Estimates are that there are about 9,000 Ebola cases in the three west African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. My own speculation is that these estimates might be low. Modern health care is in short supply in these countries and sick people have traditionally been cared for by their families at home. That suggests that there might be a lot of unreported cases in remote areas. It also suggests one reason why the disease spreads so readily in these countries. The World Health Organization in Geneva is predicting that there may be as many as 10,000 new cases per week in west Africa by December. The WHO isn't an organization prone to alarmist rhetoric (unlike much of the news media), so these predictions need to be taken seriously. They suggest that the epidemic might be in its early stages where it's growing exponentially. It certainly suggests that the world's leading epidemiologists don't think that anti-Ebola efforts in these countries are successfully getting a handle on the problem. That's not good. Countries around the world are becoming alarmed. And the public is becoming alarmed as well, perhaps more than they should be at this point. The rest of the world has only seen a handful of cases, most places none at all. But there's already a hint of fear in the air, even if the virus isn't. Hospitals here in California are putting in plans for what to do when an Ebola case arrives. Canada's doing the same. The UK just had a big nationwide drill in which medical personnel practiced their procedures. New Zealand has reportedly designated three Ebola receiving hospitals, and it goes on and on.
I heard on Frontline that in Africa the number of doctors is about 1 per every 71,000 people. That's alarming in itself. By the time people get to see a doctor there is a long window in which they could easily have infected many other people without knowing it. Nations of the world need to treat this epidemic like the pandemic it is becoming and send help asap.
Agreed. We need to step up those efforts for several reasons, not the least of which is that the best way to stop Ebola in the US is stop it at the source.
In many villages, the nearest medical care might be in a small clinic in a district capital, twenty miles down a muddy dirt track or something. Sick people aren't going to make the trek. So they stay home. I've also heard that Ebola patients create quite a bit of fear in their neighbors, who fear contagion and want sick people and anyone associated with them gone. So I'm guessing that lots of families with sick family members try to hush it up and keep it quiet. So people die without the government recording the case, family members who were in close contact with the sick individual's blood, sweat and vomit fall ill themselves, and much of the village ends up being exposed. The international epidemiologists don't even learn about it until a new hot-spot has appeared and everything starts falling apart. Villagers start thinking, 'Screw this, I don't want to get sick, I'm taking my family and getting out of here.' They flee, perhaps to a bigger town or to the capital, but some are already exposed and take the disease with them, so it just spreads. Which raises the question what would be required. These are three European-sized countries. Creating a whole medical treatment infrastructure in each of them in a matter of weeks, while trying to prevent the thing spreading internationally, is going to be difficult at best.
An interesting fact is the CDC budget was pillage by Democrats and President Obama with some of the funding used to make bicycle trails across the country. I have used these trails and appreciate that, but pork barrel although a way for one party to buy votes, got in the way of that which could protect us all. It is weird how the type is all squished together. How did that happen?
Except, that isn't what happened. Scapegoating Democrats for Republican fiscal recklessness and malevolence may help you reconcile your many cognitive dissonances, but it will not change reality. It was the Republicans who held nation hostage to their irrational and damaging fiscal demands - damn minor details.
There's absolutely nothing you won't believe from this source of yours, is there. Remember sequestration? It's still a blight: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...-the-u-s-politics-and-public-health-dont-mix/ The members of the Republican Religious Right are the most ignorant and gullible human beings in the US. And they are running the medical care systems front line responsible for the populations most vulnerable to a plague like Ebola (the emergency and public "welfare" hospitals in the Red states, where Ebola could most easily get loose).
Democrats are on the record for being against spending cuts at NIH and the CDC - damn facts again. Democrats are again demanding NIH and CDC funding be restored. If Republicans are for it, the Dems are ready. They have been ready for years.
Do they make intellectual hazmat suits? It's interesting how the American news coverage of the Ebola thing has switched from full panic mode a few days ago, to a much more relaxed attitude now. Four days ago we were all clearly doomed. Now the emphasis seems to be political posturing, who's to blame, and which officials' heads should roll, the traditional wind-down of any crisis. (I'm always struck by the mainstream media's herd-instinct. They all lead with the same stories and typically give those stories similar spin. When that changes, it changes across-the-board, in the broadcast and major urban print media alike, often just in a matter of hours.) I'm guessing that the new tone is due to the lack of new Ebola cases in the United States in the last several days. Ebola isn't 'breaking news' any more. Of course when we get some new Ebola diagnoses, and we likely will somewhere if not in Dallas, it will probably be the end of the world all over again in every newspaper and TV screen. Ebola-panic hasn't gone away, it's just in temporary remission.
I don't see any Russians delivering aid in West Africa. You should ask Putin where are his white trucks. If you had paid attention you would notice, the news has changed. There are no new outbreaks of the disease. Obama has taken steps to ensure the nation is better protected. The news has changed, because the facts have changed. I know that doesn't happen in Mother Russia. Funny, you never complain about the Russian media which only reports what the state (Putin) wants reported regardless of reality and the truth.
