Ebola epidemic

“If they’re not lying, they are grossly incompetent,” said Mobley, a microbiologist and emergency trauma physician from Springfield, Mo.

Doctor dons Ebola protection suit to protest ‘asleep at the wheel’ CDC

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/doctor-...it-to-p/nhZk8/

Two days after a man in Texas was diagnosed with Ebola, a Missouri doctor Thursday morning showed up at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport dressed in protective gear to protest what he called mismanagement of the crisis by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Gil Mobley checked in and cleared airport security wearing a mask, goggles, gloves, boots and a hooded white jumpsuit emblazoned on the back with the words, “CDC is lying!”

“If they’re not lying, they are grossly incompetent,” said Mobley, a microbiologist and emergency trauma physician from Springfield, Mo.

Mobley said the CDC is “sugar-coating” the risk of the virus spreading in the United States.

Efforts to reach a CDC spokesperson for comments on Mobley’s criticism have been unsuccessful.

Watch the CDC discuss the Ebola case here.

“For them to say last week that the likelihood of importing an Ebola case was extremely small was a real bad call,” he said.

“Once this disease consumes every third world country, as surely it will, because they lack the same basic infrastructure as Sierra Leone and Liberia, at that point, we will be importing clusters of Ebola on a daily basis,” Mobley predicted. “That will overwhelm any advanced country’s ability to contain the clusters in isolation and quarantine. That spells bad news.”

Mobley, a Medical College of Georgia graduate who had an overnight layover after flying to Atlanta from Guatemala on Wednesday, said that he feels that the CDC is “asleep at the wheel” when it comes to screening passengers arriving in the United States from other countries.

“Yesterday, I came through international customs at the Atlanta airport,” the doctor told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The only question they asked arriving passengers is if they had tobacco or alcohol.”

Mobley is director of a free-standing emergency clinic in Springfield that specializes in workplace injuries. He has been an advocate of medical marijuana use, and formerly operated a clinic in Seattle that specialized in medical cannabis authorizations.

The doctor also does volunteer work at a hospital he helped rebuild in Guatemala and operates a charity, “The Largest Project,” which works to provide safe drinking water to a Mayan village in Guatemala.

In an article on Mobley’s work in Guatemala in 417 Magazine, the Springfield publication referred to the doctor as being “mostly known for his ‘Medical Minute’ spots on local radio, which earned him a reputation as a publicity hound.”

Efforts to reach a CDC spokesperson for comments on Mobley’s criticism have been unsuccessful.

The CDC on Wednesday sent a team to the airport in Monrovia, Liberia, where the Texas patient began his recent trip to the United States, to make sure health officials there are screening passengers properly.

“There were no signs of any disease when the gentleman boarded the flight,” said Dr. Tom Kenyon, director of the CDC’s Center for Global Health. “This was not a failure of the screening process at the airport.”

Also Wednesday, customs workers at Hartsfield started handing out Ebola information leaflets to passengers holding passports from West African countries such as Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Information on Ebola is also displayed on posters and TV monitors in the customs area.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Somebody just send them a dictionary with the page with the word "quarantine" earmarked and the definition highlighted. Sheesh......

One person comes into Dallas carrying Ebola and they have 100 possible infections to monitor. Suppose that had been 50 people?

Not that I think even that would be a wake-up call for them...

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-T...osed-Ambulance

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Somebody just send them a dictionary with the page with the word "quarantine" earmarked and the definition highlighted. Sheesh......

One person comes into Dallas carrying Ebola and they have 100 possible infections to monitor. Suppose that had been 50 people?

Not that I think even that would be a wake-up call for them...

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-T...osed-Ambulance

That's it. We're Doomed.
I don't even know what else to say.
If this is the way things are handled, we are utterly f-ed.
You would think the ambulance and the workers would be the first to be quarantined.
Absolute incompetence.

Here is a picture of the Dallas County health officials leaving the apartment where the person with Ebola stayed. They walked in and out without protection. One hopes that they did not track anything out as they left.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/us...&nlid=57474085

Regardless of the crap CDC is trying to feed us about this to keep things calm, the USA is completely unprepared for something of this nature. Health services will be completely overwhelmed in pretty short order if this starts to get out of hand.

Can you imagine how they are going to handle multiple patients likely only having the flu, but are within an area with a known Ebola infected person? They are going to HAVE to institute quarantine procedures for each and every one of them. They can't afford not to. But will they? CAN they?

Not only that, how many people who come down with "flu-like" symptoms believing that all it is is a cold of flu, but realizing that this will get them hawg tied for 21 days will just avoid going to the doctor's. Many people cannot afford to take off from work for that length of time. But suppose some of them HAVE contracted Ebola without realizing it?

By the time anyone with half a brain realizes the potential seriousness of this (like perhaps Obama taking the drastic measure of cancelling one of his golf games or free vacations to address it) it's going to be far too late to do much about it.

And another one...

