Plagues
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Red Flag

Sierra Leone considering nationwide quarantine over Ebola outbreak

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© AFP PHOTO | ISSOUF SANOGO A man walks past a poster raising awareness on the Ebola virus reading "the risk Ebola is still there. Let us apply the protective measures together", on September 2, 2014 in Abidjian, Cote d'Ivoire.
An aide to Sierra Leone's President has said the president was "seriously" contemplating a nationwide shutdown to contain spread of Ebola.

For weeks now there has been speculation about a planned 21-day nationwide quarantine to prevent sick people from moving around, a situation that has seen the virus spread uncontrollably.

The government had denied that it intended to take such drastic measures to contain the virus but the aide Ben Kargbo, a insider in the government, said Wednesday that President Ernest Bai Koroma was now considering it.

"The decision has not been taken yet, but to stop people from running around, this is very important," he said in an interview.

"If we move to that direction let no one blame the President because he is trying to save lives," he added.

Comment: It's looking more and more likely that Western leaders are underestimating the danger of the Ebola outbreak in Africa. If they do nothing until the outbreak reaches American shores, it will be too late.


Attention

Ebola outbreak 'unstoppable' says doctor recently returned from West Africa

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© REUTERS/Tommy Trenchard
A doctor who just returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa predicts the current Ebola outbreak will go on for more than a year, and will continue to spread unless a vaccine or other drugs that prevent or treat the disease are developed.

Dr. Daniel Lucey, an expert on viral outbreaks and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Medical Center, recently spent three weeks in Sierra Leone, one of the countries affected by the Ebola outbreak. While there, Lucey evaluated and treated Ebola patients, and trained other doctors and nurses on how to use protective equipment.

The current Ebola outbreak, which is mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, has so far killed at least 1,552 of the more than 3,000 people infected, making it the largest and deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. It is also the first outbreak to spread from rural areas to cities. Strategies that have worked in the past to stop Ebola outbreaks in rural areas may not, by themselves, be enough to halt this outbreak, Lucey said.

"I don't believe that our traditional methods of being able to control and stop outbreaks in rural areas ... is going to be effective in most of the cities," Lucey said yesterday (Sept. 3) in a discussion held at Georgetown University Law Center that was streamed online. While the World Health Organization has released a plan to stop Ebola transmission within six to nine months, "I think that this outbreak is going to go on even longer than a year," Lucey said.

Health

U.S. response to Ebola outbreak is feeble and unorganized

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© Kjell Gunnar Beraas, MSF, File, Associated Press
Sometimes the artifice of writing - metaphors, historical comparisons, the just-so quote - fails. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa demands directness: We are about to witness a human catastrophe that could destroy large portions of a continent and pose a global threat. And the response of the world, including the United States, is feeble, irresponsible and disrespectful of nature's lethal perils.

American health officials and nonprofit groups are bringing back the same report from the region. In Liberia, the rate of new infections has probably already moved from a linear to an exponential curve. The same may be true within the next week or so for Sierra Leone and Guinea. The normal countermeasures for an infectious disease - isolation, case investigation, contact tracing - are increasingly irrelevant given the rate of increase. Local health care infrastructure, which barely existed in the first place, is overwhelmed. People have lost faith in the large clinics, where 50 percent to 60 percent of patients who enter do not leave alive. And those in need of emergency care for other conditions - such as heart attacks or complicated births - are often frightened of clinics and hospitals, and are dying without treatment.

The international response is inadequate and disorganized. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations provide "road maps." But, according to one infectious disease expert, "there is no one to implement command, control and communications. No one." Multiple, uncoordinated organizations are attempting to confront a disease that is out of control. "They are quibbling over 25 to 30 bed units," the expert vents. Meanwhile, WHO has revised its prediction of new Ebola infections upward to 20,000 by year-end. Other models indicate more like 100,000.

Once the growth of an outbreak becomes exponential, the tools normally at the disposal of health officials have limited value. It may require military airlifts just to deliver sufficient rubber gloves, aprons, soap and buckets to highly affected areas. Doctors Without Borders is calling for the deployment of civilian and military medical teams to provide triage centers, field hospitals with isolation wards, mobile diagnostic labs and systems for the management of corpses.

Comment: Is the lack of reaction by the U.S. government intentional? It's certainly possible that the psychopaths in power don't have a reason to be worried about Ebola spreading in Africa. It's pretty far away, after all. But they've got a tiger by the tail right now, and it's about to get angry.


Attention

Ebola virus accelerating: Experts have "never seen anything like it"

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© Akintunde Akinleye / ReutersAn aerial view of the oil hub city Port Harcourt in Nigeria's Delta region May 16, 2012.
Three cases of Ebola have been identified in the southern Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, the World Health Organization (WHO) says, confirming that the disease has spread outside the capital Lagos, where five people have died.

