BS: Ebola and the Missionaries

Subject: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 02:35 PM

No, not a new band, but do we need a separate thread for the issue of Are the missionaries doing more harm than good in the current outbreak of Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea? I am the first, as you know, to ask this type of question, but don't want the thread on the breakout itself to get sidetracked.

So my question to the forum is, IS this a sidetrack, in which case let's post stuff about that here, instead of there?

Or is this part of the main story, in which case, never mind and we can close this thread afte we reach that consensus?

I think both issues are hugely important.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 03:51 PM

A difficult question, since one must evaluate the work of many groups, some with medical doctors in the forefront (Seventh Day Adventists) and others with only moderate to minimal training in health procedures.

I can't see that a thread which lumps all groups together has any value.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 04:27 PM

I grew up as one of the 'plain people'. Those days are long past- more than 60 years past, in fact - but to this day I donate to and admire the Mennonite charity groups. #1: I know they are not going to gouge the recipients. #2: They are conscientious and will do their best. #3: If there is money involved, it will be rightly allocated, even if there happens to be no formal accounting. #4: They won't proselytise or allow their efforts to be contingent upon anyone's religious beliefs or racial happenstance.

They and 'Doctors without Borders' are among my heroes.

So far as I know, the Mennonite group is not involved in the current crisis but at a certain point they may well be.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 04:40 PM

So far, no need for separate thread on a religious element of the problem, I see.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 05:06 PM

Quakers won't proselytise either, so we can exclude both those groups from what are commonly considered "missionaries" whose "job" it is to promote "Christianity"[sic] .

As for Doctors Without Borders, I couldn't agree more, Ebbie.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: wysiwyg
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 08:43 PM

I'm pretty sure anyone helping with Ebola has their hands full just dealing with it, whatever personal belief system may be getting them through it. I think Racism is a far more dangerous dynamic there (and worldwide esp in the USA) than any proselytizing may be.

I think we who choose not to engage Ebola personally from safe US space-- where our health system has developed thanks to stolen/undonated Black cadavers-- don't get to judge those who are engaging it.

Check out the book 'Medical Apartheid.'

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 05:58 AM

Christians get a rough ride on here.
Their provision of medical aid to the poorest of the poor, risking their own lives and forsaking a safe and comfortable life at home, is worthy of a mention.

Re. The identification of Ebola, had there been an existing name among the locals it would have been used.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 12:24 PM

I find this a very strange thread indeed. Why are missionaries an "issue"? I have read quite a bit on this story and nowhere have I found any reference to this.
In fact, I find the concept of even asking such a thing about those who are risking their own well being, offensive.
As for christians getting a rough ride here, it is true, they do. Christian bashing is the last bastion of acceptable stupidity..talk about stereotyping...

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 12:32 PM

Christian bashing is the last bastion of acceptable stupidity.

Wrong.

Muslim bashing is the last bastion of acceptable stupidity.

And "Christians"[sic] deserve a rough ride when they fuck up.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 12:48 PM

Everyone deserves a bashing when they fuck up. However, It seems acceptable to make huge generalizations about some religious groups. I find those kind of sweeping statements offensive, about any group.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Rumncoke
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 01:09 PM

I was listening to the radio in the car a few weeks back and heard how the religious order of nursing nuns in a hospital - I think in Africa, was told by the local government to stop holding prayer meetings in the middle of the day as it was not acceptable as patients could hear them.

The local chief asked that the meetings be allowed to continue, as the patients would rather have some, any, religious observance rather than nothing at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 01:21 PM

Religion is a two way street. I have good memories of faith based charities working alongside infrastructure rebuilding when I did some voluntary work, designing manufacturing equipment for hand use in non urban areas.

On the other hand, I recall seeing two charities in a village in Kenya where a third charity I was involved with was working on irrigation. the two faith charities were concentrating on building a church and mosque at opposite ends of the village, on the basis that their work can bring membership expansion. Iy was the missionary clause I found less than altruistic, not to mention the judgement side..

Most people in the affected areas are superstitious and faith based care may well be a comfort to them.

Local government / local chief / patients can hear nuns praying?? Are you sure it was the radio? I didn't think The Daily Ma*l ran a radio channel??

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 01:24 PM

Re. The identification of Ebola, had there been an existing name among the locals it would have been used.

Nonsense, though that is an aside. There was malaria before white folks got there, it's called malaria, not any of the native terms for it. There was sleeping sickness before white folks started calling it Trypanosomiasis. We never take the native words for diseases, we name them usually for the place *we* first found it, like ebola and dengue, or we make up a white person's word for it, like Onchocerciasis.

But that is an aside. Thinking that just because white people have heard of it now means it was just discovered is old-fashioned. To be kind.

Kinda like thinking art started in Europe because white folks hadn't found any cave paintings outside Europe yet...

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 01:43 PM

Diseases get renamed for good scientific and medical reasons. Each local community may have a different name for a particular malady. That is a situation that would certainly hamper medical research. It is fairly common in the scientific community to have a common name for the same thing..makes perfect sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 06:01 PM

A comic on UK telly last night said that The US were considering invading Ebola..

😏

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,#
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 06:39 PM

"Re. The identification of Ebola, had there been an existing name among the locals it would have been used."

It was named after the Ebola River in 1976.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 06:52 PM

Why is the world response to this so slow, do you think?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 07:06 PM

Racism.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 07:08 PM

See "Anybody else watching Ebola break out?" thread, Date: 04 Oct 14 - 03:07 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,#
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 07:12 PM

I think most people don't see this outbreak as an emergency. Four thousand deaths means nothing these days. In the days of Biafra, about 1 1/2 million people in the Ibo breakaway state starved to death (1967-9). What is a few thousand people compared to that or many other starvations? I don't mean to sound cold about it, but it's the only reason I can think of. We just don't care.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 09:37 PM

I think it has to do with the majority of people who are affected not having much influence (money, power). I don't know if the "world response to this" is "so slow" or reporting of it is. I also don't know if it's the "world response" or that of the US that's being questioned. I suspect WHO were on this from the beginning, but there has never been a lot "the world" could do if it got involved.

The most effective thing that might have helped control the spread of the disease would have been people not touching the bodies of the sick or dead, or objects contaminated with their body fluids. Telling people they can't care for their loved ones or perform the traditional burial rituals obviously isn't that effective. It would have been more effective than anything else, but people first would have had to believe changing the way they did these serious and sacred things would have kept the sickness from spreading.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 11:16 PM

Oops wrong thread for that question my fault sorry. Definitely see the other Ebola thread.

The way to stop it is to waltz in and not LET them care for the ill or dead, which is an awful thing to do to people, and takes a huge number of other people going in and isolating people who love and need each oher from each other.

Yet it must me done.

Is religion in the way, is the question for this thread. I apologize for forgetting that myself, let's uncreep, shall we?

Blicky to other thread for the other issues.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 02:22 AM

Starvation in Biafra wasn't contagious. You couldn't catch it in Western countries.

