President Obama Has Cancelled Tonight’s Fundraiser !!

CDC Thomas Frieden says:

“We have stopped every Ebola outbreak, until this one!

The second Ebola treatment nurse, diagnosed with Ebola herself, is a 29-year-old named Amber Vinson.
Riddle me this: The second nurse who has Ebola in Texas flew on a plane two days before apparently developing symptoms. The CDC is alarmed by the commercial travel method. The CDC says Ebola exposures should have “controlled travel” only, and wants 132 passengers who were on the plane with the nurse to call them ASAP. Why?

[Frontier Airlines] “At approximately 1:00 a.m. MT on October 15, Frontier was notified by the CDC that a customer traveling on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth on Oct. 13 has since tested positive for the Ebola virus.

The flight landed in Dallas/Fort Worth at 8:16 p.m. local and remained overnight at the airport having completed its flying for the day at which point the aircraft received a thorough cleaning per our normal procedures which is consistent with CDC guidelines prior to returning to service the next day. It was also cleaned again in Cleveland last night. Previously the customer had traveled from Dallas Fort Worth to Cleveland on Frontier flight 1142 on October 10.  (link)

The CDC opposes a travel ban to/from West Africa. To support their position the CDC says if a person has no symptoms there is no reason to worry. They say the Dallas nurse, Amber Vinson, had no symptoms – yet her travel is alarming.  A contradiction, no? (more…)

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A patient with a high fever and other serious symptoms contacted and then entered The University of Kansas Hospital on Monday morning.
The hospital says that the patient recently worked on a medical boat off the west coast of Africa and has a low-to-moderate risk of Ebola.
According to a news release, the patient is being kept in strict isolation and tests are being done to determine a diagnosis. Dr. Lee Norman, chief medical officer of the hospital, says that there are many other diseases that fit the patient’s symptoms, but the hospital is following guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control to determine whether the patient has Ebola or not. (more…)

Australia’s Prime Minister has refused to commit personnel to battle ebola directly inside Africa, although the country has committed $18 million in financial resources to assist West Africa contain the outbreak.
The Australian news agency reports that “growth is out of control” and cases in Liberia are doubling every 15 – 20 days.
It is important to be aware that these models are based on known or reported cases – however, all medical personnel have affirmed that no one truly knows the number of actual cases, because many rural areas are refusing to cooperate with investigators.

Dark blue shows the number of actual cases while light blue is projections for the next four weeks.

IT’S the deadliest Ebola outbreak the world has seen — claiming more than 4033 lives and infecting double that as it rampages around the world. (link)
(more…)

 …F.D.R. in Hell (@FDRinHell)

Gov. Dannel Malloy has signed an executive order effectively enabling the indefinite suspension of civil rights in the state of Connecticut.  He’s given his Commissioner of the Department of public Health the ability to quarantine, or otherwise detain, any person or group suspected of being infected with the Ebola virus. 

Note…all this has been done “preemptively”, because no specific case has yet to be identified.

Checks  = None

Balances = None

All done for your own good… without due process…. on behalf of the State.

(more…)

Does anyone else notice how China and Russia appear completely ambivalent to the “crisis” and potential threat that is Ebola ?

(Sharyl Attkisson) Public health and policy officials believe a big part of their job is preventing panic: Panic breeds behavior that can spread infectious disease. So when some of these health professionals begin speaking in alarming terms, there is reason to stand up and take note.

