Tag Archive: pandemic

CDC confirms Ebloa in U.S.

Well, this is not good:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed on Tuesday that a patient being treated at a Dallas hospital has tested positive for Ebola, the first case diagnosed in the United States.

Guy gets infected in Liberia, flies over to visit family, then starts getting sick here in the U.S.

CDC team is enroute, people who were exposed to the patient while sick are in quarantine.

Now, before we all batten down the hatches and crack open the cases of MREs, the CDC is saying those on the flight over or who were exposed to the patient prior to him showing symptoms are not at risk. According to CDC Director Tom Frieden via Fox News:

“It’s only someone who’s sick with Ebola who can spread the disease,” said Frieden. “Once those contacts are all identified, they’re all monitored for 21 days after exposure to see if they develop a fever.”

Frieden added that while it is possible that someone who had contact with the patient could develop Ebola in the coming weeks, he has no doubt the infection will be contained. At this point, he said, there is zero risk of transmission to anyone on the flight with the patient because he was not showing any symptoms at the time of travel.

Still, having the Atlantic Ocean as a barrier was much more comforting than some reassurances from the CDC. The CDC is always reassuring the general population in pretty much every zombie movie, ever, and we all know how well that turns out…

Just another example o’ current events to motivate you to get to work!

 

Start now to make sure you are staying prepared.

 

 

Via: teotwawki-blog


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Governments Building Ebola Detention Camps to Quarantine the Infected: “Community Care Centers”

The Ebola crisis is fast approaching a point of no return and now Western nations have gotten involved on a large scale in an effort to prevent the virus from making its way to major cities outside of Africa. Currently, no infections have been detected anywhere outside of Africa but virologists and other researchers have recently warned that the virus is beginning to spread at an accelerated rate and may lead to as many as 1.4 million infections by January. With a mortality rate over 50% and no signs of progress in slowing it down, Ebola could leave more than 500,000 people dead in just a matter of months.

According to some research models, however, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. Should the virus make its way outside of Africa and spread at a similar rate then it is possible that it would eventually make its way to all corners of the globe. This potential for an Ebola-based global pandemic has set into motion a number of different responses from officials at the World Health Organization, African governments, and western nations.

Many now believe that it is only a matter of time before cases of Ebola are detected in other parts of the world. And if what’s happening in Africa is any guide, then we can expect a widespread, heavily militarized response by officials in the West, especially in the United States. In Sierra Leone the military is doing house-to-house searches looking for anyone who may be infected with Ebola or showing similar symptoms. A similar plan is being put into place in Liberia, where the World Health Organization is rapidly establishing “Community Care Centers,” where those infected with the disease will be detained and quarantined:

The Liberian government, the World Health Organization and their nonprofit partners here are launching an ambitious but controversial program to move infected people out of their homes and into ad hoc centers that will provide rudimentary care, officials said Monday.

The effort, which is expected to begin in the next few weeks, is an intermediate step, officials said. The goal is to reduce the chances that Ebola patients will infect their own families and others while ensuring that they receive basic care — such as food, water and pain medicine — at a time when many hospitals and treatment centers are closed.

The initiative also is a tacit acknowledgment that it could be weeks, even months, before new treatment facilities promised by the United States and others are operational.

An Ebola Treatment Center (Click here for larger view)

Martial law, round ups of those suspected of being sick, and detentions in quarantine camps is the only option governments have left and similar strategies will be implemented in the United States if and when the virus starts popping up.

But Doctors without Borders, the organization that spearheaded the treatment and containment efforts at the beginning of the crisis when governments were completely ignoring it, says that WHO’s efforts are destined to fail:

One of the main organizations involved in fighting the outbreak, Doctors without Borders, is dubious about the new effort and has decided not to take part. Brice de le Vigne, the group’s director of operations, warned that the proposed community care centers could worsen the situation.

“This is not going to work,” he said. “To move people in an epidemic is a big responsibility, and it requires huge logistical capabilities” that the affected countries simply don’t have.

To be effective, he said, these care centers need to have strict infection control, adequate supplies, trained staff, regular supervision, the ability to diagnose and refer patients, and proper burial methods. Otherwise, they could turn into “contamination centers,” he said.

