patrick.net

thomaswong.1986 says

Soooooo ! what do you want US to do about it... fork over some $$$ maybe..

Give 2 shits about something other than what's on TV tonight, and what Obama insult you can wedge into threads NOT about US politics?

Oh right too much to ask of you.

What would be worse : A Catholic priest/realtor, or merely a generic realtor with ebola virus ?

thomaswong.1986 says

Money talks Bullshit walks...

You must be a gold medalist with the olympic walking team.

Vicente says

However a death toll of 330 is quite high for a single outbreak in modern times

Not compared to influenza:
The outbreak has been especially severe in California. There have been 243 deaths of residents younger than 65 so far this year. An additional 41 cases were reported but have not been confirmed. In the 2012-13 season, there were 26 deaths by this time, and in the 2011-12 season there were nine deaths. In the 2009-10 season, there were 527 deaths

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/death-toll-from-flu-rises-as-h1n1-strain-returnswith-young-invincibles-most-affected/2014/02/19/71f539f4-98b0-11e3-b931-0204122c514b_story.html

We need to keep Africans healthy so that they can continue to mass murder each other.

Any amount of money is worth seeing them come back to health, the light gleam again in their eyes, and their hands grab a machete or an AK47.

Ceffer says

We need to keep Africans healthy so that they can continue to mass murder each other.

Any amount of money is worth seeing them come back to health, the light gleam again in their eyes, and their hands grab a machete or an AK47.

I blame this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium

Not that Africa was such a peaceful place to begin with but he personally took it to the next bloody level.

Death toll now 390, WHO calling for "drastic action".

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/26/health/ebola-outbreak-west-africa/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

Wouldn't the hand of the free market be the most suitable to bring succour to these unfortunates? Why is the President standing in the way of businesses eager to cure ebola?

Or are they just the party of James K. Polk, indifferent and callous?

Time to shut down air travel from Africa.

Truly, this is an opportunity for Teabaggers & Randists. If Sierra Leone is completely depopulated, they could move it and make it a White Conservative's Utopia. A shining beacon of Gold Dollars & Freedom.

Plus, there's all that cheap brown labor all around them when they realize they need someone to do actual WORK.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

All Africa needs is a few tactical nukes, a bible and Freedom.

No nukes needed, they already have millions of machetes and proven will to use them.

(Plus they are already well stocked with bibles.)

Seems to me that the same people who think that we should single-handedly take on the Ebola problem are the same ones who advocate that everyone should stop having children because it puts stress on the resources of this planet. Doesn't the Ebola problem serve your concern that the world is overpopulated? I might add, precisely where birth rates are among the highest? We shouldn't have children... But Africa's right to grow at a rate that eclipses most of the world must be preserved and the US must lead the charge.

Vicente says

Teabaggers & Randists.

You seem to have a strange fascination for them, also known as Wasserman-Schultz-syndrome.

zzyzzx says

It's all Obama's fault!!!

Like we didn't already know that. Oh wait, Dan didn't know, now he does.

turtledove says

Doesn't the Ebola problem serve your concern that the world is overpopulated?

This is a common misconception. People with the worst healthcare, and most struck by diseases COMPENSATE BY HAVING MORE CHILDREN! Areas of Africa with the best healthcare, see declining birth rates. This is true across the globe. It should not take more than a few minutes, for you to examine world history and see that the idea that disease solves population pressure just doesn't hold water. If you have reasonable certainty that you can have 2 kids survive to adulthood, there's much less incentive to have 6.

"NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

jturtledove says

Seems to me that the same people who think that we should single-handedly take on the Ebola problem are the same ones who advocate that everyone should stop having children because it puts stress on the resources of this planet. Doesn't the Ebola problem serve your concern that the world is overpopulated? I might add, precisely where birth rates are among the highest? We shouldn't have children... But Africa's right to grow at a rate that eclipses most of the world must be preserved and the US must lead the charge.

It looks like Afghanis are having as many kids as the busiest Africans.

Now we know what they've been doing with those billions of dollars.

Just imagine what the world would be looking like had China not its one child policy.

