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

What a read.

“Close to 130 countries containing 2.5 billion people have yet to administer a single dose.” https://t.co/cGsoO9qrAw

— Alex Press (@alexnpress) April 12, 2021

Illustration is pretty good anyway

Will honestly say that at this point, it seems like we're going to be living the way we are right now for the foreseeable future. People are over it and just don't care if others die because the way we deal with death in this fucked-up country is to look the other way and blame the dead person for their own mortality.

(Speaking for the US)

It's not the way I deal with it, and I'm American. Really wish people would stop saying "we" do all this appalling garbage!

If there's a covid truther/anti-mask/freedom/Q protest anywhere within a few hours of me, I'm going to show up and ruin everything for them. that's different for me at least!

Really wish people would stop saying "we" do all this appalling garbage!

In most cases, this kind of "we" should be taken to mean "people who aren't like me, because obviously I know better and am proving it by criticizing the people who are like this".

I know! And I’m starting to take it personally!

Seems a bit... excessive:

https://globalnews.ca/news/7756911/astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-stop-used-denmark/

To be fair, I think what table meant by the "we" is that, like it or not, "we" (citizens of the US) are going to be stuck where we are for quite some time because we have so many selfish idiots and anti-vaxxers. I don't think that's disparaging anyone itt or any ilxors to say, because of the actions of others, "we" are all going to be kind of stuck longer than necessary.

As Eric Church might say, that was a cold one.

I think if vaccination rates stall out with a large portion of people refusing them, we will soon see many more people saying "fuck it" and making more aggressive moves back towards regular life regardless.

I'm kind of getting there myself. I'm vaccinated, my family is vaccinated, I've already punted a year+ of my life, I'm gonna start doing shit

anyone got numbers on exactly how much of u.s. society is exactly anti-vaxxer/selfish idiots and how this will ruin vaccination/immunity or is this just ambient dread 4 fun

sorry, i know, thread title

oh wait this is the outbreak thread

Here you go:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/04/07/984697573/vaccine-refusal-may-put-herd-immunity-at-risk-researchers-warn

new Monmouth University poll:

proportion who say they'll never get covid vaccine if they can avoid it

5% of Democrats
22% of independents
43% of Republicans

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) April 14, 2021

This is actually down from 24% in their March poll. https://t.co/9sB9n2vF2i

— Ian Sams (@IanSams) April 14, 2021

or is this just ambient dread 4 fun

^ new borad description

I always put on some Lustmord before opening ILX.

USC has a tracking poll on covid stuff that has been running for a year now

https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/

i think there's a good shot we get to the necessary threshold to at least greatly curb the virus to just a nuisance. it's hard to say "herd immunity" when other countries are going to be mega-far away from it, and countries like Brazil are just a breeding grounds for variants. but it'll be enough to re-open some things and do some things. Moderna should have their booster by fall they say.

I doubt we will get to a zero case load ever. it's here to stay. we have to find ways to work around that while ensuring public safety. but it'll eventually be in a weakened state, and of course our immune systems will now begin recognizing it.

sadly I think we will become the Sneetches and life will turn into the Scolds vs the Reckless endlessly fighting until the end of time...which will be 2043, when the Decepticons arrive.

I have a neighbor who says he won't get vaxxed unless you're required to in order to travel. if that's what it takes...

To be clear, I'm not just trying to dredge up "ambient dread" and I wasn't insinuating that we'd never move back to some closer semblance of normal. Just expressing frustration that, while knowing we would never completely eradicate the virus, some combination of selfish and ignorant people are going to keep us from making it even safer for everyone.

You got my meaning earlier, jvc.

I am frustrated but with my partner's job, what I hear in the streets and news, and what I see on social media...all of it points to this being something that is here for a while, and getting used to that and starting to think about risk in that way is something we're all going to have to get more accustomed to.

So at what point do you say that a significant portion of people just aren't getting vaxxed and you go back to living life anyway?

I’m planning on waltzing about like I’m invincible post vax myself

India is reporting 200,000 new Covid cases and 1,000 Covid deaths today. That's a doubling in both over the past nine days.

