outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

dr. brantly speaking now, was just discharged from emory

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/tests-under-way-for-ebola-following-donegal-death-1.1904073

Shit got real. school with this guys sister

Pharmeceutical industry person tries to defend the industry re charges they have not done enough re ebola because it is in poor countries

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2014/08/18/washington-post-off-base-in-critiquing-pharma-efforts-in-ebola/

the incentives for the pharmaceutical industry are what they are, unfortunately

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/ebolanomics

Irish guy didn't have Ebola. Was a false alarm.

South Africa and Senegal trying to bar some folks from countries at issue from entry

First US case in Dallas. Take that NYC & LA! We're number one!

Yikes!

I wonder how many crisis of this kind will happen before countries take the WHO seriously and decide to invest in a proper international health structure to prevent this kind of outbreak. Freaking hate to see institutions like the FMI giving up to 130 millions $ but then pressure politicians in the region to go for austerity, it's a waste of money for everyone.

ebola USED to be at the top of my list of irrational fears. presbyterian hospital is about 5 miles north of where i'm sitting right now.

welp

#patientzero

The Frontline piece on this a week or so ago was eye-opening. Hospitals that are barely more than cordoned off fields, mass graves, disinfecting the back of trucks (where patients ride, near death) by tossing in buckets of bleach, doctors and other aid workers more or less forced to visit villages free of any special suits for fear of scaring the shit out of everyone, children orphaned and alone overnight. Just heartbreaking. It's both a matter of doctors struggling to keep up with a rapidly and easily spreading illness and a population almost impossible to isolate. Bodies being dumped and left by the side of the road, families taking members out of quarantine, superstitious treatments co-mingling with modern medicine ...

Here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ebola-outbreak/

The saddest bit may be at the end, where grave diggers, one by one, list all their families members who have succumbed.

I'm just a few miles further away, art. Drive by it almost every day as I head up to Richardson.

Your risk of dying from ebola (total confirmed 2014 ebola deaths: a few thousand worldwide) is still lower than your risk of dying due to complications related to seasonal influenza (on average, 5800-7500 a year in the US). Get a flu shot. Don't get too preoccupied by ebola.

wanna c&p that on every damn facebook post I see for the next week

be my guest

i have total confidence in the medical system to properly handle any other arising cases. that said, i am still illogically terrified

Sick Burn I saw on FB:

Don't worry about Ebola spreading in Dallas. The Cowboys have shown us that people in Dallas can't catch anything.

Ebola spreads by physical contact with bodily secretions and fluids. That makes it easier to contain in a place like the USA or Europe, where there are lots of medical facilities and a patient's recent contacts can be quickly discovered and tracked down.

Even so, if ebola strongly establishes itself in Africa, with a reservoir of infected people who keep the virus continuously viable and circulating, then not only will massive numbers of africans die, but ebola will keep leaping to other parts of the world, including the USA and Europe. It can be compared to sparks thrown out from a wildfire, which land on tinder and start other fires away from the main fire. You can put out many of these small satellite fires, but it is hard to extinguish all of them, and the more new places that start burning the harder the firestorm is to keep contained.

That's a good analogy. I really wish international focus between the Ebola outbreak and ISIL was better divided.

run for the hills imo

*not the hills of West Africa, tho*

http://i.imgur.com/LHm72Rq.png

ugh goddamned parody accounts :(

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/africa/ebola-spreading-in-west-africa.html

this is a very difficult article to read

apparently the problem is not money but organization and time

Oh jeez:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/02/texas-ebola_n_5919522.html

at what point is it ok for me to start panicking?

supposed to go to the state fair this weekend and have resolved not to touch any surfaces and to bathe myself in hand sanitizer after it is all over.

the panic is hilarious. Especially from folks who drive on the streets of Dallas. You should be much more afraid of north Texas drivers than ebola.

until there is an effective vaccine I consider ebola as a threat, but in the USA it is a long term threat, which gives the researchers plenty of time to develop that vaccine.

truly despicable imo for rand paul, a physician, to be saying things like this to score political points

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-rand-paul-sounds-ebola-alarm/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/africa/ebola-spreading-in-west-africa.html

this is a very difficult article to read

apparently the problem is not money but organization and time

― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, October 1, 2014 7:27 PM (Yesterday

disorganization and lack of preparedness (not to mention distrust of medical authorities, belief in traditional healing, etc) are consequences of poverty, though. this was from a few weeks ago but i think it's a good primer

