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geldedgoat
Joined: 05 Mar 2009
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 Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 7:58 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| And its perfectly possible to enact screening procedures and quarantine procedures without sealing off those who are healthy in these countries from the world. |
So we house visitors for 3+ weeks, potentially exposing apparently ill-trained and ill-equipped US healthcare workers in the process... to what benefit, exactly? |
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KimchiNinja
Joined: 01 May 2012
Location: Gangnam
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| Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 4:18 pm Post subject: |
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Proof that human IQ is in fact declining fast...
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Lawmakers Press for Ebola Travel Ban That CDC Rejects
“From terrorist watch lists to quarantines, there are tools used to manage air travel to assure public safety. Why not here?” Upton said at a subcommittee hearing today. “We need to be aggressive and finally get ahead of this outbreak.” [smart, what use is the police state if not here?]
“We’re able to screen on entry,” CDC Director Thomas Frieden said at the hearing. “We’re able to get detailed locating information. We’re able to determine the risk level.” [yeah right, and the screeners get ebola]
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-16/lawmakers-press-for-ebola-travel-ban-that-cdc-rejects.html |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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About screening:
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On 9 October the UK government announced that “enhanced screening” for Ebola virus disease will be implemented at Heathrow and Gatwick airports and Eurostar terminals. Details of how this will be done are not yet available, but the objectives presumably are to identify people arriving from Sierra Leone, Guinea, or Liberia who may have been exposed to Ebola, assess whether they have symptoms consistent with Ebola, test those who do, and isolate anyone with positive results.
Several practical difficulties will need to be overcome to achieve these objectives. As most direct flights to the UK from Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia have been discontinued because of the epidemic, passengers will be arriving from various European cities, and itineraries will need to be carefully checked to identify passengers arriving from those countries. Those who are identified will be asked to complete a questionnaire stating whether they have been in contact with sick people or have attended funerals in west Africa, and whether they have symptoms such as fever, headache, diarrhoea, or vomiting. People who answer “yes” to any of these questions will presumably be referred to a health official, which is likely to lead to considerable delays; this would not be an incentive to fill in the form honestly. A thermal scanning device may also be used to check passengers’ temperature on arrival, but it is unclear what will happen to those found to have a fever. Most will not have Ebola. Even if testing facilities are on site, substantial delays to large numbers of passengers seem inevitable, and isolation of all passengers waiting for their test results may prove challenging.
The World Health Organization recommends that passengers on international flights out of Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia should be screened for evidence of Ebola before boarding their flight. Those with symptoms or a raised temperature should not be allowed on the flight. Clearly, identifying people with Ebola before they board an international flight is a desirable objective. But how well does this system work in practice? Data are not available on the number of passengers denied entry to a flight during the current epidemic, but there are strong incentives for those wishing to fly to deny symptoms even if they have them and to take an antipyretic such as aspirin to bring down their temperature if they have a fever.
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Is there any evidence that screening travellers arriving at international airports is an effective way of identifying those with serious infections? The data from Canada, which introduced airport screening during the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic, are not encouraging. A total of 677 494 people arriving in Canada returned completed questionnaires, of whom 2478 answered “yes” to one or more question. A specially trained nurse referred each of these for in-depth questioning and temperature measurement; none of them had SARS. Thermal scanners were installed at six major airports. Of the 467 870 people screened, 95 were referred to a nurse for further assessment. None of them was confirmed to have a raised temperature. The cost of this unsuccessful programme was $CA17m (£9m; €12m; $15m).1
Why was this measure so ineffective, and could it work now? During the SARS epidemic a simple model was used to assess the fraction of cases that could be detected by entrance screening.2 Assuming that people with symptoms are not allowed to board, entrance screening can only pick up those who develop symptoms while travelling. The longer the incubation period in relation to the flight duration, the lower the chance that this will happen, and the lower the yield from entrance screening. Updating the model using data on Ebola (incubation time 9.1±7.3 days3; direct flight from Freetown to London 6.42 hours), we estimate that, if everyone with symptoms was denied boarding, about 7 out of 100 people infected with Ebola travelling to the UK would have symptoms on arrival and hence be detectable by entrance screening (95% confidence interval 3 to 13). The other 93% would enter the UK unimpeded.
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Screening seems virtually useless.
Last edited by Fox on Thu Oct 16, 2014 4:37 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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| geldedgoat wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| And its perfectly possible to enact screening procedures and quarantine procedures without sealing off those who are healthy in these countries from the world. |
So we house visitors for 3+ weeks, potentially exposing apparently ill-trained and ill-equipped US healthcare workers in the process... to what benefit, exactly? |
To what benefit does Dallas have a several thousand strong Liberian community.
Actually, that's funny. Libera was set up modeled after the USA as a place for African slaves to return to. Their constitution was quite similar to USA etc. They were running from white racism but this racism is so addictive that they're clamoring to come right back.
xxxxxx
If someone comes into the country with a highly infectious virus, knowing that he is infected, and then does not take any precautions what so ever to diminish contact, and then kills some locals and causes heaps of $ in damage.. Isn't this terrorism? |
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KimchiNinja
Joined: 01 May 2012
Location: Gangnam
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| Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Updating the model using data on Ebola (incubation time 9.1±7.3 days3; direct flight from Freetown to London 6.42 hours), we estimate that, if everyone with symptoms was denied boarding, about 7 out of 100 people infected with Ebola travelling to the UK would have symptoms on arrival and hence be detectable by entrance screening (95% confidence interval 3 to 13). The other 93% would enter the UK unimpeded. |
Exactly, we can build simple models that disprove flawed thinking, and help us make intelligent decisions. But many Amerikans can't do math... |
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GENO123
Joined: 28 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2014 7:28 pm Post subject: |
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| In NYC |
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KimchiNinja
Joined: 01 May 2012
Location: Gangnam
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:13 pm Post subject: |
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Angry at Christie, quarantined nurse plans to sue government over illegal detention.
