Ebola Hysteria, fast to spread, easy to catch - so something like the common cold

Sometimes words speak louder than numbers... So..

Good Morning America, hands up who needs another diaper change!

There is a new virus in the United States of America, and it has infected most of the population within a matter of days! It's called 'Ebola Hysteria virus' (EH), and it can be contracted by watching tv, reading newspapers and following the social media. With America's online presence, it is only a matter of hours before you and everyone you know will be infected. In a freak mutation of the virus, it seems to affect only Americans, so the rest of the world is safe.. for now. It is important to see the EH is a different, more virulent strain of the far less common Ebola Concern (EC). However, the two are easily distinguished: the latter only occurs in countries also suffering from a large outbreak of the Ebola virus disease (EVD), indicating there may be a link between the two. Ebola Hysteria, on the other hand, roams freely regardless of the number of ebola infections, as the graph below clearly shows. It should, therefore, be considered far more dangerous than EVD. American Experts (also known as journalists) however, have denied a ban on all media coverage of EH is a solution. "The chances of anyone dying from EH, are a million to one", they say. But still....

There are over 4,000 dead bodies who would argue that Ebola isn't a joke to anyone but Democrats, and the WHO and CDC project the number of dead into the millions within several months. This will be your waking up day. Appointing a political fixer to combat a hemorrhagic fever with a 70 percent mortality rate, one the old CDC described as a slate wiper, just proves that Democrats are on board with Americans bleeding out in shit and vomit as they breathe their last breath and bite the bitter earth.

Why does gturner think all scientists have wonderful administration and political skills?

Tsk! Of course they do. Except when it comes to climate change.

Zenow, I think you should request a mod to move all the "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIIIIEEEE!" posts out of your first thread into this one so the adults can continue our conversation in the first thread.

Many don't, but many do - because they've been running large and complex scientific endeavors that deal with uncertainty, public communications, and rapid response. There are doctors on the ground in Africa who've dealt with prior Ebola outbreaks and who have had to coordinate efforts of both the CDC, WHO, and local doctors. How about one of those? Maybe the head of Doctors Without Borders?

But Obama picked a political fixer and a lawyer, similar to George W Bush putting Michael Brown in charge of FEMA, even though Brown was merely a lawyer whose previous top accomplishment was becoming the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, That ended with "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie" and Bush ended up with an albatross around his neck.

But Brown was appointed when we weren't in a crisis and he had a few years in the job before the public had reason to question his competence and complete lack of background needed to run FEMA. We had the luxury of assuming he was competent until he proved us wrong. But Klain was appointed when the entire world is focused on the problem he's tasked to fix, a problem that we all desperately want fixed, and we're looking at his resume and asking "Why did you even apply for this job? Did you get lost when you stepped out of the elevator? We're looking for a Chief of Staph. You're a Chief of Staff."

Second, why does Obama need an Ebola czar? He's got the HHS, which even has a deputy administrator in charge of pandemic response. Shouldn't the head of HHS, DHS, or their deputy administrator already be the Ebola czar? He's got a surgeon general with experience working for the CDC's disease intelligence unit. He's got a head of FEMA, and Ebola is an emergency. He's got a CDC director. To an already confused and overlapping organizational chart, Obama's merely inserted another position whose authority is unclear and whose skills and background are non-existent.

That kind of muddied organizational structure is what led to the Bay of Pigs, and in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs Kennedy and his advisers fixed the glaring dysfunctions in the decision-making apparatus. After six years in office, Obama's team still hasn't realized that to lead, instead of merely to campaign, they have to do the same.

By the way, the situation we're in with Ron Klain in charge of Ebola was predicted back in 2001, during the Bush Administration.

If we're not allowed to reference the Bush adminstration, neither are you.

But you certainly see the parallels between Ron Klain and the guy who stayed in a Holiday Inn Express.