“We have to work now so this is not the world’s next AIDS,” said CDC Director Thomas Frieden today at a Washington D.C. meeting of officials from the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
“Failures in leadership have allowed a preventable disease to spin out of control,” write Lawrence Gostin and Eric Friedman in the current issue of the medical journal Lancet. Gostin, a Georgetown Law professor, is Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights. Friedman is Project Leader for the Joint Action and Learning Initiative on National and Global Responsibilities for Health. (more…)

EV-D68 More Dangerous Than Ebola

PHILADELPHIA – Infectious diseases caregivers and public health professionals are gathered in Philadelphia through the weekend for the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), more commonly known as IDWeek 2014. (You can also follow attendees in real-time on Twitter at the hashtag, #IDweek.)
The Society organized the press conference because of the very timely news about Ebola here, Europe, and West Africa, as well as children with respiratory disease caused by enterovirus D68.
The vast majority of today’s panel discussion focused on enterovirus D68, or EV-D68 for short, a virus that’s causing particularly severe respiratory illness in children nationwide. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported yesterday that EV-D68 infections have been confirmed in 45 states. Five children with the virus have died thus far and some children, especially in the Denver area, are experiencing muscle paralysis.
[…] The virus was first discovered in 1962 but not seen again in the U.S. for 36 years. Over 100 types of enterovirus are known, but they are distinct from polioviruses, stressed Aaron M. Milstone, MD, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.
In the current outbreak, Jackson said that EV-D68 is primarily affecting children. No cases have been identified in adults, suggesting that some previous exposure to EV-D68 conferred immunity to the currently-circulating virus. (more…)

“Ladies and Gentlemen: Please secure your trays tables and seats into their upright and locked positions, along with any vomit or Other Potentially Infectious Materials for our flight staff to pick up as we prepare for arrival to our final destination”…. “And, as always, the staff of United Flight 998 would like to thank you for remaining calm as we transport the Ebola virus to a destination near you”.

NEW YORK – A United Airilines flight from Brussels was met by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials today at Newark Liberty International Airport after a passenger on board believed to be from Liberia exhibited possible signs of Ebola.

The passenger was traveling with his daughter on United Flight 998 and both were removed from the plane by CDC crew in full hazmat gear.
A senior federal official said the passenger was exbihiting “flu-like symptoms.”
Other passengers remained on the plane while the two were being removed. (more…)

More confirmation of what we suspected from the outset. Ebola man intentionally left Liberia knowing he was infected, and came to the U.S. for treatment.

WASHINGTON – Liberian authorities say they plan to prosecute the man infected with Ebola who brought the disease to the United States, saying he lied on his airport health questionnaire.

With an Ebola crisis raging in West Africa, passengers leaving Liberia are being screened for fever and are asked if they have had contact with anyone infected.
On the questionnaire obtained by The Associated Press, Thomas Eric Duncan answered ‘no’ to those questions. (more…)

Liberian officials said the U.S. case was inevitable and unsurprising. “It means the entire world is not safe,” said Liberian assistant health minister Tolbert Nyenswah in an interview on Wednesday.
“It means we should all be making frantic efforts to stop Ebola in West Africa,” he said.
Mr. Nyenswah and other Liberians are hoping that the U.S. case will help to mobilize more global resources to fight Ebola in West Africa, where the epidemic originated earlier this year. “It’s a clear indication that Ebola has no boundary,” said Thomas Siakor, a 32-year-old university student and bread vendor in Monrovia. “It can kill anyone.”

(more…)

What we had suspected was the case is now confirmed by the New York Times.  Patient Zero, Thomas Duncan, came to the U.S. knowing he was exposed to Ebola and seeking treatment.

MONROVIA, Liberia — A man who flew to Dallas and was later found to have the Ebola virus was identified by senior Liberian government officials on Wednesday as Thomas Eric Duncan, a resident of Monrovia in his mid-40s.

Mr. Duncan, the first person to develop symptoms outside Africa during the current epidemic, had direct contact with a woman stricken by Ebola on Sept. 15, just four days before he left Liberia for the United States, the woman’s parents and Mr. Duncan’s neighbors said.
In a pattern often seen here in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, the family of the woman, Marthalene Williams, 19, took her by taxi to a hospital with Mr. Duncan’s help on Sept. 15 after failing to get an ambulance, said her parents, Emmanuel and Amie Williams. She was convulsing and seven months pregnant, they said.
Turned away from a hospital for lack of space in its Ebola treatment ward, the family said it took Ms. Williams back home in the evening, and that she died hours later, around 3 a.m. (more…)