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1409494

First, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia are resource-poor countries already coping with major health challenges, such as malaria and other endemic diseases, some of which may be confused with EVD. Next, their borders are porous, and movement between countries is constant. Health care infrastructure is inadequate, and health workers and essential supplies including personal protective equipment are scarce. Traditional practices, such as bathing of corpses before burial, have facilitated transmission. The epidemic has spread to cities, which complicates tracing of contacts. Finally, decades of conflict have left the populations distrustful of governing officials and authority figures such as health professionals. Add to these problems a rapidly spreading virus with a high mortality rate, and the scope of the challenge becomes clear

rand paul, a physician

He's an ophthalmologist without board certification so this is something of a stretch, but yeah obv his statements are fear mongering nonsense.

does anyone know what's the hard libertarian faithful take on institutions like the cdc?

viruses are information that wants to be free?

It seems to be under control in Nigeria! Good news!

Slate: Spread of Ebola Appears to Have Been Stopped in Nigeria

Meanwhile, local health workers paid 18,500 face-to-face visits to repeatedly take the temperatures of nearly 900 people who had contact with them. The last confirmed case was detected on Aug. 31, and virtually all contacts have passed the 21-day incubation period without falling ill.

wow, don't think i knew about paul's board certification controversy before this, that's pretty messed up. at any rate tho he's still a physician and should know better

context:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=202402

how about this madness

http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/09/04/illegal-immigrant-related-pandemic-diseases-are-appearing-in-the-us/

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/09/the_invasion_of_enterovirus_evd68.html

meanwhile in dallas officials seem to be handling things well

from cnn.com

Cleanup delayed
As concerns grow over how many people he may have exposed to the deadly virus, a plan to sanitize the apartment was delayed late Thursday.
Brad Smith of the Cleaning Guys, the company hired to sanitize the apartment, said they do not have the proper permits to transport hazardous waste on Texas highways.
Smith said authorities sent them away late Thursday before they entered the apartment and told them to come back with proper permits. It's unclear how long that will take.
"The permit is being processed through DOT (Department of Transportation) because it is a special permit," Smith said.
"This is a unique situation. Once awarded our hazmat teams will be allowed back inside to do their jobs."

CNN: Dr. Irwin Redlener, a professor at Columbia University's school of public health, called the handling of the quarantine "hair raising."

<3 cnn.com

EBOLA IN DC & MARYLAND

UNNECESSARY IRONIC ALL-CAPS HAVE INFECTED ILX

Let me know when DC ebola fatalities exceeds http://mpdc.dc.gov/page/traffic-fatalities

RIP Thomas Eric Duncan

My office sent out an Ebola advisory note to everyone today advising that we don't travel to countries with outbreaks. Thanks for the tip guys! I guess I should reconsider that vacation to Liberia.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00O4ADBA8

mmhmm

I mean, ebola is transmitted through fluid contact, so it might, or it might just make you a prepper

How long can ebola just hang out on surfaces and remain contagious?

Increasingly concerned about the H5N1 bird flu that's making the rounds...one friend of mine, who granted is a huge hypochondriac, seems to think it's the next pandemic and we'll all be dead next year.

We should all be so lucky.

speak for yourself.

your friend is right that, of all the viruses currently identified and tracked, H5N1 avian flu is the virus most likely to cause another human pandemic. but right now it hasn't made the leap to enough humans or with enough virulence to require all of us to write our wills. it is a major concern and placing HHS under RFK Jr means public health officials have an enemy rather than an ally in the federal agency that would be responding to a bird flu outbreak. that's very worrisome.

I mean, the chances are still low (though far from negligible) of this specific thing being the next big pandemic, but given we seem to have learned fuck-all from COVID that's hardly much of a reassurance.

less than fuck-all

the first scene in the movie: blankly staring at a TV headline and not comprehending just how much everything is about to change

Unknown disease kills 143 people in south-west DRC, local authorities say

Infected people described as having flu-like symptoms including high fever and severe headaches

An unknown disease killed 143 people in a south-west province of Democratic Republic of the Congo in November, local authorities told Reuters.

Infected people had flu-like symptoms including high fever and severe headaches, Remy Saki, the deputy governor of Kwango province, and Apollinaire Yumba, the provincial minister of health, said on Monday.

concerning, particularly for the people in that area, but worth nothing we are working with an absolute dearth of info at the moment other than the above, so...waiting until one of the resources I read picks it up. one of the symptoms is also anemia, which would suggest something more closer to dengue or malaria than flu (not that these are, like, not scary in themselves)

https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinrivers/p/understanding-mysterious-outbreaks

Seems the DRC thing is just really nasty malaria

A previously unknown disease making the rounds in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a severe form of malaria, the country’s health ministry has announced.

