Ebola epidemic

US to send 3,000 troops to Ebola danger zone as Obama administration shuffles military's mission in Africa

The Obama administration said late Monday night that the U.S. military will set up a command post in Monrovia, Liberia, the Ebola outbreak's epicenter
'This effort ... will involve an estimated 3,000 U.S. forces,' according to the White House
Pentagon official says military will 'be the lead dog, and that will make a lot of people nervous. ... No one wants U.S. personnel enforcing someone else's martial law if things go south and the entire region is at risk'
U.S. Africa Command warns servicemen and women: 'Avoid nonessential travel to Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia'
Pentagon is drawing flak for sending 25-bed 'field-deployable hospital' that is meant to treat health care workers, not civilian victims
The U.S. president will travel to the CDC in Atlanta on Tuesday for a briefing about his government's efforts to stem the tide overseas

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...on-Africa.html

Hmm, not sure how I would feel if I were in the military and got those orders. Is that REALLY the job of our military forces? Does Obama even have Constitutional authority to use our military in that manner?

There have already been medical personnel put into west Africa who were trained to deal with highly infectious diseases who caught Ebola anyway. How well trained and protected are those military personnel going to be? More or less than those medical personnel were?

Anyone else storing provisions, just in case? If this gets into the USA, quarantines are going to become more the rule than the exception. And a point was made by something I read a little while back. Quarantines don't come with a warning. Your first hint that you might be in a locked down "hot zone" might just be a roadblock in front of you.

Even without a quarantine, with Ebola even potentially or rumored on the loose nearby, I sure as heck wouldn't want to be traipsing around out in public at the grocery store. Just one person with the sniffles and all hell would break loose with people heading for the doors. Heck, I would be praying that I don't suddenly have to sneeze.

Anyway, plan accordingly.

Yeah, I know doom and gloom stuff. But sooner or later ONE of them is going to be right on the mark.

Here in Texas, schools receive funding from the state based on daily attendance. All kinds of incentives are used to get the kids in the school so that that school receives maximum funding- drawing for bicycles and other nice items based on attendance, perfect attendance parties, films, pop corn, ice-cream.
Teachers would often not send sick kids to the clinic before 10 (that was the magic hour, if the student was there at 10AM, they were counted there for the day). The kids themselves would often not say anything no matter how sick they were prior to 10AM because they wanted the incentive gifts and parties. Some of the parties were organized by classroom, so you can imagine the peer pressure exerted by the kids on each other to not be absent or go home early.

I would not underestimate educational politics and funding weakening the fabric of any quarantine efforts especially in urban areas where students are frequently bussed out of their area rather than attending the local school they are zoned to.
There would be all kinds of wrangling as to who would bear the burden of paying the various schools for their attendance losses due to quarantine. If you question how local politicians could possibly wrangle about money when there were dead people in the street with blood coming out of their orifices, I suggest listening to them closely some time and getting that 'me and mine first' flavor.

While I totally agree with the concept of preparation, stocking food and so on, I also believe that money and politics may defeat the concept of quarantine.
I'm not even going to get started on favoritism for the rich and powerful, but I can't imagine those sorts of people being unable to come and go, quarantine or not.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Anyone else storing provisions, just in case? If this gets into the USA, quarantines are going to become more the rule than the exception. And a point was made by something I read a little while back. Quarantines don't come with a warning. Your first hint that you might be in a locked down "hot zone" might just be a roadblock in front of you.

Damn, I need more frozen rats...

With news traveling on an instant basis, I think trying to quarantine a large urban/suburban area could backfire very quickly. The second it hits social media, people will scatter by any means necessary. Perhaps if they shut down the TV, radio, and cell towers first...
I live in a busy suburb, but if every road suddenly shut down, I could get to 2 major rivers pretty easily. No, I'm sure what I'd do then, but you get the idea. And if I happened to have Ebola and died in said rivers, well that would be ugly.