Previous Ebola breakouts have died down as quickly as they started, often before WHO agents could identify index patients. This time, the strain appears to be rather hardy and resistant to our natural body defences.

Add in the ease of international travel, as per many flu issues and this time the world has to look at it differently. Whilst deploring tardiness, the "wait and see" philosophy was borne of experience not racism.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:11 AM

This is a dreadful disease and obviously needs to be contained. Nevertheless, I suspect that its long term impact will be as nothing compared to the impact of climate change resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. This will, of course, devastate poorer countries, like the W. African states being affected by Ebola now, first but it will get everyone on the planet eventually.

It's interesting (if that's the right word!) that the mass media and western political establishments are presently agonising over Ebola and ignoring climate change. In her recent book, 'This Changes Everything' the Canadian journalist Naomi Klein shows that the increasing release of CO2 emissions and the tardy responses to the growing danger of catastrophic climate change can be directly attributed to the prevailing economic dogma of the neo-liberal free market. The mass media and western political establishments are presently 'slaves' to this dogma and probably welcome the diversion provided by Ebola.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: akenaton
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:21 AM

Missionaries are a problem. I have a friend in the armed forces, who is a present posted out to train and educate missionaries on the dangers associated with Ebola from a security viewpoint.
It is apparently very difficult to convince these well meaning people of the dangers, not only to themselves but to national security.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:34 AM

Climate change is a great threat, but it is an ongoing situation not news.
Ebola and IS are an acute crisis. That makes news.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: akenaton
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:41 AM

Quite so Keith.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 06:26 AM

Climate change may not be news, as far as the mass media is concerned, but note that the three main parties, in the UK, virtually ignored it at their recent party conferences.

Just imagine, though, how deadly a disease like Ebola will be in a world devastated by floods, droughts, crop failures, rising sea levels and ferocious cross-border and internecine wars fought over dwindling resources.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 11:37 AM

Ebola Virus as terrible as it may seem, has effected a far smaller number of people than tuberculosis and malaria, which may kill a thousand or more a day in
Africa. And both are treatable and preventable.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 12:13 PM

It has only just started.
It is exponential.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 01:08 PM

Is religion why people bury their dead at all? All bodies need to be cremated immediately.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 01:17 PM

Just been reading a briefing by Prof Lyndsey Davies, who I used to know as our regional director of public health, now advising HMG.

We cannot rely on it dying out as it has in the past, but the impetus to find a vaccine or other protection is far greater now. Drug companies have better incentive to get there. Interesting point.

Far too late for some and the combination of commercial indifference to third world health issues combined with religious interference (HIV retrovirals kill you, inoculations are a route for genocide etc) are a huge issue and the realisation of the globalisation of these issues is getting complacent interests to sit up.

It isn't just Africa. Tuberculosis was becoming rare here, yet the multi drug resistant strain has led to far more negative pressure side rooms in hospitals being fitted, a crude but telling statistic. We are global, his problems are our problems.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 06:33 PM

Is religion why people bury their dead at all? All bodies need to be cremated immediately.

This is the thread about whether religion is in the way of the reponse to the current outbreak.

There is a separate thread for other ebola issues.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 03:50 AM

Mrr says: Is religion why people bury their dead at all? All bodies need to be cremated immediately.

Oh, I'm sure that local burial practices could be considered religious, and therefore suspect. So, yes, that then gives enlightened Americans and Europeans the right to barge in and tell the indigenous people how they must behave when they grieve for their dead.

Somehow....that just doesn't seem right. There ought to be a better, more respectful way.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 05:06 AM

Ok. Try this.

Bury your dead and rely on God to make sure the virus is destroyed and contained.


Sorry Joe. Tact and approach, not respect for non clinical factors. This is a clinical issue. Persuading and trying to get people to understand the risks rather than compromise. Compromise is as effective as not bothering in the first place.

Slightly academic as there are no cremetoriums in many of the affected areas, and hermetically sealed body bags are not always available. Hence an outbreak that dies out if localised is getting out of control as the index patients cross each other's paths, geographically speaking.

Burying, whilst the only practical solution for putting bodies to rest merely incubates the next outbreak.

It's a problem, but a practical one. The religious angle would be a factor if cremation were an option, but open pyres can exacerbate not destroy, and cremation facilities are not always available. Burial is the only option for many, regardless of religious considerations.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 07:01 AM

Racism sez we can decide for Africans from this bastion of well-meaning White Privilege.

Really?

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 08:14 AM

Buried bodies are very unlikely to be a vector.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: bubblyrat
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 09:09 AM

Crematoria , surely ??

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 09:29 AM

Buried bodies, according to the brefing via CE Bulletin, (a Dept of Health daily briefing sent to NHS bodies, I still appear to be on the mailing list,) says that hermetically sealed body bags or coffins are a reasonable precaution as until body fluids dry out fully and total dessication is achieved, eradication cannot be guaranteed. The double whammy being that the better the seal, the longer that takes.

I am no expert on this in any sense, but read the information for health professionals with interest.

Racism can decide many things if you try hard enough to push your values. "White privilege" isn't relevant, answering the call for help is though. It is patronising in the extreme to say that such aid is arrogance. In addition, this is not a local problem, it is potentially global so a matter for all to combat with the tools available. If those tools include haematological knowledge and established infection control measures, all the better.

The area this is affecting is not some back water that idiots can get all condescending about, rattling on about Western values on an indiginous population. The healthcare systems are, funding allowing, about as "Western" as you can get. Qualifications from the medical school in Freetown are accepted as to relevant Royal College standards, making local doctors as approriate as their colleagues in The EU, USA, Canada, Anzac etc.

All this tosh about inflicting white man values... Now that IS racism...

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,#
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 11:32 AM

The infrastructure in most of the afflicted countries isn't very good. As Musket so astutely pointed out, starvation isn't contagious. However, numbness to death is contagious. We have been watching starving kids for decades; dead kids bombed in war for decades, kids hacked to death by machetes for decades. Four thousand deaths is a pittance in comparison.

Some facts about Ebola elude even the 'educated' parts of the world. Hell, we struggle to deal with whether it can go aerosol without an understanding of what that really means. Can the disease spread through the air? Of course it can. Don't believe that, just go stand in front of an Ebola carrier when s/he sneezes. Yes it can transmit through the air.

Maybe a mantoux test adapted for Ebola could be developed. (Wayward thought.)

I do understand the 'need to help' syndrome. That said, isolation is the only thing other than a vaccine that will stop the spread of the disease. Superstition or folk wisdom/religion does little to help matters. Lead, follow or get out of the way mightn't be such a bad slogan at this juncture.

A Herman cartoon (tried to locate but can't) showed a man with splotches covering much of his body standing before a doctor who was sitting at his desk. Beneath the desk the doctor is loading a revolver. The caption reads "I'm sure you'll understand. We don't want to start an epidemic do we?" That used to be funny.