What's worse is that the Ebola czar doesn't report to Obama, he reports to Susan Rice (whose two claims to fame are repeatedly lying about an Internet video for Benghazi - to evade blame over an incompetent screw up - and lying about having an agreement with Turkey to operate against ISIS from their soil) and to Lisa Monaco, who is an assistant on counter terrorism. What does Ebola have to do with counter terrorism? Second, they didn't even bother inviting him to the big White House Ebola strategy meeting, which even Samantha Power (our UN ambassador) attended via video link.

Ebola strategy meeting attendance list.

Wow, nine posts in; you're a model of self-restraint. Now do a riff on "They're taking ur gunz!" and you'll win the TightyRighty ODS trifecta.

Seriously, the woman went out and told the American people that Benghazi was the result of a spontaneous protest caused by an Internet video for two weeks, while everyone in the Administration knew it was a lie, and everyone in America found out it was a lie. When it comes to a global public health emergency, she is not someone who would have any credibility. Everyone would assume she's spouting more BS to cover her team's ass, and snark that 'yeah, and she told us Benghazi was a protest, too'.

Likewise, Ron Klain's most famous action was dismissing doubts about Solyndra's solvency. Before that he helped run the team (he was played by Kevin Spacey) that lost Al Gore the 2000 election. More recently he was Joe Biden's chief of staff, which is like being Ronald McDonald's sidekick. Have you check Joe Biden's public image lately?

Obama has just added more layers of confusion to an organizational chart that was already a bowl of spaghetti, and there's no way Klain can reassure the American public because we all already know that he doesn't know as much about Ebola as we do. His tweets about Justin Timberlake reflect that. If things are not getting done, if people on the ground are unable to cut through bureaucratic red tape (such as the Dallas hospital having a machine to detect Ebola - which they were forbidden from using on patients), then organizational action should be to grant someone the authority to cut through all the red tape. They should be above all the agencies and structures, not reporting to them. And they should probably at least be invited to the strategy meetings, unless the strategy meeting was to discuss how to make the new Ebola czar the patsy for any failures.

As Ebola fears get worse, and they will because we're not cutting off air transport even as the epidemic grows exponentially, the Administration will have crippled any chance they had at reassuring the public because they've put political hacks and buffoons in charge, and the goal of the hacks is to protect Obama, not us.

Ebola's not panning out the way you've predicted, so it'll be All Benghazi, All the Time again?

Ebola is panning out the way the CDC and WHO feared back in April. It continues to multiply almost unchecked. By their own numbers, they could be looking at over a million cases by spring. They say they face a pretty narrow window to get it under control, because if the numbers grow much past what they are now, they simply won't have the resources to track down and isolate contacts.

From the CDC

By September 30, 2014, without additional interventions and using the described likelihood of going to an ETU, approximately 670 daily beds in use (1,700 corrected for underreporting) will be needed in Liberia and Sierra Leone (Figure 2). Extrapolating trends to January 20, 2015, without additional interventions or changes in community behavior (e.g., notable reductions in unsafe burial practices), the model also estimates that Liberia and Sierra Leone will have approximately 550,000 Ebola cases (1.4 million when corrected for underreporting) (Appendix [Figure 2]). The uncorrected estimates of cases for Liberia on September 9, 2014, were 2,618, and the actual reported cases were 2,407 (i.e., model overestimated cases by +8.8%). The uncorrected estimates of cases for Sierra Leone on September 13, 2014, were 1,505 and the actual reported cases were 1,620 (i.e., model underestimated cases by -7.6%).

The combined population of Liberia and Sierra Leon is 10 million, so 1.4 million cases is 14 percent of their population. The outbreak is having a four week doubling time and it has a three week incubation time, so about five or six percent of their population could be asymptomatic carriers at that point. That would mean that of the 150 people flying here per day, there could be seven people carrying Ebola, just like Duncan. We had one case and it caused pandemonium. Seven new Ebola cases a day here would be unimaginable. Other countries would ban air travel from the United States.

