Thread: West African Ebola Outbreak

WH Adviser Flounders When NBC Host Asks:
Why Should we Trust the Government to Handle Ebola?
October 5, 2014 By Greg Campbell



There used to be phrases thrown around in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s like, “Fight the establishment,” and that one should never trust “the man.” These phrases have slowly turned into ironic phrases uttered in comedy, but there was a time when “don’t trust anybody over 30” was a mantra of a skeptical generation that knew the government was lying to them.

Today, the left that was famous for skepticism of the government now, seemingly, trusts the government for everything. To them, these noble bureaucrats should be in charge of everything- our healthcare, how we raise our children, what is and what is not acceptable political expression- and the same Fourth Estate that once took down a corrupt president now often just accepts the Obama party line as gospel and dutifully relays the talking points assigned to them by this regime.

Still, there are some vestiges of media mistrust and on Sunday, NBC’s Chuck Todd highlighted that fact by bluntly wondering, “Why should we trust the government?”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer tried to explain how the government is in firm control of the Ebola crisis and tried to dispel worry that an outbreak could occur.

Todd put on the screen a list of scandals that continue to plague the administration including the NSA scandal, the VA scandal, the IRS scandal, the lack of a response to ISIS, border security and the Obamacare website fiascos.

Todd candidly asked, ”Why should we trust what you’re saying about the CDC [being] able to handle this?”

Pfeiffer tried to downplay the seriousness of these breaches of public trust by claiming it was an inherent distrust in institutions and that the Obama Administration had dealt with each aforementioned situation “quickly” and “forcefully.”



Of course, the Obama Administration has lingered and dragged their feet on every single issue listed and it is unfathomable that this administration that cannot gauge the appropriate level of seriousness with which they should address radical Islam can formulate an appropriate response to Ebola

http://www.tpnn.com/2014/10/05/video...-handle-ebola/

Ebola – What You’re Not Being Told
The Mind Unleashed on 5 October, 2014 at 21:07
By: SCGNEWS: http://themindunleashed.org/2014/10/...oure-told.html



There is something very, very important that the corporate media and public health officials are not telling you regarding the Ebola outbreak in west Africa.

The information I’m about to present here is frightening. There’s really no way around that. However, I request that you do your very best to maintain a calm state of mind.

Right now in West Africa the worst Ebola outbreak in history is in full swing and is jumping borders at an alarming rate. Already it has spread to four countries, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and now Nigeria. This latest jump into Nigeria is particularly serious since the infected individual carried the virus by plane to Lagos Nigeria, a city with a population of over 21 million. Doctors without borders has referred to the outbreak as “out of control”.

To make matters worse, there is something very, very important that the corporate media and public health officials are not telling you regarding this crisis.

You’ll notice if you read virtually any mainstream article on the topic that they make a point of insisting that Ebola is only transferred by physical contact with bodily fluids. This is not true, at all.

A study conducted in 2012 showed that Ebola was able to travel between pigs and monkeys that were in separate cages and were never placed in direct contact.

Though the method of transmission in the study was not officially determined, one of the scientists involved, Dr. Gary Kobinger, from the National Microbiology Laboratory at the Public Health Agency of Canada, told BBC News that he believed that the infection was spread through large droplets that were suspended in the air.

“What we suspect is happening is large droplets; they can stay in the air, but not long; they don’t go far,” he explained. “But they can be absorbed in the airway, and this is how the infection starts, and this is what we think, because we saw a lot of evidence in the lungs of the non-human primates that the virus got in that way.”

Translation: Ebola IS an airborne virus. (as is annotated in the video and below, I am using this term in the layman’s sense as TRAVELS THROUGH AIR)

UPDATE: Someone pointed out that in medical terms, if the virus is transferred through tiny droplets in the air this would technically not be called an “airborne virus”. Airborne, in medical terms would mean that the virus has the ability to stay alive without a liquid carrier. On one hand this is a question of semantics, and the point is well taken, but keep in mind that the study did not officially determine how the virus traveled through the air, it merely established that it does travel through the air. Doctor Kobinger’s hypothesis regarding droplets of liquid is just that, a hypothesis. For the average person however what needs to be understood is very simple: if you are in a room with someone infected with Ebola, you are not safe, even if you never touch them or their bodily fluids, and this is not what you are being told by the mainstream media. Essentially I am using the word “airborne” as a layman term.

