[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')BUT -- look at how people catch it. Unless it's a spouse sharing bodily fluids, otherwise it seems like people catch it at the end when when the viral load is so high and the vomiting and diarrhea are so bad. At that point, in Africa, family members are catching because they're carrying the person around hospital to hospital trying to find a beds, / caring for them at home and *sanitation is so bad to start with* over there.

In the US and Europe -- it's nurses catching it. They're the ones right there at the worst of it, with all the bodily fluids.

(my bottom line on it is self-centered -- do I have to worry about catching the damn thing off a shopping cart in six months??? That's what I would want to know, *how bad can it get* if we're talking about a country that's clean and doesn't have filth and squalor all over like a Liberia and a India, etc.

That's the question I want answered, do I have to worry about the darn thing or not.)

[tmazanec1]

My cousin is a nurse. She is now on a round-the-world cruise. I hope she isn't one to get ebola if this grows in America.

[Subjectivist]

Monrovia Liberia has a population over 400,000 people and until this outbreak was improving daily. Watch this report from July,
http://youtu.be/l4xtR8so6_o

Ebola is bad in Monrovia, a few thousand are sick or dead, but even right now trade goes on, people go to their jobs, babies are born. The real key will be the next few months, if things stay rapidly gettingworse at some point the remaining people will flee or hunker down.

[GoghGoner]

Excuse me if this has been posted before. You can see one of those lines going to Dallas.

http://qz.com/242388/here-are-all-the-35-countries-one-flight-away-from-ebola-affected-countries/

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')It could have been prevented, if the Obama administration had stopped those flights.

[Sixstrings]

Remember when I was saying that military should be handling this?

I guess I was either making a prediction or I just have a lot of common sense and / or I'm just always ahead of the curve.

Anyhow, it's in the news now that the military is putting together a quick response team to deal with ebola patients in the US:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Military preps quick-strike team for Ebola response in United States

The U.S. military is forming a 30-person "quick-strike team" equipped to provide direct treatment to Ebola patients inside the United States, a Defense Department official told CNN's Barbara Starr on Sunday.
A Pentagon spokesman later confirmed portions of the official's information.

The team will be under orders to deploy within 72 hours at any time over the next month, the official said.
The Department of Health and Human Services requested the military team, and the Pentagon has given verbal approval, the official said.

The team will include five doctors, 20 nurses and five trainers, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said in a statement.

Hospital apologizes for Ebola mistakes Hospital 'deeply sorry' for Ebola mistakes Dallas nurse treated for Ebola Ebola concerns cut cruise short
The Pentagon has been working to determine what assistance it could offer the civilian health care sector following a White House meeting last week during which President Barack Obama said he wanted a more aggressive response, according to two Defense officials.

...

The team will remain in "prepare-to-deploy" status for 30 days, he said. It will be able to respond anywhere in the U.S. if "deemed prudent by our public health professionals," he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/19/health/us-ebola/index.html

[joyfulbozo]

Its really getting worst. If it spreads in high density population countries, it will be difficult for human kind. And Ebola has started affecting markets as well. It should be controlled as soon as possible..

[Newfie]

M.B.S. started the initial thread back in early April.

ebola-pandemic-t69466.html

It pays to take a look.

I think the fact is that we have blown it big time.

The time to control it was then, whether it can be controlled now is doubtful.

The Dallas events seem to have calmed down, but I fear that is a false sense of the storm having passed.

The true test will be other poor third world areas in India, Phillipeans, Detroit, etc.

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'M').B.S. started the initial thread back in early April.

ebola-pandemic-t69466.html

It pays to take a look.

I think the fact is that we have blown it big time.

The time to control it was then, whether it can be controlled now is doubtful.

The Dallas events seem to have calmed down, but I fear that is a false sense of the storm having passed.

The true test will be other poor third world areas in India, Phillipeans, Detroit, etc.

[tmazanec1]

Prepared to deploy on 72 hour notice for a month? FOR A MONTH?
Did the guy who came up with that timetable get his "cigarettes" in Colorado?

[dohboi]

Ebola has been known for decades.

Throughout that period, we knew that it could one day spread and become a major deadly pandemic.

Yet for all those years no vaccine was developed.

Why?

A prudent society/culture--a culture that considered seriously the long-term well being of the health and welfare of its people--once it knew a major threat was lurking and could pounce at any moment, would put considerable effort an resources into doing what it could for the (nearly inevitable) day when the 'pounce' happened.

But we didn't.

Why?

Clearly we are not a prudent society.

Why?

