Marburg Toll in Angola Increases to 221....

[Media_Lies_Daily]

Marburg Toll in Angola Increases to 221
<http://www.recombinomics.com/News/04110503/Marburg_Toll_221.html>

QUOTE:

The 221 discovered Marburg cases gives a lower limit on cases with Marburg symptoms. These numbers clearly lag the number of people in Angola infected with Marburg. The infected patients is markedly higher than 221, but that number is largely unknown. WHO uses the term confirmed cases to generate an even lower number, which appears to lag the numbers identified for several weeks. Media stories tonight still maintain that there has been no transmission of Marburg in Luanda and the number of confirmed Marburg deaths in Luanda remains at two. However, the first two deaths in Luanda, a 15 year old male and the Italian pediatrician, died on Match 24, over two weeks ago.

Last week MSF conceded that urban transmission of Marburg in Luanda had begun because there were cases that had no connections to Uige. Moreover media reports described patients in Cacuaco, a Luanda slum, that also had no clear ties to Uige. The number of deaths in Luanda last month was at least 5, so the comments on Marburg Luanda transmission attributed to WHO a clearly quite dated.

....snip....

Now WHO is continuing to ignore the fact that Marburg is transmitting in densely populated slums of Luanda. If the only two cases WHO has been able to confirm in Luanda are the two victims who died on March 26, then WHO should explicitly state that as of March 26 there was no evidence of transmission in Luanda.

To repeatedly state that there are only two confirmed cases in Luanda is at best misleading and clearly scandalous, either because the confirmation process lags the cases on the ground by over two weeks, or because the media is allowed to publish misleading information on a daily basis without comment from WHO.

[icymist]

1. What is 'recombinomics'? Is it a blog?

The transmission of this disease is becomming alarming, especially to healthcare workers.

[WindRavenX]

3. the virus is mutating

Most of these types of viruses have high rates of recombincy.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

4. It certainly looks that way. Read the info under "Founder"....

...pretty impressive credentials. And he clearly doesn't think much of the WHO at all.

Here's the part that concerns me the most...while the WHO dragged their feet getting involved in dealing with Marburg, any number of people could have traveled from Angola to any number of countries by air, sea, and land. The incubation period is about 10 days, allowing those people plenty of potential contacts before exhibiting any symptoms of the disease.

We live in a society that is about a plane ride away from some major problems.

[icymist]

5. So this is one man's view, a type of blog?

The last line in the 'founder's' statement:
These latest findings are the subject of recent patent filings.

Two questions: 1) Why is he so angry at the WHO? 2) If his posting of this information is for the well-being of society, why is he patenting his information?

I don't mean to downplay the Marburg virus, this sounds scary enough, but something here seems strange.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. I would think that an easy way to get....

...the answers to your questions would be to contact the author directly.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm just happy that someone's reporting what's REALLY happening in regards to Marburg.

It's more strange to me that we are NOT getting up-to-date information on Marburg. Why?

[enki23]

6. adding "omics" to various words became hip sometime after "genomics"

was coined.

[Sufi Marmot]

7. Genomics is so 1997...

;-)

We're well into the proteomics era...

-SM, who remembers when "bioinformatics" was the Next Big Thing in biology

[Spangle]

2. That is some scary SHAT!

Scary, scary, scary!

[sharonking21]

9. For earlier discussions

on this topic that may have some bearing on the OP, the website mentioned, and on some of the comments below the OP,

Please go to:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1377255

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1332019

[sharonking21]

10. See also an earlier thread citing this website

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1386729&mesg_id=1386838

[Media_Lies_Daily]

11. Let's let the moderators do their job, okay? If they want it moved,...

...they can do so.

By the way, what is reported on the website in question is REAL news, and up-to-date as of yesterday, 4/11/2005.

While I'm at it, let's call it like it is, shall we? You've made it very clear that you don't like the site in question, and that you don't like the fact that this version of Marburg has a near 100% fatality rate.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

12. One more comment....the founder of the site has a pretty impressive....

...backgound, and is certainly more qualified to speak about Marburg than 99.9% of all of the reporters of the captive mainstream press.

From the website being discussed:

Founder

Recombinomics, Inc. Founder and President, Henry L Niman earned a PhD at the University of Southern California in 1978. His dissertation focused on feline retroviral expression in tumors in domestic cats.

He took a postdoctoral position at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation where he developed monoclonal antibody technology. He fused monoclonal antibody and synthetic peptide technologies and accepted a staff position at Scripps.

In 1982, he developed the flu monoclonal antibody, which is widely used throughout the pharmaceutical, biotech, and research industries in epitope tagging techniques. He also produced a broad panel of monoclonal antibodies against synthetic peptides of oncogenes and growth factors. These monoclonal antibodies were distributed worldwide to researchers by the National Cancer Institute. The antibodies identified novel related proteins which correlated with clinical parameters.

This technology was used to form ProgenX, a cancer diagnostic company that became Ligand Pharmaceuticals. Dr Niman subsequently identified protein expression patterns at the University of Pittsburgh. More recently, he became interested in infectious diseases while at Harvard Medical School. He then founded Recombinomics and discovered how viruses rapidly evolve. These latest findings are the subject of recent patent filings.

[pandemic_1918]

14. Case Fatality Rate Update - 9 of 10 Dead in a Week

The case fatality rate has been misrepresented since the outbreak was announced. WHO won't give a number because they know it is greater than 99% (probably 100%).

Thus, initially they gave the raw data (102 cases and 95 dead). The later announcements by others used ambiguous language (i.e. 100 dead and 110 diagnosed), which reporters assumed meant that there were 210 cases, 100 dead, and 110 in the hospital, when in reality it was 100 dead and 10 in the hospital and most of the 10 would be dead in the next few days, followed by the rest in a week or two).

Next came the reporters doing there own inaccurate calculations which assumed all in the hospital would survive. This generated fatality rates in the 80-90% range.

Now the latest in the NY Times indicates that 90% will die in the first week (and the rest take slightly longer). There are NO documented SURVIVORS.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/health/12angola.html?

"Experts say at least 214 people have caught the virus and 194 have died. Marburg is spread by contact with bodily fluids, from blood to sweat, and kills with gruesome efficiency. Victims suffer from vomiting, diarrhea, high fever and bleeding from body orifices. Nine in 10 are dead within a week. There is no effective treatment."

[pandemic_1918]

15. WHO: No One Released From Hospital Alive

Here's another comment on the fatality rate:

"Last week, the WHO pointed out that no one has been released from the hospital who has contracted the virus, and statistically the death rate is nearly 100 percent. "


http://www.elitestv.com/pub/2005/Apr/EEN425bd18751072.html

[Media_Lies_Daily]

13. Here's the latest report for 4/12/2005:..........

Marburg Toll in Luanda Continues to Grow
<http://www.recombinomics.com/News/04120501/Marburg_Luanda_Toll.html>

[Media_Lies_Daily]

16. How the heck did this get moved from LBN? Looks to me like....

...the mods don't care if Africans are being impacted by a killer disease.

I guess it will be okay to post about Marburg once it reaches the US.