Anyone ever watch the Vice Guide: Liberia?

http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia-1

They still frigin eat each other there. Street food isn't maybe just dog like you worry about in some countries. There is may be human. With the warlords fighting (see video) we have a very real recent case of cannibal anarchy.

Ebola is going to spread... There is nothing General Butt naked, General Rambo, General Mosquito or General Mosquito Spray can do about it either.

HydroCabron says

Wouldn't the hand of the free market be the most suitable to bring succour [sic] to these unfortunates?

Yes. You are so lost in sarcasm that you don't even realize when you stumble across reality. You won't even know about this comment because I am among the 10 PatNet users you Ignore. You prefer ignorance and misspelled sarcasm, which make a really pathetic combination.

"The calls started coming in August to the office of GlaxoSmithKline Plc Chief Executive Officer Andrew Witty from the head of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan. The Ebola outbreak was raging out of control and Chan needed the drugmaker’s vaccine as quickly as possible.

The sudden sense of urgency for an Ebola vaccine was an about face from a few months earlier when Glaxo contacted the WHO, asking whether its vaccine could help with the outbreak. At that time, the company was told the focus was on containment and the WHO didn’t have a policy for using vaccines in this type of situation. “We’ll get back to you” was the message, said Ripley Ballou, head of Glaxo’s Ebola vaccine program.
***
Glaxo and Johnson & Johnson are preparing thousands of doses of their experimental vaccines to test in Africa as early as January."

BUT, if Ebola got converted to a chronic condition requiring daily pills for life, and if those pills could be subsidized via mandatory insurance, then there would never be a vaccine, because that would disrupt the revenue model.

just_passing_through says

Ebola is going to spread... There is nothing General Butt naked, General Rambo, General Mosquito or General Mosquito Spray can do about it either.

General Butt Naked, come on. You won't lose a war with a name like that.

Vicente says

Plus, there's all that cheap brown labor all around them when they realize they need someone to do actual WORK.

Posted before but bears repeating...

thunderlips11 says

General Butt Naked, come on. You won't lose a war with a name like that.

Nor fighting like that.

curious2 says

Glaxo and Johnson & Johnson are preparing thousands of doses of their experimental vaccines to test in Africa as early as January.

Note the "experimental" part there. Many experimental vaccines do not work, some are not even safe. What if the vaccine makes people sicker, how do you think that will help the already-thin reputation of healthcare people in the area?

Containment has worked best in the past as primary focus, thus they would repeat that and minimize dilution of thin resources. There are not exactly droves of healthcare workers standing in line eager to work in this situation.

From your article:

"When Glaxo contacted the WHO in March, the vaccine was seen as a “diversion of energy” at a time when it was believed the outbreak would be controlled with traditional measures, such as contact tracing and safe burials, that have helped contain every previous outbreak, said Marie-Paule Kieny, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health systems and innovation. At the end of March, there were about 100 cases of Ebola in Guinea, with early reports the virus was spreading to Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Vicente says

What if the vaccine makes people sicker, how do you think that will help the already-thin reputation of healthcare people in the area?

Current "traditional" containment measures can never really solve the problem, because the virus returns year after year. The only solution is a therapeutic (retroactive) vaccine to eliminate the virus. If the first vaccine doesn't succeed, try another.

As for reputations in central Africa, people there believe all sorts of crazy things, and you can't waste your time worrying about what they will think of you. A vaccine would protect us in case one of them gets on a plane with the virus. While you wring your hands about what central Africans might say amongst themselves, I think American resources should protect Americans.

Vicente says

If you have reasonable certainty that you can have 2 kids survive to adulthood, there's much less incentive to have 6.

They are under fatwas and other religious orders to multiply as fast as possible. As a result, they lurch from one disaster to the next: famine, disease, war, etc. If you solve one problem, they crash into another. Even elliemae has described the Utah BMWs: Big Mormon Wagons, full of more kids than the family can feed, even with America's low rates of infant mortality. The actual causation for stabilizing population is giving people (especially women) access to contraception, e.g. the pill and RU486, which is why religious potentates oppose it. You've put the cart before the horse: reducing infant mortality doesn't reduce population growth, but stabilizing population can reduce infant mortality by making more resources available per child.

curious2 says

Even elliemae has described the Utah BMWs: Big Mormon Wagons, full of more kids than the family can feed, even with America's low rates of infant mortality.

