Ebola hits Europe & America

[gadgetman]

Yup they are very brave to be in the thick of it.

[gadgetman]

Now it's hit America (Dallas) via a Belgian airport.

So anyone that came into contact with them on the plane 10 days ago could be anywhere. I expect more countries to announce infections in the next day or two.

[RobClubley]

Don't worry, we're all saved:

 

Peter Chappell is promoting a new MP3 file that plays some violin music. He claims that listening to these files can treat and prevent ebola.

 

If you are ill with ebola, listen to this music every 15 minutes until you are better.

 

For protection from ebola, listen to this music twice daily (or at least once daily) until the danger passes.

Clicky

 

Riiiiiiight.

[D15VRS]

The Hallam Shire in Sheffield has sectioned off a secure unit with Medical Staff fully trained. Been ready for ages.  

[cheezemonkhai]

Maybe they should just drop a few infected bodies over IS and deal with it that way?

[Nick P]

Given the CDC already hold patents on Ebola, I'm sure if the US did want to deploy biological tactics against IS, they'd probably do so without dropping infected bodies over them. I'd imagine there would be better biological agents they could use, but I guess at the moment there is a certain plausible denyability in using Ebola.

[cheezemonkhai]

It was a joke, along the lines of an electection is looming, so bomb Iraq.

Plus Ebola bad news.

Two ways to bury pre-election bad news in one go.

[sparks03]

Maybe they should just drop a few infected bodies over IS and deal with it that way?

 

 

 Or how about we get The Crankies to lick a few ebola corpses before parachuting them into northern Iraq? As funny as ebola will then have the irony of delivering it. 

[gadgetman]

Don't worry folks, the NHS got this covered

http://metro.co.uk/2014/10/13/london-hospital-in-chaos-after-ebola-patient-walks-into-casualty-4903988/?ito=facebook

[Clunkclick]

Interesting to see what happens to infection rates and spread during the Hajj - November ? Bearing in mind that the sort of air passengers that will predominate then will be the ordinary rank-and-file rather than  the businessmen and rich from "Clean areas".

 

Lets hope it doesn't spread to en masse to Nigeria (It is there at the moment but only in limited quantity) where 70% of the population are muslim.

 

http://www.muslimpopulation.com/africa/

 

Now if this was a volcanic eruption . . . . . the commercial powers that be would have no choice but to take temporarily reduced air travel on-the-chin. Can't see what the problem is. Implementing a rolling program of  21 day stays in a quarantine facility for air travellers departing from the infected zone, means you only loose 21 days of revenue as a one-off. Some bright spark could probably work out that in the long-term it is cheaper to do this and pay some airlines compo than watch the dismantling of western economies in slower-time by an unstoppable virus . . . assuming the crisis is  genuine, of course.

 

Nick

Edited 14 October, 2014 by Clunkclick

[kilted]

Although the numbers are relatively low at the moment it is the potential rate of spread that is the issue - a potential under-reporting of (up to) 2.5 times and doubling of cases every month at the moment. So 4,000 reported cases (making potentially 10,000 total cases) relatively quickly can become 150,000-650,000.

 

That is assuming the disease does not mutate to airborne and remains (apparently) contact spread. If it does mutate, we are all in the pooper!

[@Lee]

WHO reckons there could be up to 10,000 new cases per week by December.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-29615452

[Auric Goldfinger]

* Cough * * Cough *  sniffles * cough *

[grr666]

I saw loads and loads and loads of folk off on the Hajj at Heathrow and Kuala Lumpur.

If they are anything like the dirty Indian woman who virtually coughed up a ball of phlegm 

in my face while I was on the plane to NZ then we are in trouble. Surely it isn't beyond 

people to cover their mouths when they cough. Also, how ironic that their pilgrimage

which they do to feel closer to "God" could quite well see them getting much closer to

"him" than they originally intended.

[gadgetman]

The dread will be toilets. Judging by the state some people leave toilets in at services and restaurants we're in trouble.

Would love to do the same to their toilet at their house

[seboni121]

We are definately in trouble !

[Nick P]

Your main concern should be once we get to the point of non-import cases who do not know they have been exposed (A "Have you been to West Africa?" based risk assesment won't cut it any more) and are just assuming they have flu. They will be infecting family at home and in many cases trying to press on as long as possible with going to work before having time off sick. So you might think it's not that bad, by the time their viral load gets really high, they are going to be bed-ridden at home or in hospital, consider this - people might well have flu or a cold as well as ebola whilst still strong enough to be up and about. Yes their ebola viral load will be lower at this point but they may be mobile and sneezing and coughing infectious mucus and saliva all over the place. Now also consider that the virus is stable on surfaces outside of the body for much longer in cold conditions and without UV light and we are going to be bearing the brunt of this over winter.

 

I'm enlisting the help of my Dad (an industrial chemist) to build a variable dilution chlorine spray sanitisation station. I have taken careful note of the MSF PPE recommendations. I am in the process of stocking up on baby milk formula, canned goods etc. I have bought several hundred pairs of nitrile gloves and cleaning products. I will be monitoring the situation very closely and when I feel the time has come will stop commuting to the office and only work from home and of course will keep my children away from nursery. If one child gets it, they all get it. They sneeze and slobber over everything at the best of times and cannot keep their hands out of their mouths. Once kids get it and are infectious, it is absolutely inevitable that parents who have to change their nappies and get slobbered over will get it. Patient 0 in the current outbreak was a two year old, who very quickly took our her sibling and then the rest of her family.

