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Thread: EXPERIMENTAL Ebola Vaccine Will Be Administered In Congo As Ebola Death Toll Climbs

  1. #1
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    Default EXPERIMENTAL Ebola Vaccine Will Be Administered In Congo As Ebola Death Toll Climbs

    EXPERIMENTAL Ebola Vaccine Will Be Administered In Congo As Ebola Death Toll Climbs

    Mac Slavo
    May 21st, 2018



    An experimental Ebola vaccine is being rolled out in Congo as the death toll from the infectious disease continues to climb. The vaccination campaign will begin today.

    “The vaccination campaign begins tomorrow, Monday, in Mbandaka, capital of the province,” Minister of Health Oly Ilunga told The Associated Press as reported by 9 News Australia. “It will target, first, the health staff, the contacts of the sick and the contacts of the contacts.” The World Health Organization has been warning about the “Ebola situation” in Congo, and it appears their only solution is an experimental vaccine.

    An experimental vaccine is one that has never been tried on humans before.

    Ebola hemorrhagic fever, seen mostly only in Africa, is one of the world’s most feared diseases. It begins with flu-like symptoms, followed by bloody diarrhea and vomiting. Days later, some victims begin bleeding through the nose, mouth, and eyes. Depending on the strain of the Ebola virus, it can kill up to 90% of victims. There is no cure for Ebola. The virus is spread through direct contact with the blood or secretions of an infected person.

    So, is the Ebola virus reaching a terrifying enough level that an experimental vaccine is warranted? The death toll has reached 26 and the vaccine will be rolled out at Mbandaka, the north-western city of 1.2 million recently struck by the outbreak. Since the virus is spread through direct contact, an isn’t airborne, it isn’t nearly as deadly as it could be.

    Read more here about Ebola and how it is transmitted:

    Initially, the campaign will target 600 people, mainly medical staff, contacts of suspected cases, and those who have been in contact with the contacts, Ilunga said. Officials are working urgently to prevent the disease from spreading beyond Mbandaka, which lies on the Congo River, a busy traffic corridor, and is an hour’s flight from the capital.

    The spread of Ebola from a rural area to Mbandaka has raised alarm as Ebola can spread more quickly in urban centers. The fever can cause severe internal bleeding that is often fatal. Meaning, the virus itself doesn’t actually kill. The immune system’s response to the virus is what’s deadly.

    ZMapp is also an experimental drug that could aid in the recovery from the Ebola virus. But, like the vaccine being administered, it has not been tested for safety or efficacy yet. It is not a vaccine – it is a therapeutic drug. Of the seven people given the drug so far, two have died. ZMapp show “promise,” although scientific results are not definitive.

    The risk of Ebola spreading within Congo is “very high,” according to authorities, and the disease could also move into nine neighboring countries, the World Health Organization has warned. The WHO, however, stopped short of declaring the outbreak a global health emergency. WHO said there should not be restrictions on international travel or trade.

    In the meantime, it’s important to prevent oneself from contracting the virus. Unfortunately, health care workers are at the greatest risk as they try to cull the suffering: which is why they will be the first to get the experimental vaccine. For their sake, let’s hope it works better than this year’s flu vaccine.

    http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-new...limbs_05212018
    ”The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” - Margaret Thatcher

  2. #2
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    And The Hits Just Keep On Coming



    [FONT="arial" ]This is not the story, or topic, I wanted to open the week with. I was going to put off even looking at the topic until the end of the week, for just a cursory check-in, like last week.[/FONT]
    [FONT="arial" ]I would have been happy not to speak of this story again. Ever.[/FONT]
    That's how "alarmist" I am.

    Well, so much for fond hopes.

    [FONT="arial" ]Y'all do as you like.[/FONT]
    For me, this news moves the currently-small outbreak in DRC from an occasional glance, to a regular visit, with both eyes on:

