BS: Ebola and the Missionaries

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.