Similar efforts are already underway in the United States. Earlier this year Ebola bio detection kits were deployed to National Guard units in all 50 states and hospitals around the country have been given guidelines for preparing quarantine units in advance of the virus afflicting Americans.

In July, the President amended an Executive Order giving the medical emergency responders the legal powers to identify and detain individuals suspected of carrying a communicable disease. And though it’s not talked about publicly, it is widely believed the the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have already pre-positioned domestic detention camps and CDC quarantine centers in the event of a national security emergency.

Ebola appearing in the United States would likely call for exactly such a declaration from the President. In such a scenario it is highly likely that military personnel will be deployed to maintain peace, as well as to work simultaneously with medical professionals to identify and detain those suspected of being infected.

Efforts to develop an effective vaccine are still in progress, thus we must assume that the only plan to contain and prevent the spread of the virus currently available to the government is to mobilize military resources just as has been done in Africa.

And, as we’ve seen in Africa, the virus continues to spread, proving that containment efforts are too little, too late.

The only option for Americans concerned about the virus showing up here is to take preventative measures now, including stocking up on the supplies that will disappear the minute an Ebola infection in the United States is announced. As we’ve noted previously, this should include similar equipment to what you see doctors wearing in Ebola treatment centers:

But just as important is understanding what such an emergency will do to our systems of commerce. If and when people panic, we could well see a breakdown (even if temporarily) of the regular flow of goods to grocery stores, or even people going to work to maintain things like utility plants or other essential services. Assuming we are faced with such a scenario it would be in our best interest to be prepared to deal with the fall-out by having reserve food, water, and other essential supplies on hand to weather the storm.

We don’t know if Ebola will hit U.S. shores or exactly what kind of response to expect. What we do know is that it will likely cause panic, a government mobilization of military resources, and shortages of the most basic essentials we’ll need in a crisis.

 

Start now to make sure you are staying prepared.

 

 

 

Via: shtfplan


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Mystery Virus Causing Paralysis in Children- CDC WARNING


States with Lab-confirmed Enterovirus D68 from cdc.gov

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a warning about a mysterious polio-like virus that’s causing acute neurological illness and paralysis in children. The virus seems to be related to the nationwide epidemic of EV-D68 that we reported on during the first weeks of the outbreak.

The CDC is investigating nine cases of muscle weakness or paralysis in Colorado children to see if enterovirus 68 (EV-D68) might be the virus responsible for the neurological symptoms.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a Health Advisory to doctors about the polio-like cases in Colorado, and said EV-D68 was detected in four out of eight of the sick children who were tested for the virus.

The CDC says the mysterious illness is characterized by “focal limb weakness and abnormalities of the spinal cord gray matter on MRI.”  The cases, which are just now being made public, occurred between August 9 – September 17 among children aged 1-18 years old (with a median age of 10 years-old).

The nine children who have been confirmed to have this neurological illnesses all had fever and respiratory illness about two weeks before developing varying degrees of limb weakness. Health officials don’t think its polio because eight of the nine children are up to date on their polio vaccinations.

The CDC, in their health advisory, confirmed that they are looking into the possibility that the nationwide outbreak of EV-D68 is causing the polio-like illness. They are asking doctors form around the country to be on the lookout for similar cases and to report any similar neurological illnesses to the CDC.

The Mysterious Virus that really isn’t a Mystery!

As we reported in our first article on the EV-D68 outbreak, the CDC and our Federal government is completely ignoring the fact this this virus seems to have been spread by illegal immigrants who’ve been dumped throughout the country – thanks in large part to the Obama administration.

Although it’s received very little mainstream media coverage, the current outbreak of EV-D68 is common to El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, three countries where a bulk of the illegal immigrant children come from. These unaccompanied illegal immigrant children have been allowed into the nation’s school systems without medical screenings, and without required vaccinations.

The CDC may be pretending that they have no idea where this outbreak came from, but for months now similar neurological illness outbreaks have been occurring in border towns throughout the U.S.. In fact, back in February of 2014 an outbreak of a polio-like illness caused as many as 25 children in California to come down with paralyzed limbs and little hope of recovery. According to the BBC, at least five of these cases were directly linked to enterovirus-68, proving the CDC has known about this outbreak for quite some time now.

