32 replies to this topic

[Russ]

There are reports that an immunization agent is to be tested in September... good luck to medical researchers.

[dasein]

HI RD,

I mentioned it elsewhere if not here that midweek we will get the Ebola scare - it amazes me that something that is normally quarantined has sent more than one Westerner back home to be treated for the virus. I am pretty sure someone went back to Europe too.

http://www.nytimes.c...over-ebola.html

snip - The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said Thursday that the United States was considering a medical evacuation to bring home American aid workers diagnosed with Ebola. Two, infected in Liberia, were in grave condition, according to a statement on the website of a charitable organization, Samaritan’s Purse.

Emory University Hospital in Atlanta issued a statement on Thursday saying it had been told of plans to transfer a patient with Ebola to its special containment unit, set up in collaboration with the C.D.C., in the next several days. Because of privacy laws, the hospital declined to name the patient.
end snip

[NAV]

RogerDodger,

You sound like the media guys who dramatize things !

Ebola 'moving faster than efforts to control it.

The outbreak of the disease, the worst since it was discovered in the mid-1970s, has so far caused 729 deaths in four different countries.



Now how about some real epidemic !

http://en.wikipedia..../Bubonic_plague

The first recorded epidemic ravaged the Byzantine Empire during the sixth century, and was named the Plague of Justinian after emperor Justinian I, who was infected but survived through extensive treatment.[11][12] The epidemic is estimated to have killed approximately 50 million people in the Roman Empire alone.

In the Late Middle Ages (1340–1400) Europe experienced the most deadly disease outbreak in history when the Black Death, the infamous pandemic of bubonic plague, hit in 1347, killing a third of the human population.

The plague resurfaced for a third time in the mid-19th century. Like the two previous outbreaks, this one also originated in Eastern Asia.[21] The initial outbreak occurred in China's Yunnan province in 1855.[22] The disease remained localized in Southwest China for several years before spreading. In the city of Canton, beginning in March 1894, the disease killed 60,000 people in a few weeks. Daily water-traffic with the nearby city of Hong Kong rapidly spread the plague there, killing over 100,000 within two months.[23]

From China, the plague spread to the Indian subcontinent around 1896. Over the next thirty years, the India would lose 12.5 million people to the Bubonic plague.

It's all about perspective eh ?. We live in a world (especially the western world) where things are so secure, so under control, so systematic, so orderly that every small inconvenience is reported as disaster, every minor outbreak of disease is reported as epidemic, every small economic dips reported as depression. American media has got be the dumbest thing i have come across. Masses have lost both perspective and independent thinking. It's all about regurgitation of what the media says and brainwashes. I keep reading about the Kondraitieff winter and the depression America is in. Yet every time i go to Vegas i see bigger and taller casinos - the era of multi million properties is over. Welcome to the era of billion dollar properties. People sitting in front of their large screen TVs in their plush sofas, tablets, fancy cars, expensive vacations and talk about economic depression. You gotta be kidding me. We are dealing with a few generations of people which have not seen wars and dislocations, real epidemics, real economic depressions and suffering. In the absence of them, paranoia and conspiratorial thinking rule. When the real things hits, folks will be scrambling for survival !. You ain't seen anything yet !

[NAV]

Fear of germs

Edited by NAV, 02 August 2014 - 10:13 PM.

[jack]

Death toll from Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone hits 729

Many hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of people in Sierra Leone have died of Malaria.
At the present rate one in every seven people in Sierra Leone will die of malaria, most during childhood.

[tradesurfer]

only spread through 'contact' but the virus is able to survive outside the body on any surface for 20 to 30 days or more ! that means any high traffic surface area that is repeatedly touched is a potential risk for cross transfer transmitted through saliva... well when someone sneezes moisture droplets fly through the air and if you are within 2 feet of someone....

[Rogerdodger]

when someone sneezes...if you are within 2 feet of someone....

Like on an airplane or cruise ship?
The Norovirus is bad enough! But rare.

the Norovirus infection rate is ~0,01% of all passengers

See here all 2014 cruise ship Norovirus reports showing you the numbers.
http://www.shipcruis...s-cruise-ships/

I've been on 4 cruises and no problem. Knock on teak.
But we do avoid water and ice when in Mexico.
Montezuma is still around.

PS: Remember when everybody was going to die from AIDS?
I actually think that my wife's uncle was one of the first, back in the late 60's.
Then Freddie Mercury.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 02 August 2014 - 11:32 PM.

[pdx5]

I've been on 4 cruises and no problem. Knock on teak.
But we do avoid water and ice when in Mexico.
Montezuma is still around.

Main reason Ebola is scaring people is because there is no cure or antidote or
vaccine for it. And 70% of those who get the virus die. After some type of
cure/vaccine is invented, the fear will disappear.

Everybody talks about norovirus on cruises also. I have been lucky to go on
27 cruises of one week or more, and never had a single problem. Never bothered
with sea-sickness patches after the first cruise. But I avoid eating outside of ship
and take drinking water from ship when in ports. In Mexico we always go to the
Wal-Mart in Mazatlan and load up on pop. In the old days we carried booze in our
luggage, but now most ships do not allow bringing booze on ship from outside.
This year one of my cruise stops was in Pattaya in Thailand. During a long shopping
trip, we broke our rule of not eating outside of the ship but we were very hungry.
So we stopped at a hole in the wall restaurant and had the tastiest chicken fried
rice in my entire life. Did not cause any gastro-intestinal distress either.

Edited by pdx5, 03 August 2014 - 02:49 AM.

[arbman]

I never got sick from anything, but I had pneumonia in March and it repeated twice within 2 months in May, I just could not heal for weeks. At some point, it felt like I was taking the medications and nothing was working, my fever would not come down for days. I ended up in emergency eventually, even though I avoided to use antibiotics as long as I could, it was impossible for my body to overcome it after days of really high fever. I was too weak to heal by myself, it was obvious, it was only getting worse every week. There were some cases of death in California, my doctor friends told me that they got more severe cases last winter. So there you go, you never think it will happen to you, but when it happens it is really hard to believe you can actually die from these diseases. I think I have now some sort of permanent damage in my lungs because I still feel tired quickly. I am trying to exercise more and when I go to surfing, I am still lacking my old energetic self to swim out. It sucks... It feels like I am getting older...

Edited by arbman, 03 August 2014 - 03:29 AM.

[slupert]

One of the dead is a doctor who wore a full haz-mat suit.
Symptoms typically start two days to three weeks after contracting the virus, with a fever, throat and muscle pains, and headaches. I understand that those infected at first think they only have the flu, and are likely to expose others for a few weeks.
Typically nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea follow, along with decreased functioning of the liver and kidneys. At this point, some people begin to have problems with bleeding.

No worries, it's only spread through contact.

Then why this?:
www.cdc.gov

Alert Level 3 (Avoid Nonessential Travel; updated 7-31-2014) CDC urges all US residents to avoid nonessential travel to Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia because of an unprecedented outbreak of Ebola.

But even if the fear is totally unwarranted, the effect can still be problematic.

Seems to me that it hs already done a pretty good job of spreading by contact............