Where Are My Keys?

Still nothing to worry about..

“I would say that in the 30 years I’ve been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS,”

Dr. Tom Friedman, Director of the CDC

The lady in Spain that has Ebola (the first known case of the disease being transmitted outside of West Africa) had a dog that was put down.  Let's assume the dog had Ebola as well, and sniffed/licked/swapped saliva with another dog (or dogs) on the daily walk, and then those dogs became infected, carrying the virus back into their master's homes.

Is that such a leap to consider?

Good thing we don't have to worry about Ebola being transmitted outside West Africa..

This article clearly came from The Onion:

 In what is the first reported incident of Ebola transmission outside Africa, a Spanish nurse who treated a missionary for the disease at a Madrid hospital tested positive for the disease, Spain's health minister said Monday.

The female nurse was part of the medical team that treated a 69-year-old Spanish priest who died in a hospital last month after being flown back from Sierra Leone, where he was posted, Health Minister Ana Mato said.

The woman went to the Alcorcon hospital in the Madrid suburbs with a fever and was placed in isolation. Mato said the infection was confirmed by two tests and that the nurse was admitted to a hospital on Sunday.

The woman's only symptom was a fever, Antonio Alemany, Madrid director of primary health care, told a news conference. Alemany said authorities are drawing up a list of people the nurse had contact with.

If only we had a President that tried to put quarantine procedures in place before the Ebola virus made it to the United States..

Wait, we did have a Preisdent that did try to put those in place, only to have those plans shelved by the next President:

In 2010, the Obama administration withdrew updated quarantine regulations drafted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and proposed by the Bush administration. The new rules would have required air passengers to submit more information to airlines and strengthened the government’s authority to detain travelers suspected of carrying disease.

In proposing updated regulations, the CDC called them “critical to protecting Americans from dangerous diseases spread by travelers.” The CDC also said:

It’s important to public health to move forward with the regulations. We need to update our quarantine regulations, and this final rule is an important step.”

Thus, the wisdom of updating quarantine regulations was apparent years ago. Now that the Ebola virus has entered the U.S. via international travel, it may even be apparent to Team Obama.

The Bush era CDC regulations faced fierce resistance from the “civil liberties” lobby and the travel industry. However, the pretext for killing them was that more time was needed to come up with suitable rules. Espousing the party line, a CDC spokesperson said:

Upon further discussion and review across the government, it has become clear that further revision and reconsideration is necessary to update the regulations and make them more in line with ongoing government preparedness and public health planning and strategies.

Four years later, the quarantine rules have not been updated. Maybe now they will be.

Liberals like to say that President Bush and Republicans generally are “science deniers.” But in this instance, Bush followed the path recommended by the Centers for Disease Control — no science deniers, they. It was Obama who elevated ideology over science thereby (to borrow the CDC’s words) denying Americans “critical” protection against “dangerous diseases spread by travelers.”

POTUS is sure lucky this guy isn't in the Senate anymore..

This guy was really pissed about how unprepared the USA was to deal with "bird flu", and took the Bush Administration to task for it:

The failure to prepare for emergencies can have devastating consequences. We learned that lesson the hard way after Hurricane Katrina. This nation must not be caught off-guard when faced with the prospect of an avian flu pandemic. The consequences are too high.

The flyways for migratory birds are well-established. We know that avian flu will likely hit the United States in a matter of time. With the regular flu season coming up shortly, conditions will be favorable for reassortment of the avian flu virus with the annual flu virus. Such reassortment could lead to a mutated virus that could be transmitted efficiently between humans, which is the last condition needed for pandemic flu.

The question is will we be ready when that happens? Let’s make sure that answer is yes. I urge my colleagues in the Senate and the House to push this Administration to take the action needed to prevent a catastrophe that we have not seen during our lifetimes.”

The current Ebola outbreak is significantly worse than H5N1 was.  Where is that young Senator now, to hold this Administration's feet to the fire?

So much for the "hope and pray" solution..

First case of confirmed Ebola on US soil, in Dallas.  Seems someone was traveling commercially from West Africa to Texas, and brought the virus to the United States.

I remember not too long ago, someone telling me how I was overreacting, and that the chances of being exposed to the virus was next to nothing.  I think I was also accused of "rooting for Ebola".

How many people are now looking back to when they passed through the DFW airport, and are wondering if they came in contact with this "unnamed person"?

I wonder if folks around the Country are now asking how prepared their local hospitals are to deal with an Ebola-stricken patient?