In July of 2014, the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that communicable diseases were being spread throughout detention centers setup to house incoming illegal immigrant children. These children were then being dumped in unsuspecting communities around the country.

The report said, “Many UAC and family units require treatment for communicable diseases, including respiratory illnesses, tuberculosis, chicken pox, and scabies,” the IG report said. “UAC and family unit illnesses and unfamiliarity with bathroom facilities resulted in unsanitary conditions and exposure to human waste in some holding facilities.”

Unless this government starts to control the crisis at the border, this is only the beginning. When you allow entire populations of people into a country without medical screenings, the results are actually quite predictable.

This isn’t a mystery; it’s well-known medical science. This is exactly why we once required medical screenings of all incoming immigrants, and why we built special islands in New York’s Harbor to quarantine incoming ships. When you introduce new populations to a country, you introduce diseases that have not been seen in that area. You also immediately increase the risk of deadly disease outbreaks.

 

Start now to make sure you are staying prepared.

 

 

Via: offgridsurvival


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Ebola Virus Cases May Hit 1.4 Million by Winter, U.S. Warns

CDC and World Health Organization Say Cases Could Balloon Without Significant Action.


Red Cross health workers carry the body of a victim of the Ebola virus on Sept. 12 in Monrovia, Liberia.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the disease could balloon in the country.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

 

Two leading public-health agencies issued dire warnings about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, estimating that the number of cases could grow exponentially unless measures to tame the outbreak are implemented on a large scale soon.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that from 550,000 people to as many as 1.4 million people when underreporting of cases is taken into account could be infected by mid-January in Liberia and Sierra Leone, in a worst-case scenario generated by a computer modeling tool the agency constructed. Around 21,000 cases would occur by Sept. 30.

“Reported cases in Liberia are doubling every 15-20 days, and those in Sierra Leone are doubling every 30-40 days,” the CDC said in its report. (Further reading: Ebola death toll nears 3,000).

The bleak estimate was made at the end of August, before big pledges of aid started rolling in and before the U.S. military hit the ground in Monrovia, as it has in the past few days, to help lead a beefed-up U.S. response.

Experts from the World Health Organization and Imperial College, London, also predicted that the number of cases in West Africa would climb exponentially, saying more than 20,000 people would have been infected by early November, in a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Without drastic improvements in control measures, the numbers of cases and deaths…are expected to continue increasing from hundreds to thousands per week in the coming months,” the authors wrote.

The differing numbers illustrate the range of scenarios that could occur—and the difficulty of predicting what might happen over the next several weeks and months.

Officially, 5,864 cases, including 2,811 deaths, have been reported in five West African countries, according to the WHO. But the United Nations agency says that toll is vastly underestimated.

Both agencies agree that the situation is grim without an imminent surge of aid.

More Ebola treatment centers, medical staff, health educators, training in safe burial practices and other help are needed urgently, they say.

Yet if 70% of Ebola patients are cared for in treatment centers or community settings where they can’t transmit the disease to others, then the epidemic in both countries “would almost be ended” by Jan. 20, according to the CDC report.

“What the modeling shows us is that even in dire scenarios, if we move fast enough, we can turn it around,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said. “And I’m confident that the most dire projections are not going to come to pass, given what we’ve already seen on the ground in terms of the response and what we’re beginning to see in terms of some of the data coming in.”

Dr. Frieden added that “a surge now can break the back of the epidemic. It also shows that there are severe costs of delay.”

The U.S. plans to bring in 3,000 military personnel to help build Ebola treatment centers and train health workers to staff them.

The CDC has about 120 staff in West Africa, and is beginning a training program in the U.S. for health workers preparing to deploy to the region.

 

 

Start now to make sure you are staying prepared.

 

 

Via: wsj



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Martial Law Declared in Response to Ebola Virus

When news of the Ebola virus epidemic started breaking a few months ago, we knew it was bad.

But we didn’t know just how bad things would really become.

Over the past few months, the Ebola virus has killed thousands of people in Africa, and two American doctors even contracted the disease.

Ebola is continuing to spread with no end in sight.

Just how close to home will this get?

Could it happen here?

Martial Law Declared in Sierra Leone in Response to Ebola Virus

Recently Obama sent 3,000 US soldiers to Africa to “combat” the Ebola virus outbreak.

