outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

every time this stuff gets in the news i have an anxiety attack just reading about it

do you think we're all going to die of a plague, soon?

I watched Contagion 2x in a row on a recent intercontinental flight and within 24 hours of landing I was sicker than I can ever remember being.

-Peter

that was a scary one because you know that's exactly how it's going to go down, too

my dad is of the opinion that we're all gonna drop dead from mad cow disease eventually from a lifetime of pink slime exposure

Ebola in Uganda, new flu killing East Coast seals...

Who the HECK would choose Contagion for in-flight programming???

-Peter

There is still this other side of me that wishes I'd embarked on one of my many fig tree dream careers of epidemiologist. I really get a kick form this kind of thing. Someday we will all be dead.

So how worried should we be now, anyway.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/25/us-heath-ebola-nigeria-idUSKBN0FU1LE20140725

Fanning flames, paranoia: http://www.sfgate.com/news/medical/article/New-fears-about-Ebola-spread-after-plane-scare-5651721.php

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — No one knows for sure just how many people Patrick Sawyer came into contact with the day he boarded a flight in Liberia, had a stopover in Ghana, changed planes in Togo, and then arrived in Nigeria, where authorities say he died days later from Ebola, one of the deadliest diseases known to man.

Now health workers are scrambling to trace those who may have been exposed to Sawyer across West Africa, including flight attendants and fellow passengers.

Health experts say it is unlikely he could have infected others with the virus that can cause victims to bleed from the eyes, mouth and ears. Still, unsettling questions remain: How could a man whose sister recently died from Ebola manage to board a plane leaving the country? And worse: Could Ebola become the latest disease to be spread by international air travel?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ebola-virus-top-sierra-leone-doctor-shek-umar-dies-of-disease-9636406.html

Sierra Leone's top virologist has died in the current outbreak.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/health/patient-at-mount-sinai-has-ebola-like-symptoms-hospital-says.html

This is terrible, reports of hospitals shutting their doors, infected rotting corpses in the streets and ebola nurses downing tools after not getting paid measly $30 a week risk money pledged by the Sierra Leone gvt. Conditions described as "medieval" in parts where the health system has totally collapsed.

i heard a woman talking on the radio about it the other day and she was not holding back about how grim it was -- she was a reporter but i don't remember her name
she used the same analogy, like it was medieval in terms of what people believe about medicine as well as the degree to which people receive/shun medical care when they need it

Little did we know all the right wing survivalists had the right idea for the wrong reason. It's not Obama they should fear, but ebola.

I read an article about the stress of being an ebola nurse. Encased in completely enveloping PPE in a hot climate for 12 + hour shifts. Dealing with infectious, dying patients that constantly fall out of beds, spray blood and diarrhea all over the place. The people that deal with these patients ... I just have no idea where they get their courage from.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-armed-men-attack-liberia-ebola-clinic-freeing-patients/

holy shit

Yeah,

Plague Inc is my favorite game

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/08/19/341412011/shadow-and-d-12-sing-an-infectious-song-about-ebola?

dr. brantly speaking now, was just discharged from emory

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/tests-under-way-for-ebola-following-donegal-death-1.1904073

Shit got real. school with this guys sister

Pharmeceutical industry person tries to defend the industry re charges they have not done enough re ebola because it is in poor countries

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2014/08/18/washington-post-off-base-in-critiquing-pharma-efforts-in-ebola/

the incentives for the pharmaceutical industry are what they are, unfortunately

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/ebolanomics

Irish guy didn't have Ebola. Was a false alarm.

South Africa and Senegal trying to bar some folks from countries at issue from entry

First US case in Dallas. Take that NYC & LA! We're number one!

Yikes!

I wonder how many crisis of this kind will happen before countries take the WHO seriously and decide to invest in a proper international health structure to prevent this kind of outbreak. Freaking hate to see institutions like the FMI giving up to 130 millions $ but then pressure politicians in the region to go for austerity, it's a waste of money for everyone.

ebola USED to be at the top of my list of irrational fears. presbyterian hospital is about 5 miles north of where i'm sitting right now.

welp

#patientzero

The Frontline piece on this a week or so ago was eye-opening. Hospitals that are barely more than cordoned off fields, mass graves, disinfecting the back of trucks (where patients ride, near death) by tossing in buckets of bleach, doctors and other aid workers more or less forced to visit villages free of any special suits for fear of scaring the shit out of everyone, children orphaned and alone overnight. Just heartbreaking. It's both a matter of doctors struggling to keep up with a rapidly and easily spreading illness and a population almost impossible to isolate. Bodies being dumped and left by the side of the road, families taking members out of quarantine, superstitious treatments co-mingling with modern medicine ...