This whole religious thing in Africa (and elsewhere) is somewhat of a mystery to me. I expect it will remain so. However, emergency situations are not improved when the people driving the boats are all going in different directions. And as always, the people who need to be in control of the situation have to understand logistics because a big part of the present problem is that the logistics are a mess.

Situations of this nature need people who deal with the disease, people who deal with the populations involved and people to do as they are instructed without guidance from the heavens. In other words, there has to be a central command with the authority and muscle to do what needs doing.

"MOSCOW, October 7 (RIA Novosti) - The Canadian government will send 300,000 personal protective equipment (PPE), or face shields, to West Africa to combat the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, the country's Public Health Agency said in a news release."

Please note that this started in early to mid-September and Canada eventually received word on where to deliver the damned things. Folks, that ain't organization and the organization I think mostly at fault is the WHO. I am still waiting for them to do something right.

And last, because I have likely pissed off everyone, I figure that if the geometric growth of Ebola spread holds true for another forty weeks, over seven billion people will be infected.

"There was an acute shortage of masks and protective clothing for the medical and health personnel, who were hard hit by the disease. Lack of epidemiological information about the disease hampered the prompt application of effective control measures. Because of inadequate communication, panic developed in the community and weakened cooperation and support from the public."

That was said about the SARS epidemic of 2003.

Have a good day all.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 03:51 PM

Joe, that's exactly the problem - science does actually know what is needed and it's horrible and inhumane and unkind and all kinds of terrible horrible ugly nasty bad things, I completely agree, but it IS, unfortunately, what is needed.

It's not a question of enlightenment. It's a question of knowledge. I learned my science IN West Africa, it doesn't change the science.

They don't need masks, it's not airborne. They need gowns and gloves by the thousands daily, so they can take them off in an educated fashion and regown and reglove constantly, taking time and time and time they don't have, and handing them out by the thousands to all villagers and townspeople so that as soon as a child has a fever the CHILD can be wrapped in the gown to keep the sweat in and the parents can also gown and glove and not kiss and learn how to take the gowns off inside out properly and so on.

That would reduce one major source of transmission by a large proportion.

A more powerful source of transmission is the virus bomb that is a mammal body killed by ebola. They should be treated as the hazardous waste that they are, they really really really should, they ARE extremely hazardous and you don't need your body for the afterlife or after death in real life, you really really don't, and you can treat a corpse with all kinds of respect and still burn it instantly, have ceremony, weep and wail, yes your loved one has died and I have lost beloveds and weeping and wailing over the loss is absolutely appropriate and necessary but that doesn't detract from the medical necessity of getting rid of that hazardous material as if it were hazardous material, being instantly and without coming any closer to it than you must.

This is the real world where a horrible disease is being mollycoddled by the unwillingness of the educated to impose reality on the ignorant, and it will cost them both a mean, ugly, nasty and terrible price.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: mg
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 11:20 PM

I agree. You must preserve the living. Why can not open fires be used if indeed it is not airborne which i am dubious about. In any catastrophe we need to figure out rapidly what to do with corpses even without an epidemic....

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: mg
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 11:24 PM

I also think that anyone who is willing should divert some or all of their chrkstmas budget to this.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 11:38 PM

Certainly we need to use "best practices" from a medical standpoint; but this must be done with sensitivity and an honest respect for religious and cultural considerations, along with the need people have to grieve.
Gross disregard for the wisdom, and for the religious and cultural sensitivities of others, will not get us where we want to go.

We must consider the whole person with respect, not just medical necessity. It's a balance that must be achieved.

And of course, missionaries also must respect the cultural and religious sensitivities of the people they seek to serve.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 12:42 AM

but this must be done with sensitivity and an honest respect for religious and cultural considerations
No, it mustn't. Respect should take a far, far back seat to reality, which is, sorry, screw the sensitivities, get the bloody thing isolated. Do what science says is required even if it means trampling on the beliefs and sensitivities of others.

The balance is between life and death, not between respect and disrespect.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 02:19 AM

Cultural sensitivities...

This is an area of countries with a very "Western" healthcare set of systems and antibiotics and stents fitted by vascular surgeons overtook witch doctors and superstition a long time ago. Cancer patients get chemotherapy not ritual dancing.

For crying out loud, nurses in Liberia are threatening strike action over risk and pay. How bloody "Western" is that???

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: bubblyrat
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 06:47 AM

Seems to me that these epidemics, gradually spreading to become pandemics,have occurred at regular intervals throughout history ; possibly as a (rather unpleasant and random ) way of keeping populations in check ?? One has to imagine a combination of natural phenomena and "higher powers" at work here , otherwise humanity would undoubtedly destroy itself .

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 09:42 AM

If you can think of a higher power, let us know. Religious people have been looking for the elusive bugger for years....

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 12:34 PM

We are prey and ebola is a predator. There are a lot of us, it's about time something evolved that could eat us without us being able to technologize ourselves out of it. But I as a prey animal will do what I can to outwit it; ebola being a virus that isn't all that hard...


Isolate
Isolate
Isolate

Everything else is just getting in the way.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,#
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 12:41 PM

The Canucks may have a vaccine.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 12:52 PM

not just isolate, which is primary of course, but food is a problem. Some of the things they eat, either out of necessity or preference, are passing this on. Is it waterborne at all? Well, yes, if in sweat...

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 01:15 PM

So, I guess that's the deal then. For those Internet Gurus who are obsessed with the rightness of their opinion, there is no need or room for respect or compassion for those who are so obviously wrong.

Damn. As I've said before, it sounds frighteningly close to what the fundamentalists are saying - since they, too, are convinced that their truth is the only truth.

With all these infallible demagogues on the left and the right, I wonder if there's any room left for us normal human beings and our mistakes and confusions and doubts and incorrect beliefs.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 04:29 PM

There is not when there is a tremendously fatal epidemic going on. Saving lives will be harsh and cruel. There are things people can donate certainly, there are ways of praying, socializing etc. from a guaranteed distance, which I do not know what it would be. I think any assembled group must be broken up now where ebola has taken place. Certainly rituals around the dead must be stopped..I am confident they have been but you never know. Niceness will kill in this situation. I also think we need to think in terms of arm extension tools...easier done here with robotics etc. but certainly long tongs, large paddles for scooping up the decomposed bodies, anything to avoid touching the remains. Also I am wondering if animals could be trained to bring water or whatever.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 05:05 PM

What're you smoking, Mary?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 05:45 PM

Right with you, mg. The people who enforce the isolation, if it's western soldiers, can bring water and food for the isolated. What will be done with the fertilizer they produce, the soldiers that is, remains a logistical issue.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 07:24 PM

Effective isolation requires harsh measures.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 09:02 PM

Effective isolation & treatment requires adequate medical facilities and resources, which none of the several countries in Africa involved have.

Worried about this sort of thing? Then economic and social development in Africa is the way to go.