“The mystery has finally been solved. It’s a case of severe malaria in the form of a respiratory illness,” the Ministry of Public Health said in a statement, adding that malnutrition in the area had weakened the local population, leaving them more vulnerable to disease...

Had a long day of meetings and finally logged in to Bluesky and had to check the calendar quick to make sure it wasn’t actually March 3, 2020 somehow.

I don’t wanna dismiss the seriousness of the risks of bird flu or anything but, wow, it’s like suddenly a flip was switched today and everyone is doomposting as if we’re already in a pandemic.

Narrator: We were not in a pandemic.

i had no idea what your first paragraph was about until I read the second paragraph. you might want to unfollow some people.

Yeah, I unfollowed the two worst offenders in sharing the doom-y stuff, but it was more that it just seemed to come out of nowhere to pop up yesterday.

My wife mentioned the same thing about Facebook in the last 24 hours, just filled with doom-y posts about the bird flu and lockdowns. I'm guessing the death of the person in Louisiana sparked a lot of it, but the sudden volume of noise about it surprised me. Out of (morbid) curiosity, I scrolled through some of the replies to legit news stories about the Louisiana case and it's eerie how similarly worded the doom-posting is. Just one of those times where I don't doubt the bad actor troll farms cranking messaging out through fake accounts.

And we're developing a bird flu vax.

Your Local Epidemiologist, which I probably learned about from this thread during the pandemic, is unsurprisingly very good on H5N1

Yeah, that's always a good read.

Just to be clear, I'm not sharing in the panic or concerned, I was just struck to suddenly see a noticeable uptick in the doom-y ("stock up on toilet paper", "another Trump presidency, another pandemic!") posts.

I have a pretty modest bluesky presence, but I've started to unfollow posters who have, as I understand the phrase, main character syndrome.

seth abramson on their describing himself as a biographer of Elon musk

I saw that and was all "Oh ARE you."

I've never heard the phrase "main character syndrome" until listening to a podcast this morning (Chris Fleming on Mike Birbiglia) and it's got me thinking lots of thoughts.

But in NYC we're currently battling a norovirus more than bird flew. Lots of kids in school throwing up. Neighbors quarantining kids. etc.

> And we're developing a bird flu vax.

we're going one better in the uk (news from 2 days ago)

https://metro.co.uk/2025/01/07/black-death-vaccine-developed-fears-plague-reemerge-22308503/

They have to make the injectors for that one wear Plague Doc outfits.

Staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been ordered to immediately stop engaging with the World Health Organization, a move that affects critical work on influenza surveillance and disease outbreaks across the globe, according to emails sent to staff Monday that were reviewed by The Washington Post.

President Donald Trump ordered a U.S. exit from the global health body last Monday, citing what he described as a mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and other international health crises. This is Trump’s second attempt at withdrawing the United States from the WHO.

According to an email sent from CDC’s deputy director for global health to staff Monday morning, “effective immediately all CDC staff engaging with WHO through technical working groups, coordinating centers, advisory boards, cooperative agreements or other means — in person or virtual — must cease their activity and await further guidance.”

The memo continued: “Please ensure your impacted staff receive this message. CDC detailees to WHO have been instructed to pause engaging in any work on behalf of WHO as part of their respective details, and to no longer go to WHO offices until further notice.”

“This goes beyond what they tried to do in 2020,” said one federal health official who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “Last time, they didn’t forbid us to engage or even talk. That’s what’s unusual in this circumstance now.”

I'm sure y'all will love to hear this, but we know someone with a child that I believe works as a zoo vet, or something like that to do with non-pet animals, and she said the bird flu is going to be baaaaaaaad ...

It for sure will be if motherfuckers won't wear a mask.

I mean, it’s a dice roll. If it mutates to person-to-person, we are in deep shit

It took 3 months but the virus has now hit domestic Japan hens and eggs are now disappearing from shelves due to the virus.

https://i.imgur.com/dYijjfJ.jpeg

Freshly vaxed w/no trouble at Walgreens. The doctor was genuinely surprised I wanted it without being obligated to by a job. In Spanish he says, "We're seeing a lot of people hating vaccines these days."

Sucks to be them. (Which sounds flippant but my patience has long since run out with these people.)

I'm on a couple of college Facebook pages, and I now see parents that are posting vax recommendations and other stuff first just outright saying if don't like or want vaccines, fine, that's your choice, keep it to yourself, don't post, this is not for you, we don't want to hear from you, move on.