Here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ebola-outbreak/

The saddest bit may be at the end, where grave diggers, one by one, list all their families members who have succumbed.

I'm just a few miles further away, art. Drive by it almost every day as I head up to Richardson.

Your risk of dying from ebola (total confirmed 2014 ebola deaths: a few thousand worldwide) is still lower than your risk of dying due to complications related to seasonal influenza (on average, 5800-7500 a year in the US). Get a flu shot. Don't get too preoccupied by ebola.

wanna c&p that on every damn facebook post I see for the next week

be my guest

i have total confidence in the medical system to properly handle any other arising cases. that said, i am still illogically terrified

Sick Burn I saw on FB:

Don't worry about Ebola spreading in Dallas. The Cowboys have shown us that people in Dallas can't catch anything.

Ebola spreads by physical contact with bodily secretions and fluids. That makes it easier to contain in a place like the USA or Europe, where there are lots of medical facilities and a patient's recent contacts can be quickly discovered and tracked down.

Even so, if ebola strongly establishes itself in Africa, with a reservoir of infected people who keep the virus continuously viable and circulating, then not only will massive numbers of africans die, but ebola will keep leaping to other parts of the world, including the USA and Europe. It can be compared to sparks thrown out from a wildfire, which land on tinder and start other fires away from the main fire. You can put out many of these small satellite fires, but it is hard to extinguish all of them, and the more new places that start burning the harder the firestorm is to keep contained.

That's a good analogy. I really wish international focus between the Ebola outbreak and ISIL was better divided.

run for the hills imo

*not the hills of West Africa, tho*

http://i.imgur.com/LHm72Rq.png

ugh goddamned parody accounts :(

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/africa/ebola-spreading-in-west-africa.html

this is a very difficult article to read

apparently the problem is not money but organization and time

Oh jeez:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/02/texas-ebola_n_5919522.html

at what point is it ok for me to start panicking?

supposed to go to the state fair this weekend and have resolved not to touch any surfaces and to bathe myself in hand sanitizer after it is all over.

the panic is hilarious. Especially from folks who drive on the streets of Dallas. You should be much more afraid of north Texas drivers than ebola.

until there is an effective vaccine I consider ebola as a threat, but in the USA it is a long term threat, which gives the researchers plenty of time to develop that vaccine.

truly despicable imo for rand paul, a physician, to be saying things like this to score political points

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-rand-paul-sounds-ebola-alarm/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/africa/ebola-spreading-in-west-africa.html

this is a very difficult article to read

apparently the problem is not money but organization and time

― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, October 1, 2014 7:27 PM (Yesterday

disorganization and lack of preparedness (not to mention distrust of medical authorities, belief in traditional healing, etc) are consequences of poverty, though. this was from a few weeks ago but i think it's a good primer

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1409494

First, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia are resource-poor countries already coping with major health challenges, such as malaria and other endemic diseases, some of which may be confused with EVD. Next, their borders are porous, and movement between countries is constant. Health care infrastructure is inadequate, and health workers and essential supplies including personal protective equipment are scarce. Traditional practices, such as bathing of corpses before burial, have facilitated transmission. The epidemic has spread to cities, which complicates tracing of contacts. Finally, decades of conflict have left the populations distrustful of governing officials and authority figures such as health professionals. Add to these problems a rapidly spreading virus with a high mortality rate, and the scope of the challenge becomes clear

I was in line at a fast food place this weekend and there was a guy in front of me who was unmasked. The counter girl called out "Next in line!" twice and the guy was just staring off into space. I was standing 6 feet behind him and I heard it. After she called it a third time, the guy took notice and walked up to the counter. "Sorry, I couldn't hear you because of your mask."