Patient with 'ebola-like' symptoms being treated in DC

No words...

http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/dogs-eati...ding-epidemic/

Dogs eat Ebola victims

NEW YORK – A horrifying threat has surfaced in the fight West Africans are waging against the epidemic of Ebola – dogs digging up corpses of virus victims and feasting on the remains, then carrying the infection with them wherever they go next.

A recent report in the Mail Online in the U.K. said villagers in Liberia were complaining dogs were found digging up the corpses of Ebola victims buried in shallow graves and eating them in the street.

“Furious residents of Johnsonville Township, outside capital Monrovia, raised the alarm after packs of wild dogs were spotted digging up corpses from a specially designated ‘Ebola graveyard,’ dragging them into the open and feeding on their flesh,” the Mail Online noted.

“Now fears are mounting that the dogs – which cannot grow sick from the strain of Ebola running rampant through West Africa but can carry it – will be able to pass it on to humans through licking or biting.”

A YouTube video documented the problem with dogs eating corpses of buried Ebola-infected dead in Johnsonville Township.

In addition, a scientific study published in Emerging Infectious Diseases 2005 and posted on the CDC website demonstrated that dogs eating the corpses of Ebola-infected humans can become infected with Ebola, posing a risk of spreading the disease to humans as well as to other animals.

“During the 2001–2002 outbreak in Gabon, we observed that several dogs were highly exposed to Ebola virus by eating infected dead animals,” wrote lead author Lois Allela, a veterinary inspector with the Ministry of Environment of Gabon.

“Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreaks occurred in villages where people keep domestic animals, including dogs,” the study continued.

“The dogs are not fed and have to scavenge for their food. They eat small dead animals found near the villages and also internal organs of wild animals hunted and slaughtered by villagers. Some dogs are also used for hunting in the dense forested area.”

The scientists compared a control group of 102 dogs living in France to 258 dogs sampled in the area of Gabon hit by the 2001-2001 outbreak.

“We found evidence that dogs can be infected by Ebola virus, a finding that raises important human health issues,” the researchers concluded.

Said the study:

Given the frequency of contact between humans and domestic dogs, canine Ebola infection must be considered as a potential risk factor for human infection and virus spread. Human infection could occur through licking, biting, or grooming. Asymptomatically infected dogs could be a potential source of human Ebola outbreaks and of virus spread during human outbreaks …

The scientists stressed these findings “strongly suggest that dogs should be taken into consideration during the management of human Ebola outbreaks.”

On Sept. 12, dog expert Stanley Coren, Ph.D., said in Psychology Today:

Although dogs are susceptible to Ebola, the CDC concluded that “infected dogs are asymptomatic,” meaning that they do not develop symptoms. During the early phase of their infection, however, they can spread the disease to humans and other animals through licking, biting, urine, and feces. However, the good news is that once the virus is cleared from the dog it is no longer contagious. Dogs do not die from Ebola infections.

Coren downplayed the risk here, noting at the time of publication, “The good news is that there is no known source of Ebola infection outside of the affected areas in Africa.”

He concluded, “In the developed world, most countries have more stringent rules concerning food production and sanitation, which means that, in the same way that humans are protected from this deadly disease, so are our dogs.”

However, the good news is that once the virus is cleared from the dog it is no longer contagious. Dogs do not die from Ebola infections.

So, how is the virus "cleared" from a dog?

And can we presume that rodents and anything else feasting on either a corpse or living person or animal that is infected carries the same risks? Has anyone thought about vultures becoming a reservoir for the virus? Evidently the virus CAN live in one or more creatures and not be "cleared" from it.

Anyone else thinking about the possibility of dogs lapping up the vomit from Thomas Eric Duncan (aka "Ebola Tom") outside his apartment?

This all is beginning to sound a lot like some sort of script for a horror movie being produced.

Prescription for avoiding Ebola airport screening: ibuprofen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - People who contract Ebola in West Africa can get through airport screenings and onto a plane with a lie and a lot of ibuprofen, according to healthcare experts who believe more must be done to identify infected travelers.

At the very least, they said, travelers arriving from Ebola-stricken countries should be screened for fever, which is currently done on departure from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. But such safeguards are not foolproof.

"The fever-screening instruments run low and aren't that accurate," said infection control specialist Sean Kaufman, president of Behavioral-Based Improvement Solutions, a biosafety company based in Atlanta.

"And people can take ibuprofen to reduce their fever enough to pass screening, and why wouldn't they? If it will get them on a plane so they can come to the United States and get effective treatment after they're exposed to Ebola, wouldn't you do that to save your life?"

Originally Posted by Lucille

I loled at the mention in the link above that air travelers in some of the countries mentioned are 'screened for fever' and not permitted to fly if they have one. All someone needs to do is take a Tylenol before going to the airport and an elevated temp will come down for a few hours, long enough to get on the plane.

I think people are going to do this as well as fill out any form put in front of them with information that allows them to board the plane, not necessarily a factual answer.