all, to say that its growth will be exponential is the equivalent of saying that increases in CO2 will cause a linear increase in temperature. As always, there are variables involved. In the case of any disease, the variable at work is human behaviour – and that is probably what accounts for the slowing in the rate of growth.
To dwell on my earlier point, the growth since the disease was reported in March has not been exponential. Furthermore, although it was reported in March, given the numbers in March it is likely that the outbreak got started several months before then.
Similarly, the many past outbreaks have snuffed out in a relatively short period of time. Unlike with AIDS, for example, people know what it is and they react accordingly. Consider your own response. Would you travel to anywhere in Africa at the moment? Would you place yourself in a position where you are likely to have contact with anybody from the region?
I will hazard a guess and say that because of changed behaviour the number of new cases will be declining within a week or two.
10
But this depends in large measure on infected groups being relatively isolated from each other. When you can get on an airplane and go from Liberia to the U.S. in a matter of hours without even knowing you’re infected you can spread the disease to populations that would otherwise be completely safe.
I don’t care whether the growth curve is exponential or linear. I care that we’re now spreading this deadly pathogen all over the world.
The present policy of Barack Obama’s administration is stupid beyond belief.
10
Ebola can be confined to Africa, or even a few countries in Africa, if tough decisions are made.
Ebola is Airborne means Ebola is flying around the world in Airplanes.
60
How about “Ebola Witchmaster General”? That would capture the imagination.
More seriously, glad to see Bill Gates getting involved.
+1 For Billionaires helping with real-world problems, not those conceived in a model and the fevered imagination of environmentalists.
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Yes indeed we must take all measures possible to prevent the current outbreak from spreading any further. The problem is no one and especially the governments of the world are taking it seriously. As long as they allow people who are potentially infected to travel back home from the danger areas by way of commercial airlines and through major airports then they are all treating it as though it’s of no real consequence. No point telling them to go home and guarantee themselves. It’s too late by then.
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In the last few days the opposition have been politicising the issue. Especially the deputy leader who is such a low life, I won’t bother mentioning its name.
Here’s a take from somebody that’s been on the ground.
Worth a listen as it blows the deputy dog’s argument out of the water.
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A couple of innovations re ebola –
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientist-leads-search-for-ebola-cure/
http://www.timesofisrael.com/how-israeli-app-technology-helps-beat-ebola/
20
Jo,
From Wiki: Ronald A. “Ron” Klain is an American lawyer and political operative best known for serving as Chief of Staff to two Vice Presidents – Al Gore (1995–1999) and Joseph Biden (2009–2011).
He’s no more qualified to head up an effort to stop Ebola than Ronald McDonald. Hell, Jo, Ronald McDonald might do a better job. Klain is a political operative, a man who kisses up to his boss by profession.
I have watched Obama for a long time. There is nothing frivolous in thinking czar is the wrong word. Obama’s modus operandi is a simple one, pick a yes-man, delegate responsibility and then go on his merry way, forgetting about the matter. If this failure of a leader is not soon removed from office by the House and Senate we are going to have a disaster right here, never mind the rest of the world. And neither house of congress has the nerve to admit publicly that Obama and his appointed officials are a failure, lest the public get mad and not vote for them next time around. Do you realize that since his election in 2008 Obama has sacked 197 flag rank military officers and replaced them with yes-men?*** If anyone doesn’t recognize the term “flag rank” it means at least one star, a general or admiral, the most experienced and valuable advisors on military matters a president can possibly have. Can you understand the importance of that? We are bereft of leaders who will challenge what Obama wants and when a man like Obama with a penchant for power and control isn’t challenged by his counselors…well…I expect everyone can see the handwriting on the wall. And everyone in this administration shows the same proclivity to simply follow the boss’s lead and get along the easy way. It is that way throughout his administration.
Ebola now has at least a third person in the U.S. being monitored for signs of the disease according to CNN not more than 3 hours ago — he’s the head man at the Dallas Presbyterian Hospital.
