Peace Corps removing volunteers amid Ebola outbreak

[n2doc]

Source: LA Times

The Peace Corps is removing more than 300 of its volunteers from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea as an Ebola outbreak that has left hundreds dead worsens in West Africa.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the Peace Corps said it is temporarily removing volunteers from the affected countries. It did not offer a possible return date.

A Peace Corps spokeswoman also said Wednesday that two of its volunteers have been quarantined after coming in contact with an Ebola victim who later died.

The news came just days after two American charity workers contracted the disease in Monrovia, the Liberian capital. Patrick Sawyer, a 40-year-old consultant with the Liberian government, was also revealed to be the first American to die of the disease, relatives said Tuesday

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-fg-africa-ebola-peace-corps-volunteers-20140730-story.html

[randys1]

1. This shit could get very real, very quick, if it hopped on an airplane

[theHandpuppet]

8. I fear it's inevitable

It's not like you can quarantine an entire country and from what I understand people are fleeing across the borders, not that I blame them.

[XemaSab]

19. Oh, shit's already real

340 million people live in West Africa.

Even if it "only" rages out of control there, that's 1/3 of the total population of the African continent.

[randys1]

23. What we could see here in USA is a republican controlled house and senate dismantles

the CDC and USDA and whatever else, the NTSB and so on and Ebola then comes into our country and does its deed

I am listening to a racist Obama hater calling into Michelangelo Signorile right now on Sirius, sorry to take this off topic but i cant stand another second of these people

cant stand another second

[XemaSab]

24. The CDC said they weren't so worried about an outbreak here because we have a different "culture"

and I interpret "culture" to be a euphemism for clean water, hot running water, flush toilets, good nutrition, soap, bleach, laundry facilities, easy-to-clean surfaces, low prevalence of HIV/AIDS, lack of parasites, lack of other diseases, and about 50 other things that we all take for granted.

This is what they're dealing with in West Africa:



It's the very best that they can do under the circumstances, but LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT CONTAINER OF BLEACH.

You can get 121 ounces of bleach for $3, or two and a half cents per ounce. The idea that MSF might not be able to afford enough bleach to adequately sterilize everything that needs to be sterilized is horrifying. And the idea that people are trying to care for sick relatives at home where there is no sanitation at all is unthinkable.

We're talking about countries where the GDP is $700 a person per year, 1/5 of small children are underweight, 60% of the population is illiterate, there are 890 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, 1/4 of children work, and 80% of the population is below the poverty line, it's easy to see how a pandemic could spread there in ways that it wouldn't spread here.

I got off topic. But yeah, it would kill people here, but probably not at the same rate it's killing people there.

[randys1]

26. And that different culture we have here goes entirely out the window if teaparty takes over

[n2doc]

2. Doctors Told To Prepare For Global Outbreak

Ebola: Doctors Told To Prepare For Global Outbreak After Victim, Who Later Died In Lagos, Was Allowed On 2 Planes

Doctors fear Ebola victim Patrick Sawyer may have sparked a worldwide spread of the killer disease after being allowed on two flights while infected.

And tonight a desperate race was on to find dozens of passengers who flew on the same jets as the 40-year-old American.

British doctors and border officials have been warned to be on the lookout for people in the UK showing signs of the disease.

Mr Sawyer was allowed to board an ASKY Airlines flight in Liberia, where Ebola is rife, despite vomiting and suffering from ­diarrhoea. His sister was recently killed by the virus.

more

http://www.thetrentonline.com/ebola-doctors-told-prepare-global-outbreak-victim-later-died-nigeria-allowed-2-planes/


Definitely got me freaked.

[Hekate]

7. He was that actively sick and they let him on the flight?!

Christ on a trailer hitch. Words absolutely fail me.

[LisaL]

13. Yea, if airlines are allowing people who are showing active signs of Ebola to board planes, that's

not going to contain the disease.
WTF are they thinking?

[theHandpuppet]

9. Holy shit.

Tick... tick... tick.

[dembotoz]

3. good

this scares me

[Baclava]

4. As long as you aren't slurping up bloody diarrhea and drinking infected urine you should be OK

yea verily

[WinkyDink]

5. I guess that's what the dead and dying doctors are doing.

[Baclava]

6. I was thinking more of a global threat - of course those closest caregivers would be most exposed

Blood and body fluid precautions in a medical tent city would be no fun.

