Ebola, coming to a place near you soon!

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LOL YOU MIGHT WANT TO SEE A DOCTOR ABOUT THAT.

 

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More good news, the CDC has issued new Ebola guidelines. But one has to wonder why they were ever so lax.

 

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That's probably courtesy of the Ebola Czar

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Is that the goofiest titular title ever!?

Ebola Czar!

Maybe that's in Ron Klain's high school yearbook : Most likely to be named Ebola Czar. If they interview his old Aunt Gretchen who raised him from the time he was a make-believe Russian prince, would she say, "I always knew Ronski Petrovich would do great things, but I never thought he'd make Ebola Czar!" Will he be putting that on his curriculum vitae?

I mean, what does one call an Ebola Czar?

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Ivan the Curable!

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I predict they'll be a grunge band some day: The Ebola Czars!

 

Well you may think it funny, but the term has been used in the US since Woodrow Wilson.

 

Panic is good for listening figures.
In the UK, if we have so much as an inch of snow
the radio talks it up as though it was a blizzard.
They talk as though venturing outside your door was full of peril.
The message is to stay in and keep tunes for further announcements.

 

If by free you mean unbiased, it isn't.

 

You may think the term is funny, but it has been used since WWI and used to describe presidential

 

You mean 'czar', not 'ebola', correct? They didn't have the disease back then, just the eponymous river. I just find it a bizarre juxtaposition.: Ebola Czar! A deadly virus (and river) from darkest Africa, and a defunct Russian potentate. And then to think it's some man's title. Has he had it stenciled to his office door. Has he had business cards printed. Is he in the Yellow pages?

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By free I mean the government doesn't control content. CNN does better than most in adherence with traditional journalistic standards of professionalism. But it does tend to love sensationalism as sensationalism drives rating. Fox does the same but uses sensationalism to drive a political agenda and doesn't adhere to traditional journalistic standards or ethics.

The good news is that in this age, there are a number of good international news sources like the BBC or Aljazeera.

 

His formal title doesn't include the word czar. It's an informal term used by folks like us to describe some presidential appointments. The term was first used durring WWI when the czar was in the news, back before he was dethroned.

 

A Czar had power over life and death.
Following the metaphor,an appointed Czar must have the ability to promote and demote people, and if necessary fire them.
People must know that their jobs are on the line if they don't do a good job.

 

He doesn't have that power. But he does have high level access to the POTUS. So he can pressure those who do.

 

Scientific American and the WHO
are recommending blood plasma transfusions from recovered patients as the best treatment at the moment.
Though it is far from a certain cure.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/blood-transfusions-from-survivors-best-way-to-fight-ebola/

The US Pharma industry is hyping Zmapp, an untested drug that will cost $1,000s of dollars per course of treatment.
My rough estimate is $100,000 per course of three injections.
That would probably set up a small isolation and treatment hospital in Liberia.
Anyone beg to differ?

 

There are multiple drugs in development..
A Canadian firm has a promising vaccine in phase I trial and it is being fast tracked. As soon as it has been proven safe it will be sent to West Africa.

 

When important news is breaking in real time, CNN seems to do the best job covering it here in the States and it becomes the most watched cable news network. Unfortunately, on slow news days CNN doesn't attract nearly as many viewers. So there's a natural Darwinian tendency to ride stories.

That being said, I think that all of the major media arguably overplayed Ebola-panic. It obviously wasn't just CNN. For a few days there it was end-of-the-world, looming-international-pandemic coverage seemingly everywhere one turned.

So it isn't really surprising that the general public's anxiety level went through the roof.

My impression is that similar things were happening in the UK and in Europe as well. There were reports here in the States of Heathrow putting in screening and British hospitals conducting Ebola drills.

 

The US has just announced that all travelers from the afflicted countries must arrive at one of five airports were fever screening is mandatory for those individuals.

It's a step in the right direction. But it wouldn't prevent another Duncan. Only a travel ban would do that. US embassies in the afflicted regions should stop issuing travel visas in those regions.

I sincerely hope they get a vaccine soon. Ebola is tragic. It is killing thousands and if unchecked will soon be killing tens of thousands in West Africa. Help has been too slow in coming because health professionals did not expect it to get this far. They expected this outbreak to die out as previous outbreaks have done. So the interesting question is why.

 

Should flights from countries with high rates of TB be banned?

 

No, silly. Sure, it kills about a million people a year, is more infectious than Ebola and has a 50% mortality rate, but it's not scary like Ebola. I mean, it doesn't even kill that many white people.

 

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The much maligned CDC has done a good job with TB,
if the sharp fall in the number of reported cases is their doing.
It has been falling elsewhere in the last decade,
but from the graph it looks like the US is doing particularly well.

http://www.tbalert.org/about-tb/statistics-a-targets/global-stats-and-targets/