When the boss won’t lead unless he’s shamed into it by public pressure, why would I believe his ebola czar will lead?
Damn! We don’t need a czar we need a president who pays attention to his job, not this idiot whose whole life, including his presidency, has been one big bluff.
Obama’s czars don’t even have the legitimacy of constitutional authorization to exist. They are not vetted by the Senate and they are of God only knows what quality. And they are accountable to no one. It’s not only not frivolous to reject them, it’s good judgment.
—————————————
*** My source for this is reliable but I don’t have the right to spread his name all over the internet. Suffice to say that I trust the information. Google will be revealing, however.
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And before I’m accused of it, yes I am an alarmist over this one.
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Better the be alarmists than to treat it like some joke. It can be very serious and potentially turn into a pandemic very quickly. Worst case scenario is millions could be killed – no actually billions; and that’s no exaggeration. Yet no one of authority is taking it seriously. We still see the left worried about global warming, which even it were real is decades away. Yet a serious pandemic is potentially knocking on the door right now. I wonder why the mixed up priorities? Incompetence perhaps? If that’s so then when the real threat of a pandemic outbreak comes out assuming this one is not it, then there is no hope for most of us. People of authority appear to have lost the plot of late. I can see dangerous times straight ahead.
50
It’s most likely that global warming or Republicans will be blamed for ebola. Maybe both will be blamed. A scapegoat is always useful to the dishonest.
Incompetence is the right word.
I may have said this before — if you ask the wrong question you always get the wrong answer. And the question here, first and foremost is this: to whom does the president and his entire administration have a constitutionally mandated responsibility to look out for their welfare? Is it the people of the United States or the people of Africa?
No one is asking that question. The last three presidents I can think of who did were: Harry Truman when he decided to drop the atomic bombs. John Kennedy when he decided he must stare down Nikita Kruschev, risking war in the process. Ronald Reagan when he decided to confront the Soviet Union head on with common sense.
30
Roy,
Our favourite US tv show is Doomsday Preppers.
20
They may be wiser than you think. Unfortunately if things get very bad then no one will be able to be an island unto himself. Not here, not anywhere.
20
Roy, Ron Klain, like Obama, is a community organized and thus most qualified in Obama’s limited understanding.
10
Well of course. How else was he going to get the Military to squark about “climate change”?
20
In a military population the size of the US armed forces, what would the normal rate of attrition of general rank officers be over a six year period?
10
Gnome,
As you know, flag officers do not have the same status as officers of lesser rank. The president can assign them their responsibilities personally, remove them again at will and can determine who is promoted to and upward within the General Officer ranks. I’ve never heard of a case of the president getting personally involved in a similar way with an officer of less than flag rank, though there could be some I don’t know about. The problem is that this was not from attrition. These officers were fired outright, forced to resign and if they would not, then actually fired as Harry Truman did to McArthur. The sole purpose can only be to replace officers who would not want to follow orders destructive to the military or the country with those who will.
There is only one officer in that 197 who was fired for cause and that’s Stanley McChrystal whose insubordination was so well documented in his Rolling Stone interview that no president would keep him after that. I would have fired him myself if I was president. Had McChrystal been less than a general officer he would simply have been court martialed and that would be the resolution.
The process of attrition would see officers announcing their retirement and the president selecting and announcing replacements in advance of the retirement date.
This was so blatant that numerous retired officers and knowledgeable civilians as well have been ringing alarm bells over it.
20
I don’t know what the normal attrition rate would be. But the departure through attrition would not even remotely look like the officer was fired.
01
There is that element too I suppose. But I think the purpose is much more sinister than that.
20
Roy
Like Stalin before the German invasion?
10
More like Maliki in Iraq I would say. As soon as we were gone he began to fire all the generals who were Sunni and replaced them with yes-men. The result is what we see now in Iraq, incompetence and real danger of losing their nation to murdering vermin.
30
too busy playing politics.
Gore’s strategist named Ebola czar!