[Nobel_Twaddle_III]

10. Why are these countries not under quarantine.

[PasadenaTrudy]

11. I have friends

traveling in Morocco right now. Hope they are safe from this...

[quadrature]

12. Centers for Disease Control .. ZZZzzzZZZzzz ... nt

[Hekate]

14. And you know this how? Because they aren't releasing hourly bulletins & causing a panic? nt

[quadrature]

15. some panic would be useful right now...

if panic would cut down
on non-essential travel

[Hekate]

16. Some useful links from the CDC. Google is your friend.

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/t0728-ebola.html
CDC Telebriefing on Ebola outbreak in West Africa
Monday, July 28, 2014, 2:30 p.m. ET
STEPHAN MONROE: Thank you, for the last few months, the CDC and World Health Organization and other partners have been actively engaged in response to the Ebola outbreak in west Africa.

CDC has issued a level 2 travel notice for these 3 countries. We recommend that travelers “avoid contact with blood and body fluids of infected people to protect themselves.” We have more detailed information on our Traveler’s Health website, which is www.cdc.gov/travel.


http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/index.html
Ebola Homepage

[quadrature]

17. Fly the Friendly Skies of Ebola

a discussion from the PoV
of an airline passenger

http://www.pprune.org/african-aviation/544401-ebola-lagos.html

[XemaSab]

20. As opposed to a level 1 travel notice

where people are encouraged to play with blood and body fluids?

[B2G]

21. CDC just upped it to Level 3

[Hekate]

25. I'm guessing that means they are going Zzzzzzz but are paying close attention. nt

[XemaSab]

27. I don't think there is a level 4

[LanternWaste]

22. You're not very clever at looking to the primary source of information on this particular topic, eh?

You're not very clever at looking to the primary source of information on this particular topic, eh?

[Hekate]

28. Apparently not. Encouraging panic is so much more fun than Science....

This is certainly a deadly serious situation -- one requiring thought, planning, Science, co-operation.

Panic, by its very nature, destroys cognition. Panic is what the Bush/Cheney administration fomented and fostered after 9-11. Keep people running in circles with fear, afraid of everything whether it makes sense or not, and dictators (by whatever name they go in a given circumstance) can achieve amazing things. Who could ever have imagined the Congress would pass a document like the USA PATRIOT ACT without even reading it? But I digress (sort of).

Panic is just what we don't need. We need Science -- something the radical RW and their enablers in the GOP have gone out of their way to discredit and devalue.

Even worse, a sizable minority of well-fed and well-educated (except in Science) and well-off residents of the US have taken to not vaccinating their babies because of campaigns of misinformation. Villagers in the African and Pakistani hinterlands have been known to attack and even kill health squads bearing vaccinations because of campaigns of misinformation. Intellectually they are just about on par with each other.

In public opinion Science has to claw its way back from 1900 to 2014, but I have no doubt whatsoever that in the US at least the same people who fear to vaccinate their children for things we CAN prevent will be howling for a quick shot of magic juice to prevent the spread of Ebola -- for which there is no prevention or cure at this time.

I await further developments with interest and sorrow both. At this point all I can see is quarantining large areas, especially to air flights, and enforcing cremations in diseased areas for reasons of public health.

[Sunlei]

18. we desperately need a vaccine against virus, especially after the new Canadian research

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_disease#Domestic_animals
Ebola virus can be transmitted to dogs and pigs.[142] While dogs may be asymptomatic, pigs tend to develop clinical disease.
Recent research[edit]

In late 2012, Canadian scientists discovered that the deadliest form of the virus could be transmitted by air between species.[143] They managed to prove that the virus was transmitted from pigs to monkeys without any direct contact between them, leading to fears that airborne transmission could be contributing to the wider spread of the disease in parts of Africa. Evidence was also found that pigs might be one of the reservoir hosts for the virus; the fruit bat has long been considered as the reservoir.[143] A 2013 study isolated antibodies from fruit bats in Bangladesh, against Ebola Zaire and Reston viruses, thus identifying potential virus hosts and signs of the filoviruses in Asia.[144]