World Health Organization: Latest Ebola Outbreak Moving Too Fast to Control

[SamTheNewb]

And America brings back 2 ppl to treat them. Not to be a dick but thats a pretty dam high risk.

Not really. Two people can be easily managed. The risk factor comes down almost entirely to competence of the people that are treating them. As long as they do everything by the book, and they don't have a reason not to, it will be fine.

>america
>competence

pick one

better to test competence in a controlled situation than one where we have a trial by fire in the case of an actual outbreak.

 

[Frost27]

Maybe it will infect Boko Haram and something good will come out of this.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

-snip-

Small Pox (it's variants) had the same lethality ratios as Ebola, yet they eradicated it. It was a big concern, at the time, but which would be cheaper; Eradicate Ebola now while it's small, or wait a few years until it has infected half the world?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

You misunderstand. Ebola is enough to deal with without an "Oh God There's Vomit Leaking Into My Abcess" standard infection. That's how cleaning away bodily fluids can help keep someone alive. Yes, even if they only have 48 hours to live. Infections via vomit/diarrhoea happen fast.

Also, you massively underestimate the effect of a sudden influx of vitamins and minerals can have on a sick person. It doesn't take days for your immune system to start using what you give it.

The human body can only process a certain amount of vitamins and minerals at a time. massive influxes can result in hypervitaminosis. Which can be lethal. Granted vitamins will bost your immune system, it likely won't make a difference to something that can kill in days. You would have a better chance at survival if you are healthy prior to infection.

 

[LobsterFeng]

Anyone know where to buy a quality hazmat suit?

 

[Fsyco]

-snip-

Small Pox (it's variants) had the same lethality ratios as Ebola, yet they eradicated it. It was a big concern, at the time, but which would be cheaper; Eradicate Ebola now while it's small, or wait a few years until it has infected half the world?

'Vaccination' doesn't mean 'eradication'. They vaccinated against smallpox in 1798, but they didn't eradicate it until the 1970s. Vaccinating against Ebola wouldn't be that hard, since they have an experimental one already in the works, and people are going to be throwing much more money at it now. Actually destroying the virus from the face of the Earth would be much more tricky, because it lives in very rural parts of Africa. Only two diseases have ever been fully eradicated, because of how time consuming and painstaking the process is.

Also, ratios don't mean actual numbers. Small Pox and Ebola may have similar fatality rates, but the actual spread of Ebola was usually pretty small. The largest outbreak before this was 425 people with a 53% fatality rate. That's less than a third of the current outbreak. A 'big' outbreak could be 250-320 cases (of which there were like, 7 at most), with a 50-90% fatality rate. Smallpox also had a high (60-80%) fatality rate, but it killed (not infected, KILLED) about 400,000 Europeans EVERY YEAR during the 1700s, and was estimated to have killed about 300 million people in the 20th century. Smallpox was much more widespread by many orders of magnitude, hence the much greater desire to deal with it.

 

[Norithics]

Ebola's a little too quickly-acting to be that much of a concern to the rest of us, but boy, I feel bad for the people who have it. That must be a terrible way to go. :\

 

[Zaeseled]

Dear overlord of our planet; stop playing Plague Inc.

 

[Thedutchjelle]

The needless alarmism and apocalyptic doom-saying in this article is ridiculous... I shake my head in shame at the standard of journalism here.

It isn't much better than in most of the media, sadly.

Distrust in modern medical agencies to carry out their job properly and too many fictional superdeadly viruses? I don't know.
People tend to be all scared for things that are really unlikely to kill them, just because they see it in the news as the big thing.
Ebola? How about crossing the street or catching HIV?

I'm quite disgusted by some people who would rather have infected doctors die in Africa than to threat them in the US/EU. This is not a zombie apocalypse or a 28 days later scenario. So long people follow the guidelines laid about by the scientists and officials investigating the matter there should be no risk.

Ofcourse people in Africa don't quite understand all that. I've seen newsreports going about Africans believing it's witchcraft, or that the doctors are actually spreading the disease, or they are ignoring their illness until it's too late. And then to go to the funeral of their deceased loved ones and kiss their bodies as a griefing ritual, only to catch Ebola form the corpse and die of it.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

-snip-

I am aware of these facts, but it doesn't change that it would be more beneficial and cheaper to wipe the virus out now than it would if the virus broke free of the rural confines of Africa.