17 Oct: WaPo: Obama taps Ron Klain as Ebola czar
President Obama has asked Ron Klain, who served as chief of staff to both Vice President Biden and former vice president Al Gore, as his Ebola response coordinator, according to a White House official…
Klain is not known for his health-care expertise, though he would get briefings on those policies in his capacity as a campaign strategist for Gore and the Democrats’ 2004 presidential candidate, John F. Kerry…
Klain navigated the legal and political worlds with ease, Jennings added. “He wasn’t just an analyst. He was a strategist.”
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.) questioned Klain’s lack of medical credentials, saying in a statement: “Given the mounting failings in the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola outbreak, it is right that the President has sought to task a single individual to coordinate its response. But I have to ask why the President didn’t pick an individual with a noteworthy infectious disease or public health background?”…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/10/17/obama-taps-ron-klain-as-ebola-czar/
20
Here is a not very well thougth out idea that popped into my head. In the old days ships that were suspected of carrying plague were “quarantined” for 40 days. If there was plague it would incubate and the disease could be contained. If they were still all well they could disembark If the crew were lucky they would be sent food and water while stuck in harbour.
Instead of closing borders, travel by ship would possibly weed out the sick on the way, and make those who travel very cautious about their ship mates.
Could we say – yes, travel, but by ship??
30
Yes, but you need ships with willing crews in the right places.
20
Crew reporting for duty!
10
I do like the 360° all round visibility. That design in Dallas could have saved clipboard man the ignominity of worldwide news coverage.
00
You cannt be sure a protocol has been followed without someone with a clip boàrd to tick all the boxes. Thoughts & prayers for Nurse Vinson and her family.
10
In the days when travel was a burden. The origins of the word travel, like travail meaning a struggle, at best.
20
1)Ships are faster nowadays.
2)the 21 day period covers 95% of cases. There is talk of 42 days + for a few outliers and possibly, asymptomatic carriers.
However the UN and governments are on the case. We’re screwed.
60
Biblical proportions.
40
quite a few online have asked why the Surgeon-General hasn’t been seen or heard from – Newsweek makes excuses:
17 Oct: Newsweek: Where’s The Surgeon General When You Need One?
Klain’s new position, which the White House is calling the “Ebola response coordinator,” will be largely managerial and behind the scenes…
But during public health scares like the occurrence of Ebola in the U.S., the government also needs to communicate health advice to the public. As the media—and some political candidates—stoke fears about a full-blown Ebola outbreak in the U.S., shouldn’t there be someone to tell us what’s going on?
The answer is yes. That person is the surgeon general of the United States.
The problem is, the U.S. doesn’t have a surgeon general…
There is an acting surgeon general, Rear Admiral Boris Lushniak, but in light of the Ebola outbreak and panic, he hasn’t stepped up in the way a confirmed surgeon general would be expected to…
http://www.newsweek.com/wheres-surgeon-general-when-you-need-one-278141
10
why should the plasma products from thousands of people from 3 or 4 african nations go anywhere other than protecting the thousands of people in those same countries who are in danger of dying – including among them many African health care workers.
50
Why should the rest of the world care what happens in Africa?
00
Hmm. Just thinking out loud here, but maybe normal folk would prefer not sound like those climate concernists who wring their hands about the possibility of malaria ‘migrating north…’
😀
“Sure, it’s safely confined to Africa… for now. But with global warming, how long before malaria starts killing actual, proper people of fully-human metaphysical status? Scientists say they can’t say!“
00
Not everyone is convinced that this Ebola isn’t airborne.
Last month, the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy published an article arguing that the current Ebola has “unclear modes of transmission” and that “there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles both near and at a distance from infected patients, which means that healthcare workers should be wearing respirators, not face masks.
In September the World Health Organization’s Ebola Response Team estimated the R0 to be at 1.71 in Guinea and 2.02 in Sierra Leone.
Since then, it seems to have risen so that the average in West Africa is about 2.0.
