BS: Ebola and the Missionaries

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: 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: 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: 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 - 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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,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: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 15 Oct 14 - 08:41 PM

From the prior posts.

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: 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: 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,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: 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: 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,#
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Donuel
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 12:52 AM

Medicine sans frontiers are super heroes.

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: 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: 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: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 07:24 PM

Effective isolation requires harsh measures.

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: GUEST
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 05:05 PM

What're you smoking, Mary?

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: 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 - 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: GUEST,#
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 12:41 PM

The Canucks may have a vaccine.

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: 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: bubblyrat
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 09:09 AM

Crematoria , surely ??

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.