Utah fertility rate is 2.449. Anecdotes are not data.

Vicente says

Utah fertility rate....

Only 40% of Utahns are active Morons. Fertility rates among Morons are consistently higher than the general population: even in the UK with its NHS and a lower infant mortality rate than the USA, Moron fertility dwarfs British and exceeds even South African, where infant mortality is 10x higher.

Substitution does not resurrect your false claim. You wrote, "Areas of Africa with the best healthcare, see declining birth rates." To the extent those variables correlate, the causation is precisely opposite of the claim you were trying to make. In Africa as elsewhere, areas with declining birth rates are better able to take care of their population and achieve lower infant mortality and greater prosperity. That is why China implemented a "one-child policy," which many families continue even though allowed to have more. It is also why serious efforts focus on providing people (especially women) access to contraception, but struggle due to pseudo-liberal cultural "respect" for religious potentates' insistence on prohibiting it.

The issue in central Africa comes down to forest vs trees. If you react by "generously" using western bounty to "contain" each problem, you don't solve the fundamental issues of kleptocracies and general refusal to reason together and cooperate successfully. Instead, you enlarge those problems, as each "aid" effort enables the next crisis. The perennial largest per capita recipient of foreign aid is Haiti, where generous pseudo-"aid" infects people with cholera and crushes local enterprises. At least if you develop a vaccine against ebola, or HIV, you can end that particular crisis permanently, instead of merely staving it off temporarily to grow even larger.

I've also learned (through experience) that if you feed stray cats you get more stray cats to feed.

curious2 says

In Africa as elsewhere, areas with declining birth rates are better able to take care of their population and achieve lower infant mortality and greater prosperity.

Mexico similarly has a reputation for turning out lots of babies. Which is no longer true. Better healthcare, sanitation, and water quality are followed by lower birth rates. You have the cart before the horse.

Last figure I found for Mormons was 3.0 in the 1990's. Anecdotes about BMW filled with dozens of kids, is not useful population trend data.

Call it Crazy says

If 18% represents the 6200 current cases.... just do the math...

The math says 30k in a continent with a population of 1 billion. My calculator can't do that small a percentage.

Quigley says

I've also learned (through experience) that if you feed stray cats you get more stray cats to feed.

Spay and release "fixes" that problem quite effectively.

Also fixes your rodent problems.

bob2356 says

Call it Crazy says

If 18% represents the 6200 current cases.... just do the math...

The math says 30k in a continent with a population of 1 billion. My calculator can't do that small a percentage.

Try scientific notation. :P

Vicente says

curious2 says

In Africa as elsewhere, areas with declining birth rates are better able to take care of their population and achieve lower infant mortality and greater prosperity.

Mexico similarly has a reputation for turning out lots of babies. Which is no longer true. Better healthcare, sanitation, and water quality are followed by lower birth rates. You have the cart before the horse.

Vicente, copying and pasting the cart/horse metaphor from my comment to yours begins to seem too childish even for a digression about birth rates and infant mortality, like saying "No I'm not you are." If you are actually interested in this topic, you might want to read about the extensive empirical research considering multiple hypotheses including your preferred assumption. "In contrast to the remarkably unambiguous empirical evidence supporting the existence of an impact of fertility on infant and child mortality, evidence of an effect of infant and child mortality on fertility has been stubbornly elusive, with different data and models yielding very different results." It's a longer topic for a different thread, not particularly relevant to your OP about Ebola, except possibly in the Malthusian sense where the relevant populations increase inexorably until reduced by catastrophic famine or overcrowding/disease.

Call it Crazy says

OK, get out your calculator and use your 30K TODAY and map it with this chart through Nov. and Dec and tell us what you get..