You may be asking yourself what a soldier could possibly do to combat a deadly virus. The answer apparently, is “declare martial law and treat infected people like criminals.”

Ebola victims who flee deadly hospitals will be hunted down and rounded up

People who are “reluctant” are those who have fled Sierra Leon’s hospitals which have become nothing more than Ebola death traps that offer no solutions whatsoever against Ebola.

This entire campaign, which is being supported by thousands of U.S. soldiers as well as the United Nations, is a striking sign of extreme desperation, demonstrating that world governments are now resorting to “nuclear options” in last-ditch attempts to halt the exploding outbreak that could kill millions, even if it stays contained within the African continent.

What the U.N. and W.H.O. are really causing, however, is encouraging citizens of Sierra Leone to flee the country in order to escape the medical martial law. This may actually increase the spread of Ebola rather than containing it.

The spread of Ebola shows no signs of slowing down, and it’s only a matter of time before it spreads outside of Africa.

The Ebola virus is already an international emergency, and it will get a lot worse before it gets better.

Don’t think we here in the US are immune to the disease, or to the kind of tyranny we’re seeing in Africa right now.

Always remember, it can happen anywhere. And most likely, it will.

To learn more about the threat of medical martial law, click here.

And start preparing now, before it’s too late.

 

Start now to make sure you are staying prepared.

 

Via: survivallife


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Model Shows How Ebola Will Spread: “It Only Takes One Infected Individual Making It Through An Airport Checkpoint”

Health officials around the world are scrambling to contain the Ebola virus with many, including the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, now preparing for its eventual escape out of West Africa.

According to CDC director Tom Frieden, the ‘window of opportunity’ for stopping the spread of Ebola is closing rapidly. In July, as the virus surged across west African borders, Frieden downplayed its potential to reach U.S. shores. “It is not a potential of Ebola spreading widely in the U.S.,” claimed Frieden in a preemptive effort to prevent panic. “That is not in the cards.”

The cards, apparently, have been reshuffled, as Frieden now joins a growing chorus of concerned officials around the world. “This is not just a problem for West Africa, it’s not just a problem for Africa,” Frieden said last week. “It’s a problem for the world, and the world needs to respond.”

In the United States, hospitals are quietly preparing Ebola infection wards and procedures for what many believe is the inevitable arrival of the virus on U.S. shores.

Mathematical models performed by numerous researchers suggest that anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 people globally could contract the virus by December of this year.

Researcher Yaneer Bar-Yam, whose models predicted the rise of the Arab Spring just weeks before it actually happened, has been modeling viral outbreaks since 2006. In a report published in conjunction with MIT and the New England Complex Systems Institute, Bar-Yam and colleagues developed a host-pathogen model to predict the spread of emergent diseases, including Ebola, in evolving ecosystems.

The results are nothing short of terrifying as depicted in the video produced by the NECSI showing how the Ebola virus originating in West Africa might spread:

The most relevant features of NECSI’s model to the current crisis is the critical threshold of connectedness at which a virulent strain can spread out of control.

Even if a system seems stable, it may only take a few more routes of travel to trigger secondary outbreaks.

“It wouldn’t take much for the current Ebola outbreak to spread to more countries or continents,” says NECSI president Yaneer Bar-Yam. “It only takes one infected individual making it through an airport checkpoint.”


(Watch at Youtube)

When it comes to pandemics, it only takes a little global connectedness to trigger a cascade of infections. The outbreak of Ebola raging in West Africa— labeled a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization—echoes a scenario mapped out by NECSI in 2006.

In a computer simulation of pathogens and hosts, long-range routes of transmission — most prominently, international air routes — can allow the deadliest viral strains to outrun their own extinction, and in the process kill vastly more victims than they would have otherwise.

In an evolutionary model accounting for spatial distribution, a pathogen like the Ebola virus can cause its own demise by killing all the hosts in its immediate vicinity. If there is no one left alive to infect, a viral strain will die off. Successful pathogens leave their hosts alive long enough to spread infection. Typically, the most virulent mutations burn themselves out, and a stable balance is achieved between host and pathogen. But avenues of long-range dispersal break this pattern.