Of course, none of the first world countries give a rats ass about the folks in Africa, so don't hold your breath.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 09:14 PM

Annual US cases of Influenza ± 31,816,763
Annual US death toll from flu is ± 36,000.

Annual cases measles worldwide is 20 million
Annual deaths from measles worldwide is 164,000

Annual cases malaria worldwide is 207 million
Annual deaths from malaria worldwide is 627,000

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 09:27 PM

Sure, and women still die in childbirth, and planes can also crash. Irrelevant.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 12:52 AM

Medicine sans frontiers are super heroes.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 03:19 AM

You could always sit round a camp fire singing Kumbaya Joe. Or even A Million Green Bottles. That would at least be ironic and remind those listening that green bottles are falling.

The originating area already uses "western" medicine. Not superstitious mumbo jumbo but a healthcare system whose issues are capacity not culture.

Cultural issues are not a consideration. Saving lives is. If that makes health workers fascists, go write a song about it.

Sorry but I just can't believe what you are writing here.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 09:45 AM

I can't stand it any longer--all this "tough talk" is really shows that you all are as ignorant as the people who kiss the virus-oozing dead.

There is a conflict of cultures here, and the response to interventions, even those that weren't "harsh and cruel" has been brutal. Aid workers have been stoned and had their throats slit, clinics have been burned.

Thick-headed, self-righteous Westerners that march into tribal areas on a crusade to stamp out disease and ignorance are at significant risk of never marching back out. Do you not understand what Boku Haram is about?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 10:18 AM

Sure, and women still die in childbirth, and planes can also crash. Irrelevant.

Irrelevant? More like putting things in perspective.

If you'd rather continue with needless hysteria, knock yourself out.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 12:58 PM

Yeah, its about... I'd say three thousand miles in that direction..

💤

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,#
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 01:48 PM

A few lessons should come from this outbreak.

1) In future, whoever is doing the treatment of Ebola infected people will have to have a keen understanding of the local mores and taboos. The people themselves have centuries of handling their dead a certain way. That won't stop just because someone says stop, whether their reasons be religious, cultural, social, medical or just because.

2) In future, Ebola cases will need to be hit hard and fast. I think the WHO has been disgraceful this time 'round. Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders and various other first responders have been and continue to be magnificent, but they are seriously hindered by politics and logistics.

3) While I understand where Joe is coming from, and in many instances he'd be correct, this is a very different situation. Education is the answer, but it takes years. Hell, look at HIV/AIDS. That took 10 years to get relatively educated people to use protection. That was in North America.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 01:49 PM

I don't see hysteria here. And the worry about Ebola has only been needless because nothing has been done about it, not because Ebola isn't killing thousands of my neighbors. I agree that the worry isn't that it will take over the US or Europe, but that isn't what we're talking about.

Boku haram is a PERFECT example of religion getting terribly in the way.

Europeans (and I include Americans here) letting Africans die because they (the Europeans & Americans) don't want to offend them (the Africans) is just plain imbecilic.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 02:22 PM

You are right. The same ways of controlling epidemics in Liberia and epidemics in Denmark are pretty much the same, although in Denmark you have infinitely more resources, a more scientifically educated population, etc. But you must still quarantine. If someone does not like the rules you do not hope for their intellectual conversion. You must have martial law of some sort if you have to break into cultural practices, you must have the local priestesses or whatever explain it again and again, but you have to enforce martial law the same way it is usually enforced. You have to protect the health workers, the soldiers, the sanitation workers, the transporters. You have to work out the math to see how fast this can spread. Oh it is Africa and they have their special customs etc. we must respect. Sure, on a nice day. On a day when you and everyone around you can die you take on a different method. It has escaped Africa. It has been in Boston and Texas and Madrid. We are obtuse. When it gets into a refugee camp, a pilgrimage, a huge soccer tournament, either by natural transmission or acts of terrorism, watch out.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 08:10 PM

It isn't a question of not wanting to offend people, which you would know if you'd bothered to do a little reading.

The problem is that the tribal communities deeply distrust the West, and reject the Western understanding of disease and they do not cooperate, and in some instances resort to violence to resist treatment and preventative measures.

And the thing is, you can't really do things like they do in Denmark--it's a jungle out there.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 09:09 PM

The problem is that the tribal communities deeply distrust the West

Now, what could the West possibly have done in Africa over the last 250-300 years that might cause such distrust, Hmmm?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 09:55 PM

So, because they don't trust us, we should just let them die?

I'm not finding the story, but the 3 rules of ebola seem to be isolate, don't travel, and keep the faith healers out.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 08:48 AM

So, because they don't trust us, we should just let them die?

Where'd you get that?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 08:41 PM

From the prior posts.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 11:00 PM

I certainly didn't say that, Mrrzy--I was responding to the idea that someone is somehow "mollycoddling" the tribal populations by not doing whatever MG thinks they are not doing.

The fact of the matter (which has curiously gotten lost in this discussion) is that the model for managing Ebola outbreaks, which was developed in 1976 at the time that the disease was first identified, and includes the isolation of the infected, as well as the procedures for safe disposal of the dead, is one that is being followed--no mollycoddling--

That said, in order to enter tribal areas, locate and isolate the infected, prevent contact with the aforementioned virus-oozing remains, and safely dispose of them, it is necessary to obtain some level of cooperation with tribal chiefs and such persons.

This leads us to another, and also curiously overlooked fact--until the recent outbreaks, the Ebola Fever was unknown to these people. This is the first time they've seen it! There is no native language name for it, because it never happened before, just as there were no
native names for the initial outbreaks in Zaire and Uganda.

Given that, some of the tribal chiefs, at least the ones who haven't had the benefits of Western education, have come to the conclusion that the Westerners who have come to manage the outbreaks are responsible for them, and when they take the infected into isolation, they kill them and steal their souls.

This (and not resentment about centuries of colonial exploitation) is what makes them homicidally uncooperative.

At this point, if I were a sarcastic person, I'd suggest that the solution is for you, Mrrzy,
to haul your Atheistic backside over there and explain to the tribal chiefs that everything is cool because there is no such thing as a soul and they have nothing to worry about because science will save them.

I won't do that though, because it would trivialize a terrible situation, and I'm not that insensitive.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 12:00 AM

I believe I used the term mollycoddle, Stim. I really think that it's the mot juste.

And the isolation model is as old as the middle ages for Europe, it's nothing new, but science is why we know it works, and how. And the procedures are NOT being followed because people are still getting it, obviously, duh! If they were (a) isolating the ill (b) not traveling if well and (c) keeping faith healers out, as did the 2 or 3 localities where the disease has been successfully stopped, then it wouldn't be an issue now, because after the first few dozen cases there wouldn't have been any more.

It is a fact that it it a virus and it is a fact that we know how to stop its spread.

Of course there is something to worry about - the fact that thousands of their fellow citizens are dying of a largely preventable disease! Of course science and not religion will save them! You don't have to believe in it for it to work, that's the *point*! Whether they have a soul or whether they think they have a soul or not not is completely irrelevant!