Originally Posted by Lucille

Here in Texas, schools receive funding from the state based on daily attendance. All kinds of incentives are used to get the kids in the school so that that school receives maximum funding- drawing for bicycles and other nice items based on attendance, perfect attendance parties, films, pop corn, ice-cream.
Teachers would often not send sick kids to the clinic before 10 (that was the magic hour, if the student was there at 10AM, they were counted there for the day). The kids themselves would often not say anything no matter how sick they were prior to 10AM because they wanted the incentive gifts and parties. Some of the parties were organized by classroom, so you can imagine the peer pressure exerted by the kids on each other to not be absent or go home early.

I would not underestimate educational politics and funding weakening the fabric of any quarantine efforts especially in urban areas where students are frequently bussed out of their area rather than attending the local school they are zoned to.
There would be all kinds of wrangling as to who would bear the burden of paying the various schools for their attendance losses due to quarantine. If you question how local politicians could possibly wrangle about money when there were dead people in the street with blood coming out of their orifices, I suggest listening to them closely some time and getting that 'me and mine first' flavor.

While I totally agree with the concept of preparation, stocking food and so on, I also believe that money and politics may defeat the concept of quarantine.
I'm not even going to get started on favoritism for the rich and powerful, but I can't imagine those sorts of people being unable to come and go, quarantine or not.

Yeah..... It might sound cold and callous of me, but I avoid kids like the plague. Literally. Schools are really a bio lab where all the pathogens anyone could possibly get are being mixed all together and dispersed back out into the environment on the hands of those kids. Kids just do not understand the concept of germs and person to person transmission.

I was reading some stuff late last night posted by medical personnel at various hospitals around the country. All of them admitted that their facilities will be very ill prepared to deal with a pandemic. Hospitals are already running at full or over capacity and staff is overworked and worn out just from dealing with the influx of new patients because of obamacare. Many admitted that if even a single patient shows up diagnosed with ebola, they were signing out and heading for the hills.

I also read that there were already 250 known mutations in this strain of Ebola since the epidemic started in west Africa. That virus is rolling the dice pretty vigorously....

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment...orders_ask_me/

The New York Times has commentary, and I predicted heavy losses from Ebola. They would not even print the comment back in the beginning when everyone was saying it was just a small local issue and would burn itself out.

Their tune has changed, they are printing estimates of possible heavy losses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/he...&nlid=57474085

People seem to be studiously ignoring the fact that Ebola is endemic in one or more native animal populations (speculation is fruit bats) and there is nothing at all to rule out something like that happening if the virus gets introduced into new geographical areas. How would things look in the USA if there were a seasonal Ebola outbreak, much like we expect to happen with the flu?

Heck, I'm STILL not convinced that those people who survive Ebola aren't potentially asymptomatic carriers. After all, that seems to be the case with the animal reservoir natively carrying the virus.

There is an article in today's local paper mentioning that some experts expect Ebola to become a permanent problem in west Africa. On the same page is another article that I haven't read yet but the headlines are showing instances of dangerous pathogens escaping from supposedly secure facilities.

It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together and become rather alarmed at the total that comes up.

Oh yeah, and I saw a claimed death rate of 70 percent mentioned. Seems the earlier figures were being fudged with new infections counted into the total infected so the mortality rate was not accurate. A TRUE picture would be a percentage determined from only victims who have had the virus past the time that they either recovered or died from it. That would show the true mortality rate.

Oh yeah, I read somewhere else that Monsanto was getting involved in trying to develop a vaccine for Ebola. Sweet!! NOT!

My review of the TV series 'Blacklist':

Originally Posted by Lucille

I loved it. Layers of plots and personalities, nonstop action, but on another level an exploration of bad guys, a philosophical show and tell of right and wrong and an almost chess-like complexity. Bad guys ranging from amusing 'the Stewmaker' to a scary prelude of an Ebola-like disease where chronic administration of antidotes to those infected depended on their obedience to bad guy plans and agendas.
Entertaining yet thoughtful. Alan Alda as a guest star was a nice touch.

Not that I am painting anyone as a bad guy, but having an antidote to Ebola would place any manufacturer of such an antidote in a position of immense power.
If one was prone to thinking in science fiction terms, one might even wonder if, as in Blacklist, infections might be intentional.