The absolute worst case anyone has projected is 1.4 million. Is that the number you are looking for? If this epidemic hadn't happened in the poorest most war torn part of Africa with almost zero facilities to deal with an elboa outbreak it would already be under control.

It's not a pandemic, it's not going to be an epidemic in any country with reasonable medical facilities, so what are you panicking about?

we are all children in Uncle Al's Playhouse.

curious2 says

Vicente, copying and pasting the cart/horse metaphor from my comment to yours begins to seem too childish even for a digression about birth rates and infant mortality

The moment you place food in front of a stray cat, it is no longer classified as "stray". You have taken ownership by providing for the feline in it's time of need. It is now your pet.
Therefore, any kittys your cat burps out are technically your GrandPets, also under your financial umbrella, and are not 'stray cats'.
Your statement below does not hold water.

Quigley says

I've also learned (through experience) that if you feed stray cats you get more stray cats to feed

Vicente says

If Sierra Leone is completely depopulated, they could move it and make it a White Conservative's Utopia. A shining beacon of Gold Dollars & Freedom.

Yep ye oh whittey he be opining fo dis

Call it Crazy says

How come in every other outbreak in that area, they were able to contain it at a few hundred people?

What's different this time?

In what area? There's never been an outbreak in western Africa before. Zaire/drc, Ugunda, Gabon, Sudan are over two thousand miles away (at least) from Guiana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. That's like NY to LA.

What's different this time is just what I said. The countries are crowded, poor, war torn, with almost non existent medical facilites to isolate the virus victums.

Call it Crazy says

thunderlips11 says

General Butt Naked, come on. You won't lose a war with a name like that.

But I bet he throws some great parties!

General Butt Naked is about as evil as the definition of evil gets:

] Blahyi now claims he would regularly sacrifice a victim before battle, saying, "Usually it was a small child, someone whose fresh blood would satisfy the devil."[1]

Blahyi claimed to a South African Star reporter that he "met Satan regularly and talked to him" and that from age of 11 to 25 he took part in monthly human sacrifices.[11] In his account of a typical battle Blahyi claimed, "So, before leading my troops into battle, we would get drunk and drugged up, sacrifice a local teenager, drink the blood, then strip down to our shoes and go into battle wearing colorful wigs and carrying imaginary purses we'd looted from civilians. We'd slaughter anyone we saw, chop their heads off and use them as soccer balls. We were nude, fearless, drunk yet strategic. We killed hundreds of people--so many I lost count."[12]

http://en.www.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Butt_Nake

Party on.

New Renter says

Call it Crazy says

thunderlips11 says

General Butt Naked, come on. You won't lose a war with a name like that.

But I bet he throws some great parties!

General Butt Naked is about as evil as the definition of evil gets:

He says that when he was a cannibal, he preferred meat from the back.

Call it Crazy says

bob2356 says

There's never been an outbreak in western Africa before.

So, does that mean there won't be a large outbreak like the past outbreaks. Can you say "Normalcy Bias"?

What past outbreaks in west africa?. What large outbreak? This is the first large outbreak there has been. Look at your own chart for christ sakes

Call it Crazy says

That could be just the opposite why it hasn't spread faster. These poor people lack the ability to travel around and are usually confined to their villages and small towns.

You don't travel around much do you? Poor people in in third world places like west africa travel quite a bit. Buses, mopeds (with 4-6 passengers), the ubiquitous toyota hiace van with 25 passengers and 50 chickens crammed in are everywhere in the third world. Africa and the third world isn't a bunch of mud huts. The cities are where the outbreak is and where the new cases are popping up. Being in the crowded dirty cities with very limited medical facilities is why it's spreading so fast.

Call it Crazy says

In other parts of the developed world, people move and travel around a lot easier, which would allow the spread of the infection to a larger group of the population. An example is how the seasonal flu is spread in this country.

Get a grip. Morovia isn't London. Ebola isn't the frigging flu. It's not that easy to transmit. The couple cases that showed up with people traveling to lagos and nigeria are already contained with no new cases since. You caught the contained in lagos and nigeria part didn't you? If they can contain it in nigeria and lagos then new jersey shouldn't be a problem. Well maybe not.