 

[paragon1]

Just because it would be more effective to deal with a problem in its early stages doesn't mean the political or financial will exists to do so. It's not conspiracy garble to say that the problems of the poor and powerless tend to get ignored until those problems affect people who aren't.

Edit: Also article is pointlessly sensationalist, irresponsible journalism, etc. etc.

 

[Strazdas]

Hoo boy... methinks perhaps I should start looking at tickets to Madagascar. Then again they've probably already closed their borders..... bah.

nah, iceland it is. they may not close the boarders but infection spread is so slow only 10 yokels will be infected by the time its killed the rest of the world.

So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how terrified should I be right now?

depends on where you live and your habbits/friends. if you live in areas close to the spread centers or have came back from there/friends that came back your risk increases severely compared to just living your life away somewhere. also if you constantly contact human fluids (such as cleaning stuff without gloves for example) the risk increases. but if you just work 8-5 at computer and likely dont even shake hands with somone every day the chance of infection is very low as it is not airborne.

depends entirely on incubation period. you have to jugle that between "living long enough to spread it" and "Short enough for them not to find vaccine".

729/1300 ~= 0,56

just because someone is infected and hasnt died yet does not mean he got cured.

Small Pox (it's variants) had the same lethality ratios as Ebola, yet they eradicated it. It was a big concern, at the time, but which would be cheaper; Eradicate Ebola now while it's small, or wait a few years until it has infected half the world?

In case you are forgetting, Smallpox did eradicate hundred of millions before they came up with a vaccine.
You also assume people arent shortsighted.

I am aware of these facts, but it doesn't change that it would be more beneficial and cheaper to wipe the virus out now than it would if the virus broke free of the rural confines of Africa.

for whom? what benefit it is for me that i stop somone in africa from dieing? also you talk as if i care about the future. nobody got time for future. nobody cares abou global warming. as long as i keep making money they can all drown for all i care.

This was sarcasm btw. but i know people that actually think like that sadly.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

And we're dealing with the Zaire variant, where it drops down to 50-60% mortality, provided that you're receiving proper care. That's still pretty extreme, considering that the Black Death "only" had around 33% mortality rate, back in the days of medieval healthcare and is recognized as one of the deadliest plague in known history.

The Black Death didn't have a 33% mortality rate. The Black Death killed 30-60% of Europe's population. Its mortality rate was near 100%. Nowadays it's much lower due to better medial care, but back then it was basically a death sentence.

As for Ebola: its spread is mostly being enabled by poor conditions and education in Africa. It's not a hard disease to contain, but when you don't have basic sanitation and can't afford to throw food away because it fell on the floor, diseases spread more easily.

 

[Fsyco]

Just because it would be more effective to deal with a problem in its early stages doesn't mean the political or financial will exists to do so. It's not conspiracy garble to say that the problems of the poor and powerless tend to get ignored until those problems affect people who aren't.

Basically this. Wishing really hard doesn't make the financial and logistics issues go away.

-snip-

I am aware of these facts, but it doesn't change that it would be more beneficial and cheaper to wipe the virus out now than it would if the virus broke free of the rural confines of Africa.

Actually 'wiping out' Ebola (assuming you mean total eradication) would be a a very long, painful, and expensive process. Ideally, yes, we should deal with it now before it becomes a global problem, but that means that somebody has to sink alot of money and manpower into hunting a rare disease in rural Africa where the locals don't trust health care professionals. That's been an issue already with stopping the pre-existing outbreak and will continue to be for administering the vaccine. It might be less expensive than dealing with it later, but it's still pretty pricey.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

During the Commonwealth games in Scotland, 2 athletes may have Ebola - not followed up to check if its been confirmed. Just quarantine every person that arrives from flights from the danger area. Also the media need to stop with the terror bullshit. We can better deal with cases of Ebola than Africa so i dont see what the big deal is. Remember the big threat of bird flu. Im in the UK and I believe that the people in power will deal with it and i can live my life fine - no point in me worrying about something i cant see. Like i said to my mum during the high point of the IRA bomb attacks in London, if your distracted by bombs you cant see you might walk into the road and get killed by a car.

