Posted on 08/10/2014 12:46:23 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe
I have spent a little time compiling links to threads about the Ebola outbreak in the interest of having all the links in one thread for future reference.
Please add links to new threads and articles of interest as the situation develops.
Thank You all for you participation.
This is a case of political correctness and military security allowing the uniformed "clerks" to play games. Like happened to Pres. Clinton and SACEUR Gen Clark in the 1999 Kosovo War
The Chemical Corps decontamination equipment is highly classified. It's presence in the deployment would be conspiracy theory central for the media and politically embarrassing without full CDC/WHO information campaign disclosure of the Ebola fomite threat.
The uniformed “clerks” can play games keeping the equipment out of the deployment and the DoD civilian leaders are too ignorant, operating outside of any known crisis frame of reference, that the game can be played.
If we don't hear about Chemical Corps decontamination troops in the deployment, we know the clerks have won this round...and a lot of poor GI Joe's are going to lose their health or their lives.
Maybe we should send in the clerks. They’re having trouble keeping stats over there, anyway.
I think the MD (medical school of the Caribbean!) who is telling people that someone ‘literally has to vomit on you’ to be infected should be the first to volunteer!
This reminds me of the army troops sent near a desert testing of an A-Bomb in the 1950s. They were assured everything would be okay and yet a big percentage of them later developed cancers from the radioactivity.
Ebola Cases & Deaths UPDATED 09/16/14 - 5006 CASES - 2469 DEATHS
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/133546/1/roadmapupdate16sept14_eng.pdf?ua=1
We have 5,000 WHO reported Ebola cases on Sept 16th from a base line of ~3,000 cases on Sept 1, 2014 against a projected 6,000 cases by 1 Oct 2014.
We are at 2/3 of a doubling in two weeks -without- Liberia updating since 9 Sept 2014.
We are going to surpass 6,000 cases before Sept 24st, without any further Liberia updates. And frankly the lack of reporting from Liberia is scarier than a report from them putting us over 6,000.
Our troops are going to be where no reports are coming from.
I still do not understand what prompts so many to downplay the contagious aspects of this desease, whether they equate it with or compare it to AIDS (apples vs kumquats), or simply call it 'hard to catch'.
Considering it is lethal, has been described by those on the ground as "highly contagious", and has killed nearly 100 medical staff who know the risks and generally follow PPE protocols as best they can, the first thing that should die is the nonsense of downplaying the public health danger it presents, not just to West Africa, but the World.
Was the note of R0 between 5 and 20 from Liberia maybe?
That would mean they have no clue about the numbers there right now. And if it’s on fomites in the public taxis and heaven only knows where else...
Prayers up for the troop going there.
It appears Liberia has reached the point where systems of reporting have broken down.
The question is one of how many people, on average, have to be disabled, dead, or flee before critical systems cease functioning.
None of the vehicles, equipment or stocks we send there will come back if we don’t include the CBW decontamination vehicles and equipment. They’ll all become contaminated with Ebola and turn into big fomites that will spread Ebola here.
I spoke with Thud in a side bar and he made the point that we are going to be seeing periodic huge spikes in Ebola new infection cases and deaths — at least until the data stops coming from places like in Liberia — as Ebola invades new high population density urban spaces.
We can expect Ebola cases and Ebola RO to go up and down reflecting that pattern.
It doesn't mean that disease control efforts are having any affect.
It is simply “infection rate noise” mirroring that Ebola ‘burns out’ the easily infected in new high population density areas very quickly and has diminishing returns on the higher/better hygiene remainder. Example -- Think public transportation users, public transportation operators and their families going to Ebola first. Then followed by those too poor, and finally those too affluent to use public transportation going down to Ebola in that order.
We don’t bring vehicles back any more, anyway. Look at what ISIS found in the used camel lot...
Ummm.... no.
The Iraqis had a separate MRAP truck program with their own oil money — AKA it was corrupt as all heck.
All the MRAPS given to the local police were over seas and came back.
All the up armored 2.5 ton, 5-ton and 10-ton military logistical trucks came back and are either in depots awaiting rebuild or in Federal USMC/Army Reserves or Army National Guard outfits.
The US Army kept and brought back the late production up-armored Humvees as well as late production heavy duty suspension Humvee’s with separate up-armor kits.
Most of what we left behind in Iraq — and later seized by ISIS — were older up-armored and rebuilt in Kuwait by KBR or Dyncorp Humvees that were not as good as Humvees we already had in the National Guard, plus US Agency for International Development light trucks.
“Former Miss Liberia ‘Did Not Die From Ebola’, Mom Says”
Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt. Check back in 3 weeks to see if any other family members have ‘developed complications from a surgery’.
From what I understood from my late and dearly departed dad, a WWII vet who served in the SPT, the US Army abandoned a lot of jeeps and other vehicles on some South Pacific islands near and at the end of the war as it was just not economical to ship them all back home. Of course those islands had been completely liberated and secured from the Japanese and were not likely to fall into enemy hands.
My dad also told me he saw pallets of bags of sugar and flour and other food supplies and even barrels gasoline being dumped into the Pacific Ocean from the sides of Naval supply ships as they had more than they needed and many of the supply depots were full. But it did pi$$ off my dad when he read letters from home from his family about ration coupons and shortages. But then again, shipping these excess supplies back home would not only be not economical or feasible, but some items would spoil or be unusable even if they were shipped back to the US.
http://www.punchng.com/news/340-ebola-cases-under-surveillance-in-rivers-commissioner/?
“340 Ebola cases under surveillance in Rivers -Commissioner”
Are these still from the contact with the doctor who secretedly treated the diplomat buddy of Sawyer?
Article wasn’t clear. If NOT those contacts, who was the patient zero for these 340?
“I certainly hope that the 5-20 range is from fomite transmission to direct contact at a funeral. Because on this chart:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number
The only things with numbers that high are airborne or airborne droplet transmitted...”
That’s why the CSPAN thing looked so Kabuki to me as well.
Behind closed doors, they are telling them its airborne. Reston is the precedent.
Talk of the genealogy of this bug has stopped too. I never bought into Zaire as being the daddy. This looked like Reston from the get go.
I get why they need to deploy the military to roll out a response in Africa, but 3000 ain’t going to do it.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/17/ebola-three-day-shutdown-sierra-leone
“Ebola lockdown in Sierra Leone: nationwide three-day curfew”
If the 20 number is even close to being true outside of a funeral contact situation, then this thing is even more contagious than measles.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24860690
This was the most helpful phylogeny paper for me.
It still shows a different branch than Reston.
HOWEVER, that’s sequence identity over the whole genome. I wonder how different the sequence from the pneumovirus analog ElenaM mentioned is for its homologues in Reston and Zebola Guinea.
If that protein were to be involved in airborne transmission that could be expected to show similarity at least between Reston and Zebola Guinea.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.