This article repeated the idea I've heard more than any other about Ebola: "Medical professionals note that Ebola is extremely difficult to catch." Now, I don't know if I'd call a disease which has killed many of the health workers trying to help contain it "hard to catch," but I suppose I'm not one of the health workers at risk of dying in the bargain, so such classifications are up to them. But, if so, if it really is a "hard to catch" disease, then it should be awfully easy for Africans to get it under control of their own accord, shouldn't it? I keep hearing how 'the world is ignoring Africa instead of helping,' but the obvious falseness of that aside, if it's just a matter of not touching the body fluids of symptomatic people, then it should be easy for anyone who doesn't want to catch the disease to avoid catching it. Likewise, if it's really hard to catch, then the chances of it spreading beyond Africa and getting any kind of a foothold are extremely low, yet I keep hearing that travel or visa bans would be 'ineffective at stopping the spread of the disease,' which only makes sense if the spread is actually hard to contain. Otherwise, a travel ban would take a near impossibility and render it into an actual impossibility.
Either this is a real threat or it isn't. If it is, playing politics with it by freting about the "racism" or "unfairness" of travel restrictions really doesn't make sense. If it isn't, then the epidemic is just a manifestation of disease-promoting behavior by locals, and the primary answer is for them to stop doing the things that spread the disease (though of course it would be compassionate to provide medical assistance, assuming they don't riot in response to attempts to assist or invade health centers and steal mattresses covered in infected blood). In neither case does this strange mix of fervent demands for world action coupled with fervent demands that the world take no meaningful steps to protect itself make any sense.
To be clear, I'm not particularly worried about an Ebola outbreak outside of Africa (at least absent a serious mutation). It's the rhetoric which surrounds the matter that I find interesting and perplexing, this dance of trying to convince us Ebola is some supreme threat while simultaneously scolding anyone who actually accepts it as a threat and suggests protective measures as stupid or uneducated. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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That headline is about as far as that lawsuit will go. |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm obviously not a doctor or I wouldn't be wasting my time arguing with all of you, but I think it actually is difficult to catch in most circumstances. The fact that something like 20% of the people who have caught it have been health workers says it all. The family of the guy in Texas spent days in a small apartment with him while he shit his brains out and nobody came down with the virus, but those who cared for him did. Based on what I've read, it sounds like you catch it from feces, vomit, blood, and saliva pretty easily, but not so from casual contact. I read in one source (I don't remember where), that despite all the claims that you can catch it from sweat, there isn't a single documented instance of that actually happening. So, it sounds like it's incredibly contagious if you're dealing with the bodily fluids of an effected individual (health care workers), but not so if you happen to be in the same room as a sick individual. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:51 pm Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
| I'm obviously not a doctor or I wouldn't be wasting my time arguing with all of you, but I think it actually is difficult to catch in most circumstances. |
You may not be a doctor, but that's what many doctors have said as well, and if that's true, it's not clear to me how this epidemic is anything but a problem with hygiene in African countries, which seems to be a topic about which we can do very little. Of course developing and providing innoculations or after-the-fact treatments is reasonable and compassionate, but that's already magnanimously being worked on, so it's not clear to me how all that, 'The world is watching as Africans die, probably because they're racist!' rhetoric can be justified. |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2014 5:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| northway wrote: |
| I'm obviously not a doctor or I wouldn't be wasting my time arguing with all of you, but I think it actually is difficult to catch in most circumstances. |
You may not be a doctor, but that's what many doctors have said as well, and if that's true, it's not clear to me how this epidemic is anything but a problem with hygiene in African countries, which seems to be a topic about which we can do very little. Of course developing and providing innoculations or after-the-fact treatments is reasonable and compassionate, but that's already magnanimously being worked on, so it's not clear to me how all that, 'The world is watching as Africans die, probably because they're racist!' rhetoric can be justified. |
There's actually a lot of development-related political science literature on this topic. Essentially, the argument goes that the West was kind enough to provide inoculations and the like, because it's cheap to do so, but not kind enough to provide solutions to the underlying issues of poor health in the developing world (poor infrastructure), because that's a lot more expensive. Even the best trained health workers are going to have a hard time maintaining a sanitary environment without running water.
All that said, I think there is real risk that the disease becomes endemic to West Africa, likely as an STD, even if the overall numbers drop significantly. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2014 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| northway wrote: |
| I'm obviously not a doctor or I wouldn't be wasting my time arguing with all of you, but I think it actually is difficult to catch in most circumstances. |
You may not be a doctor, but that's what many doctors have said as well, and if that's true, it's not clear to me how this epidemic is anything but a problem with hygiene in African countries, which seems to be a topic about which we can do very little. Of course developing and providing innoculations or after-the-fact treatments is reasonable and compassionate, but that's already magnanimously being worked on, so it's not clear to me how all that, 'The world is watching as Africans die, probably because they're racist!' rhetoric can be justified. |
Given the fact that the two nurses have recovered (well one at least, and the other's prospects are looking good) and the fact that Nigeria, yes, NIGERIA, was able to get a handle on it would tell me yes, it is due to hygiene and a few other problems in those three West African countries.
I wouldn't be surprised if a year from now hardy anyone in the US and Europe is talking about Ebola, but thousands are still dying from it in that part of West Africa. |
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Chaparrastique
Joined: 01 Jan 2014
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| Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2014 6:09 pm Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
| All that said, I think there is real risk that the disease becomes endemic to West Africa, likely as an STD, even if the overall numbers drop significantly. |
It'll keep popping up so long as they keep eating bushmeat. |
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