But the CDC article goes on to say:

Results from the two illustrative scenarios provide an example of how the epidemic can be controlled and eventually stopped. If, by late December 2014, approximately 70% of patients were placed either in ETUs or home or in a community setting such that there is a reduced risk for disease transmission (including safe burial when needed), then the epidemic in both countries would almost be ended by January 20, 2015 (Appendix [Figure 3]). In the first scenario, once 70% of patients are effectively isolated, the outbreak decreases at a rate nearly equal to the initial rate of increase. In the second scenario, starting an intervention on September 23, 2014, such that initially the percentage of all patients in ETUs are increased from 10% to 13% and thereafter including continual increases until 70% of all patients are in an ETU by December 22, 2014, results in a peak of 1,335 daily cases (3,408 cases estimated using corrected data) and <300 daily cases by January 20, 2015 (Appendix [Figure 10]). Delaying the start of the intervention until October 23, 2014, results in the peak increasing to 4,178 daily cases (10,646 cases estimated using corrected data). Delaying the start further, until November 22, results in 10,184 daily cases (25,847 estimated using corrected data) by January 20, 2015, which is the last date included in the model (Appendix [Figure 10]).

The epidemic can be beat, if we take it very, very seriously. And how does Obama show he's serious? By appointing the cross-eyed chad guy, Joe Biden's clown of a partisan sidekick, to lead the response.

TLDC.

So the narrative has switched from "why doesn't Obama appoint an Ebola czar" to "why does Obama even need an Ebola czar," then, has it?

To be fair, people are scratching their heads over the fact that Obama picked a laywer with no medical cred whatsoever over...yanno, a doctor. Or also, the Surgeon General. Kinda confused by that one, myself.

It's not to confusing if you realize that the Ebola crisis was spiraling out of control, threatening to ruin his golf game. Czar appointed, he was back out on the links today playing with an ESPN host. The only way he'll do something is if someone starts a rumor that Ebola can be spread by ball washers and that some caddies have been exposed.

And why do you expect Obama to do personally, exactly? I don't see him doing anything that any other recent President wouldn't have done. Fact is, this entire country is lackadaisical where ebola is concerned because no one ever expected it here in this part of the world. Same as with the average American's knowledge about external terrorism on September 10th 2001 unless they were stationed on the USS Cole eleven months earlier.

And in America, we've also got better access to medical care. Patient Zero aside, there's been a better-than-average survival rate with the cases for far, because the original doc that was over there and that staff called ahead of time and there was a team waiting at the airport to take care of them. So far as I'm aware, no one involved with that case contracted the illness. The first nurse is expected to survive and the second nurse is presumably alive, since I can't find any articles more recent than three days ago about her. The third woman on the cruise ship in isolation isn't showing signs, either.

Meanwhile:

Canada to Ship Experimental Ebola Vaccine to World Health Organization

But the World Health Organization doesn't need a vaccine, people in Liberia do. Canada should ship it there instead. WHO will probably lose it in their mail room.

Where do you think the WHO are gonna send it, dingbat?

Forget him. He's one of these:

The Ebola Conspiracy Theories

Or maybe one of these:


6 Fake Ebola Cures Being Peddled Online

Just pray that nobody over there thinks they can cure themselves of Ebola by raping a virgin.

That's AIDS.
Now go kill yourself.

Mmm,yeah, moving the bullshits posts from my original thread here would be nice, but I can't imagine a mod wasting the time to do that - nor do I really expect gturner to restrict himself to one thread

By the way - the whole 'ebola is a slate wiper' shtick is nonsense - that was said at the time of 'The Hot Zone' - a time when the CDC still suspected ebola was airborne.

Why is it that America never seems happy unless it's in total fear of something?

- The British (18th and 19th century)
- The Communists (20th century)
- The Muslims (21st century)

And now, we bring you...

... the fear of Ebola!

(Sounds like a good band name. Hmmmm.)

It's not fear. It's that we're seeing a serious situation being responded to with the usual incompetent politically- driven buffoonery and were kind of tired of it.

Yeah, hard to blame the victims for this one the way some here were doing post-Katrina (*cough*Sokar, Midnight Funeral*cough*).

Don't forget teh Fear of teh Anthrax!!!! (already a band name - sorry!) that saw duct tape sales soar...