Besides, I hadn't heard that they thought that westerners were stealing their souls, I don't even know that they think they do have souls, that actually sounds like something made up by westerners to make the people they are mocking sound primitive. I do know some people think that westerners invented the disease (and it's likely that western exploitation of the natural resources are what got it out of the mammals it wasn't killing and into people, but that is a separate question), but the fact of the matter is that it is a virus that we know how to stop, and we're not stopping it in large part out of misplaced respect for the disbelieving who, I agree, are ignorant and not stupid.

It's the same imbecilic attitude that says respect for parents' beliefs in demonstrably false idiocies trumps an American child's right to a decent education. Bah! Humbug! And, in this case, Danger, Will Robinson!

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 12:50 AM

if we get into these i am nicer and more respectful of people than you are contests, more people will die. Awful deaths. The quarantine will be awful but not as bad as when the epidemic really takes off. Nigeria says it has no cases now..hopefully they can keep that. farms are now being abandoned in sierre leonne. i keep wondering about sunlight..it is a disinfectant which would help..certainly better than the dank apartments without water that people are crowded into in the cities...jobs are of course being lost...one thing we could all do is divert christmas spending to relief efforts..certainly if we talked to adult members of our families and said we are sending a donation instead of buying gifts for family, coworkers etc..something simple to be done. i wish we had ongoing shipments of used clothing, bedding etc. to some places so they would have more of a stockpile to start with.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 02:08 AM

It's fairly obvious, Marianne, that you haven't been reading either the news on this subject or the medical literature that is available. You have an extreme bias against religion of any sort, and that interferes with your ability to process or even focus on anything else. Given that, your opinions, while certainly fervent, lack any sort of substance.

Who are these faith healers you keep ranting about? And where did you get the idea that if your three steps had been followed, there after the first few cases there wouldn't have been any more? Where is your evidence that "it is a virus that we know how to stop"? and where is your evidence that "we are not stopping it in large part out of misplaced respect for the disbelieving"?

It's time to put up or shut up.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 12:58 PM

Isolation!
Eventual vaccines!
Handling protocols!
These are indispensable.

Disbelievers will continue to aid the spread of the virus; they must be educated.
This is difficult for two reasons- the governments have little respect outside of urban centers, and tribal values still are strong in rural areas.

It will be a long process.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Oct 14 - 04:18 PM

Right, Q. Prayer isn't going to help the people who may have rubbed sweaty elbows with that nurse on 2 crowded planes, and catching ebola will not be because they were sinners either. And the burden of proof to the contrary is on stim and their ilk, who are attempting the extraordinary claim.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 05:23 AM

Nobody's questioning the need for following proper medical procedures carefully, exactly, and efficiently.

However, there does need to be a sense of humanity in all this, for consideration of the emotional and "spiritual" needs involved. This isn't a matter of "mollycoddling" or singing Kumbaya. This is simple, human compassion and respect.

This, too, is necessary.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,#
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 01:12 PM

http://www.who.int/features/2014/telimele-ebola-free/en/

Worth a read.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 01:48 PM

I don't think we need to question the humanity of anyone who voluntarily goes into that pit of disease. And yes to compassion, which I think is implied. And I think there need to be hands off ways of showing compassion, through radio, through perhaps standing at a distance with hymns, prayers, whatever..but I can not say what a safe distance is and it would have to be outdoors I would think.

But first and foremost contain the disease. Make sure that soldiers, nurses, taxi drivers, garbage collectors are safe. Make patients as comfortable as can be within that requirement. If you lose your people who take care of the sick, you have lost it period. There are things that can be done with cell phones, technology that we throw away in US such as cd players, vcrs, projection screens so people could see their loved ones talking to them. Do not touch unless you have to. Use tongs or whatever to stay farther away. Use older people I guess rather than younger to take care of the babies, which are a huge problem I have not been able to consider. Explain and have local authorities explain again and again. THis is definitely working but there is not the luxury of time to have it work its way down.

And I am waiting for at least one bishop out of the hundreds assembled to (perhaps some already ahve but I have not heard it) discuss this and offer some concrete help. Look at pictures of them in their matching outfits..they don't need to match when people are dying like this. Think of the money we could have had without all those lawsuits, which were preventable if honest men and women had been running things...also, think of how this relates to the ban on contraception...do we need a recipe for plague? Crowd people 20 to a room with no sanitary facilities.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 01:53 PM

I wish I completely agreed with you, Joe! I almost completely do, especially when I stopped to consider an exit strategy if they (the armies of all friendly nations, including the nearby African ones) did march in and enforce quarantine and build sewage systems and hospitals with isolation wards and schools and shelters for the orphaned and shunned kids and running water and electrical infrastructure and cell phone towers and all for each and every village, what would happen when the epidemic was over.

Yeah, I know, I know. I don't live on the same planet as everybody else. But I have hopes.

And the above is, indeed, worth a read. Or two.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 02:18 PM

can you start by telling us the basic geography and weather of some of these places..i realize it might change mile by mile but things are different in wet vs. basically arid places.

we could start with the cell phone towers. surely some big company could put them up. big companies are stepping up. one tobacco company is devoting its entire crop I think (check on this..I don't mind people double checking me as I read on the fly) to some sort of medicine involving tobacco. cocacola has machines now, not in relation to ebola, but that have wifi attached..like coke machines with wi fi.

sewage systems involving running water might be impossible in an arid climate. what else can be done? there are sand toilets in some places. i think burning of everything if it does not further spread the disease. in a huge slum area with no sewage disposal how is it currently handled? or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 03:36 PM

This is rain forest country, not sahelian. Sub-sub-saharan. It's wet when it's wet, and bloody humid when it's dry. And when it rains, it pours.

Can one build temporary vertical dams? Generate electricity while the rain falls hard?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 03:42 PM

Google Earth shows that area as still mostly green.

Google maps, satellite view shows this, compared to this which shows the desert parts too, if my html works.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 03:55 PM

what is the elevation generally? one thing that internationals could do with machinery assisted by locals with/without machinery is cut in roads. it is good that two out of the three main countries have large coasts where stuff could be brought in.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 06:05 PM

we could start with the cell phone towers.
What the fuck universe are you inhabiting Mary? This is Africa- these folks don't have the proverbial pot to piss in and you're talking about FUCKING CELL PHONES???

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 06:44 PM

Liberia people have 67% cell phone coverage, according to something I just read. I have also read 40 something. More would undoubtedly be helpful. If not to the people themselves, which would be best, then to the medical care, the ambulance drivers, etc. They are using cell phone usage to determine hot spots. We throw away cell phones by the millions in US every year they say. Even without an epidemic, cell phones prove to be extremely useful in transferring funds, hearing agricultural broadcasts. They could of course be used in an epidemic for keeping in touch with quarantined people.

