Sierra Leone Ebola lockdown exposes hundreds of suspected cases

FREETOWN (Reuters) - A three-day lockdown in Sierra Leone has exposed hundreds of potential new cases of Ebola, aiding efforts to bring to an end an epidemic that has already killed 3,000 people in the country.

Officials ordered the country's 6 million residents to stay indoors or face arrest during the period that ended late on Sunday as hundreds of health officials went door-to-door looking for hidden patients and educating residents about the virus.

Reports to authorities of sick people increased by 191 percent in Western Area, which includes the capital, during the lockdown compared with the previous weekend, said Obi Sesay of the National Ebola Response Center.

"Tests are being carried out on their blood samples, and the results will be in by Wednesday," Sesay said, adding that 173 of the patients in Freetown met an initial case definition for Ebola.
In the rest of the country, there was a 50 percent increase in sick people reported in the lockdown's first two days, Sesay said.
Sierra Leone has reported nearly 12,000 cases since the worst Ebola epidemic in history was detected in neighboring Guinea a year ago. In all, more than 10,000 people have died in the two countries plus Liberia.
New cases have fallen since a peak of more than 500 a week in December, but the government said the lockdown, its second, would help identify the last cases and reduce complacency.

A source who declined to be identified said there were 961 death alerts nationwide during the lockdown's first two days and 495 reports of illness of which 235 were suspected Ebola.

Sierra Leone quarantines 700 homes after Ebola case

Freetown (AFP) - Sierra Leone placed hundreds of homes in the capital under Ebola quarantine Friday, in a huge blow for its recovery less than a month after it lifted all restrictions on movement.

The government said 700 properties had been locked down in Aberdeen, a fishing and tourist district of Freetown, after the death of a fisherman who tested positive for the deadly tropical virus.

"We are on top of the situation and people should not panic," said Obi Sesay of the government's National Ebola Response Centre, adding that a special control centre had been set up to deal with the incident.

He told reporters Aberdeen had been "flooded" with surveillance officers and contact tracers to ensure the death didn't turn into a serious outbreak.

The west African nation of six million has seen almost 11,000 cases and 3,363 deaths during the epidemic which has raged in west Africa for more than a year. 

President Ernest Bai Koroma had pointed to a "steady downward trend" in new cases on January 23, lifting country-wide quarantines affecting half the population and declaring that "victory is in sight".

But optimism gave way to fresh alarm on Wednesday as the World Health Organization (WHO) reported the number of new cases rising across Sierra Leone and neighbouring Guinea for the second week running.

Transmission remains "widespread" in Sierra Leone, which reported 76 new confirmed cases in the week to February 8, according to the WHO.

http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-locks-down-700-homes-ebola-death-162551911.html 

Ebola cases near 16,000, Sierra Leone to overtake Liberia soon with most cases: WHO

GENEVA (Reuters) - The death toll in the world's worst Ebola epidemic has risen to 5,689 out of 15,935 cases reported in eight countries by Nov. 23, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

Almost all cases and all but 15 deaths have been in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia - the three hardest-hit countries, which reported 600 new cases in the past week, the WHO said in its latest update.

"The total number of cases reported in Sierra Leone since the outbreak began will soon eclipse the number reported from Liberia," it said. The former British colony has reported 6,599 cases against 7,168 in Liberia.

Transmission of the virus remains intense in Sierra Leone, especially in the west and north, with the capital Freetown still the worst affected area, it said.

Sierra Leone appealed to the United States on Wednesday to send military aid to help it battle Ebola as it falls behind its West African neighbors Guinea and Liberia in the fight against the virus.

http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-cases-near-16-000-sierra-leone-overtake-171705005.html 

How Far Do Germs Fly When You Sneeze on a Plane? Pretty Far, it Turns Out

A new animated video put together by Pennsylvania-based engineering firm Ansys simulates just what happens when someone seated in the middle of an airplane sneezes.

The results aren’t pretty.

Instead of staying in a little bubble around the sneezing passenger, airborne particles can travel up to 50 feet, dispersing in all directions around the cabin due to plane airflow.

https://www.yahoo.com/travel/what-happens-when-you-sneeze-on-a-plane-101865809857.html?hp=1 

From the no shit dept...Ebola rapidly advancing in rural Sierra Leone

"London (AFP) - Ebola is spreading up to nine times faster in parts of Sierra Leone than two months ago, a report by the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI) said on Sunday.
 "Whilst new cases appear to have slowed in Liberia, Ebola is continuing to spread frighteningly quickly in parts of Sierra Leone," said the AGI report."

"On average, 12 new cases a day were seen in the rural areas surrounding Freetown in late October, compared with 1.3 cases in early September, the report said, a nine fold increase.

Transmission was also increasing rapidly in the capital Freetown, with the average number of daily cases six times higher than two months ago.