Because we are governed by corporations that by law can only act in the interest of the increased short term profits of their stockholders.

And, up until very recently, there was no probability of a short term big profit from Ebola, since it had only ever affected poor people in Africa (which points out further, in case it needed pointing out, that we are structurally neither prudent nor compassionate).

............

So what broader lesson can be learned, or inference drawn, from this vast failure of Capitalism on the Ebola front.

Well (and I hope and am sure that ad will supplement these ruminations with his own inimitable prose), it strikes me that, just as there was no short-term profit to be made from researching and producing an ebola vaccine, there is no short-term profit to be made from trying to avert GW catastrophe.

Oh, there will be all sorts of well publicized schemes of various sorts that will make us all feel virtuous even if they are scams or even (in the rare case that they are not total scams) if we had nothing to do with it (kind of like we might point to MSF and say, "See, society isn't completely worthless" even though they themselves point out that they are vastly understaffed--under-supported by society--to handle such things and we in our smugness almost inevitably have done not one thing to help them out).

But basically, we will really never do anything very effective that actually materially lowers the risk of total CC apocalypse, just 'cause no one can make much of a buck out of vastly and rapidly reducing our total consumption, on the one hand, and figuring out how to get the vast majority of people to not have kids (and to have only one relatively late in life if they do choose to procreate).

There's just no damn money in it.

It's kind of like your kid is crying to you because they have fallen off a cliff and are hanging on to a ledge by just three trembling fingers, and you rush to see how they are, notice that you could relatively easily reach down and pull them up, but first ask, "Hey, kid, how much cash do you have on you." And when the kid whimpers that he only has a couple penny's, you sneer and walk away back to the gambling hall and casino where fortunes are waiting to be made.

(Sorry about the rant, and the basic insight is probably totally obvious to all, already; It's just something that stuck me as I've been reading recently about the continuing lack of a vaccine in the face of exponential growth of this epidemic, in spite of the fact that we have known pretty well that this moment was inevitably going to arrive at some point or other.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbb6y8Nqc28

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IJweR1d0dE

(And while we're at it, I couldn't help but include:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDDnkQQyzQU

Oh, now I just can't stop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0kbA5LG5GM

And for no particular reason:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfGkOZetpi0

[Loki]

It made no sense for anyone, private firm or government agency, to develop a vaccine or treatment for Ebola. This says nothing about capitalism per se. Ebola is still a dim blip on the global radar.

Capitalism poses an impediment to climate change response. As do socialist governments. No large institution, private or public, wants to advocate everyone getting poorer, nor would they last long if they did.

Unfortunately, getting poorer is the only thing we can do to mitigate climate change. It will have to be forced by circumstance.

[Plantagenet]

Don't be so gloomy. Back here in the real world NIH is now testing two new Ebola vaccines. You see, it is only capitalist societies that have enough wealth to develop something like an Ebola vaccine.

In the USA alone, the goverment spents about 30 BILLION dollars a year on pure medical research and applications through the NIH and CDC.

Unfortunately, the grant program managers at these institutions decided several years ago that research on Ebola vaccines wasn't their highest priority, and they shifted the research money to other topics. Needless to say, they made a terrible mistake, and now they are rapidly shifting research money back into Ebola research.

The good news is that, thanks to the newly accelerated research program on Ebola vaccines at the NIH, two new vaccines have just gone into human trials.

two new Ebola vaccines go into human trials at the NIH

[Plantagenet]

Peter. Hello. Cuba yourself.

Are you having a fantasy that Cuba has developed an Ebola vaccine?

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'P')eter. Hello. Cuba yourself.

Are you having a fantasy that Cuba has developed an Ebola vaccine?

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dohboi', '(')Sorry about the rant, and the basic insight is probably totally obvious to all, already; It's just something that stuck me as I've been reading recently about the continuing lack of a vaccine in the face of exponential growth of this epidemic, in spite of the fact that we have known pretty well that this moment was inevitably going to arrive at some point or other.)

[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'P')eter. Hello. Cuba yourself.

Are you having a fantasy that Cuba has developed an Ebola vaccine?

[dohboi]

Nice parody, MQ. I'm honored to have inspired it.

Yes, population is certainly a very big part of the equation--in the long term the only part.

But the more proximate cause was deforestation, and it is certainly possible to have big increases of population without having local massive deforestation, if population centers are concentrated and dense (think Japan).

And there is always the qui bono question behind over population--whose who profits from an ever-expanding workforce which then constantly pushes down wages, and an ever-expanding consumer base...?