Officials in Port Harcourt - a teeming city of 1.4 million in the Niger delta - are now monitoring over 200 people, 60 of whom are considered at high risk of having contracted the disease. It is a worrying expansion of an epidemic that has now killed 1,900 in West Africa and defied the attempts of under-staffed and under-funded aid teams to halt it.

WHO officials warn that the virus is not just expanding geographically but also accelerating. Ebola has now sickened upwards of 3,500 people and in the past week alone almost 400 people have died of the virus, said Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the WHO at a press conference in Washington D.C. on Wednesday.

Comment: Don't wait for WHO to help you! Do it yourself and check out this life-saving information:


Ambulance

Ebola-infected patient escapes quarantine, enters crowded local market in Liberia

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© Reuters/Reuters TVHealth workers surround an Ebola patient who escaped from quarantine from Monrovia's Elwa hospital, in the centre of Paynesville in this still image taken from a September 1, 2014 video.
A video has emerged that an Ebola-infected patient has escaped a quarantine zone in Liberian hospital and went to a local crowded market in search of food. He was then pursued by medical staff and returned to hospital.

The man left Elwa hospital facility in Liberia's capital, Monrovia, which is full of Ebola patients. Wearing a tag which indicated that he had tested positive with Ebola, he arrived at a local crowded market in the Paynesville neighborhood, the busiest part of the city.

The crowd is fleeing in fear and shouting angrily at a man wearing red clothes, as shown in the video released on YouTube. When medical staff arrived, the patient began to run and then took a stick and tried to keep them at bay. However, the doctors managed to take him to the ambulance.

A local resident told the media that it is the fifth case in which a patient has escaped the quarantine zone.


Comment: How are they getting out?


"We told the Liberian government from the beginning that we do not want an Ebola camp here. Today makes it the fifth Ebola patient coming outside vomiting," a man who watched the scene, told Reuters.

Comment: 25 Facts about the Ebola outbreak that you should know


Red Flag

Ebola outbreak "spiraling out of control" sez CDC Director

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© Alex Wong/Getty ImagesDirector of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tom Frieden testifies during a hearing before the Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Aug. 7, 2014 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
The director for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention says that the Ebola outbreak is going to get worse.

Speaking to "CBS This Morning" following his trip to the West African countries dealing with the outbreak, Dr. Tom Frieden explained that they have to act now to try to get Ebola under control.

"It is the world's first Ebola epidemic and it is spiraling out of control. It's bad now and it's going to get worse in the very near future," Frieden told CBS News. "There is still a window of opportunity to tamp it down, but that window is closing. We really have to act now."

Frieden, who visited Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, will tell Washington tomorrow that the Ebola outbreak is "spiraling upward." The CDC director explained that these countries still need help to deal with the deadly outbreak.

"We need to support countries with resources, with technical experts and with cooperation. Too many places are sealing off these countries," Frieden told CBS News. "If we do that, paradoxically, it's going to reduce safety everywhere else. Whether we like it or not, we're all connected and it's in our interest to help them tamp this down and control it."

Bell

Ebola is back and it's worse than ever! Is it because it's airborne?

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© European Commission DG ECHO/Flickr
You've seen Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers depicted on screens both large and small, but what health care workers are currently fighting in West Africa is worse than anything writers have dreamed up.

In sixth grade, I molded a human hand out of clay and then used acrylic paints to map the course of radiation poisoning. When a seventh-grade science teacher told us to create models of animal cells, mine had to be three-dimensional. I bought a fishbowl and some clear Jell-O. Over the course of an afternoon and night, I tiptoed into the kitchen every hour or two to pour a thin layer of gelatin onto my legume and pasta organelles.

By eighth grade, I had moved on to viruses, becoming fascinated with the least-understood and most terrifying group known to man: viral hemorrhagic fevers, the genre that claims yellow fever, dengue fever, and the Marburg and Ebola viruses. I learned that Ebola isn't a scary virus - it's the scary virus. Yellow fever may have wiped out more than 10 percent of Philadelphia's population in 1793, but that stunning death toll is nothing compared to the devastation that Marburg and Ebola wreak. They're our epidemiological boogeymen.

What Ebola does to the human body defies reason. It's like something out of a horror movie, not a textbook. A la Andromeda Strain, we know very little about where this virus comes from, just that the most likely "ground zero" is the fruit bat. These bats serve as natural reservoirs, occasionally infecting other animals - from primates to antelopes, porcupines, rodents, dogs, and pigs. Most strains that can infect humans are extremely contagious and exceedingly lethal, with fatality rates between 60 and 90 percent.