In September the WHO estimated that by October 20, there would be 3,000 total cases in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
As of October 7, the count was 8,376
In other words, rather than catching up with Ebola, we’re falling further behind.
And we’re likely to continue falling behind, because physical and human resources do not scale virally.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/six-reasons-panic_816387.html?page=1
00
So shut the borders……job done.
10
I eagerly await the first idiot who blames the Ebola outbreak on “climate change”…… it will happen.
20
I should have Googled that first….. the warmists are all over it.
20
Backslider,
They are probably correct, climate alarmism has prevented the construction of efficient and economical energy production.
If not for climate activists the last 18 years could have been a period of building energy, education and medical infrastructure in third world countries.
For the Global Warming Activists who assisted in the diversion of those valuable resources, tax payer funds, subsidies and grants to their own pockets by cultivating green/socialist governments merely to pi$$ it all up against the wall attending international conferences, buying waterfront mansions and conning the gullible into building desalinisation plants (the monorails of out generation), there is probably not the resources to fight a pandemic.
Learned behaviours of the green and socialist humanitarians as it seems WHO and the UN now has their hands out once again before they can act on this real crisis.
You reap what you sow.
50
Notice Roy Spencer has a post re Ebola. He measured the CO2 concentration on two air flights:
“Anyway, to the answer. On two flights — one a large plane, the other small — I measured CO2 concentrations of 1,600 ppm or more (coming out of the nozzles), which is 4 times ambient (400 ppm)….(In small offices with several people confined I’ve measured 1,000 ppm, the point at which some people consider the start of “reduced” air quality).
So, it is true, a greater proportion of air you breathe on an airplane has been exhaled by others than in most other environments you are likely to be exposed to.
It’s still hard to say from my measurement of 1,600+ ppm just how much fresh air is mixed in with the air that is recycled by the aircraft ventilation system, but I think the bigger concern is this: that you are in such close proximity to other people in a confined space, you are breathing other peoples air — including tiny aerosols — even before all of the exhaled air gets sucked back into the ventilation system and filtered…”
from: How Safe is the Air You Breathe in Planes?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
30
Interesting. The desiccation of sneeze particles in an A/C environment makes the particles size smaller and therefore prone to remaining air-borne longer, as someone pointed out on another thread.
10
A similar plot seems to be occurring with malaria,how come it has taken 40 plus years to reconsider DDT.
Malaria kills more in one year every year,than Ebola is likely to in total.
20
A relentless tide? Or is it, to quote the best film of the 3rd millennium so far,
10
If anyone needs reminding of how useless the UN are regarding natural disasters just re-visit the Haiti Earthquake.
20
Here’s a snapshot from Connecticut…
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/dannelmalloynctdictator08oct14.shtml
Governor Dannel Malloy has declared Connecticut to be in a state of public health emergency, enabling the indefinite suspension of certain civil rights. State bureaucrats have been granted the broad authority to forcibly detain suspected sick people without due process. The declaration came pre-emptively, as Connecticut has not yet seen a single case of the virus it purports to stop.
20
Another incompetent showing that he’s on the ball – not.
20
I noticed NCT02041715 has never been mentioned in the above comments.
http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT02041715
Apparently in January the US DOD with a Canadian pharmaceutical company started a ‘first in human’ clinical trial using Ebola right where this Ebola outbreak started.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-liberian-scientist-claims-the-u-s-is-responsible-for-the-ebola-outbreak-in-west-africa/5408459
10
It is only a phase 1 trial, for the safety & tolerance of the vaccine in healthy recipients. Nowhere does it suggest infecting recipients.
10
From fda.gov:
Phase 1 studies are usually conducted in healthy volunteers. The goal here is to determine what the drug’s most frequent side effects are and, often, how the drug is metabolized and excreted. The number of subjects typically ranges from 20 to 80.
The phase 1 of this clinical trial was apparently testing an ebola vaccine, TKM-100802.