Source: New England Complex Systems Institute

This particular outbreak of the Ebola virus has been underestimated by health officials and government leaders since the very beginning. They assumed, wrongly, that it would behave like previous outbreaks. But rather than remaining contained in a specific rural area, wiping out its hosts, and dying off like previous outbreaks did, the virus has continued to spread. The likely cause is that travel systems are much more advanced today than they have been in the last several decades, and as noted by Bar-Yam, it only takes a single individual with Ebola to cross a checkpoint.

In fact, this is exactly what happened in Lagos, Nigeria. One person reportedly entered the country via a flight to Lagos, slipped through Customs with the virus, and now at least 19 individuals have been infected and another 400 are under surveillance.

It should be clear that unless global transportation systems and international border crossings are completely shut down, a move that is unlikely, the virus will keep spreading.

This week an official from the U.S. National Institutes of Health told Newsweek that the virus continues to accelerate and is now “completely out of control.”

The Threat Is Real

Though we have warned about the potential havoc Ebola would wreak since it was first identified, many have failed to take it seriously.

Now, with nearly 2,000 people dead and potentially thousands of others infected, we are reaching a point of no return.

It’s not clear how officials plan on isolating a virus that has spread to at least six West African countries and could now have made its way to other regions like Europe, Asia, Central America or even the United States.

As highlighted by Yaneer Bar-Yam and his colleagues, since there is no cure the only preventative measure is isolating oneself from populations that could potentially carry the virus – and in this case, that means every one.

There is no cure for the Ebola virus; only early detection and basic medical care can improve a patient’s chance of survival. Thus, awareness of how quickly the scales of transmission can tip is paramount to getting the current outbreak under control and preventing more from starting.

Containment efforts around the world have thus far failed, so we must assume a worse-case scenario in which the virus makes its way to our regions, cities, and neighborhoods.

What You Can Do To Prepare

In The Prepper’s Blueprint, Tess Pennington outlines various Pandemic Preparedness tips.

Among her instructions for creating a sick room, Pennington recommends a basic supply list.

Basic Pandemic Preparedness Supply List

But she also notes that a pandemic event will likely lead to significant shutdowns for businesses, government offices, potentially even your doctor’s office, so preparing for that is also an important consideration. And that includes having emergency food, water and other supplies on hand, because the last thing you want to do is have to leave home when those in your town or neighborhood could be carriers of a deadly disease.

Whether Ebola hits U.S. shores remains to be seen. But as of right now nearly 2,000 people worldwide are dead, the virus is spreading, and it has a mortality rate of 50% to 90%.

Government officials seem to be unable to contain it. This means that prevention comes down to each individual and their families.

Do you really want to wait until after infections have been identified in the United States to make your preparations?

 

Start now to make sure you are staying prepared.

 

 

Via: shtfplan


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And More Bad News About Ebola.

Grim Ebola Prediction: Outbreak Is Unstoppable  : Folks this has the potential to mutate into a major pandemic threat, I hope that it doesn’t, and don’t know that it will, but it sure looks like we are quickly, heading in that direction.

According to the author of the above linked to article it’s passed the point of our being able to control it, so what can we do? Prep but don’t panic…

Start by reading this article “Ebola – What You Need to Know” this one “Ebola by Joe Alton, M.D., aka Dr. Bones” and this one, “17 Things For Pandemic Survival that You Probably Forgot to Include in Your Medical Kit” and watch the video below…

Also check out:

Pandemic Preparedness

15 Preparedness Uses for Kiddie Pools

Survival Antibiotics

SURVIVAL ANTIBIOTICS-2

MUST HAVE ANTIBIOTICS, ANTIFUNGALS, AND ANTIVIRALS

 

Start now to make sure you are staying prepared.


Via: thesurvivalistblog


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Enterovirus 68 Outbreak

Another great post from our friends at doomandbloom.net

There is currently an outbreak of a virus called Enterovirus 68 in the Kansas City area. This is one of those viruses that, sadly, strikes children in a disproportionately large percentage. 300 kids or more have been affected currently, with many hospitalized.


I have been asked if this could have been one of the diseases that crossed the border in the recent immigrant crisis. While I have no evidence that supports this theory, we certainly must be aware that various illnesses have been found in the kids in U.S. custody. Close monitoring is necessary to keep an eye out for trouble in the uncertain future.