They're probably just over-reacting, right?  It's not like this is the worst outbreak ever, or anything.

Makes you wonder if there have been other infected passengers that have landed in the US or other previously unaffected Countries, doesn't it?

I wonder if the Feds have reached out to everyone that was on the Dallas patient's flight, and had them tested yet.  If not, what are they waiting for?

 

Nothing to be worried about, everything is fine..

I'm sure I'm still overreacting to the widespread Ebola epidemic, right? 

The epidemic has now grown into the largest Ebola outbreak in history, with some 6,000 people currently sick with the virus across Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal.

The virus has caused some 2,800 deaths, according to WHO, and health services and charities in the most affected countries are struggling to cope.

Scientists tracking the disease are increasingly convinced that the current epidemic has been growing exponentially for at least 16 weeks, with the number of new cases doubling every 20-30 days.

The President seems to be a worrier as well, suggesting the death toll from Ebola could top 1 million:

"It is a marathon, but you have to run it like a sprint," Obama said. "How quickly we can contain it is within our control. If we move fast, even imperfectly, that could mean the difference between 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 deaths versus hundreds of thousands or even a million deaths."

"I want us to be clear. We are not moving fast enough. We are not doing enough. Right now everybody has the best of intentions, but people are not putting in the kinds of resources that are necessary to put a stopto this epidemic. There's still a significant gap between where we are and where we need to be. We know from experience that the response to an outbreak of this magnitude has to be fast and it has to be sustained. It is a marathon, but you have to run it like a sprint. And that's only possible if everybody chips in. If every nation and every organization takes this seriously. Everybody here has to do more. International organizations have to move faster and cut through red tape and mobilize partners on the ground as only they can. More nations need to contribute critical assets and capabilities, whether air transport, medical equipment, or treatment."

Nope, nothing to worry about..

POTUS follows my lead, and is concerned about the worst Ebola outbreak in history:

U.S. lawmakers called for a government-funded "war" to contain West Africa's deadly Ebola epidemic before it threatens more countries, building on an American pledge to send 3,000 military engineers and medical personnel to combat the virus.

"Here's the hard truth. In West Africa, Ebola is now an epidemic, the likes" of which have not been seen before, President Barack Obama said during a meeting with top U.S. public health officials.

"It's spiralling out of control, it's getting worse," he said at the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he flew to outline the plan to deploy 3,000 troops to West Africa.

The deployment represented a ramping-up in the Obama administration's response to the worst Ebola outbreak on record. It comes after repeated calls for governments to step in and help West African countries whose healthcare systems have been overwhelmed by the epidemic.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers said further measures should be considered in the coming weeks.

"We need to declare a war on Ebola," Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, said during a congressional hearing on the U.S. response to the outbreak.

Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, said the country should view the threat of Ebola "as seriously as we take ISIS," referring to the Islamic State militant group in Syria and Iraq.

Acknowledging that the epidemic represented a national security crisis, U.S. administration officials said the focus of the military deployment would be on Liberia, where the threat of chaos is greatest. The disease has also hit hard in Sierra Leone and Guinea, and has turned up in Nigeria and Senegal.

Under the plan, engineers, medical personnel and other service members would build 17 treatment centres with 100 beds each, train thousands of healthcare workers and establish a military control centre for coordinating the relief effort, U.S. officials told reporters.

The CDC is catching up to WAMK..

The CDC has issued guidelines to hospitals, on how to prepare for Ebola:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warning hospitals and doctors that “now is the time to prepare,” has issued a six-page Ebola “checklist” to help healthcare workers quickly determine if patients are infected.

While the CDC does not believe that there are new cases of Ebola in the United States, the assumption in the checklist is that it is only a matter of time before the virus hits home.

For example, one part reads: “Encourage healthcare personnel to use a ‘buddy system’ when caring for patients.” Another recommends a process to report cases to top officials:

Plan for regular situational briefs for decision-makers, including:

-- Suspected and confirmed EVD patients who have been identified and reported to public health authorities.

-- Isolation, quarantine and exposure reports.

-- Supplies and logistical challenges.

-- Personnel status, and policy decisions on contingency plans and staffing.

The checklist has been distributed to major hospitals and even little ones, including an urgent center in Leesburg, Va.

“Every hospital should ensure that it can detect a patient with Ebola, protect healthcare workers so they can safely care for the patient, and respond in a coordinated fashion,” warns the CDC.

It's about time.

I guess the NYTimes is "rooting for Ebola" now?

