Hearing on Ebola today(yes some members of congress came back from recess).

[smokingman]

I watched the entire hearing.For the first hour and 40 minutes not much was said.We can contain it,it is a tragedy,more is needed...blaa blaa.Then Ken Isaac spoke.The director of Samaritan's purse along with the head of Doctors without borders.I think everyone should listen to what they had to say.

Some highlights.Only 25-50% of cases are reported,even less make it into WHO statistics.
0 containment.Most hospitals and Ebola treatment centers are closed.In Liberia for example only one remains open with enough beds for 25 infected people.
The most prominent doctor in Nigeria did not believe they had Ebola cases,saw patients with another doctor without PPE.Both doctors died within 5 days.Samaritan's purse virologists expect an explosion of Ebola cases in Nigeria in the next three weeks.Samaritan's purse and doctors without borders(who also testified in the video below starting at 1 hour and 41 minutes)expect the death toll to reach the tens of thousands if the world reacts quickly,many more if they do not.Things are "totally" out of control.


Samaritan's purse and doctors without borders have been the only two organizations in the world dealing with the outbreak since March(Ken Isaac has apparently been pleading for help all over the world for months,and has received none,and is not happy the world did not respond until two American volunteers where infected in late July) and are now advising the CDC and WHO on what needs to be done right now.
Ken Isaac suspects"the cat is probably already out of the bag" in his testimony meaning Ebola may well already be out of Africa.

Skip to 1 hour 41 minutes to hear Ken Isaac followed by doctors without borders(sorry did not catch his name).You may be able to scroll the video,but also below the video are links to specific time stamps and speakers.

<strong>[video]http://www.c-span.org/video/?320862-1/hearing-ebola-outbreak-africa[/video]

http://www.c-span.org/video/?320862-1/hearing-ebola-outbreak-africa

 

[Vigilant]

No problem they say, bring them here they say...

 

[smokingman]

Isaacs, whose urgings to Congress about the urgency for a better response prompted Thursday’s meeting, is gravely concerned about the future. After first observing the outbreak in April, he’s watched the disease spread furiously across West Africa with little to no effective international support. “I think we are going to see death tolls in numbers that we can’t imagine,” said Isaacs. “If we do not fight and contain this disease, we will be fighting this and containing this in multiple countries across the world. The cat is, most likely, already out of the bag.”

 

[ArmedProgrammer]

No problem they say, bring them here they say...

Again - bringing them here may give us better tools to combat this and PREVENT it from getting us. It's a lot more likely to hit the US population from some jackass who contracts it in Nigeria and gets on a plane to New york or something, than it is from 2 aid workers under the care of CDC/AMRIID/et al.

 

[Moparracer89]

This whole thing bothers me. Ebola is spread by contact with blood or bodily fluids. How hard is it to stop touching the infected people?

 

[ghuns]

Perhaps we should send all of Congress on a fact finding mission to western Africa.

 

[RockofStrength]

Perhaps we should send all of Congress on a fact finding mission to western Africa.

They are already suffering enough without another plague descending on their shores.

 

[88GT]

This whole thing bothers me. Ebola is spread by contact with blood or bodily fluids. How hard is it to stop touching the infected people?

First, in Africa, there's a lot of that. Poor sanitation and unprotected sex. What else is necessary to spread such a disease?

Second, in the case of treating this disease, lack of knowledge that it IS ebola at the time the patient seeks treatment and generally poorer hospital protocol for protective/preventive measures increases transmission.'

Third, there's growing evidence that the airborne droplets pose a risk of infection. If infection still requires direct fluid-to-fluid transmission, this isn't that much a risk increase. However, if the droplets can infect from inhalation and not direct contamination of the healthy person's bodily fluids, then probably more than 90% of the efforts to stop transmission in the hospitals, even with the knowledge that it was ebola, has been for naught. Airborne transmission has been pretty solidly confirmed, but only in non-human species. Transmission between humans has only been documented anecdotally, but there's enough concern that the CDC (I think) amended the protocol for institutional treatment of ebola just last week. Add to all of this the fact that contagious status occurs before full manifestation of the disease (and therefore full awareness of what it is), most people only think they have a cold or the flu when they head out in to public and expose others.

 

[Vigilant]

Again - bringing them here may give us better tools to combat this and PREVENT it from getting us. It's a lot more likely to hit the US population from some jackass who contracts it in Nigeria and gets on a plane to New york or something, than it is from 2 aid workers under the care of CDC/AMRIID/et al.

I don't disagree with this premise, but we have the means to combat this disease there, and we should. I understand that any given infected Mutumbo, Dick, or Jane, can hop a plane and get here, and THAT is what we should worry about preventing. Containment is the operative word, it can't be contained if we are moving it about jus because. I don't think we should voluntarily bring it here!

 

[hoosierdoc]

Unprotected sex isn't spreading this. Washing dead bodies for burial is a horrible tradition in light of this disease. Need to stop that, but how do you change tradition?

this thing can be contained with a lot of resources that we don't want to spend. We'll spend millions to send drones to bomb someone but won't spend any to save lives. I don't get it. Where is the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation in this?

 

[churchmouse]

Africa has brought us so many wonderful and incurable diseases.

If this gets out of hand and beyond will we shut down incoming from the dark continent?????

 

[88GT]

Unprotected sex isn't spreading this.

Just for clarification, I wasn't implying that unprotected was how ebola was spreading. Just that African cultural norms, such as unprotected sex, make the abolition of sharing bodily fluids highly unlikely.

 

[churchmouse]

Just for clarification, I wasn't implying that unprotected was how ebola was spreading. Just that African cultural norms, such as unprotected sex, make the abolition of sharing bodily fluids highly unlikely.

And has made the aids (HIV) virus a wonderful contribution to the entire world