Comment: There's undisputable evidence that the poor fruit bat could not be the culprit. Black Death was found to be Ebola-like virus, and Black Death had a Cosmic origin. Perhaps that's why it's the worst virus we've seen?


Health

WHO confirms that Ebola in Congo is genetically distinct from the one spreading in West Africa

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© Sergey Uryadnikov/ShutterstockA sign warns visitors that an area is infected with Ebola
If there can be any good news - or at least not further disheartening news - coming out of the African continent regarding this year's Ebola outbreaks, we have one positive report this morning.

The World Health Organization has just confirmed that the newly-identified cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in the Democratic Republic of Congo is genetically unrelated to the strain currently circulating in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria.

A WHO collaborating research center in Franceville, Gabon, the Centre International de Recherches Médicales, had previously identified six Ebola positive samples sent to the laboratory. They report today that, "the virus in the Boende district is definitely not derived from the virus strain currently circulating in west Africa."

Comment: How could anyone qualify these news as good news is beyond us! Bottom line, deadly diseases with very similar symptoms are spreading uncontrolled in different directions.


Ambulance

Ebola virus rapidly mutating, making it harder to diagnose and treat

nigeria ebola
Countries across the world battle to contain the spreads of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), the killer ailment appears to be devising means of circumventing efforts to stop it, researchers have said.

Experts claim that the virus is "rapidly and continually mutating, making it harder to diagnose and treat."

This is just as former President Olusegun Obasanjo declared, on Saturday, that the index case, Patrick Sawyer, in a "devilish" connivance with some Liberian authorities, intentionally brought the disease to Nigeria.

He also noted that the disease, which he said had become a global problem, had been taking a toll on Nigeria's economy, charging the Federal Government to partner the World Health Organisation (WHO), European Union (EU) and government of America in containing the virus.

Sunday Tribune's finding showed that result of a research by a team of American scientists indicates that the initial patients diagnosed with the virus in Sierra Leone revealed almost 400 genetic modifications, concluding that this could render current treatment ineffective and put vaccines that are being worked on for its cure in danger.


Comment: Waiting for vaccines that probably won't work is a bad idea. There are much better ways to protect yourself. See: Are you prepping your diet? and Scientists stumble across the obvious treatment for Ebola: tobacco


Comment: BigPharma will no doubt produce an Ebola vaccine, but it's use could have devastating consequences. There are several reasons why being vaccinated might NOT be such a good idea:

1) If the vaccine fails - and vaccines have a solid track record of failure - those who were used as guinea pigs would be predisposed to infection.

2) A vaccine may exert selective pressure on the virus to produce "mutants" capable of being more pathogenic. See perfect examples here: Fail: Infant Hep B vaccines perform shamefully; time to end them? , Vaccine not virus responsible for Spanish flu and Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests.

3) The Black Death which killed scores of people around the world was an Ebola-like virus

4) Mother nature doesn't need our help to create a deadly mutated virus: New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection.

5) Ebola is supposedly transmitted directly, but there are indications that it has become air-borne


Health

Ebola spreading! Sweden investigates possible Ebola case

Ebola medical workers
© Unknown
Swedish medical authorities are investigating a possible case of Ebola after a young man who recently had traveled to an Ebola-hit West African country was hospitalized in the capital Stockholm due to high fever and stomach pains.

According to local media, the unidentified man had developed high fever and stomach pains and was taken to Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm on Sunday to receive medical care.
"Yes, we have a suspected [Ebola] case, but it's not confirmed," a spokeswoman for Stockholm County Council said on condition of anonymity.
Communicable disease specialist Ake Ortqvist said, "The risk that this is an Ebola case is minimal, but we are handling this with extreme care."

He further noted that that the probability for an Ebola outbreak in Sweden is very low."The virus is not airborne, but is spread among humans through direct or indirect contact via blood and other fluids," he pointed out.


Comment: This is criminally ignorant to say that the virus only spreads via blood or other fluids, when lots of information show otherwise. Perhaps the specialist is ignorant of this and/or just sticks to his preconceived ideas about the virus or he is knowingly spreading lies. Lies that will only result in many more people being exposed to the virus.
More than 100 healthcare workers have died of Ebola and these are people who take the outmost precautions, when dealing with infected Ebola victims and yet they all died.

The question about Ebola that no one can answer


Comment: Knowledge protects and ignorance endangers. Being aware is the best protection that we have. Check out the following for more information:

Pestilence, the Great Plague, and the Tobacco Cure

Vitamin C: A cure for Ebola

And of course there is the matter of strengthening the immune system through adopting a Ketogenic Diet and doing EE, a gentle and effective breathing program, that brings balance to the body, mind and soul, eliminates toxins from the body and strengthens the immune system.