We were in a hotel for the first time since March 2020 this weekend. The hotel had a mask mandate which was followed 98%. We were on the elevator two different times with people with people who didn't have masks on and both times my wife told them about the mask mandate and they put masks on. One time was a family and the dad's mask had an American flag on it.

How's everyone feeling about movie theaters at the moment? I'm still desperately hopping through listings, looking for sparsely attended screenings and generally avoiding weekends. But I look at a countless amount of seating charts all the time, and it seems most people don't care now. Am I still being overly paranoid?

We don't have too much of that kind of bellicose posturing in the UK that I've seen (other than musicians on the experimental circuit for some reason), more of a shrugging fatalism and the innate British attitude that it's all someone else's problem.

xpost

Fucked if I'm going to a cinema any time soon.

I'm certainly overly cautious but I have no plans to do theaters again anytime soon. Partly because the theater in our town closed last year and I'd have to go to more crowded screenings in the city, partly because very little has changed on the COVID front over the past several months even despite our ongoing mask mandate.

I will say that the Prince Charles Cinema is still doing social distancing, staggered showtimes, one way exits. So as much as they can short of not letting ppl w/o masks in.

It's quite possible to pay for a noon or 1 p.m. show and get a sparsely populated experience. I went in the middle of a Saturday to watch Titane, one of six people. I remained masked and felt perfectly safe.

i've been to the cinema plenty of times and there's never been more than about 10 people there. i don't mask because i'm constantly slurping soda and eating popcorn. AITA?

OL, since we've learned that we live near the same now shuttered theater, pretty much sums up my standing as of now, though I'm also holding off until my son gets jabbed.

I will say that I'm starting to dream of a future when I don't have to wear a mask for 9-10 consecutive hours per day (yet another minus for the open plan office, which means I'm effectively in a public space 100% of my day) at work. Illinois and Chicago are both saying the indoor mask mandate for everyone will stay "until more people get vaccinated". Given the number of intransigent assholes out there, I'm guessing this means... always? Don't get me wrong, given current cases, I'd rather have the mandate than not, but I can understand why even the most well meaning and obedient people are getting a little despairing about masks being a thing for many years to come.

vaccine take-up probably accounts for a lot of the difference in attitude. it’s easier for people to feel both personally safe and that they’re not running the risk of spreading anything when they know approx 80% of the eligible population has been vaccinated.

Quite like to go to see the new Velvet Underground doc in a couple of weeks.

Maybe taking day off and going at an early day screening could work out!

I mean, to be crystal clear, I'm not anti-mask and I happily wear it all day and whenever I pop into any indoor space. It's clearly helping to reduce transmission and I'm happy the mandate has in place here through the Delta wave, just noting that I can understand why fully vaxxed people might be ready to consider some real triggers/thresholds for when they might not be required and not just vague mutterings about "not forever".

I've meaning to write a "COVID endgame" thread for a while and I apologize this is somewhat delayed compared to media interviews like https://t.co/dQuo9i6ER7 and https://t.co/48MmCeq33g and to recent seminars like https://t.co/PGcgDinSNT. 1/17

— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) October 13, 2021

Thanks for sharing, this tweet in particular stood out:

Together, this would suggest perhaps 40k or 100k deaths per year in the US from COVID at endemic state. Most infections would be relatively mild (just like flu), but there's enough of them that even a small fraction of severe outcomes add up. 15/17

— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) October 13, 2021

Which would put this significantly higher than the flu, at least compared to the last ten years of data:

2010-2011 37,000 (32,000 – 51,000)
2011-2012 12,000 (11,000 – 23,000)
2012-2013 43,000 (37,000 – 57,000)
2013-2014 38,000 (33,000 – 50,000)
2014-2015 51,000 (44,000 – 64,000)
2015-2016 23,000 (17,000 – 35,000)
2016-2017 38,000 (29,000 – 61,000)
2017-2018* 61,000 (46,000 – 95,000)
2018-2019* 34,000 (26,000 – 53,000)
2019-2020* 22,000 (18,000 – 29,000)

That didn't format well at all, but the second digit is estimated flu deaths for each season, with the uncertainty interval in parentheses)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/09/negative-pcr-test-covid-symptoms-self-isolate

(Leaving aside wtf is a 'rapid PCR'?) this positive-LFTs-then-negative-PCR is definitely a thing where I am in the UK (anecdotally, usually occurring where the person is actually ill) but the messaging around it is a disaster for getting anyone to do anything other than essentially 'guess whether you think you have COVID'.