I do have a policy of not responding to abusive people, and you are on my list, but this is such a serious situation that I have made an exception.

I would not assume Africans have nothing. Some have nothing, some are climbing out of poverty. We could help them quite a bit with our used items that are still good. If nothing else, bedding, electronics, tools. I know it detracts from local merchants but the economy in many places is so trashed that I think it would be less of a problem and of course you could go through local merchants.

They have an abundance of sunshine in some areas, which can translate to energy; they have abundant seacoasts, which can translate to tourism and possibly aquaculture. They have an intelligent and hardworking population (many countries of course, not a unicountry). I have made many Kiva loans to people there and they seem to benefit from it.

WHy in the world would any decent person, which I am not convinced you are, want to stop suggestions from flowing? Every person on the planet should be thinking about this.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 06:58 PM

WHy in the world would any decent person...want to stop suggestions from flowing?

Perhaps because those suggestions are idiotic bullshit that is entirely worthless in the current situation?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 06:59 PM

This thread has WAY too much of privileged people trying to think for Africa. This is Africa's issue and must be addressed within African values and under African leadership.

OUR role can only be to advise OUR leaders on how to handle the tiny impact it is now having HERE, and bring our values into THAT debate, and on the debates to come as we see how much of an issue we are going to have HERE.

We as human beans on this planet in this era are not-- sorry-- exempt from epidemics, pandemics, and plagues. Perhaps we privileged people have finally hit a wall we will not be able to knock down. As a species we have allowed the present situation to develop. And we are going to have to pay our share of the price of our blindness. Telling Africa what they ought to be doing is not only egregiously arrogant, it also distracts us from what needs to be done HERE.

Unless I missed something about anyone here having even a remote connection to the health authorities in African sovereign nations.....

Ya know who of us privileged people over here gets to exercise their values in Africa? People who are willing to GO there and be directed BY AFRICANS.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,MG
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 07:22 PM

this is not just Africa's issue. It an issue of every country in the world. It is especially an issue of every poor country in the world. Every refugee population in the world. Every place in the world subject to terrorism. Every military organization in the world. Every taxpayer in the world. Every traveler in the world. Every food producer in the world. It knows no boundaries. It might be on a cruise ship right now. It has been in Spain. Phillipines are very worried. Any highly populated country, such as India, must be very afraid. There are things that have to be done. They have to be done immediately without worrying excessively about stepping on cultural toes. Sort it out later. Or let God sort it out.

Worry less about our values and worry more about how to get bleach and gloves into and onto the right hands.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 09:35 PM

Cell phones would enable a huge amount of commincation and organization, it isn't so that teens can text selfies to each other at the mall.

I am going to try to agitate that our local hospital stop performing cosmetic (unnecessary) surgery and donate all the materials they would have used to do so (gowns to gauze etc) to MSF (Doctors Without Borders).

If the rich people who were going to get prettifying nose jobs etc could donate the money they would have spent on the prettifying to MSF instead, too, wouldn't that be nicer.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: mg
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 10:02 PM

Work on the christmas splurge too. It is obscene to spend on thongs people neither need nor want when the same twenty dollars could buy how much soap. Tell your families you are donating instead and.please.do the same..if you agree.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Jeri
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 11:05 PM

Damn. Almost bit clear through my tongue.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 11:13 PM

We can still do a lot at $mas without spending all our dough on each other...

But if other cities tried the unnecessary-surgery medical supplies thing, that might actually catch on... ya think?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 17 Oct 14 - 11:46 PM

For the record, Mrrzy declined to substantiate her claims.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 12:11 AM

there are huge amounts of unwanted medical supplies, old machines, et. in so many hospitals and labs...if they just sent the surplus that would make a difference. and many teenage girls have 10 bottles of shampoo they used once. it probably would not be economical to ship it but it would beat having nothing. people are shipping supplies and there are air shipments coming too. things are starting to move..food is now a big problem..farmers abandoning farms...how will food get in? what a mess. how do you have ambulances that protect the driver...hopefully enlosed cab. and they are using radio and video and cell phones to text messages and give guidance etc...as would be expected. what is the eletrical sstem there?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 01:17 AM

220, not 110. Don't send electrical things, they'll need transformers.
And the unwanted and old things are good, but new things that we would be using for icing when they can't get cake would be better.

This thread has WAY too much of privileged people trying to think for Africa. This is Africa's issue and must be addressed within African values and under African leadership.

First, Africa is not a country, but spans about a third of the globe, and includes highly developed nations and nations still basically in the stone age, so calling anything that is happening in one place on that huge continent a problem for the continent but not for the rest of the world is strange. It may have started as a Guinean problem, but it quickly became an international one, and limiting the people who can respond to people that are thousands and thousands of miles away but on the same continent is downright silly, and seems to say that all Africans are just "them" and nobody off the continent can say anything about them.

Thirdly but next, many of the people desperately trying to lead the response ARE Africans but have no resources and are being hampered by other Africans with other values, including disbelief in science or in westerners or both. Making it sound as if all Africans, let alone all Liberians or Sierra Leonians or Guineans, have the same values is downright silly, and seems to say that all Africans are "them" and so on.

Secondly but last, addressing anything like this according to "values" is absolutely the last thing that should be done, especially if people who refer to individuals from Egypt to Zambia as "Africans" with "African values" are right, given that the assumption then is that "their" values include the ideas that science is bunk and people who use it are not to be trusted and even more so if the skin of the user is paler than normal for the locals.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 02:03 AM

I'd be interested to see what Mrr would do with babies who have cleft lip and palate or people with skin cancer when he or she had finished interfering with what he or she thinks is cosmetic surgery. Breast cancer? Transflaps and mastectomies are out as options then.. I wouldn't fancy my chances being caught up in a fire for that matter.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 01:00 PM

I did say "unnecessary" cosmetic surgery, which lets out cleft palates but leaves in many nose and boob jobs.

I did say prettying surgery for rich people, not surgery allowing babies to suckle in the first place. Calling that "cosmetic" is silly or an insurance scam. A mastectomy is surgery to excise cancer, not to make yourself prettier on the whim that makes you want to have no boob on one side? Boob jobs to make yourself prettier are unnecessary and expensive and right now that money and those supplies could be better allocated.

Be reasonable in your criticisms.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 01:10 PM

As I posted, lumping all missionary groups together is wrong, since medical missionaries would be included with the religion salesmen.

Has anyone got a list of the main "missionary" groups? How can a mudcat evaluate their efforts without names and details?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 01:29 PM

Some mission groups who definitely are not needed.

Heartformissions.com, Includes Africa Inland Mission- "Seek to spread the good news of Jesus Christ to the peoples of Africa."

International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

African Christian Mission- from Ghana. No medical branch.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 01:41 PM

The scope of cosmestic surgery is quite well defined, internationally. My point is twofold.

1. If someone wishes to pay for cosmetic surgery, it's their money.

2. What that has to do with ebola is beyond me.

Bugger two. Make it three.