 

[Saetha]

During the Commonwealth games in Scotland, 2 athletes may have Ebola - not followed up to check if its been confirmed. Just quarantine every person that arrives from flights from the danger area. Also the media need to stop with the terror bullshit. We can better deal with cases of Ebola than Africa so i dont see what the big deal is. Remember the big threat of bird flu. Im in the UK and I believe that the people in power will deal with it and i can live my life fine - no point in me worrying about something i cant see. Like i said to my mum during the high point of the IRA bomb attacks in London, if your distracted by bombs you cant see you might walk into the road and get killed by a car.

An athlete from Sierra Leone felt ill, so they put him in isolation and tested him for Ebola. He was fine, though. The tests came back clean.

 

[michael87cn]

'Least its not rabies. That shit kills everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-GSx1ENgJA

 

[Maxtro]

Transmission requires close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, also after death.

So in other words, it's a virus that is only being transmitted by ignorance.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

nah, iceland it is. they may not close the boarders but infection spread is so slow only 10 yokels will be infected by the time its killed the rest of the world.

Someone never read world war Z, this ends up being the worlds most terrible idea because half a billion people all decide "ICELAND No one thought of iceland right?" and the whole country sinks under the weight of millions of refugees who dont really understand how small the population centres of iceland are Cuba, now THATS where you wanna be.

I've been putting some study into Ebola, to be frank it just isnt a thread to modern western countries. Dont get me wrong people who get it would likely have a relatively high mortality rate but remember when smallpox made a comeback after a lab accident? It got 2 people before quarantine hit like a gorram hurricane of hazmats and air tight walls. I mean you had THE cliche movie "pandemic" startup, scientist accidentally releases sample into the air vents of lab, infects a couple of people. And yet we shut that down before it picked up even in the slightest. No massive outbreak. And thats an AIR transmitted disease!

Since Ebola spreads by fluid transmission aid workers are the biggest vector and even then identification is very easy, as is quarantine. Ebola just couldnt pick up speed in a western country with the transmission rate so poor.

HOWEVER. We have to deal with (somewhat ironically) the same issue the people in that little mobile app game do. Which is the more hosts a virus has; the greater the chance of a mutation in one of those strains. If the virus becomes more infectious from a number of avenues then the risk multiplies. More hosts gives rise to more potential mutations. Ebola may become literally stronger the more hosts it takes. As it is now, little threat. Here in the western world we have LARGE safe blood supplies, massive stocks of IV fluid and generally very well equipped hospitals all with high security isolation units to treat patients like this. All the things the third world lacks.

I wouldnt worry about Ebola, hell the chances of a mutation that bring its lethality up or make it spread faster are fairly low but since it IS a very very dangerous jumping point for further mutation its probably safer to put it down as soon as possible.

Also speaking purely outside the realm of science, as a humanitarian i fully believe it SHOULD be put down since, unlike HIV, it has no really nasty mechanism to avoid vaccination or a potential cure.

 

[Strazdas]

nah, iceland it is. they may not close the boarders but infection spread is so slow only 10 yokels will be infected by the time its killed the rest of the world.

Someone never read world war Z,

while i havent read world war Z (saw the movie but book readers say its incomparable) the response i gave was not a genuine "lets go there" but rather a response based on game (plague Inc, Pandemic 2) logic where it used to be hardfest to infect madagascar due to it always closing its port early on, but after update greenland[footnote]yes i did a mistake, its supposed to be greenland and not iceland[/footnote] became a country that has so slow infection rate that on hard even with all upgrades for cold climate and rural teritories maxed yourll likely kill the rest of the world before your infecting a quarter of greenland.

I've been putting some study into Ebola, to be frank it just isnt a thread to modern western countries.

From what i read i do agree that westenr cultures have advanced to the stage of isolation and hygiene high enough that ebola would burn itself out with very few casualties here.

I wouldnt worry about Ebola, hell the chances of a mutation that bring its lethality up or make it spread faster are fairly low but since it IS a very very dangerous jumping point for further mutation its probably safer to put it down as soon as possible.

well, mutations are certainly a real danger, but we had a lethal muttion on one of the most infectiuos viruses and called it swine flu, yet we contained it with relatively little casualties. so id say world is quite prepared to deal with pandemic.

Also speaking purely outside the realm of science, as a humanitarian i fully believe it SHOULD be put down since, unlike HIV, it has no really nasty mechanism to avoid vaccination or a potential cure.

Could you tell more about this mechanism? as far as i was aware HIV was just mutating too fast for any potential vaccine to be distributed before it becomes obsolete.