The past few weeks one of my kids has had 'covid symptoms' (ie a high temp, not that unusual in pre-schoolers) a couple of times, for the first time since before covid. There seems to be a lot going around as they say, requiring PCR tests which I'm now not as confident in as I was.

xp do bear in mind those are back of the envelope estimates/calculations, probably good to within a factor of a few. the low end of his 40-100k estimate in the US is pretty much in line with flu.

Yeah, I'm not taking those numbers as gospel or anything, was just curious to compare.

Mudhoney bassist Guy Maddison, who is an ER nurse by day, on his experience working through the pandemic (in Seattle, where the initial US outbreak was), and his attitude toward returning to shows as punter or performer:

https://crosscut.com/culture/2021/10/mosh-pit-er-mudhoney-bassist-being-nurse-during-covid

Good stuff, thanks.

Yes, great read. I'm still not quite at live shows yet but I'll see how I feel post-booster next month. At this point I'm comfortable with going to the theater and just watching a movie, no food or drink. (It helps there's an Alamo five blocks away and they've got empty seat policies separating ticket buyers, which is all right by me.)

Good thread on the under reported mortality:

For example, the Economist’s analysis is brilliant and uses this data to infer excess deaths worldwide, suggesting that currently over 16 million deaths have occurred worldwide. Over 3 times as many as reported. Thank you @Sondreus for all this work https://t.co/IJrASYk3B6

— OJ Watson (@ojwatson92) October 14, 2021

Wish the Economist article didn't require registration.

Try this: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgraphic-detail%2Fcoronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

Thanks!

i try not to follow this stuff closely too days, but it's hard not to notice. i assume this is a common dynamic between police in cities that mandate vaccinations

Tensions between Chicago’s mayor and police over the city’s vaccine mandate grew this week as the head of the police union urged officers to ignore a deadline to report their vaccination status.

Chicago city employees, including police officers, are required to report their vaccination status by Friday. Employees who aren’t vaccinated will be required to get tested twice weekly, a temporary measure until the end of the year as the city decides what to do with unvaccinated employees.

But the head of the Chicago branch of the Fraternal Order of Police, John Catanzara, urged members of the union in a video message this week to “hold the line.”

He told officers not to submit their vaccination statuses, and instead to flood the city with exemption requests on Thursday.

“Submit those all on Thursday, give them everything at one time, and that’s it,” he said. “Do not fill out the portal information,” he added, referring to the reporting of vaccination statuses to the city.

Officers and other city employees who fail to report their vaccination status by Friday will “be placed in a non-disciplinary, no pay status,” according to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office.

Catanzara said that “it’s safe to say the city of Chicago will have a police force at 50 percent or less” over the weekend.

“Whatever happens because of that manpower issue, that falls at the mayor’s doorstep,” he said.

They've already been working at 50 percent capacity, if that, all year now, so, good, fuck 'em. They haven't done jack shit anyway.

I'm not usually one to be doomposting about the violence in the city, but shit has gotten wild this year. I'm not arguing that we need more police, but this summer was rife with motorcycle and car groups taking over intersections for hours at a time to film each other doing donuts and there was, if I'm remembering right, three rolling shootouts in River North in four days, an area that doesn't usually see that sort of thing. In all cases there wasn't a cop to be seen anyway, so not sure we'd notice a difference even if these crybabies throw another temper tantrum.

his summer was rife with motorcycle and car groups taking over intersections for hours at a time to film each other doing donuts

looks like you don't take too kindly to the hyphy movement

Untrue. If it was E-40 and Mister FAB out there instead of a hundred ding-dongs TikToking each other for the clout, I'd be all for it!

Damn it, Mistah FAB. I knew that too.

As a person who does not give the tiniest fuck about sports, it amuses me greatly that the anti-vax basketball player is also a literal flat-earther.

I've resumed the cautious dining indoors again, always at lunch at a place I know with open doors and windows and whose staff is masked.