The analysis was based on three-day averages of new cases recorded by Sierra Leone's health ministry"

The rest...

http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-rapidly-advancing-rural-sierra-leone-201756826.html

By Dr. Sanjay Gupta Ebola is a killer, but it is not very contagious and not a threat in the United States.

We now have a quadrupling down on the stoopid by the .gov controlled media...

Apparently Dr. Gupta was either bribed by the CDC,the Obama admin,Ebola czar Flounder,or he really is that stoopid.
While I'm not a Dr, I did get a passing grade in Middle school biology,and in college I got a passing grade in microbiology.
Anyone with an internet connection,common sense,and a half hour at most can refute Dr. Gupta's idiotic claims. Hell,my 5 year old granddaughter can tell you Ebola is a nasty virus and that our government should not allow people from the countries where Ebola outbreaks are ocurring to come to the U.S.
Either my granddaughter is super-smart-(of course she is-she's my granddaughter)- or Dr. Gupta is a tool and a moron.
How the f*ck can this asswipe who claims to be a Dr. state that "Ebola is a killer,but it is not very contagious,and not a threat in the United States"? 
What. The. Fuck.    What is the doc smokin, snortin or shootin ? Maybe all three? One for each mind altering drug?


"Ebola is a frightening disease, no question. It kills more than half the people it infects, and there is no cure. But here’s an important fact:  Almost nobody in this country needs to be worried about it.
If you are not a health worker or, for some other reason, in direct physical contact with someone who has Ebola, you are not at risk of getting it. Here’s what we know:
While Ebola is deadly, it is not very contagious. The flu virus is carried through the air, but the Ebola virus is not. You have to be in physical contact with a sick person and get their blood or vomit or feces on your skin.
Even in areas of Africa where the outbreak is spreading out of control, each sick person infects only two others on average. That is called the R-nought value. It is a measure of how contagious a disease is. Compare it to measles, for example, which is airborne like the flu. The R-nought for measles is 18, meaning each sick person infects 18 others on average during an outbreak.

Of course, even an R-nought of two is serious if the virus is allowed to spread unchecked. One person infects two, who infect four, then eight, sixteen, etc.

That is what is happening in West Africa. In Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the public health systems were not able to contain the outbreak, so it has become an epidemic. But that could not happen in this country, which has a robust public health system. Even if more Ebola-infected people come here, we can be sure the virus will be contained."


What a moron. What a lying scum sucking .gov bought and paid for piece of excrement.



http://www.everydayhealth.com/news/ebola-what-every-american-needs-to-know/ 

More Idiocy about nurse waaaaaaaahhh-they put me in isolation...

 The egotistical,self centered whiny acts like a 4 year old twit of a nurse who complained about being placed in isolation when she informed customs workers she was returning from W. Africa now claims "her civil rights" were violated,and is suing everyone who was mean to her.
 YOUR rights? What about MY rights?
Shes a freakin' nurse for God's sake-she knows damn well how deadly Ebola is,and that people who have used ALL the correct PPE  have STILL GOT EBOLA.
She knows damn well that protocol is isolation and monitoring for fever for at least 21 days.

She's whining about HER rights?
Fuck her rights-she has NO RIGHTS when coming here from the Ebola hot zone-NONE-she gets the exact same treatment anyone coming from the hot zone gets-being a nurse does NOT grant special rights. She has no right to infect others with Ebola-no right whatsoever.

Maybe she will get a judge that's not a Obamazombie,or other far left loon,one who actually got passing grades in middle school biology class who knows what the dangers of whiny twit transmitting the virus to others are
Whiny twit nurse and Ebola nurse #2 who possibly infected NE Ohio are self-centered the whole world revolves around me types who need to have pointed out to them that that is exactly what their behavior has shown the world they are...because they are both too self-absorbed to see that one for themselves.


 From the leader of the land of rainbows and unicorns...

"Anyone who has heard the nurse explain her situation in her proud, passionate, intelligent voice, knows that what happened to her is inappropriate," said de Blasio.

The Obama admin chimed in with similar fertilizer.

More from whiny twit...

"Hickox, who was helping treat patients in hard-hit Sierra Leone before her return to the United States, has been isolated outside the main hospital building.

She has only been allowed to wear paper scrubs, and the tent is equipped with just a hospital bed, a non-flush chemical toilet and no shower."

"I feel like my basic human rights have been violated," she told CNN's "State of the Union" show, insisting she was not contagious because she has shown no symptoms and tested negative for the disease.

"To put me in prison... is just inhumane."

- 'Haphazard' -"

Prison? She thinks that's what prison is like?!

Maybe she should spend a few months in prison for filing such an idiotic lawsuit-then she would have something to whine about...

Six Degrees Of Ebola - For The Geographically Challenged

 Originally posted @ Raconteur Report-http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2014/10/six-degrees-of-ebola-for-geographically.html

 

Six Degrees Of Ebola - For The Geographically Challenged

As one hilarious wisecracker posted elsewhere yesterday when I added that Mali had gotten on the Ebola Scoreboard, "Oh God! Not Mali!!! {runs to Wikipedia}

Which is fair, funny in a 7000-miles-from-me way, and a reasonable observation.
Fair enough; not everyone liked maps since they were little kids.