    (WSJ) “This outbreak is still in the escalation phase,” said Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has staff working to stem the outbreak in Congo, neighboring countries and the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization. “The key is identifying (patients’) contacts and getting people vaccinated.”
    On Friday, the WHO said a doctor in the town of Oicha in Ituri province had become ill with Ebola and may have infected his wife. The cases are the first in “an area of high insecurity,” said Peter Salama, the WHO’s emergency response chief. “It really was the problem we were anticipating, and the problem at the same time that we were dreading,” he said.
    Officials have identified 97 people in the town who may have been exposed and need to be vaccinated, but haven’t been able to reach them all due to security concerns, Dr. Salama said.
    While Oicha itself isn’t under rebel control, it is surrounded almost entirely by territory controlled by the Allied Democratic Forces, Uganda’s Islamic dissidents that are one of the dozens of foreign and local armed groups operating in Congo’s gold and tin mining heartlands.
    Large numbers of civilians have been killed around Oicha and aid workers, priests and government officials are being held hostage, Dr. Salama said. Health teams from the U.N. and Congo’s government managed to reach the town accompanied by military escorts, but staff from nongovernmental groups have been locked out.
    Dr. Salama said the WHO expects at least one more wave of cases.
    [FONT="arial" ]That all is concerning, but they bury the real money quotes at the bottom of the article:[/FONT]
    The 1.3 million people, including thousands of refugees, who live in the region have endured violent insurgencies dating back to the 1990s. But it is their first time experiencing an Ebola outbreak, stunning a rural population where many believe the virus is sent by evil spirits, aid officials say.
    “Many can’t comprehend the idea of not being able to bury dead loved ones according to tradition,” said Hassan Coulibaly, a field director in eastern Congo for the International Rescue Committee. “We are trying to educate them, but the environment is hostile”
    Last week, locals angered by health officials’ insisting they forego traditional burial practices, including washing bodies to avoid infection, burned down a health center in Mangina, the epicenter of the outbreak, pushing out medical personnel, according to the WHO. A local team administering vaccinations was also beaten up in Manbangu village, some 10 kilometers west of Mangina, while the IRC was forced to close down its health facility in the village of Mabalako following an attack from locals.
    [FONT="arial" ]So, just like with the ignorant tribal jackholes in West African nations in 2014, this is going to take months to try and get a handle on, not days nor even weeks, by which time it will multiply by several orders of magnitude, like it does, to hundreds and thousands of cases, even with a vaccine, and cross one or two international borders, and so on, and so on, and so on. And it's already off to the races now.[/FONT]

    Grab your hats; here we go again.

    And for comedy gold, the outbreak began in "Mangina".
    You can't make this stuff up.

    Next, we're going to see if international and national leadership has learned any effing thing at all from 2014, and if so, how much. Last I heard, Japan and ROK were pledging support to try and stamp this out ASAP; they get it. But this is going to take far more than that, including quite probably, a military mission to wade in and finally pacify the region, and squash the rebel militias holding sway five feet outside all the villages.

    That won't be the French Foreign Legion, the Bundeswehr, the Paras, or the Dutch Marines, boys and girls. Everybody's going to look in one direction, seeing whether we dive in, or back away.

    You heard it here first.


    I leave it for the clever tier of thinkers to ponder what happens if we don't go;
    then, what happens if we do;
    and finally, if we decide we have to go in, what happens when an American military person contracts Ebola, whether it's a medical relief mission, or some grunt or Combat Barbie, trying to push guerrillas out of the afflicted area.
    BONUS: And/or, brings it home with them. Because Murphy hates the military since ever.

    There's always the common sense approach that will never happen.


    Oh, and for double bonus points, it's an overwhelmingly Islamic guerrilla force.

    Because, apparently, you can't just have a $#!^ sandwich, you have to order it with the delicious e. coli and c. dif. Special Sauce.

    Because what we really need in this country is another jungle war, and a fresh war with Islam, on a continent that eats outsiders and spits them out, combined with an Ebola outbreak.

    "[FONT="arial" ]Hey, Bernie, I've got this great script, it's Contagion meets Tears Of The Sun and Blackhawk Down. Brad, George, and Matt are already down to do it, Denzel is interested too, and Steven and Ridley are fighting over who gets to direct. It's gonna be yuuuuuuuuuge!!!![/FONT]
    [FONT="arial" ]What?? No, HELL no, we're gonna shoot it in Hawaii. I smell half a billion bucks net, baby!"[/FONT]
    They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
    “As a general rule, the earlier you recognize someone is trying to kill you, the better off you’ll be.”

    "You think a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a sheet of glass."