Enterovirus 68 is a member of the Picornaviridae family, a group of viruses which includes the virus that causes polio. It is similar to the rhinovirus, the cause for most common colds. Once considered very rare, it has been seen more frequently as of late, usually appearing in clusters in a particular community. Before the most recent cluster, there were 6 known outbreaks on different continents during the period from 2008-2010.


Polio victim


Enterovirus68 infection starts off looking just like the common cold, and that’s as far as it goes in most cases. Sometimes, however, it can quickly progress to a syndrome which includes nausea and vomiting and difficulty breathing. In its full manifestation, it looks like an asthma patient who’s vomiting a lot. In the worst cases, mechanical respirators were necessary to maintain breathing. Despite this, it is rarely fatal, with 3 deaths total occurring in the Phillipines and Japan.


There was a small group of kids in California in 2012-3 who developed what appeared to be polio, except that they were already vaccinated against the disease. Although they survived, none of them recovered full function of their limbs to date. It turned out that two of these children tested positive for Enterovirus68, outlining the serious nature of long-term effects in the worst cases.


Enteroviruses are spread from person to person through contact with nasal secretions, saliva, stool, or by contact with contaminated surfaces. Frequent hand washing is the best preventative measure, as well as disinfection of work areas and sick rooms. For more info on maintaining a good off-grid sick room, check out our article on the subject:

http://www.doomandbloom.net/survival-sick-room/


Like the common cold, there is no cure at present for the illness and testing for it involves lab studies on bowel movements or spinal taps. Treat the symptoms as they present, and get a worsening case to the hospital if it’s available to you.


Hopefully, Enterovirus68 will stay what it is, a rare virus that pops up from time to time in a small group. Knowledge of the symptoms will help you succeed in dealing with the disease, even if everything else fails.

 

Start now to make sure you are staying prepared.

 


Via: doomandbloom


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What is Ebola? And How to Protect Yourself

Ebola is Spreading through Africa Via Public Transportation

With the recent Ebola outbreak infecting American aid workers, one of whom has returned to the US for treatment, the possibility of a global epidemic of Ebola, though not likely, is possible. Scientists are tracking the deadly virus through West Africa. The use of bikes, taxis and planes is transporting the contagion through the human population yet, at this point, international travel has not been limited whatsoever by the authorities. The World Health Organization has yet to recommend restrictions or closures, according to the airlines association IATA. Disease specialists insist that the risk of the virus becoming a pandemic is low, but educating oneself on the basics of the virus will allow one to proceed with caution.

Health workers are more high risk than others for contracting Ebola, because of the close contact they have with those infected. The disease can still manage to spread out of hospital containment, however, and there’s not much you can do about it if it does. But what can you do? What should you know?

What is Ebola?

Ebola is a severe hemorrhagic fever and disease that kills up to 90 percent of people who are infected, as reported by the National Institutes of Health. It was first found in Africa in 1976.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that headache, fever, joint and muscle pain, sore throat, and weakness are early symptoms of Ebola. These symptoms are sometimes followed by diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach pain, and the disease further causes rashes, hiccups, red eyes, and external and internal bleeding.

How do you become infected?

The natural hosts of this disease are infected animals. According to the World Health Organization, disease can spread through contact with monkeys, gorillas, chimps, forest antelopes and other diseased animals. The contagion can be spread once an individual is infected through blood, saliva, mucus, or other body secretions. Being as such, healthcare providers must use protective clothing, masks and other supplies when treating Ebola patients. Providers may contract Ebola if protection is insufficient or if contaminated needles are reused.

Has there ever been an Ebola outbreak in the US?

No, the US has never experienced an Ebola outbreak to date.

How do you cure Ebola?

Ebola has no known cure. However, if those infected are treated with supportive therapy, the disease can be managed. Supportive therapy includes maintaining and tracking oxygen levels and blood pressure, keeping fluids balanced, and treating infections which may complicate the disease further.

Newsmax:

Taxis, Planes and Viruses: How Deadly Ebola Can Spread

LONDON — For scientists tracking the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, it is not about complex virology and genotyping, but about how contagious microbes — like humans — use planes, bikes and taxis to spread.