Now I’m not going to speculate as to whether these so called “journalist” and public health agencies who keep repeating the official line regarding the means of transmission are lying, or are just participating in some massive display of synchronized incompetence, but what I will say, is that this shoddy reporting is most likely getting people killed right now, and may in fact put all of humanity in danger.

How so?

By convincing people that the virus cannot travel through air, important precautions that could reduce the spread of the virus are not being taken. For example the other passengers on the plane that traveled to Lagos, Nigeria were not quarantined.

[UPDATE August 6th]: According to the AP and the BBC, Patrick Sawyer, the Ebola infected man who traveled to Lagos Nigeria by plane, passed the disease on to eight health workers before being properly isolated.

Nigerian health authorities acknowledged Tuesday that they did not immediately quarantine a sick airline passenger who later died of Ebola, announcing that eight health workers who had direct contact with him were now in isolation with symptoms of the disease.

In spite of the seriousness of this disease, and in spite of the fact the fact that the BBC itself covered a study in 2012 that demonstrated that Ebola can spread through the air, no one in the corporate media has budged from the official line regarding transmission.

The AP’s spin on it:

Experts say people infected with Ebola can spread the disease only through their bodily fluids and after they show symptoms.

From CNN:

Ebola spreads through contact with organs and bodily fluids such as blood, saliva, urine and other secretions of infected people.

And from the BBC itself in their article describing the second confirmed case in Nigeria:

The virus spreads by contact with infected blood and bodily fluids – and touching the body of someone who has died of Ebola is particularly dangerous.

To put this into context, Ebola kills between 50% and 90% of its victims, so the stakes are very, very high here.

NOTE: We have reported on the fact that Ebola can spread through the air in three separate articles since March of 2014, here, here and here, however the corporate media has continued to misrepresent the vectors of transmission.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: August 13th: The CDC has admitted that the Ebola virus can travel through air, but they made that admission in a very sneaky and hard to find manner. The following statement is added as a footnote at the very bottom of the page:

Casual contact is defined as a) being within approximately 3 feet or within the room or care area for a prolonged period of time while not wearing recommended personal protective equipment or having direct brief contact (e.g., shaking hands) with an EVD case while not wearing recommended personal protective equipment.

The implication of this statement is very, very clear: Ebola DOES in fact travel through the air. This is critical information and it should be highlighted in large letters on every page, but instead it is tucked away in fine print where many won’t look. Given the fact that the CDC previously was running infographic campaigns claiming that Ebola does not travel through the air (see image below) this is highly irresponsible on their part.



Hat tip to the Pontiac Tribune for making us aware of this information in their article on the topic.

Note we saved a cached version of the CDC page just in case they decide to alter the text in the future.

Furthermore, if the official vectors of transmission are accurate, please have them explain how 170 of their aid workers have been infected in spite of being covered from head to foot with protective gear?

This particular strain of Ebola is not Ebola Zaire. This is a new strain, and it may in fact be more dangerous than the Zaire variety. Not because of any difference in the symptoms (the symptoms are identical), but because this new virus seems to be harder to contain. Whether this is due to some characteristic of the virus itself or merely dumb luck is uncertain at this time, but the rate at which this outbreak has extended its range is unprecedented.

According to the CDC this virus is genetically 97% similar to the Zaire strain. However if you are interested in this virus’ phylogenetic relationship (genetic lineage) to the Zaire strain you should look read “Phylogenetic Analysis of Guinea 2014 EBOV Ebolavirus Outbreak” on plos.org.

Another study by the New England Journal of medicine (this was the one referenced by the CDC) specifically names the parts of the genetic code which differ:

The three sequences, each 18,959 nucleotides in length, were identical with the exception of a few polymorphisms at positions 2124 (G→A, synonymous), 2185 (A→G, NP552 glycine→glutamic acid), 2931 (A→G, synonymous), 4340 (C→T, synonymous), 6909 (A→T, sGP291 arginine→tryptophan), and 9923 (T→C, synonymous).

Note that there doesn’t yet seem to be a consensus as to what this new strain is called. One study referred to it as “Guinean EBOV”, another as “Guinea 2014 EBOV Ebolavirus” and others are still referring to it as Zaire. Given that we can specifically name the points where the virus has mutated, using the old name is misleading.