Edited 15 October, 2014 by Nick P

[sparks03]

Your main concern should be once we get to the point of non-import cases who do not know they have been exposed (A "Have you been to West Africa?" based risk assesment won't cut it any more) and are just assuming they have flu. They will be infecting family at home and in many cases trying to press on as long as possible with going to work before having time off sick. So you might think it's not that bad, by the time their viral load gets really high, they are going to be bed-ridden at home or in hospital, consider this - people might well have flu or a cold as well as ebola whilst still strong enough to be up and about. Yes their ebola viral load will be lower at this point but they may be mobile and sneezing and coughing infectious mucus and saliva all over the place. Now also consider that the virus is stable on surfaces outside of the body for much longer in cold conditions and without UV light and we are going to be bearing the brunt of this over winter.

 

I'm enlisting the help of my Dad (an industrial chemist) to build a variable dilution chlorine spray sanitisation station. I have taken careful note of the MSF PPE recommendations. I am in the process of stocking up on baby milk formula, canned goods etc. I have bought several hundred pairs of nitrile gloves and cleaning products. I will be monitoring the situation very closely and when I feel the time has come will stop commuting to the office and only work from home and of course will keep my children away from nursery. If one child gets it, they all get it. They sneeze and slobber over everything at the best of times and cannot keep their hands out of their mouths. Once kids get it and are infectious, it is absolutely inevitable that parents who have to change their nappies and get slobbered over will get it. Patient 0 in the current outbreak was a two year old, who very quickly took our her sibling and then the rest of her family.

 

 

 I wouldn't panic too much. As soon as TTIP and William Hague's seemingly paedophile protecting actions have gone away so, like SARS, will this. 

[Nick P]

I quite frankly don't give an explosive ebola crap about the mass media news cycles and what politicians choose to bury on what day. I base my level of concern on data and reports from NGOs, WHO and other bodies and from scientific and medical journals.

 

Oh and I'm not panicking. I'm simply several weeks ahead of you in my level of concern. This gives me a strategic advantage.

Edited 15 October, 2014 by Nick P

[Gti Jazz Blue]

I would have thought that a good idea would be a donation to Médecins Sans Frontières  http://www.msf.org.uk/make-a-donation to help them fight it at source in Africa.

 

I will be making a donation later today.

[Nick P]

Already done   ..... http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/330460-ebola-hits-europe/page-2#entry3975600

[kilted]

 I wouldn't panic too much. As soon as TTIP and William Hague's seemingly paedophile protecting actions have gone away so, like SARS, will this. 

I am not panicking yet but I am worried. Far more scientifically qualified people than me are aware of how little we know about the transmission of the disease (most studies show contact transmission in humans but not enough studies have been done to be 100% sure at all stages of infection). It only takes minor faults in sanitation practises for the treatment staff to be affected and even spread it. Bear in mind that the incubation period can be 21 days so we could already be looking at a worse picture than it seems. At a certain point the snowball becomes very hard to stop

[Nick P]

At a certain point the snowball becomes very hard to stop

 

Yeah, that point was a good couple of months ago sadly.

[Jrjg]

I've got a nice little apocalypse cupboard of tinned and dried foods, a yard full of dried wood for the woodburner, a couple of large stacks of un read books, oh, and ~2000 cartridge next to the gun cabinet. Should be enough.

In all seriousness, I doubt Ebola will ever get to global epidemic scale, there seems to be an awful lot of scaremongering going on by the usual suspect red too newspapers, as per when there is a slight possibility of a highly contagious disease arriving on our doorsteps.

Someone said above they'd heard it originated from bushmeat (I am assuming that is the native wildlife?), is there any evidence how it has mutated and how it was first transmitted ?

JRJG

[Clunkclick]

As said before, its doubtful if many posting on here recall or have witnessed the isolation hospitals that existed in the UK up to the mid-fifties for what were then untreatable diseases, TB, Polio.

 

Ambulances would turn-up, usually at dusk, and people would be carted-off  to these places and that's the last you'd see of them.

 

And that was in the days before consumerism and mass travel, when it was much easier to geographically isolate populations.

 

The last of those hospitals were sold-off in the '80s for residential housing development.

 

Given recent past practice of HMG  with respect to pandemics, I wouldn't bank on them being able to do much that's effective. Take for example the global pandemic of TB that's been in existence since 1990. During my service in the NHS (1978-1990), I came across at least one hospital in North-West London that was offering walk-in radiography services for immigrants with chest trouble i.e. suspected TB. And you didn't here a peep about it in the press, but people were being diagnosed and treated (With anti-biotics in the less severe cases) on an Outpatients basis - i.e. they were free to wander the streets whilst still undergoing treatment and infected.

 

They won't be able to do that with Ebola - far too infective and progressive to terminal stage.

 

 

Postcsript

 

I can see this turning into a Torrey Canyon equivalent.

 

Its quite possible, before this is out, that orders are issued to Napalm foreign villages in order to stall the spread - the prospect of it gaining a foothold in a half-Westernised, semi-switched-on country like Nigeria, with its transport hub status, doesn't bear thinking about.

 

Glad to see in PM's question time today that neither Dave or the leader of the opposition allowed this issue to get in the way of the pursuit of their own myopic, childish, crawl-up-the-electorates-backpassage agendas - Dave was hinting at extra relief on Inheritance Tax for those embarrassed by a surfeit of property wealth( Very timely Dave, they'll be a lot more inheritance going-on if Ebola lands on UK shores) whilst the other one was promoting a "What-the-Red-top-journalist-heard-through-the-keyhole" story about Lord Freud.

 

 

Nick

Edited 15 October, 2014 by Clunkclick