CDC director warns that Congo's Ebola outbreak may not be containable
158 points by loisaidasam 6 years ago | 55 comments- coldcode 6 years agoThe real fear is that one person makes it out of the area and into another part of the world, similar to what happened in Dallas. The more people are infected in that area the more the odds of escape go up. Any place in the world can wind up with an outbreak within a short time. Given the response of the hospital in Dallas, it's very likely most medical facilities would not recognize Ebola before transmission had already occurred.
- ams6110 6 years agoI'd think (hope?) that any hospital ER is trained to recognize hemorragic fever when it presents.
- ashildr 6 years agoWhether the patient will see a doctor in the early or late stages of Their Ebola infection will depend on whether they have health insurance. So here’s another reason for socialized healthcare.
- the-red-herring 6 years agoSocialized healthcare doesn't really apply here. Regardless of whether or not the healthcare is free, people still go see a doctor anyway.
- newbrict 6 years agoI don't want to pay my insurance deductible... Many people "worse off" than me pay nothing and get to go to the hospital no problem... I'd be much more interested in everyone paying a reasonable amount like it was decades ago
- the-red-herring 6 years ago
- irq11 6 years agoIt looks like a case of the flu when it first presents. Unless you have a specific reason to suspect Ebola, you wouldn’t suspect it.
- 6 years ago
- ashildr 6 years ago
- Consultant32452 6 years agoI'm beginning to think there's a Bill Burr bit for every scenario.
- ams6110 6 years ago
- findyoucef 6 years agoI didn't even realize there was recent outbreak. This hasn't been in the news at all.
- bow_ 6 years agoFYI, the WHO [1] and CDC [2] post regularly on the status of various outbreaks all over the world.
For Ebola particularly, WHO posts weekly updates. And a cursory look of the most recent posts paints an increasingly worrying situation.
[1] http://www.who.int/csr/don/archive/year/2018/en/ [2] https://www.cdc.gov/outbreaks/index.html
- cududa 6 years agoIt’s been reported on for months in major outlets, just not with the fervency of last time. Find new news sources or pay closer attention to your existing ones behind the outrage cycle.
- makomk 6 years agoAlmost everything is reported in major outlets somewhere, to the point that it's pretty remarkable when something isn't. There's just so much news out there that the priority they give to it matters.
- BookmarkSaver 6 years agoMost people (I assume) don't look beyond aggregation feeds, or at best, the front/landing page of whatever news source they prefer.
- makomk 6 years ago
- giobox 6 years agoI’ve always believed the “World News” section of major written news outlets must be among the most unread things in the world, I almost feel bad for the thankless work it must be for the journalists involved.
- anigbrowl 6 years agoIf you're in the US PBS Newshour does a good job of covering that sort of thing.
- bow_ 6 years ago
- starbeast 6 years ago
- eMSF 6 years agoDonate to MSF so they can increase their human trafficking operations across the Mediterranean Sea?
Thanks, but no thanks.
- eMSF 6 years ago
- runciblespoon 6 years ago"CDC director warns that Congo's Ebola outbreak may not be containable" especially as the locals insist on following traditional burial methods such as washing the deceased and sitting in for days on end with cadaver.
- guilhas 6 years agoUS, UK, France, UAE,... insist on traditional bombing of countries for peace.
- guilhas 6 years ago
- lifeisstillgood 6 years agoI would love to see regularly updated and triaged "backlogs" for countries, and subsequently the world. And then maybe just report on the top 100 in each news cycle.
Just lists of most important tickets in a global todo list - because this would just rise to the top pretty quickly and make us rethink mid terms, Brexit and train delays.
- toomuchtodo 6 years agoSomething like https://ourworldindata.org/ but with more frequent updates? I ask because I too am interested in the very same type of dashboard, and instead have a "Dashboard" bookmarks folder with a variety of links for data.
- lifeisstillgood 6 years agoMore akin to the Copenhagen Institute thingamijig that Biorn Lomborg hosts, that tries to get bigwig economists to prioritise interventions based on cost benefit (various low cost high impact projects like innocuoation and medical / public health top the bill)
Something that takes this concept and runs with it, taking both identifiable problems (Ebola outbreak) and solutions (do nothing, invade, stop subsidising petrol in that country)
I suspect that the equivalent of National Security Advisor in each major country does this. I guess what I want is to steal each of their daily briefing documents and make a combined one, and have it read out each day onthe daily news.
- lifeisstillgood 6 years ago
- toomuchtodo 6 years ago
- toomuchtodo 6 years agoUganda is preemptively vaccinating front line/first responder workers with an experimental, unlicensed vaccine (with WHO backing) that has shown efficacy in attempts to contain the virus.
> Country becomes first to administer experimental vaccine without active outbreak of the deadly disease, in bid to protect 2,000 medics close to DRC border
> “In previous [Ebola] outbreaks, Uganda lost health workers, including the renowned Dr Matthew Lukwiya, as they cared for patients,” said Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, WHO’s Uganda representative. “Scientists believe such invaluable lives would have been saved had a vaccine been in existence then.”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/nov/06/u...