Right now the question on everyone’s minds is whether this virus will spread outside of Africa.Considering the fact that Ebola has a three week incubation period, can travel through the air, and has already hitchhiked onto an international flight, this is a very real possibility. There are some that are downplaying the probability of this outcome, and to be honest, I hope that they are right, but the simple fact of the matter is that these people are basing their assessment on the faulty premise that Ebola is not an airborne virus.

Now the first thing you might be feeling when looking at this situation is a sense of fear and helplessness, and while that’s a perfectly normal reaction it’s really not helpful. Instead we should be thinking in terms of practical steps we can take to influence the outcome.

One thing we can all do is to start confronting journalists and public officials who keep making false statements regarding the way Ebola spreads. Use the links to the original study, the BBC report from 2012 and this video to put them in their place.

We also need to confront the fact that there isn’t a full out, coordinated, international effort to contain this. This is being treated like a sideshow but it has the very real potential to become a main event.

The doctors on the ground in West Africa don’t have enough staff or resources to deal with this situation. It is absolutely inexcusable for the U.S. and the E.U. to be investing billions of tax payer dollars into their little power games in Ukraine and Syria (which are both in the process of escalating right now by the way) while Ebola is getting a foothold in Africa. Every available resource should be shifted to West Africa in order to contain and extinguish this epidemic right now.

This is serious. Call them, write them, heckle them in the streets if you have to, but don’t allow them to ignore this issue. Make it impossible for them to pretend later that they didn’t know.

Now whether or not official policy towards the Ebola crisis changes there are some precautions that you should take right now for yourself and your family.

1. Know where you would go if you needed to leave your home on short notice. If Ebola escapes Africa the last place you want to be is in a densely populated metropolitan area. It may be that the most practical destination for your family would be a rural area near your current home, but if you already have concerns about the government you are living under, and how they may handle a crisis like this, then you might want to start looking at alternatives. Finding an alternative location that suits your family’s needs is something that requires a lot of time and research, so don’t put this off. The primary characteristics you should be examining in an alternative destination are geography , political environment, climate, population density and visa terms and requirements. Ideally you would want to end up somewhere that is geographically isolated to some degree.

2. If you don’t have passports for yourself and each of your dependents, get them now. This is not to say that you should leave your country, but you should have the means to do so. In countries where the Ebola outbreak is underway it is getting harder and harder to exit. Borders are being closed down. Flights are being cut off. This didn’t happen right away, but you definitely don’t want to be waiting for your passport to show up if Ebola arrives in your city.

3. Know what you would carry with you if you had to leave on short notice. Have those items ready, and have the luggage to carry them. It would be wise to consider buying a pack of surgical masks as part of this.

Now if you think about it, these preparations are wise steps to take regardless of whether the Ebola situation deteriorates or not. Knowing where you would go in an emergency, and having the means to get there on short notice is important for a wide variety of situations. The civilian population of Iraq, Syria, east Ukraine, and Gaza can attest to that.

Whatever you do don’t let fear take control of your mind. Take the steps you can take now, monitor the situation calmly, and be prepared to adapt if necessary.

[UPDATE July 31st]: A number of people have requested that I comment on the fact that theAmericans infected by Ebola are right now being flown into the U.S. My personal opinion is that this particular move will not lead to the virus getting out. This event is going to be highly scrutinized, and the isolation security should be at max. The real danger isn’t in these highly controlled transfers and quarantines, but rather in the ongoing flow of air travel from these regions. Thirty five countries are merely one flight away from an Ebola zone right now.

Why is this random air travel more dangerous?

Because if it gets in when people aren’t looking, it can spread before containment measures are put into place.

[Update September 30th] The U.S. just had its first confirmed case of Ebola in Dallas today. You should definitely keep an eye on the situation. Ebola is spreading exponentially at this point in west Africa. The number of cases are doubling every three weeks. As the number of infected increases in the hot zone the odds of new cases arriving in the U.S. or Europe increase as well.

P.S. If you want to learn more about Ebola I highly recommend that you read “The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston.

References:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...d=pm_world_pop

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27953155

http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/1211...srep00811.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20341423

http://www.standardmedia.co.ke

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbrea...bile=nocontent

http://currents.plos.org/outbreaks/a...us-outbreak-2/

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056...e&&&#t=article

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...ch-the-UK.html

http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/1211...srep00811.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20341423

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/ebola-...isis-1.2720882

http://scgnews.com/the-ukraine-crisi...not-being-told

http://scgnews.com/the-syrian-war-wh...not-being-told

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...a-borders.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/31/he...eak/index.html

http://qz.com/242388/here-are-all-th...ted-countries/

Still, there are some vestiges of media mistrust and on Sunday, NBC’s Chuck Todd highlighted that fact by bluntly wondering, “Why should we trust the government?”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer tried to explain how the government is in firm control of the Ebola crisis and tried to dispel worry that an outbreak could occur.

