RE: US testing - Does this seem possible without some special red tape cutting, given the FDA?
Bring Out Your Dead
Were gonna need
a bigger cart!
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...
OK. From a site we can’t post anything from, per copyright rules (UK Independent), there is a county in Liberia, IIRC, in which there are now only 2 doctors for 85,000 people.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
So... Enough vaccine may be ready by January(?) to inoculate 10,000 people.
FIRST, this needs to be put in context:
We could be looking at more than a million victims by January, with the number of victims more than doubling every month. It is probable that a situation like this will cause a complete breakdown of all infrastructure.
SECOND, we don’t even know if the vaccine will work, or be safe enough to use. To put this in context:
Most experimental vaccines do NOT work.
There won’t have been enough time to find out if it is safe.
THIRD, by January it will be too late to save the worst hit countries. To put this in context:
If the vaccine is safe and works, how long does it take after getting the shot before the body has created meaningful immunity? (It could take a couple of weeks.)
How long until a meaningful number of doses can be manufactured? (Most likely, quite a while.)
How will a meaningful vaccination program be implemented, and how long will it take to do so? (It will take a long time, even if a way can be found to do so.)
In other words, a vaccine, even IF it works, will be too little, too late, to help in the areas that are already hit.
WHAT ELSE WILL BE HAPPENING BY JANUARY?
Millions of people will be attempting to flee. Those financially able will attempt to flee by plane, boat, and car. The majority will attempt to flee on foot.
So... If we find a workable vaccine, the best we can hope for is that it will be useful in protecting the rest of the world. Let’s hope and pray it works.
Beats doing nothing. Hopefully, the vaccines will be proven, and then we'll have doses available, eventually, for every American. (Yes, Ebola is going to come here in an uncontrolled fashion, it's just a matter of when.)