Ebola on the horizon?

[pudly]

Healthcare organizations working in Africa really aren't impressed by the CDC standards for working with Ebola:

Aid group leader: Africa's Ebola standards higher than CDC's | TheHill

“We’re not comfortable with [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)] procedures,” Ken Isaacs, the vice president of Samaritan's Purse

The CDC should really consult people with hands-on experience. Maybe the new "Ebola Czar" will ask for input on the medical procedures.... nah.

From the head of the CDC, Thomas Friedan:

I think we could, in retrospect, with 20/20 hindsight, have sent a more robust hospital infection control team and been more hands-on with the hospital from day one about exactly how this should be managed.

No joke, you *******. You get $6 billion dollars per year to to help protect the US from infectious diseases and you utterly failed. You knew for months that Ebola was active out there and that there were no restrictions on infected people coming to the US. Local hospitals aren't equipped and educated to handle every obscure and rare disease out there. That is your job and I'd like to know why you still hold it.

 

[Ricnzak]

^^^^^

I would say about Tuesday of next week he will resign. To much heat on him now. They need a sacrifice. He will fall on the sword for the team.

 

[ArcadiaGP]

NY Times: ?Experts? Oppose Ebola Travel Ban, Quote None; Gets Other Facts Wrong | The Daily Caller

 

[pudly]

It's the NY Times. Facts are optional.

 

[ArcadiaGP]

NYT Oct 17: GOP proposed travel ban is opposed by experts.
NYT Oct 20: Dems support travel ban, experts unmentioned.

In fact, from NYTimes A1 coverage today, you'd never know that GOP even made a travel ban proposal:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/us/fear-of-ebola-closes-schools-and-shapes-politics.html?ref=us

 

[T.Lex]

Guinea is reporting a spike in cases, as infections creep closer to a significant South African-owned gold mine.
Guinea Says Ebola Spreads to Regions Near AngloGold Mine - Businessweek

The place that reported infections in the Siguiri area is 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the Johannesburg-based company’s facility, the Ministry of Health and AngloGold said in statements yesterday. Employees haven’t been infected and operations continue, the mining company said.
...
The company is working with local health authorities and the World Health Organization to manage its response to the disease, Nthite said. Travel from the site to the town is “being done on a strictly controlled basis,” he said.

 

[pudly]

NYT Oct 17: GOP proposed travel ban is opposed by experts.
NYT Oct 20: Dems support travel ban, experts unmentioned.

In fact, from NYTimes A1 coverage today, you'd never know that GOP even made a travel ban proposal:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/us/fear-of-ebola-closes-schools-and-shapes-politics.html?ref=us

Journalists (as a group) are just Democrats with bylines. The way news is covered makes a lot more sense once you come to understand this.

 

[longbow]

I have been very pleased at the turn around of the hospitals I deal with! PAPR's, tychem, and positive pressure hoods are now some items that they have in inventory or shortly will have. Training with chocolate sauce was interesting for seeing how good the workers were in preventing contamination and showing contaminants on gear.

 

[hooky]

Our new Ebola Czar or the head of the CDC? You make the call.

[video=youtube_share;AHa-AvLk4no]http://youtu.be/AHa-AvLk4no[/video]

 

[ArcadiaGP]

JUST IN: Ebola patient at Emory hospital released, "determined to be free of virus." The patient is unidentified

 

[jedi]

So he had ebola n was cured or he never had

 

[ArcadiaGP]

So he had ebola n was cured or he never had

Cured.

WH doing politics, because that's all it does:

Obama ?Seething? Over NYT Leak That Shows WH Worried Ebola Will Hurt Them In Midterms | Washington Free Beacon

 

[88GT]

JUST IN: Ebola patient at Emory hospital released, "determined to be free of virus." The patient is unidentified

September 9? Is that right? I didn't think the originating Ebola victim (Duncan from Liberia) was even in the States until late September. He didn't go to the hospital until the 23 or 24 September.


EDIT: Oh, my bad. I was thinking of the Texas hospital.

 

[T.Lex]

While we wait for WHO update, Liberia thinks they may be on the down-side of the curve.
allAfrica.com: Liberia: Less Than 400 Ebola Cases Nationwide As Ebola Declines, Says Dorbor Jallah

With particular reference to the six hardest hit counties of Montserrado, Bomi, Bong, Lofa, Nimba and Margibi, Jallah said, "Lofa County, particularly Foya and Barkedu, have registered less than ten persons in treatment in the last couple of weeks."
At the peak of its infection, Jallah said, nearly eighty people were admitted at the ETU in Foya, with most of the cases coming from Quarduboni.
"The infection reduced tremendously when the communities in Lofa and citizens from areas in Monrovia, including religious leaders, got involved," Jallah disclosed. "They implemented the measures issued by government and that has brought relief," he said.