3. Necessary cosmetic surgery gets lumped into the term, which is used then to describe vanity surgery, a small section of cosmetic surgery.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 02:51 PM

I agree that it's their money, but I think it is a less shallow decision to use that money to help medical people stop other people from dying by the thousands of something preventable by medical supplies like gowns and gloves, than to spend your money on having people use those gowns and gloves on you. For beauty.

Vanity surgery is a much better term I hadn't encountered. I did mean to restrict my recommendation to that segment.

Also, calling anything actually medically necessary "cosmetic" smacks of insurance scam to me.

Also, I think a big hospital like the one in my town, if they didn't do vanity surgery for a week, say, would actually be able to donate a respectably large amount to the effort. How about if they did it for the duration of the outbreak? How about if other major hospitals got into the act? A bunch of rich people would have to be satisfied with the bodies they either grew or ate themselves into, and a bunch of well-trained experts in making them prettier would go without excessive fees and probably be fine for a while. Maybe have to give up one of their Mercedes, or clean their own house, or do their own landscaping, what a concept. I know, I know, I'm being silly, but you get the idea.

But back to the actual thread, sorry this is more for the general ebola thread.

I did title this thread "Ebola and the missionaries" as a catchy thread title, but the issue was intended to be (and originally was, fairly well) the question of whether religion/superstitious belief in general is in the way of medical efforts in this outbreak.

The answer seems clearly to be Yes, as well as non-religious distrust of foreigners, especially ex-colonial forces, even if they come bearing gifts. Timeo somebody et dona ferentes is alive and well in West Africa, and who can blame them.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: mg
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 03:57 PM

Some nuns and priests of caritas seem to be doing a great job.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 06:38 PM

Indeed. Many many missionaries and other religious people are there on the ground in the muck and mire doing their best to stop the disease as best they can, and bully for them. (But the ones using science are doing a lot better job than the ones trying to use prayer.)

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 06:46 PM

Cosmetic surgery inc. vanity is performed by a number of specialists with reconstruction of bodily features. That is their field, and they have received extensive training in the surgery involved.
They do not have extensive experience with viral diseases such as Ebola. Are you suggesting that they stop work?

You also seem to be suggesting that their gowns, safety and operating equipment are the same as that used in treatment of Ebola.

Like Musket, I fail to see what the field of cosmetic surgery has to do with treatment of viral diseases.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 07:08 PM

I would assume that their gowns and safety equipment at least are somewhat superior to the old plastic bags on the feet and hands of nurses and/or caretakers of the ill, and the old uniforms they cut up to use as coverings for their head. I suspect if we sent them all our John Edwards for president T shirts that it would also be a vast improvement.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Oct 14 - 09:39 PM

Also gauze, tubing, anesthetics, and everything else, and yes, if they stopped doing nose jobs and tummy tucks and boob jobs and facelifts for a week, say, it could divert a HUGE amount of stuff from vanity to necessity. And probably not bankrupt any plastic surgeons/liposuckers/whatever. I'm not suggesting that they stop doing anything necessary, just stuff that only rich people can afford and don't need anyway. Just for a week. Or something concrete.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Oct 14 - 12:36 PM

Johnson and Johnson and the other large producers of gauze, tubing, clothing &c are capable of turning out more product than required.

I find the attempted uniting of cosmetic surgery and the Ebola situation is untenable.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Oct 14 - 07:08 PM

*sigh* does the forum have a better idea for incentivizing rich people and hospitals to stop wasting desperately needed resources and diverting them to where they are actually so desperately needed?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 19 Oct 14 - 08:06 PM

If there is a bright side to this, it's that Africa and the World at large don't have to depend on this forum for solutions to the Ebola problem.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 19 Oct 14 - 08:14 PM

this forum and a million probably like it are a lifeline..some will read it directly..some might get inspired to donate..some might find a solution through surfing the web, talking to friends, reading the literature. for people in such dire circumstances, in a way they are dependent on this. silence will kill them.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: wysiwyg
Date: 19 Oct 14 - 09:42 PM

Well Mrr what exactly do you want us to do? Us at Mudcat. Not African countries or US policy.... right here. What plan do you want us to join you in.... and how, exactly?

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Oct 14 - 10:16 PM

Why not do what I've already thought of instead of spending time and energy telling me how it won't work? I've sent the requests to my local newspaper, city council and hospital. Why not do the same? What would it cost us, the Americans, Europeans, and others on this forum? Or, think of something you think would work better. Or might work at all. Maybe this *is* a dumb idea, but it is the only thing I could think of that would directly, instantly and (what is the word for taking only what would otherwise be wasted and nothing being sacrificed since it's only coming from the icing, not the cake) free up medical supplies, which are what are directly and instantly needed.
Personally, I thought it was a clever idea for that exact thing. I still do, but would love to read of a better one. "I don't understand your thinking" isn't a better idea.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: mg
Date: 19 Oct 14 - 11:03 PM

Send money to doctors without borders, mercy corps etc. If no money encourage others. Sell excess on ebay and donate. Rethink holiday expenses.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Oct 14 - 11:38 PM

Right, people are already doing that. I'm also trying to get *medical supplies* re-directed from the wasteful rich to the bleeding crowd.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 20 Oct 14 - 12:55 AM

Mrzzy, Hospitals buy those supplies with the money that the "wasteful rich" pay for the "unnecessary procedures". No procedures, no money, no supplies. Get it?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Oct 14 - 02:45 AM

Wow, Stim, are you a plastic surgeon?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Srim
Date: 20 Oct 14 - 04:16 AM

No, but I am not immune to the obvious. Does NIH know about you?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: mg
Date: 20 Oct 14 - 11:56 AM

There are groups, religious and.other..they have collected supplies Naand need money for shipment.. Just. Google shipping medical supplies to liberia etc.aa

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Oct 14 - 12:52 PM

OK, guest, are you really claiming that without tummytucks, a big hospital like MassGen or Brigham & Women wouldn't have supplies to do emergency appendectomies? Or do you mean that without tummytucks there won't be later supplies for tummytucks, because they've all been sent to where they were more needed? In which case, start doing tummytucks again, I *did* say stop for a week.

I find it an extraordinary claim that stopping vanity surgery for a week would have any negative impact on necessary surgery supplies. I also find the fact that they *do* tummytucks to be evidence that they have more supplies than they need for those appendectomies.

And I repeat, do you have a better idea? Seems from your attempts to be offensively condescending that you just do not like anything I could possibly suggest, rather than actually thinking about the actual idea. Or coming up with a better one to divert the supplies from tummytucks to ebola. That hospitals need to be able to buy more supplies for tummytucks would be a lousy reason to keep doing tummytucks instead of using those supplies on ebola, if that's what you meant.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Bettynh
Date: 20 Oct 14 - 12:57 PM

Not missionaries, but Christians with a mission within Liberia are having an effect. This from NPR (I've copied the text since PBS, I know, doesn't get out of the USA and I'm not sure about NPR).