- tango24 6 years ago> including the renowned Dr Matthew Lukwiya
Short video about Dr. Lukwiya's story. He was on a sabbatical, but rushed back to provide aid, while others were running in panic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7LpjpuOvc8
- toomuchtodo 6 years ago"Look for the helpers" -- Mr. (Fred) Roger's mother.
- toomuchtodo 6 years ago
- CydeWeys 6 years agoThat's the thing about a disease that kills >50% of the people it infects -- there's no ethical risk in using untested, unproven vaccines to fight it. It's still better than the alternative, even if there's bad side effects.
- tango24 6 years ago
- jonawesomegreen 6 years agoSome interesting data about the efficacy of the experimental vaccine that is being used to try to control the outbreak.
> Merck's Jakub Simon, MD, MS, addressing a session at the American Society of Tropical Medicine's (ASTMH) annual meeting here, showed two charts tracking Ebola during this past spring's outbreak in the DRC's Equateur province and the subsequent one now raging in the North Kivu and Ituri provinces. In both, health workers on the ground have been using the Merck vaccine in a so-called ring vaccination strategy to contain the epidemic. Although not yet formally approved for marketing, the vaccine has been cleared for emergency use.
> In Equateur, immediately after vaccination began with the Merck product, the outbreak petered out.
> But the experience in North Kivu and Ituri has been quite different. Although new cases dropped significantly after vaccination began in early August, they never approached zero, and 2 months later they rocketed back to the level seen before vaccinations began.
- amputect 6 years agoThat's not great! I wonder if Ebola is especially quick to mutate. This article: https://jvi.asm.org/content/early/2015/12/08/JVI.02701-15 suggests that it is. A mitigating factor is that it doesn't seem to tolerate mutations very well (i.e. lots of mutations lead to non-viable strains), but I guess with a large enough patient pool it could have out-run the vaccine.
- amputect 6 years ago
- carboy 6 years agoIt’s scary to consider it making it to some of the large slums in Nairobi, India, or Pakistan.
- the-red-herring 6 years agoThat's a bit racist to call a place a slum
- estsauver 6 years agoComment currently says "Slums in" a place.
- estsauver 6 years ago
- the-red-herring 6 years ago
- starpilot 6 years agoWhy contain it? Let it spill over into the schools and churches, let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end, they'll beg us to save them.
- bluetwo 6 years agoSeems like a bigger problem than a bunch of migrants slowly walking towards the southern border.
- 6 years ago
- Lolibturd 6 years agoSpin it!
- yanoz 6 years agoThis doesn't seem like a problem to the welfare of Americans at all, while the caravan is. I presume that's the reason it's not in the news.
Also the Ebola scare was already sold back in the day and in the end nothing important happened, so it's going to be hard to sell this.
(If you're going to downvote please provide an argument, thanks.)
- natch 6 years agoYou asked for reasons along with any downvotes. I'm here to oblige you.
Contrary to what has been reported in the Fox News / Trump Birds bubble, the people in the caravan have expressed their intention to follow a fully legal process of applying for asylum.
As to why people lawfully applying for asylum might be a problem, I don't think it is a one. You may agree... or if you disagree, I would point out the fact that such acts follow a long tradition of lawful immigration to the United States, one which has built our country from some of the most motivated people in the world. But you may be laboring under the false assumption that they are intending to enter the US illegally.
Based on the amount of false information being pushed by people with a lot of money and very loud voices, it seems likely that your opinion that the caravan is a problem may be based on this particular misunderstanding of what's going on... that you think they plan to enter illegally.
If not, we're in a different conversation entirely, about what America is at its core.
- lamarpye 6 years agoEvery single person in the caravan has expressed their intention to follow a fully legal process for applying for asylum? That is good to know, I guess there isn't any chance that they are lying or they don't understand the asylum process.
Thank you for not adding to the false information being pushed by people with money.
- lamarpye 6 years ago
- craftyguy 6 years ago> This doesn't seem like a problem to the welfare of Americans at all, while the caravan is.
[citation needed]
Immigration is pretty much required for a healthy economy[0]
0. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2017-07-...
- yanoz 6 years ago"better for the economy" doesn't always translate to better lives for the laymen. Also you have to understand some people don't want immigrants at all.
But I was just giving a reason as to why this isn't on the media. No point on making this political.
- lamarpye 6 years agoSure. We have a huge shortage of unskilled labor in the US, if this shortage isn't addressed, it might put upward pressure on wages for unskilled workers. We can not allow this to happen to the ownership class
- yanoz 6 years ago
- mikeash 6 years agoHow is the caravan a problem to the welfare of Americans?
- felix_nagaand 6 years agoFinding that many beds, jobs, and teachers with room in their classes is hard to do. Even if every adult was skilled this would be a hard ask. Add the number of Americans who feel they are being ignored by the political class and we get a big ole stinking problem with lots of unsavory solutions.
- felix_nagaand 6 years ago
- natch 6 years ago
- 6 years ago