The problem is this:
When Ebola was (more-or-less) contained in one country, it was "just another small potatoes Ebola outbreak" in equatorial Africa. Quick flare, bodies, and poof! it's over.
But instead, it travelled by bus and taxi to the densely populated slums of the capitol, and crossed two (and later three, out of six) of the neighboring borders. And then proceeded to those densely crowded capitol's slums, and we've been off to the races trying to catch it - and abysmally failing - every day since then. That's precisely why it's now A Big Thing.

And now it's gotten to Mali (pop. 16M+). Nearly as many people in one country as there are in the other three combine. Carried there by a two-year-old, and her loving idiot grandmother, on public busses, straight to the capitol of Mali (Bamako, pop. 1.8M), and its teeming slums.

 Clever people will notice a pattern.
(And arguably, most of Africa is a teeming slum.)

And with Mali doubling down on teh Stoopid, it bears noting that it shares borders with four additional countries not previously at risk, and the president of that landlocked nation has officially announced that they won't be closing their borders at all.

In more obvious terms, this is like deciding, in the midst of a forest gloriously aflame, to build your house out of gasoline cans, and pointing fireworks at your neighbors' houses as well.
And then storing kegs of gunpowder inside that house.

We aren't losing to Ebola because we don't know how to stop an epidemic.

We're losing because no one is willing to do it.
It's too hard.
Too politically unpopular.
Too inhumane to those trapped in the Hot Zone.
Simply too damned mean.
And the "leaders" around the world, top to bottom, are simply too craven and too stupid to take the most obvious and basic epidemiologic steps to contain the spread.

So instead, we're going to kill the entire world. With kindness.
And wish on a unicorn, and think of butterflies and puppies, while we pray for miracles.

What's desperately and unpalatably called for is some tough love.

But everyone involved is too squeamish to come out and do what necessity demands, and instead, they're all diddling themselves, and will continue to do so, until nothing, not even the most draconian measures, will then avail.

And for the perennial pollyanas, who're sure that the outbreak in Mali won't spread, and the case in NYC won't spread: That's what they said when it was just in Guinea. And when it was just in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. And when it was just in Dallas.
Nota bene, dumbasses, that it's come to the U.S. twice already, skipping over 87 intermediate stops, because international jet travel, and clever government inattention, incompetence, hubris, and childish magical thinking.
It's a free country: wait for it to personally bite you in the ass at your own peril.
I promise to laugh at your plight from afar, come the day.

I say yet again:

Y.O.Y.O. - You're On Your Own.

Make appropriate personal preparations, while you yet have the time and wherewithal.
When things go to shit everywhere, as they continue to do like a Chinese water torture, drip by drop, that option will not exist for you, or for anyone else.

Two From Aesop-The Only One On The Interwebz Who's Been Posting Factual Info on Ebola

Here's Your Front Line Of Defense

"So now, the most respected medical journal in the UK has published the projection that more will certainly come. We got Duncan when there were 6000 Ebola patients in total. WHO expects that soon we'll be looking at 10,000 a week. You decide what that's going to do about whether or not people will try to get out.

The Lancet study takes into account international flight restrictions that were in place to the three countries at the Ebola epicenter as of Sept. 1. Those restrictions led to a 51% drop in passengers for Guinea, 66% for Liberia and 85% for Sierra Leone.
After accounting for that level of decreased travel, the authors’ model projects that 2.8 passengers infected with Ebola would depart the three countries via commercial flights, on average, every month.
The projection by Dr. Khan and his colleagues suggests that about two-thirds of these travelers are expected to fly to low/ lower-middle income countries. This could pose a problem because poorer countries have fewer resources to identify and track infected people.

The risk to European countries or the U.S. is considerably less. The research concludes that for every case exported to the U.S., there will be about eight cases exported to the U.K. and France combined.

Three Duncans a month, who could (and will) land in Cairo, Kinshasa, London, Brussels, Paris, Rome...and the US.
Just ducky!
But don't worry, our government officials know how important it is to protect us, which is why we're depending on the truthfulness of passengers, and the dedication and literacy of Third World middle school dropouts to keep the next Duncan off of your commuter train, out of the ER you take your kid to, and out of that ghetto apartment with 20-50 sketchy folks who may not run straight to the doctor when they get a fever, headache, or tummy ache.
So those guys are ON THAT CASE!:"

 

No Longer Operative

 

"From the old Clinton admin line, when the cover stories were changing hourly, today's title.

And now, health care workers learn what pilots have long known:
Safety rules are written in blood, usually by people who were following the OLD safety rules.
Or, as the philosophical among us have put it:
"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."

 

http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2014/10/no-longer-operative.html