Jallah said, "Currently, Foya has reported no new cases and the 120 bed ETU is empty."
While these reports show a success story, the World Health Organization, (WHO) has indicated that there could be 10,000 infections weekly in the coming weeks in Liberia. But with the dry season now in Liberia, as mentioned earlier, nature could work to support the fight against Ebola, according to health officials.

 

[smokingman]

From 10/20/2014
Ebola Doctors at Breaking Point: 'This Constant Feeling That the Boat's Sinking' - Bloomberg

“I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Lucey, a physician and professor from Georgetown University who is halfway through a five-week tour in Liberia with Medecins Sans Frontieres, the medical charity known in English as Doctors Without Borders. “The epidemic is still getting worse,” he said by phone between shifts.
MSF has been the first -- and often only -- line of defense against Ebola in West Africa. The group raised the alarm on March 31, months ahead of the World Health Organization. Now, after treating almost a third of the roughly 9,000 confirmed Ebola cases in Africa -- and faced with a WHO warning of perhaps 10,000 new infections a week by December -- MSF is reaching its limits.
Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images A doctor outside the JFK Ebola treatment center speaks to journalists on Oct. 13, 2014... Read More

“They are at the breaking point,” said Vinh-Kim Nguyen, a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal who has volunteered for a West African tour with MSF in a few weeks. MSF has already seen 21 workers infected and 12 people die, and “there’s a sense that there’s a major wave of infections that’s about to wash everything away,”

 

[T.Lex]

Compiled numbers from country-specific briefings as of October 17 - 9,693 cases, 4,811 deaths. Somewhat inconsistent with the article I posted upthread, jump of ~350 in Liberia from Oct. 14.

The growth rate appears to be slowing. Instead of a 2x jump in 30 days, it is "only" about a 1.6x jump from Sept. 17. It is ~2x from Sept. 10. (4,848).

So far, October daily growth rate has ranged from 1.2% to 2.7%. Daily growth rate in September ranged from 1.7 to 3.3 Highest spike in daily growth was approximately Aug. 18 - 4.7%.

 

[smokingman]

This reminds me of the suspected case at the Pentagon that was reported as not Ebola in less than 2 hours,even though a full hazmat response with tents covered the parking lot where the woman vomited.

WHO is alarmed by media reports of suspected Ebola cases imported into new countries that are said, by government officials or ministries of health, to be discarded as “negative” within hours after the suspected case enters the country.
Such rapid determination of infection status is impossible, casting grave doubts on some of the official information that is being communicated to the public and the media.
WHO | Are the Ebola outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal over?

 

[dusty88]

Dog under Ebola watch gets high-level caretakers - VIN

Excerpts:

Bentley, the spaniel belonging to Ebola patient Nina Pham, is living in a former military commander’s house on an inactive naval air field in Dallas, tended two to three times a day by a team of veterinarians from Texas A&M University, including an expert in infectious diseases with experience in Ebola research.......


Only one scientific study has focused on Ebola in dogs. In that study, published in the Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases in 2005, African and French researchers observed that during an outbreak in Gabon in 2001 and 2002, some dogs fed on the carcasses of infected animals. Analyzing dogs from the affected area, the researchers found antibodies in the blood of about 25 percent of the animals, but not the virus itself.
.....

There is no evidence that dogs and cats are capable of transmitting Ebola virus. At the same time, there’s no definitive evidence that they can’t. For that reason, “While it’s very unlikely they are a realistic source of infection, prudence dictates that we consider it possible until we know that it isn’t,” said Dr. J. Scott Weese, a member of the group developing the guidelines. Weese is chief of infection control at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College and Canada Research Chair in zoonotic diseases.


....


...


One aspect to consider, Weese said, is how to prevent the need for a pet’s quarantine at all. Pet owners who are being monitored but aren’t sick might consider having someone else care for their pets, if possible, until their own quarantine is over, he suggested. That way, were an owner to become ill, the pet won’t have been exposed and won’t need to be confined.

 

[longbow]

I thought I'd share some information from my source and what it means. It appears there are more than few employees at that hospital that are living in the building until they pass the quarantine time for the disease. They did not want to take it home. The rumor mill was that 20 to 30 secret infections were in the hospital, but in reality they were people that did not want to risk infecting their families.

 

[roisigns]