"...we are totally in uncharted waters.."

There have been more than 4,300 cases and 2,300 deaths over the past six months. Last week, the World Health Organization warned that, by early October, there may be thousands of new cases per week in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria. What is not getting said publicly, despite briefings and discussions in the inner circles of the world’s public health agencies, is that we are in totally uncharted waters and that Mother Nature is the only force in charge of the crisis at this time.

There are two possible future chapters to this story that should keep us up at night.

The first possibility is that the Ebola virus spreads from West Africa to megacities in other regions of the developing world. This outbreak is very different from the 19 that have occurred in Africa over the past 40 years. It is much easier to control Ebola infections in isolated villages. But there has been a 300 percent increase in Africa’s population over the last four decades, much of it in large city slums. What happens when an infected person yet to become ill travels by plane to Lagos, Nairobi, Kinshasa or Mogadishu — or even Karachi, Jakarta, Mexico City or Dhaka?

The second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air. You can now get Ebola only through direct contact with bodily fluids. But viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years. Each new infection represents trillions of throws of the genetic dice.

If certain mutations occurred, it would mean that just breathing would put one at risk of contracting Ebola. Infections could spread quickly to every part of the globe, as the H1N1 influenza virus did in 2009, after its birth in Mexico.

"Hope for the best", right?

 

Still "nothing to be worried about" in regards to Ebola?

Smart guys at Oxford predict an additional 15 Countries are at risk:

Until this year's epidemic, Ebola did not exist in West Africa. Now with more than 1,800 people dead from the virus, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, scientists still don't fully understand how Ebola arrived from Central Africa, where outbreaks of this strain of the virus had occurred in the past.

A new model by Oxford University, that is published in the journal eLife, takes a look at the most likely explanation -- that Ebola's animal reservoir, fruit bats, could spread the disease in the animal kingdom and to humans through the dense forest that spans 22 countries.

...

According to the Oxford model, in addition to the seven countries who have reported Ebola outbreaks in this epidemic and in past outbreaks since the disease was identified 1976, 15 other countries are at risk. There are five known strains of Ebola, and the one currently causing the West African outbreak, Zaire, is the most virulent. The other strains, Sudan, Taï Forest and Bundibugyo, have caused contained outbreaks in Ivory Coast, Sudan, and Uganda in the past. And the Reston species has not caused any known outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization.

According to the Oxford prediction, these countries are at risk of animal-to-human transmission of Ebola by virtue of their geography: Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Togo, United Republic of Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, Madagascar and Malawi.

"Our map shows the likely ‘reservoir’ of Ebola virus in animal populations, and this is larger than has been previously appreciated," said the study's author Nick Golding, a researcher at Oxford University’s Department of Zoology. "This does not mean that transmission to humans is inevitable in these areas; only that all the environmental and epidemiological conditions suitable for an outbreak occur there.’"

In related news, Ebola is spreading "exponentially" across Liberia:

The Ebola virus is spreading exponentially across Liberia as patients fill taxis in a fruitless search for medical care, the World Health Organization said Monday.

In Sierra Leone, a doctor working for WHO tested positive and was preparing to be evacuated from the country. Meanwhile, the newest U.S. patient, a doctor infected in Liberia, was feeling a little better and could even eat a little, doctors treating him in Nebraska said.

The various reports illustrated in the clearest possible way the disparities driving the epidemic in West Africa, where there’s almost no medical system structure. The three patients evacuated to the United States have all begun to recover quickly once they get good supportive care, which includes around-the-clock nursing care and good nutrition.

“In Monrovia, taxis filled with entire families, of whom some members are thought to be infected with the Ebola virus, crisscross the city, searching for a treatment bed. There are none. As WHO staff in Liberia confirm, no free beds for Ebola treatment exist anywhere in the country.”

For example, in Montserrado county, 1,000 beds are urgently needed but only 240 beds are available. WHO has said more than 3,600 people have been infected with Ebola in this West African epidemic, and 2,000 have died, but the organization predicts as many as 20,000 will be sickened before it’s over. Half of those infected have been dying.

“According to a WHO staff member who has been in Liberia for the past several weeks, motorbike-taxis and regular taxis are a hot source of potential Ebola virus transmission, as these vehicles are not disinfected at all, much less before new passengers are taken on board,” WHO said.

“When patients are turned away at Ebola treatment centers, they have no choice but to return to their communities and homes, where they inevitably infect others, perpetuating constantly higher flare-ups in the number of cases.”