Speaking of Chicago, I could have sworn I saw, at least in passing, that despite a supposed vaccine mandate the mayor is letting the unvaxxed school employees slide, at least for now. I mean, you want labor shortage? The Chicago schools can't even afford to lose 1% of their employees. Apparently it's been a mess at the relatively stable local middle schools where I am, with kids just wilding out, lots of fights, pushing back against teachers, all often overseen by old folks brought out of retirement to help but unable to intervene. There was a big fight a couple of weeks ago, and one of these retired teachers supposedly looked to a student and implored, feebly, "do something." So the kid got involved, got punched in the face, and then got suspended for fighting.

And re: violence in Chicago, I never thought shootouts on the highway were a thing, but ... they're sure a thing now.

never thought shootouts on the highway were a thing, but ... they're sure a thing now.

One of the NRA's stupidest and most loathsome pieces of propaganda was their pushing the idea that arming everyone would ensure a more polite society, because everyone would realize that if they made anyone else angry, they'd get shot, and therefore everyone would go out of their way never to anger anyone else. I used to hear this one a lot when I was around gun nuts. It's the kind of 'logical conclusion' that also spawns libertarians who believe the cure for all our social ills is pure, unfettered laissez faire capitalism.

xpost - Yeah, Lightfoot is doing a tremendous job at buckling every time a union pushes back about a mandate. Fwiw, I don't think she's changed anything about the school employees, but pushed back the deadline six weeks (which still sucks, but it's not really changing - they always could opt out by testing 2x per week (which is also still dumb, but hardly unique to Chicago at this point)).

This is what I saw in the Trib

Chicago Public Schools employees who are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Friday’s deadline will still be able to work Monday, but they will have to undergo weekly testing at their schools, the district’s CEO said Wednesday.

“Employees will not be barred from coming (to) work (the) Monday after the Oct. 15 deadline. What we’re going to be doing is just working with them. They will have to get tested, and we’ll have COVID testing at their schools, so that will be convenient for them,” new CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said at a news conference.

“And then we’re going to just work with them to see where they’re at in the vaccination process, what hesitation they might have, what information we can give them. I feel fairly confident, just based on how high our (vaccination) percentage is, that it’s not going to be a big issue in our district.”

Martinez said more than 85% of CPS staff are vaccinated, and employees are submitting proof of vaccination every day.

The similar thing with city workers, I guess, who now have until the end of the year to get vaxxed. Same test-out option, I think, but at their own expense.

j/v/c, yes, it was all jokes.

trust me when i say that i find the dirtbike and quad crew in Philly to be fucking rad, but also terribly noisome and occasionally dangerous. luckily it's most just lots of group rides that move at a rapid clip, no taking over intersections for hours...at least in my neighborhood.

I knew you were joking, hence my E-40 post.

it's kind of striking to look at the graphs of new cases by individual state. Most of the southern states had massive spikes and now have some of the lowest daily rates. Did delta just burn through the population to the point where it's run out of places to go? Is this what herd immunity looks like? I don't expect this will last, but I wasn't expecting such a dramatic turnaround.

it's sort of what it's been doing in most places.

Florida right now has 3.8% test positivity rate and less than 20,000 cases this week. we didn't get there by actually giving a shit or anything.

- Fewer people left to infect

- However small the daily numbers, people get vaccinated every day; the totals rise

- Masks and social distancing observed in major cities

- Some kind of low level herd immunity

I'm fairly skeptical about #2 and #3 being a factor here

It is in Florida's cities, overwhelmingly blue.

https://covidactnow.org/us/florida-fl/?s=24301344

fully vaccinated was 49% august 1 and it's 59% now. fraction with one dose also up by 10% in the same period.

this is a pretty handy chart to see how vaccinations have progressed by state

https://ourworldindata.org/us-states-vaccinations

looks like a uniform 10% climb across southern states during that same period of time, although Florida has been way out ahead overall during that time

See, we'll all put up different charts.

I use the CDC's. Even given Miami-Dade County's propensity to count visiting Latin Americans who give phony addresses, our rates, if you discount them, are above 60-65%

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations-county-view|Florida|12086|Vaccinations|Administered_Dose1_Pop_Pct

also didn't realize until just now that nearly half the world's population, 3.73 billion people, has had at least one shot. I imagined it was hundreds of millions but not yet billions. That's pretty impressive!