Lax Quarantine Undercuts Ebola Fight in Africa

NY Times ^ | 8/4/2014 | Adam Nossiter

[RightGeek]

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — The house was supposed to be under strict quarantine. Meals were to be delivered by the health department. Nobody was to go in or out.

But the enforcement of the government’s tough new measures to contain Ebola was light. Two police officers hung about chatting, out of sight of the house. Visitors came and went, including family members and well-wishers who were not supposed to be there. On the front porch sat the Ebola victim’s father and mother, in whose arms the young woman had died.

They had handled her body, putting them at serious risk of infection. But days after the death of Saudatu Koroma, her mother, Anna Conté, left to fill her plastic teapot from the communal water tap used by dozens of others. Her government minders seemed not to notice.

[snip]

[RightGeek]

The Turd World is on top of this quarantine stuff. Lots more examples in the article.

[Smokin' Joe]

Ping...

[ansel12]

Yet Africa has always managed to stop the outbreaks with little loss of life (at least compared to the end of the world vision).

They have had many outbreaks since 1976, yet only about 1600 have died.

[tumblindice]

AIDs has been killing people for about thirty years, and it’s just getting started.
Maybe Ebola is vector-specific to specific groups, like AIDs: homos, prostitute and drug users.
But our government had better not start any “We all have Ebola” campaign.
Africa can keep Ebola, and we wish they’d kept AIDS. And Obama.

[MarMema]

Exactly. Something different about this ebola.

[Cold Heat]

It’s the Zaire Strain, far as I know...same stuff..

The difference is that it is occurring in a area where transportation has carried it to 4 different regions simultaneously.

By the time they diagnosed it, most of the medical people had been affected already and now they can’t seem to do a quarantine to isolate the outbreak.

There was a story today about a family that literally took their sick kin out of a hospital and brought her home. many of them refuse treatment.

It’s a mess as always. But it’s a bigger mess this time.

That’s all that is different.

[Shelayne]

I think the difference is containment. In the past, Ebola has been almost always in East Africa in less populated areas, and they were able to contain it until the virus just died out. Some outbreaks were just a couple people affected in a little village.

This time it is affecting four countries in West Africa, with huge population centers. They have been, thus far, unable to contain it, and that is worrisome. Doctors Without Borders says this outbreak is out of control, and that they need to get ahead of this or it could be devastating. I cannot even imagine the fear that must be spreading throughout West Africa.

I am very hopeful about this “secret serum”, if both Dr. Brantly and Nancy Whitebol recover. I am praying...

[ansel12]

Here is an article on how they dealt with an Ebola outbreak in one African city in 1995.
http://www.newsweek.com/20-year-old-ebola-treatment-could-save-kent-brantly-262552?piano_t=1

Excerpt: “By the time Robert Colebunders arrived in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo (known as Zaire at the time), on June 15 of 1995, the Ebola virus had ravaged the city of 250,000 and the neighboring area for nearly 6 months. The hospitals in the riverport town were empty; patients and healthcare workers had fled to other parts of the country for fear of contracting the deadly disease, which would ultimately affect 317 people and kill 245.

Eventually, the Kikwit Ebola outbreak was traced back to January 1995, but it wasn’t until the start of May of that year that local public health officials recognized the many sick patients in the area as victims of the infectious disease. On May 8th, the Zairian government officially declared the epidemic, asking the World Health Organization to mobilize international assistance. Soon after, infectious disease experts arrived from the WHO, the CDC, Doctors Without Borders, the South African Medical Institute, the Red Cross, and Belgium’s Institute of Tropical Medicine—which sent Colebunders.

[wastoute]

Viruses have a history of “becoming less severe”. The factor that limited Ebola in the past was how quickly it killed. Folks COULDN’T spread the disease far because of this. It may be that as it “softens” it’s touch, it actually becomes worse, epidemiologically.

[Jack Hydrazine]

Quarantines are racist because those rules are from Whitey so they’ll do whatever they want to do.

[null and void]

They don't know better.

OTOH, at least one FReeper thinks we should send a private jet to bring home any American bleeding out with Ebola and treat him or her in an American hospital.

I wonder why this looks like a good idea to them?

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

[Shelayne]

Interesting. Thank you!

[Veto!]

Interesting that viruses become "less severe." But on the other side of the scale as reported in this NYT article, the ignorance and stubborn refusal of Africans to pay attention to warnings will more than balance that out.

Saudatu’s mother admitted to “a lot of touching” of her dying daughter — a common way the disease is spread — but she and other family members insisted that her daughter had died of something else.

“It was not Ebola that killed her,” said Sule Koroma, 24, Saudatu’s brother, who was angry about being confined to the house. He said that someone had “put a curse on her, so this embarrassment come up.”

[Black Agnes]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_outbreak

And yet, nearly 6 months into this outbreak, the numbers have begun going exponential.

Not decreasing.

[ansel12]

We’ll have to wait and see how this one runs it’s course.