Todd put on the screen a list of scandals that continue to plague the administration including the NSA scandal, the VA scandal, the IRS scandal, the lack of a response to ISIS, border security and the Obamacare website fiascos.

Todd candidly asked, ”Why should we trust what you’re saying about the CDC [being] able to handle this?”

Originally Posted by Eddie

Thomas Duncan, the first person in the United States who was diagnosed with Ebola, was reported to have died today after succumbing to the virus.



This is according to an Israeli news report. The information has not yet been released or confirmed in the United States at the time of publication.

This comes after a veritable comedy of errors. First, Duncan came into the country with the illness. Then, he was turned away from the hospital, even though he told them he had come from Liberia. After that, he went home and exposed numerous people, including children who subsequently attended school. When he returned to the hospital, he vomited on the sidewalk. The vomit was power washed away by workers using no protective gear. He was put in an ambulance and the paramedics were not told he’d been diagnosed with Ebola, as they continued to drive around in the contaminated vehicle for the next two days, hauling patients. The CDC keeps surreptitiously changing information on their website about transmission of the disease, and they refuse to close the border to travelers who’ve been in the area where Ebola has reached epidemic levels.

Given all of these mistakes, it’s no surprise that they may be reluctant to announce the patient has died.

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/israe...as-died_102014

Bad ... very bad...

CDC Director: travel ban would make Ebola outbreak worse

Huh? Oh, yes he says it would make it too hard for us to go to them to solve the problem of Ebola!

How stupid does he think we are? A travel ban of course would not include medical health workers. It would only stop the daily importation of diseased individuals like "patient zero".



The head of the CDC said Saturday that imposing a travel ban between the U.S. and West African countries dealing with the Ebola virus could worsen the outbreak that has killed over 3,000 people in five countries.

"Though we might wish we can seal ourselves off from the world, there are Americans who have the right of return and many other people that have the right to enter this country," Dr. Thomas Frieden told a press conference. "We're not going to be able to get to zero risk no matter what we do unless we control the outbreak in West Africa."

Frieden added that a travel ban could make it difficult to get medical supplies and aid workers to the affected regions in West Africa. "We really need to be clear that we don't inadvertently increase the risk to people in this country by making it harder for us to respond to the needs in those countries," he said, "by making it harder to get assistance in and therefore those outbreaks would become worse, go on longer, and paradoxically, something that we did to try and protect ourselves might actually increase our risk."

Health officials have ruled out two potential Ebola cases in the Washington D.C. area, with Howard University Hospital in the District and Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in suburban Maryland confirming that patients who had been kept in isolation did not have the virus. A similar scare in New Jersey, when a passenger on a United Airlines flight from Brussels fell ill, also turned out not to be the virus.

Frieden said Saturday that officials are “beginning to see some progress” toward controlling the outbreak, “but it's going to be a long hard road.”

Frieden said that they've already gotten "well over" 100 inquiries on suspicious cases in recent months, with an uptick coming after the Dallas patient was diagnosed. Federal officials have said tests have been done on about 15 and all but one -- Duncan -- were false alarms.

Most of the cases don't involve travel to West Africa, "but we'd rather have a wider net cast," said Frieden. That way "we're more likely to find someone promptly if they did actually have exposure and they do actually have symptoms," he said.

The virus that causes Ebola is not airborne and can only be spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids -- blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen -- of an infected person who is showing symptoms.

The first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United Sates went to a Dallas hospital last week but was mistakenly sent home, despite revealing he was visiting from Liberia, before returning by ambulance days later. "There were things that did not go the way they should have in Dallas," Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious diseases chief at the National Institutes of Health, said Friday. "But there were a lot of things that went right and are going right."

Texas officials now are monitoring 50 people, 10 of whom they consider at high risk, who came into contact with the man, identified as Thomas Eric Duncan. They've had to quarantine four of them, and even had problems getting rid of the infectious waste left in the apartment where the patient stayed.

Texas health officials say Duncan is now in critical condition.

Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins said during the Saturday press conference that he took the four to a new home where they will be quarantined for 21 days.