So far, authorities have taken no action to limit international travel in the region. The airlines association IATA said on Thursday that the World Health Organization is not recommending any such restrictions or frontier closures.

The risk of the virus moving to other continents is low, disease specialists say. But tracing every person who may have had contact with an infected case is vital to getting on top of the outbreak within West Africa, and doing so often means teasing out seemingly routine information about victims’ lives.

In Nigeria, which had an imported case of the virus in a Liberian-American who flew to Lagos this week, authorities will have to trace all passengers and anyone else he may have crossed paths with to avoid the kind of spread other countries in the region have suffered.

The West Africa outbreak, which began in Guinea in February, has already spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. With more than 1,300 cases and 729 deaths, it is the largest since the Ebola virus was discovered almost 40 years ago.

Sierra Leone has declared a state of public emergency to tackle the outbreak, while Liberia is closing schools and considering quarantining some communities.

“The most important thing is good surveillance of everyone who has been in contact or could have been exposed,” said David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology and head of global health security at Britain’s Royal Institute of International Affairs.

The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of peoples’ lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola’s spread.

Epidemiologists and virus experts believe the original case in that instance to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea and then returned, unwell, to her home village in neighboring northern Liberia.

The woman’s sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the Ebola virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.

Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband – an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.

She took a communal taxi via Liberia’s capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted and died of the Ebola. In Monrovia, she switched to a motorcycle, riding pillion with a young man who agreed to take her to the plantation and whom health authorities were subsequently desperate to trace.

“It’s an analogous situation to the man in the airplane” who flew into Lagos and died there, said Derek Gatherer of Britain’s Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the West Africa outbreak closely.

Liberia’s Ebola case count is now 329 including 156 deaths, according to latest data from the World Health Organization — although not all are linked to the Guinea market case.

Gatherer noted that while Ebola does not spread through the air and is not considered “super infectious”, cross-border human travel can easily help it on its way. “It’s one of the reasons why we get this churn of infections,” he said.

The risk of the Ebola virus making its way out of Africa into Europe, Asia or the Americas is extremely low, according to infectious disease specialists, partly due to the severity of the disease and its deadly nature.

Patients are at the most dangerous when Ebola haemorrhagic fever is in its terminal stages, inducing both internal and external bleeding, and profuse vomiting and diarrhea — all of which contain high concentrations of infectious virus.

Anyone at this stage of the illness is close to death, and probably also too ill to travel, said Bruce Hirsch, an infectious diseases expert at North Shore University Hospital in the United States.

“It is possible, of course, for a person to think he might just be coming down with the flu, and to get onto transport and then develop more critical illness. That’s one of the things we are concerned about,” he said in a telephone interview.

He added, however: “The risk (of Ebola spreading to Europe or the United States) is not zero, but it is very small.”

Heymann noted that the only case in which an Ebola case was known to have left Africa and made it to Europe via air travel was in 1994 when a Swiss zoologist became infected with the virus after dissecting a chimpanzee in Ivory Coast.

The woman was isolated in a Swiss hospital and discharged after two weeks without infecting anyone else.

“Outbreaks can be stopped with good infection control and with understanding by people who have been in contact with infected cases that they have to be responsible,” Heymann said.

 

 

Start now to make sure you are staying prepared.

Via: survivalist


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CDC Warns of Possible Ebola Transport to U.S. -WHO Warns of Possible Catastrophic Loss of Life – Airports On Alert To Look For Symptoms

 

Between July 28-31 , 2014, AlertsUSA issued the following
related Flash message to subscriber mobile devices:

 

7/31 – USGOV issues new travel warning for Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea over Ebola outbreak. Travelers heading to or through region should take heed.

7/31 – W. Africa Travel Warning is a Level 3 Travel Health Alert (highest) from the CDC. Warns against any nonessential travel to the region.

7/28 – CDC issues warning re Ebola in W Africa, urges travelers in region be cautious and avoid blood & fluids of sick persons, warns of poss of bringing virus to US.

 

What You Need To Know

On three occasions this week AlertsUSA subscribers were notified via text messages to their mobile devices concerning US government warnings and actions regarding the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa. Early in the week the Centers for Disease Control issued a Level 2 Travel Health Alert advising U.S.-based health-care workers to be aware of the symptoms of Ebola and to grill patients about recent their travel histories. U.S. Embassies in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea issued fresh cautionary statements and reminders for travelers to the region again advising the avoidance of sick individuals and contact with bodily fluids.