That is quite the striking coincidence, with the first test of a possible vaccine in the same area and time as an outbreak of the target.
20
Well they probably just picked the best place to conduct a trial that would be of potential benefit to recipients.
That makes it more than a coincidence but doesn’t suggest they had anything to do with the spread of the disease.
11
Assuming this is true the initial problem started with a 2 year old boy on December 6, 2013:
Patient Zero in the Ebola outbreak, researchers suspect, was a 2-year-old boy who died on Dec. 6, just a few days after falling ill in a village in Guéckédou, in southeastern Guinea. Bordering Sierra Leone and Liberia, Guéckédou is at the intersection of three nations, where the disease found an easy entry point to the region.
A week later, it killed the boy’s mother, then his 3-year-old sister, then his grandmother. All had fever, vomiting and diarrhea, but no one knew what had sickened them.
Two mourners at the grandmother’s funeral took the virus home to their village. A health worker carried it to still another, where he died, as did his doctor. They both infected relatives from other towns. By the time Ebola was recognized, in March, dozens of people had died in eight Guinean communities, and suspected cases were popping up in Liberia and Sierra Leone — three of the world’s poorest countries, recovering from years of political dysfunction and civil war.
I am somewhat skeptical of narratives and figures coming out of some of the poorest parts of Africa. But periodic outbreaks of zoonoses are believable, and it’s also believable that because Ebola had not appeared in Sierra Leone before there were few experts, yet UN officials overconfidently predicted they could get it under control like past outbreaks. That mix of poverty, local unfamiliarity, and bureaucratic overconfidence could make a perfect storm.
30
This declassified article from the US Defence of Dept is interesting.
“Defence Threat Reduction Agency- Silver Nanoparticles Neutralise Hemorrhagic Fever Viruses.”
It would appear that the Americans have already found that tiny silver particles at only 10 ppm (sweet f’all) concentration in water taken orally can interrupt Ebola viral replication inside cells but you have to get in early or prior to infection.
I’ve built a simple circuit with pure silver wire electrodes which is said to produce a suitable silver solution from clean tap water. One unit costing ~$90 could run 24/7 and service 100 people though I don’t know the dosage rate.
I note that someone in Sierra Leone tried importing some 10ppm silver water from Paris but it was refused entry to the country. Not sure why.
Also not sure why the MSM are not reporting this one. Anyone got any info? Could be sheer incompetence somewhere in the SL civil service or customs dept. Could be internet obfuscation of the story.
Will work on finding a link to the DoD paper.
10
Jo thought I’d post this on the Ebola thread, Ridley Scott is doing a TV drama on Ebola based on Richard Preston’s 1994 bestseller The Hot Zone, anyone know more about this?
10
Years ago a Marvin Antelmann patented silver tetroxide (Ag4O4) for treating viral illness. He recommended 40ppm with blood for combatting HIV.
10
I think you mean Tetrasilver Tetroxide (Ag4O4). Yes, a patent was issued, but, as I understand it, the FDA has yet to approve its use in clinical trials. It is claimed that Tetrasilver Tetroxide will cure HIV Aids, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and ME.
10
Yes Rereke, -I’ve heard similar.
I wonder what is gong on here.
Cisplatin drugs work by jamming into a DNA stand (zipper) so that as replication is progressing the replicator (zip slider) gets blocked at the Cisplatin molecule and cell death follows. Cisplatin seems to be a big flat square molecule based on a central Platinum bonded to Cls on 2 “arms” and NH3 groups bonded onto the other 2 “arms”. The NH3 end is able to attach to a protein in the DNA (probably guanine). Someone described this to me as a playing card (cisplatin molecule) stuck into a relaxed phone cord (the DNA helical zip). It physically bars DNA replication.
I wonder if the tetra-silver tetroxide could operate in a similar but less dramatic fashion.
Perhaps a bio-chemist out there could explain to fickies like me how tetra-silver tetroxide might work ?
00
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/food-storage-systems/
Some surprising facts about food storage in times of emergency.
00