Ebola Outbreak of 2014

[DA SWO]

Here is another article on Ebola, long and nerdy.
This one suggests it (the Ebola Virus) may be an airborne pathogen:

http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00811/full/srep00811.html

 

[Chopstick]

There is a picture of the pig pen used in that study on this link: http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/11/interspecies-airborne-transmission-of-ebola.html

I had envisioned the patient transferred to the US as being on a stretcher and "gravely ill" as I have read. Apparently he can walk. Check the video here.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...merican-medic-arrives-in-US-from-Liberia.html

 

[Gypsy]

"Its safe, trust us. No worries" is kind of the going thought process, but then you have this nonsense:


They should have stayed in Africa.

Damned skippy.

Diseases mutate all the time, this is nasty shit that we don't need here.

 

[DA SWO]

The Dr who treated the American in Liberia has it, and the have quarantined others.

Sometimes people forget that body fluids includes saliva, sweat, and mucus.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28640745

 

[RetPara]

The protective gear that is being used in Africa around the contaminated patients is HOT. You sweat a LOT in those (think rubber CPOG). They also ain't cheap.

In the root cause analysis (if there ever is one - doubtful) they REUSING THE DAMN SUITS. They should be one use only,

 

[Muppet]

Shared from Facebook. I have a paranoid friend that believes the world is ending over this so I tagged her in this. That resulted in her going on a rant and I laughed at her expense.....

F.M.

 

[Chopstick]

Ive been working a lot of OT this week. I missed this one.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/eb...nse-highest-alert-amid-ebola-outbreak-n174496

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday ramped up its response to the expanding Ebola outbreak, a move that frees up hundreds of employees and signals the agency sees the health emergency as a potentially long and serious one.

The CDC’s “level 1 activation” is reserved for the most serious public health emergencies, and the agency said the move was appropriate considering the outbreak’s “potential to affect many lives.” The CDC took a similar move in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and again in 2009 during the bird-flu threat.

I can imagine many people in Western Africa are saying this right about now.

 

[Chopstick]

WHO announcement on Ebola from today.


http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...nisation-ebola-outbreak-west-africa/13763509/

The World Health Organization on Friday declared the Ebola outbreak that is spreading across West Africa to be a "public health emergency of international concern." The group also said Ebola took an additional 29 lives between Tuesday and Wednesday alone.

WHO chief Margaret Chan said the announcement is "a clear call for international solidarity" but also said many countries would probably not see any Ebola cases.

"Countries affected to date simply do not have the capacity to manage an outbreak of this size and complexity on their own," Chan said. "I urge the international community to provide support on the most urgent basis possible."

Chan spoke to journalists at a news conference in Geneva after experts had spent two days discussing the epidemic.

The WHO declared similar emergencies for the swine flu pandemic in 2009 and polio in May.

The impact of the WHO declaration is unclear; the declaration about polio doesn't yet seem to have slowed the spread of virus.

 

[racing_kitty]

A little bit of good news from the lovely Alabama plains:

Auburn University Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Stewart Schneller led a team of researchers in the project, which is expected to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry.

Schneller, who has studied Ebola for the past decade, has focused on combatting a variety of virus-caused infections by designing a new drug candidate featuring a compound that may reverse the immune-blocking abilities of certain viruses, including Ebola.

"In simple terms, the Ebola virus has the ability to turn off the body's natural immune response," Schneller said. "We have made a small tweak in compound structure that will turn that response back on."

Apparently, they've been working on this for quite a while before this current outbreak kicked off. Hopefully it pans out.

 

[DA SWO]

Interesting article about mutations in the virus.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...235aaa-2ecb-11e4-bb9b-997ae96fad33_story.html

 

[BloodStripe]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/patient-zero-believed-to-be-sole-source-of-ebola-outbreak/

 

[BloodStripe]

Interesting article about mutations in the virus.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...235aaa-2ecb-11e4-bb9b-997ae96fad33_story.html

Interesting that this virus has mutated this much but in the article I posted it states early in that Ebola its a slow mutating virus. This implies to me that the citrus has been around for a substantially long period of time (I know says 2004 but could it have stated earlier than that?).

 

[BloodStripe]

As far as patient zero that article is referring to, http://www.iflscience.com/health-an...reak’s-patient-zero-identified-toddler-guinea

 

[Chopstick]

Interesting article about mutations in the virus.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...235aaa-2ecb-11e4-bb9b-997ae96fad33_story.html

Thanks for posting this, B. Ive been busier than a one armed paper hanger at work the last couple of weeks and havent really been doing much extra curricular reading.
This just got me:

It also provided another reminder of the deep toll the outbreak has taken on health workers and others in the affected areas, as five of the paper’s more than 50 co-authors died from Ebola before publication.

 

[RetPara]

Latest US doc to get Ebola skipped protective gear in 100-degree heat, says colleague

Well no shit.... the below linked article also states that Nurses have gone on strike for better access to protective garments...
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/...otective-gear-100-degree-heat-says-colleague/

 

[racing_kitty]

Mother Nature has a pretty good program for fixing stupid, as this doc is finding out. He better hope that someone, somewhere, manages to magically pull some more ZMapp out of their hat, because last I heard there currently wasn't any left.

 

[Florida173]

Pretty much a non issue. Many more will die from this outbreak, but give it some perspective. How many will die of the Flu virus this year in our own country? enough said.

 

[racing_kitty]

Guess what, ladies and gentlemen.... It's heeeeeeeeeeeeeere

DALLAS — A patient in a Dallas hospital has been confirmed to have the deadly Ebola virus, News 8 has learned.

That person has been held in "strict isolation" as he or she was evaluated for possible exposure to the virus.

This is the first case of Ebola confirmed in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control will hold a press conference at 4:30 p.m. in Atlanta regarding the diagnosis.

 

[BloodStripe]

I was just about to post this. Fucking ridiculous. There is no valid reason for anyone who has traveled to west Africa to not get screened prior to leaving the area.

 

[racing_kitty]

I was just about to post this. Fucking ridiculous. There is no valid reason for anyone who has traveled to west Africa to not get screened prior to leaving the area.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there's no reason for anyone to travel to West Africa unless they are volunteering on a medical mercy mission and are screened before they return home. Apparently this patient went there on vacation.