Jenkins, the county top elected official, urged Americans to show compassion for them, saying they are deeply concerned about the public’s health and are people “just like in your family.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...ose-us-points/

First US Ebola Patient Fighting for His Life
10/5/2014

Thomas A. Duncan, who became ill with Ebola after arriving from West Africa in Dallas two weeks ago, is fighting for his life today after his condition worsened to critical, according to the director of the US Centers for Disease Control.

The Dallas hospital that admitted him did not recognize the deadly disease at first and sent him home, only for him to return two days later by ambulance.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Ne...5#.VDKD6pt0z5r


U.S. Ebola Patient Dies: Stories Circulating Have Not Been Confirmed

http://www.inquisitr.com/1521481/u-s...een-confirmed/

President Ebola
October 6, 2014 By Alan Caruba

What does it tell you when Britain and France have stopped flights to and from the nations in Africa where Ebola has become a threat and the United States has not taken a similar measure?

What does it tell you when the President sends 3,000 U.S. troops on a “humanitarian” mission to West Africa? It tells me he has put the U.S. at risk if any or a portion of these troops return after having been infected.

As always history has lessons that cannot be ignored. In 1918 and 1919, there was a pandemic of the Spanish influenza that caught nations by surprise, infecting an estimated 500 million people and killing between 50 and a 100 million of them in three waves. It began in the U.S. in March 1918 at a crowded army camp, Fort Riley, Kansas.

As these troops, living in close proximity to one another, were transported between camps, the disease spread quickly even before they were assembled on East Coast ports on route to France. They in turn bought it to the trenches of war in Europe.

The second wave struck in 1918 at a naval facility in Boston and at the Camp Devens military base in Massachusetts. October 1918 was the most deadly month in which 195,000 Americans died. The Harvard University Open Library notes that the supply of healthcare workers, morticians, and grave diggers dwindled and mass graves were often dug to bury the dead. There were subsequent outbreaks in 1957 and 1968.

And, at some point, 3,000 U.S. troops will be returning from West Africa to military facilities here at home.

Thus far we have been fortunate to have identified the case of the Ebola victim who had entered the nation from Liberia, but there are few guarantees that more will not be found or deterred. The Oct 4 Washington Post reports that “Since July, hospitals around the country have reported more than 100 cases involving Ebola-like symptoms to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Largely unknown is that 90,000 Americans die annually from preventable infections they acquire while in hospitals!

The concern about illnesses entering the U.S. is particularly true of our southern border which remains porous. Thank goodness Texas has taken measures to tighten its border security, but I am reminded that the Obama administration sued Arizona when it attempted to increase its security against the influx of illegal aliens.

Obama is the President who engineered an invasion of thousands of children and others from Latin America and then distributed them to various states without informing their governors or other authorities of who and where they were. Not surprisingly, in recent months, cases of an enterovirus respiratory disease affecting school-age children have been reported around the nation.

Obama has no regard for the sovereignty of the nation or its immigration laws.

This is the same President who has made it clear that he intends to extend amnesty by executive order to an estimated eleven million illegal aliens, but not until after the midterm elections in November. I doubt that he has the constitutional power to do this. I hope the U.S. Congress has the means and the will to negate this.

The U.S. has a healthcare system that is the envy of the world, but the introduction of ObamaCare is already having negative effects on its administration and the former system of privately purchased healthcare insurance. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who had such insurance have lost it and those who signed up for ObamaCare are discovering it is far more expensive.

Perhaps the most under-reported story thus far regarding Ebola is the fact that in 2010, according to The Daily Caller, “the administration of President Barack Obama moved with virtually no fanfare to abandon a comprehensive set of regulations which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had called essential to preventing international travelers from spreading deadly diseases inside the United States.” Among the viral diseases of concern was Ebola.

I want to have confidence in the Centers for Disease Control, but after witnessing the failures of one government agency after another including the Secret Service, I wish I felt better about them.

I have no doubt its staff are seriously concerned and doing what they can to respond to the threat, but I also think they and the rest of us are at risk from a regime led by a man whose incompetence has written a new chapter in the history of the presidency.

I wish that I felt confident that the Obama administration will take such steps as are necessary to keep the Ebola threat from harming the health of the nation such as not issuing visas to those from the affected nations in Africa, but the record to date limits that confidence.

http://www.tpnn.com/2014/10/06/president-ebola/