President Obama told reporters Wednesday he is “cautiously more optimistic” that the chances of additional infections from Liberian traveler Thomas Eric Duncan are ebbing. However, amid Obama’s optimism, Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced the CDC is placing on the honor system travelers to the U.
Dr. Peter Jahrling has been on the ground in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, studying the disease with a team of researchers, which is also helping to care for and treat patients. He says the viral loads that his team is witnessing exceed what has been observed during previous outbreaks, suggesting that, this time, the disease is far more deadly.
After emerging months ago in eastern Sierra Leone, Ebola is now hitting the western edges of the country where the capital is located with dozens of people falling sick each day, the government said Tuesday. So many people are dying that removing bodies is reportedly a problem. Forty-nine confirmed cases of Ebola emerged in just one day, Monday, in two Ebola zones in and around the capital, the National Ebola Response Center, or NERC, said.
Johnson & Johnson is to start testing its Ebola vaccine candidate in January after the World Health Organisation (WHO) and world leaders asked it and other companies to accelerate their research programmes. GlaxoSmithKline, which is at a more advanced stage of vaccine development, separately said it would have the first doses of its serum available by the end of the year. The US drug giant said healthy volunteers in America, Africa and Europe would start receiving the vaccine, which has already shown “promise” in animal testing, early in the new year.
The Hot Zone was written by Richard Preston after he conducted dozens of interviews with virologists, scientists and doctors, many of which spent time on the front lines in Africa, hunting for the origins of Ebola. One scientist spent so much time looking for Ebola carriers in caves that he was jokingly called “Dr. Bat S#!
The United States is playing a game of Russian roulette by not closing its borders to the threat of Ebola from West Africa, contends a microbiology expert with 30 years experience in academics and private medical practice. Dr. William Miller, author of the pioneering 2013 book “The Microcosm Within:
Jason Charles knows the exact moment he will lead his wife and five kids out of their Harlem home, pile into a car, and take off for the wilderness. It will be not long after Ebola reaches the population of New York City, hospitals overflow, and looting begins—when the first riots break out on the streets of Manhattan. “Right now it isn’t bad, but if the first case happens in New York, you start hearing about hundreds or thousands of people getting sick and it shotguns through the city, then you want to start getting your plan together to leave,” says the 37-year-old fireman and dedicated prepper.
President Barack Obama’s new ‘Ebola Czar’ Ron Klain is an enthusiastic advocate of population control who thinks that there are too many people in Africa. Klain’s role in overseeing the United States’ response to a virus that has killed thousands of Africans and threatens to infect up to 10,000 a week by December 1st is somewhat disconcerting given his views on overpopulation. In a recent interview, Klain said the top leadership issue challenging the world today was “how to deal with the continuing growing population in the world” including “burgeoning populations in Africa and Asia.
Ebola can spread by air in cold, dry weather common to the U.S. but not West Africa, presenting a “possible, serious threat” to the public, according to two studies by U.
On Saturday–one day after a bus that had departed from the Pentagon was quarantined on Capitol Hill in an Ebola false alarm–President Barack Obama issued a video message to Americans telling them that “you cannot get it [Ebola] from just riding on a plane or a bus.” “Ebola is actually a difficult disease to catch. It’s not transmitted through the air like the flu,” Obama said in his weekly video message.
The White House recently deleted a petition demanding President Obama do more to stop the spread of Ebola in the U.S. The Obama administration said the petition, which urged the White House to take proper action to fight Ebola, was removed from Whitehouse.
Considering the CDC’s conflicting and confusing statements – I’m not sure which is more dangerous – government incompetence or Ebola. Aside from being a grave threat to human life, an Ebola epidemic in the US would have serious consequences for our economy, inhibiting Americans from flying, going out to restaurants or to see a movie, or just going out in public in general. Just look at the public fear incurred in the past couple of days, with only one infected person (Amber Joy Vinson) travelling on a commercial airline.
The two nurses that caught Ebola while caring for Thomas Duncan in Texas Presbytarian hospitals didn’t have a chance. Not only were protocols not followed, but the hospital couldn’t follow them even if they tried. That’s because the Ebola virus is a Biosafety Level 4 microbe, requiring the highest level of biosafety possible.
Barack Obama and the head of the CDC need to quit saying that we know exactly how Ebola spreads. Because the truth is that there is much about this virus that we simply do not know. For example, a top Ebola scientist that is working in the heart of the outbreak in Liberia says that this version of Ebola looks like it could be “a very different bug” from past versions.
President Barack Obama’s new Ebola “czar” Ron Klain has skipped another White House meeting on the Ebola crisis, a readout of who attended a Saturday meeting with Obama shows. Obama held the Ebola meeting after spending four hours and 40 minutes on the golf course at Fort Belvoir, according to the White House press pool report from the New York Daily News‘ Dan Friedman. “The President on Saturday evening convened members of his national security and public health teams to update him on the response to the domestic Ebola cases,” the White House said in an email blast Saturday evening.
The true death toll from the Ebola epidemic is being masked by chaotic data collection and people’s reluctance to admit that their loved ones had the virus, according to one of west Africa’s most celebrated film-makers. Sorious Samura, who has just returned from making a documentary on the crisis in Liberia, said it is very clear on the ground that the true number of dead is far higher than the official figures being reported by the World Health Organisation. Liberia accounts for more than half of all the official Ebola deaths, with a total of 2,458.
The National Institute of Health has placed a massive order for protective clothing and supplies that could make it impossible for you to procure your own gear. And by massive, I mean a year’s supply for employees of facilities across the country, replenished throughout the year no matter what happens, and taking priority over any personal orders. Here’s some of the text of the solicitation, entitled “EMERGENCY DISASTER EVENT PREPARATION FOR PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT (PPE)”.
Is Barack Obama telling us the truth about Ebola? What information about this horrific outbreak is being purposely kept from the American people? Is this disaster going to be far worse than most people ever anticipated?
Is Barack Obama completely insane? By not instituting an immediate ban on all non-essential travel between the United States and West Africa, he is putting the lives of more than 300 million Americans at risk. Anyone with a shred of common sense knows that you keep more people from getting sick by keeping the sick people away from the healthy people.
As Franklin Roosevelt said, “All we have to fear is fear itself.” The stock market hangs in such peril that it is the fear of fear that is now driving its surges. The market is afraid that Ebola fear will cause a panicked change in people’s economic activities.