"Night clubs have shut their doors. Soccer leagues have been suspended. And a strict curfew is keeping the streets empty at night.

But there's one place in Monrovia where people continue to gather despite the threat of Ebola: Sunday church service.

Since Ebola broke out in Liberia's capital city, more people have started coming to Sunday service at Trinity Cathedral, says the Very Rev. Herman Browne. And like many priests across Monrovia, Browne has been spreading the word about Ebola prevention through his sermons.

But Browne's message this week was personal. It came from his family's encounter with the virus.

For the past three Sundays, the reverend had been under a volunteer quarantine. This week he returned to the pulpit and explained to his congregation what happened.

It all began when his wife, Trokon Browne, went to see a close friend. "The friend ... broke down, fell on the floor and started to cry," Herman said. "Some illness had returned to her, and she was explaining it to Trokon."

These were warning signs about Ebola. Trokon knew that. But her nurturing instincts kicked in. She embraced and fed her friend anyway.

"I said that was a crazy thing to do," Herman said to his congregation, "because the lady was vomiting and had diarrhea."

Two days later, the Brownes learned that the friend had Ebola.

One of the reasons Ebola continues to spread in Liberia is that people who know they've been exposed to the virus often keep it a secret until they're desperately ill and highly contagious. They fear the embarrassment, the stigma and the prospect of losing their income.

But the Brownes went public.

"I left work immediately, wrapped up everything, called the treasurer, the bishop, my colleagues," Herman said. Then Trokon and Herman quarantined themselves for 21 days.
Even their children were not allowed to come upstairs until the couple knew they did not have Ebola.

Herman said he was hoping his congregation would learn a powerful lesson from his family's experience: "Once you slip mentally, in terms of being aware and conscious, the smallest slip could cause you grave harm," he said after the church service.

That's a message Liberians have heard constantly from the government. But many people in Monrovia say they don't trust the government. They consider it corrupt. So the messages can have more of an impact when they come from a spiritual leader.

Herman Browne began educating his congregation about Ebola long before it affected the family directly. And it's clear the message has been received at the church. People sanitize their hands before entering the cathedral. A priest delivers the Holy Communion wafers with tweezers. The church program tells the congregation: "Do not hide sick persons."

But Trokon Browne says those are relatively easy steps. What's harder, she says, is to keep a safe distance when a friend or family member is sick, perhaps with Ebola.

"I cannot see my husband sick and not touch him. Or I cannot see my child sick," she said. "Ebola might as well kill us. So it's still very hard. Trust me, it's still very hard."It's also hard for some people to accept the way Ebola appears to punish those who are trying to follow Christian teachings, Herman Browne said. That's why some in his congregation consider the disease demonic.

"Those who don't care and those who don't want to express their care are those who survive. Those who actually care are those who die," he said. "At the heart of it, for some of us with religious eyes, is an anti-care, anti-love message. And that can be very draining."

This time, the message is less harsh. Trokon wasn't infected. And her sick friend is one of the lucky ones who survived Ebola."

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Jeri
Date: 20 Oct 14 - 01:14 PM

The hospitals will use the supplies, regardless of what for.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,#
Date: 20 Oct 14 - 01:20 PM

"If there is a bright side to this, it's that Africa and the World at large don't have to depend on this forum for solutions to the Ebola problem."

Amen to that!

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 20 Oct 14 - 02:37 PM

Never claimed anything like that.

I am saying that your idea is based on a false assumption-and that is that you'd create a useable surplus of protective garments by eliminating certain kinds of elective surgery.

Your basic assumption, that there is a shortage of protective garments, is also false. As Q established, the producers of these garments seem to be able to produce and deliver as many as are needed, where ever they are needed. Given that the US has committed $500 million dollars to this effort, and that other governments,including the affected ones, have committed funds, there appears to be no problem in paying for them.

So your idea, which, rather than your character or intellect, is what I am talking about, does not seem to be useful.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 20 Oct 14 - 03:21 PM

of some subet of international funds that were promised, I just read this morning that only one country has paid up..and that was Colombia, $100,000. Many millions are left unpaid. other countries have of course contributed in other ways or paid into other funds or directly shipped supplies. one country that seems to come through very rapidly in some disasters, such as earthquakes, seems to be turkey.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Oct 14 - 03:25 PM

Much better argued.

Yet, there IS a shortage of all kinds of medical supplies for the region for the issue. That is a fact. Here are some sources for that:

Try < href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ebola-outbreak/">this, or this, or even this.

And rich people in rich countries DO have unnecessary surgery for vanity. That is also undeniable. And why we have the term "vanity surgery" at all.

So there ARE supplies being used unnecessarily that are needed where the outbreak is. Not just barriers, but all kinds of medical supplies. That seems also to be just plain fact.

So trying to divert them to where they ARE needed does not seem to be a bad idea. Feasibility may be problematic, but that is a question of priorities.

I do understand that some people won't want to, and hospitals may not want to, and plastic surgeons probably won't want to, and people who want vanity surgery might not want to, and that one particular guest really doesn't want them to, but how can we know till we ask?

Maybe it would actually get some supplies where they are needed without having to ramp up production of said supplies, using more resources and causing more waste probably, but simply re-distributing the wealth that already exists. And maybe, as a side effect, it would get some rich people to rethink their priorities.

And, yet again, do you have a better idea?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 21 Oct 14 - 01:38 PM

interesting post, bettynh. it would be good if compassion and carefulness could be achieved together, so as to limit infection.
btw, might you be the lady who is organizing a charity event at farningham on Friday ?.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Bettynh
Date: 22 Oct 14 - 12:45 PM

Pete, I'm not that person. I'm in NH, USA and don't know any Farningham.

I think I read somewhere that the US military will include chaplains/counselors in their group. Certainly they will be useful both for the people in Liberia and the troops who will be witnessing this epidemic.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 22 Oct 14 - 05:04 PM

thanks bettynh. and i'm sure you're right.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Oct 14 - 08:26 PM

Counselors, indeed.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Bettynh
Date: 23 Oct 14 - 08:07 AM

Hmm, are we looking at yet another cross-Atlantic misunderstanding? In the USA, a counselor counsels and emotionally supports a person. I understand that in the UK a counselor is a lawyer. I meant the first definition (or is there a spelling difference I missed?)

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 23 Oct 14 - 01:31 PM

i read from doctors without borders info that 75% people survived in Guinea I think..maybe Sierre Leone...with treatment. I am going to set up an automatic payment to them each month. Does anyone recommend any other charities?

We are lucky that for most of us we just can send money...please do if you possibly can.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 23 Oct 14 - 01:38 PM

Right, that was me, I meant people who help others with their emotions, not lawyers. Good point.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 23 Oct 14 - 01:41 PM

I think the first definition will be understood here also, and especially in this context. I think in law, the term -counsellor for the defence- or similar is used.