I know that no one in the US MSM cares about this stuff, but we should. If these numbers don't roll over soon, this is going to be a global catastrophe.

— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) April 14, 2021

There’s a Tokyo variant now and is seems to be driving rapidly rising case numbers in Osaka.

India is likely only reporting a fraction of the actual deaths too xp.

https://scroll.in/article/992217/as-the-dead-pile-up-in-gujarat-the-states-media-is-on-a-warpath-with-the-government-over-covid-19

Mexico's getting slammed too. Nearly every week my wife is telling me about a classmate's parent dying.

CDC identifies only 5,800 Covid-19 infections after the final vaccine, out of more than 66 million. And those who got it had mild cases. https://t.co/gvBu6s1mlQ

— Eliza Collins (@elizacollins1) April 15, 2021

To be clear, not every single post vaccine case has been mild — but most have. There have been 74 out 66 million people who have died after being vaccinated.

— Eliza Collins (@elizacollins1) April 15, 2021

Anti-vaxxers: SO YOU'RE SAYING THERE'S A CHANCE

in all seriousness, though, that's fantastic levels of effectiveness there.

that's why I got so angry at people who kept saying "95% efficacy means 5% of people who get vaccines will still get sick". no, no no, lab-based "efficacy" and real world "effectiveness" are different measures, you can't just extrapolate the math from one to the other.

There have been 74 out 66 million people who have died after being vaccinated.

assuming this means to say "of Covid" but I'm kind of curious who these people were and what age they were & preexisting conditions they had

I feel like if they had meant "of COVID", they would have said that, though?

Eh, the "of COVID" implication feels fairly clear to me, but I guess this is why it should be more explicitly explained!

Vaccines make you essentially immortal, is what I take from that.

About time we had immortality.

I think it is not at all clear that this means "of COVID". I read a little while back of a number of seniors who died after getting vaxxed, but the numbers were in line with the death rate for octogenarians and it wasn't at all clear that COVID was a factor at all.

yeah I hate to make the distinction between "died from Covid" and "died WITH Covid" but when you're talking about such a miniscule percentage it might be relevant

I'm gonna err on the side of 'died from COVID' because if only 74 out of 66 million vaccinated people have died period then we've essentially solved the problem of death.

oh you're definitely right just wondering if any of them fell within the category of people who were otherwise low risk. because right now there's this narrative going around that the vaccine is "only 95% effective" meaning that for 5% of people it "doesn't work" which obviously is something I want to push back on

Pfizer recipients cannot be killed by conventional weapons

There’s a Tokyo variant now and is seems to be driving rapidly rising case numbers in Osaka.

― American Fear of Scampos (Ed), Thursday, 15 April 2021 bookmarkflaglink

India is likely only reporting a fraction of the actual deaths too xp.

https://scroll.in/article/992217/as-the-dead-pile-up-in-gujarat-the-states-media-is-on-a-warpath-with-the-government-over-covid-19

― Scampo di tutti i Scampi (ShariVari), Thursday, 15 April 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Mexico's getting slammed too. Nearly every week my wife is telling me about a classmate's parent dying.

― frogbs, Thursday, 15 April 2021 bookmarkflaglink

If you are not in Europe, US and a few other countries the end of this is nowhere near in sight.

About time we had immortality.

Herd immortality is where it's at.

not if you're Highlander

Maxine Walters tells Jim Jordan to shut his mouth

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/overnights/548497-shut-your-mouth-chairman-cuts-off-jim-jordan-fauci-sparing-at?fbclid=IwAR3sYqVsZMKdv2fyq1OJi_2cmqw9KHrthROW1CuL9sDO_Qn80v8IVJc_FOE

posted itt because it was a COVID hearing and he was idiotically demanding to know from Fauci what vaccination level would allow people to "restore their liberties".

"1 Brazilian"

'Double mutant' most common variant now: India's genome data

The analysis shows for the first time how the detection of various variants of the coronavirus may have changed

(report by @VinayakD and @AnonnaDutt)https://t.co/nT6Gnv588Y pic.twitter.com/JoUEb8ewYE

— Hindustan Times (@htTweets) April 16, 2021