  3. #3
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    Tuesday, August 28, 2018

    Nothing (Good) To See Here



    UPDATE:Today's Ebola box score (with figures from WHO 8/24 report):
    117 Ebola cases
    73 dead
    3,421 contacts.
    So the metric to watch is to see what that looks like in 21 days.
    I.e., From 8/3-8/24, they went from 33 deaths to 72, so it's doubling a bit faster than expected. Not good.
    On or about 9/14, if they have 144 deaths, they're on track for no control on the outbreak.
    The first batch were the people infected largely before the outbreak was detected, because you're always behind the curve with this disease.
    The 40 or so who've died since 8/3 are the second wave.
    The 72 probable between now and 9/14 are the next wave.
    If the dead count is less than 144 then - assuming the counting is accurate (because Africa) - that means vaccinations and so on are slowing the spread. That would be hopeful news.
    If it's 144 or more, that's very, very bad.
    That the contacts they need to trace have already quadrupled in three weeks is the reason epidemics become pandemics.
    One other note on the panel on Wikipedia:
    IGNORE their published CFR.
    They're doing it wrong.
    Allow me to explain:
    The death rate isn't the number dead now vs. the number infected now.
    Ebola isn't a lightning bolt.
    In 2014, Duncan, with first-world ICU care, took 10 days to die.
    He'd been sick several days before that.
    In Africa, a week, or two, or more between obvious infection, and death, is not uncommon.
    So if you're going to be honest, look at how many cases they had 21 days ago (that time span being the rough average of 5-42 days between contraction and appearance of Ebola) and how many dead people they have now.
    21 days ago, there were 76 cases. Today, there are 72 dead.
    That's a CFR of 95%.
    So unless they're going to publish survivor numbers, this thing is doing what you'd expect it to do in Africa: it's killing 95% of the people who catch it.
    It's like scoring bowling. With strikes and spares, you know you have to go a frame or three back, to get the correct current score.
    You can shorten the time frame to the average number of days an infected person lives in a Congolese Ebola clinic, or you can tell us how many of the people infected two week ago are dead now, and how many have recovered; those are both statistically honest options. Anything else is b.s.ing with numbers, and purely dishonest.
    And whatever mook at Wikipedia is skewing the percentage should know that (and either isn't savvy enough to grasp this simple epidemiological concept, or someone there is holding their thumb on the scale). It's a coin-toss there; you can guess which option, stupid or evil, is more likely. Neither one makes them look very good. If they plead "we're just re-posting the numbers from WHO", which are the numbers from DRCongo, that's fine, but it simply underlines the biggest problem with Ebola: Africa wins again.
    UPDATE (8/30): Going to the WHO source document as of 8/28, there have been 75 deaths, 25 are in hospital, and 18 people have recovered (Three are apparently in limbo...). Which gives a CFR back in reality, at 80.6%, IOW the exact death rate in nearly every Ebola outbreak since it first appeared. Which means of the 25 hospitalized in clinic, 20 more will die.
    Note:
    Unless this either
    a) crosses an international border,
    b) appears in a major (pop. > 1M) city, or
    c) some modern Thomas Duncan gets through an airport and brings it outside DRCongo,
    d) something really major happens, internationally
    we're still keeping an eye on this, but won't be talking about it much, if at all, for the next three weeks. Anything other than that, grim as it may be, will just be Africa being Africa.
    Which it does just fine whether we watch, or not.
    I brought it up at all, because it's moved into being a thing, and mainly - since neither you nor I can affect what's happening 6000 miles away - as a reminder to make sure (or start making sure) you could ride things out at home if this goes as sideways as - or, God forbid, worse than - it did in 2014. Which is well within the possible likely course of action.
    This is not the all-Ebola blog, never was, nor ever will be. There is too much comedy, serendipity, and general mockable ****ery, both professional and amateur, going on in the world besides just this, to focus so narrowly. If all Hell breaks loose, and this turns into a 2014 do-over clown show, complete with TPTB importing the disease to the US, we can talk about that then. I covered it pretty intensely, to the limit of available sources in fact, in 2014, but mainly because the hubris and outright stupidity was breathtaking in its scope and depth; it was like coming across an ocean looking for the Spice Islands, and instead discovering a new continent.
    Between now, and then (or, hopefully, not), just get your crap together, literally, and check your plans. Get informed, lock down the preparations for SHTF just in case, and then move along. If there are any questions, ask them, even in comments to other posts, but it ain't going to be my 24/7/365 focus, ever, unless I'm hunkered down behind barbed wire, and you are too.
    And one other thing:
    Think happy thoughts.
    And be sure and take some Tylenol and drink a lot of water after your celebrations on the passing of our newest ex-senator. It'll make the post-celebratory hangovers a bit less uncomfortable.

    Posted by Aesop at 12:15 AM
    They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
    “As a general rule, the earlier you recognize someone is trying to kill you, the better off you’ll be.”

    "You think a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a sheet of glass."



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