As case numbers grew over the next few days, including the infection of trained medical personnel, the CDC issued a Level 3 Travel Health Alert, the highest level, warning people to avoid all nonessential travel to the three countries experiencing the current outbreak.

It is important for readers to recognize the importance of this move. Each year hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens visit these countries for tourism and a wide variety of business endeavors. For the CDC to make this move for three nations simultaneously is significant and speaks volumes about the seriousness of the threat to American citizens and interests.

Early Friday, an emergency meeting was convened by the World Health Organization during which the director-general, Dr Margaret Chan, stated the following:

“The outbreak is by far the largest ever in the nearly four-decade history of this disease. It is the largest in terms of numbers of cases and deaths. It is the largest in terms of geographical areas already affected and others at immediate risk of further spread. It is taking place in areas with fluid population movements over porous borders, and it has demonstrated its ability to spread via air travel, contrary to what has been seen in past outbreaks. Cases are occurring in rural areas which are difficult to access, but also in densely populated capital cities.”

“First, this outbreak is moving faster than our efforts to control it. If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socioeconomic disruption and a high risk of spread to other countries.”

“In addition, the outbreak is affecting a large number of doctors, nurses, and other health care workers, one of the most essential resources for containing an outbreak. To date, more than 60 health care workers have lost their lives in helping others.”

“I believe we’re only seeing a small portion of the cases out there. The virus is getting to large, dense, city areas.”

Global health authorities are currently racing to track down approximately 30,000 individuals who may have come in contact with an American man of Liberian descent who died in Nigeria earlier this week on his way to the U.S.. This includes people at any of the four airports he visited during his plane travel as well as in Nigeria’s capital Lagos. There are reports in Nigerian newspapers that airport workers with whom the American had contact are already showing signs of infection.

U.S., Canadian, European and Asian health authorities are on high alert at points of entry, as well as in major airline hub cities serving travelers coming out of the region. International airports, airline staff, customs and immigration officials and the ever present ranks of TSA are monitoring travelers using a variety of means, including thermal cameras, to identify ill travelers.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU

This outbreak will likely continue for months to come. The fact that the virus is spreading in major regional population centers with poor health standards, inadequate medical infrastructure, cultural adversity to containment efforts and and a lengthily incubation period (currently rated from 2-21 days) literally assures a slow burnout and the ongoing spread of the virus for the foreseeable future. The longer the problem exists, the greater the threat of the virus being carried to N. America. As health authorities are fond of saying, it is “only a plane ride away.”

AlertsUSA strongly recommends that airline travelers, including domestic passengers, become hyper sensitive about their proximity to those visibly ill during your trips. While health authorities stress that Ebola is not airborne, a fact they chose to dance around is that
it is transmissible, as with most other contagions, via airborne saliva particles, such as those released via coughs and sneezes (also see this).

Given that planeloads of individuals arrive hourly from impacted international locations, only to then diffuse into the domestic airline network, your increased, polite vigilance can only be a benefit to your overall safety.

We also feel it is prudent to point out that while the current “hot zone” is West Africa, take note of the fact that this region is widely visited and populated by individuals of European, Middle Eastern and Chinese descent.

KNOW THE LAW

Readers may find it useful and eye opening to understand the extent to which federal and state government can go in order to contain a domestic outbreak of communicable diseases.

CDC Resources

Legal Authorities for Isolation and Quarantine

Specific Laws and Regs Governing the Control of Communicable Diseases

Final Rules for Control of Communicable Diseases: Interstate and Foreign


Recent Actions

Executive Order (July 31, 2014)
Revised List of Quarantinable Communicable Diseases

Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA)


Previous AlertsUSA Threat Journal Coverage and Resources

July 26, 2014

March 29, 2014


As always, AlertsUSA continues to closely monitor developments with the spread of this virus and will immediately notify service subscribers of major changes in its spread to different regions, important notices and warnings by government agencies or any other major changes in the overall threat environment as events warrant.

 

Start now to make sure you are staying prepared.


Via: threatjournal


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