Ebola outbreak - West Africa

[Shambles]

Yes an individual viking raid may only have a few hundred Vikings but they weren't the ones settling. The only part of... most of what we now think of as Britain (and bits of Ireland amongst other places) where Vikingish enough to speak... Danish and probably Swedish and Norwegian and Finnish and... whichever particular group happened to own or run the that bit of the country at the time. Was Vikingish enough that the only bit that wasn't part of the Danelaw was Cornwall and Devon area. Quite literally a toehold. Obviously there were pre-Viking Brits all over the place too but clearly not in the numbers to be able to cope with "a few hundred Vikings" - were they all fannies or were they just damn sure they would be on the wrong end of the raping and pillaging (again) if they tried that cos there were quite a few of the blighters around?

Fill the rest in yourself and try not to draw over the lines - or gloss over the blindingly obvious facts. At least 2000 years of fairly regular and fairly complete being invaded and ruled by foreign folk adds up. And their children have children and so on - exponentially up until today when we're so intermixed that is the only "true British blood" that exists. Mixed blood. And even then that's only 2000 years out of 10s - if not 100s or indeed 1000s - of thousands of years before the bit you're arbitrarily taking as a start point of some kind. Flimsy doesn't come close - your argument doesn't eixst let alone be a bit hard to see amongst the speculation and blind hope (or fear I suppose). No part of any of it makes sense and virtually nothing you've said so far is even true. If this mythical people are so very obvious to all then where are they? How much foreign makes you a funny foreigner and how much does it take before you become Romanian?

 

[BlindHelperMonkey]

its not even misanthropy, its common sense. why did an all time immigration boom coincide witH the deepest recession on record. why were national corporations encouraged/allowed to advertise vacancies abroad for which quaified nationals were excluded. why were tensions actively encouraged by the permitted ghettoisation of poor urban communities along with the inexcusabe-derogation of affordable housing and bare minimum services that may have gone some way to alleviate the perceived favoritism that not only exists, but festers and thrives down the bottom cramped recesses of the barrel-scraping fight for survival the liberal loons have no concept of , never mind capacity form. the actual comprehension of such matters being inversely proportional to the distance from the urban sprawl where the manifestations of need, envy and resentment naturally take root. you generally find that inverse proportion thing with family money and common sense too btw.we used to call it the paydar
yeah yeah, fuck you laughin at the back

 

[Shambles]

I want some of what you're on Mr S.

You just might at that. Is fine rantfood and also not bad in general.

(oh, and is 2-FA - really is much like decent speed from when speed had amphetamines in it)

 

[Ismene]

At least 2000 years of fairly regular and fairly complete being invaded and ruled by foreign folk adds up

Back up a minute shammy - the last time the UK was invaded was 1066. So that's at least a thousand years of no invasion or occupation out of the last 2000. I don't think that the romans shipped over millions of romans - occupation amounted to a few garrisons in strategic positions.

of thousands of years before the bit you're arbitrarily taking as a start point of some kind

I'm not convinced the UK was invaded that often. There's an awful lot of water to cross.

 

[Shambles]

The UK & Ireland weren't separated from the rest of the Continent for (very) large parts of history that we count as British. The earliest British burial site I'm aware of is one your man Barry actually did take DNA samples from (site is in the now mostly Celtic - which is not English and not really British as such due to originating on the Continent - somewhere in and around the currently French bit I think. That would be very long ago like when this first known Briton was buried in Wales 30000 years ago though so the entire concept is meamingless cos everybody who has ever lived here came from the Continent (until we noticed that other bit of the planet we'd missed and offloaded some of our "overpopulatio" (that golden era of 5m Brits you get all misty eyed about and they apparently thought was on overcrowded and mostly quite horrid place to live briefly and die poor - but that's okay cos by then the British folk had become foreigners who were a bit like us in some ways... due to being grandchildren and stuff - well they can be immigrants now...) cos there's no other way to get to the edge of Europe is there. Or did our ancestors literally grow on stout English oak trees or spring fully formed from what later became Lord's cricket pitch? It's entirely arbitrary down the "British Race" line and entirely subject to change on the cultural side. Some stuff sticks around but mostly nobody alive in Britain today would recognise the place even relatively recently in history let alone in really olde times. Wouildn't understand a word anybody was saying for 99% of that history either.

Last time Brirain was invaded was 1066 yes. Invaded with a big army who replaced most aspect of the previous peoples who'd temporarily run the country between later invaders and earlier ones and so on and so forth. Then we did see a sharp drop in immigration certainly - mainly cos there was nobody left who hadn't already invaded at some point so all the fun had gone really. Had a bit of black death and swapped bits of country back and forth with France (are French people also British - they were British back in good King Richard "Lionheart" Frenchbloke was... never to be found in Britain cos he hated the pkace and couldn't speak the language cos he was French which made him British cos they were the same thing... in places at some times and not at others. And vice-versa which makes you Frenchman with German ancestry and a stray Viking getting off with a Celt and a Pict and... all meaningless and only matters to the extent you decide to make it matter to you, That would be an opinion and that is just fine. What it is not is historically, factually or scientifically accurate which is also fine cos opinions don't need to be.

Oh, and when we stopped being invaded by conquering armies we settled down to the less stressful and more useful immigration and enigration stuff. Got quite good at it sometimes - really, really bad at it at other times. We've done rather well out of it overall given we're a mongrel nation of regularly beaten at everything folk with surprisingly inflated sense of self-importance - or mostly just looking down on people who had the bad taste to be born somewhere else.

 

[Ismene]

We (like all powerful nations) also built our current industry and wealth by long period of massive protectionism (and still protect many things eg CAP). We now bomb or threaten other countries who dare to try the same (like international law and taxes, the 'free market' only applies to the little people) - we've pulled up the ladder after we got up, and now we look down on countries that can't get to our level as if they're just inferior races (this eugenic/scientific racist thinking is a british export don't forget).

Lets forget about the euro-centric model then. Would you support mass immigration into areas currently occupied by indigenous tribes in South America for example? Would it be racist on the part of the tribes if they didn't want to share their land with a million foreigners? Is it for the best that those cultures become multicultural?

 

[Ismene]

Oh, and when we stopped being invaded by conquering armies we settled down to the less stressful and more useful immigration and enigration stuff. Got quite good at it sometimes - really, really bad at it at other times. We've done rather well out of it overall given we're a mongrel nation of regularly beaten at everything folk with surprisingly inflated sense of self-importance - or mostly just looking down on people who had the bad taste to be born somewhere else.

Lets get away from the England my england tone for a minute them shammy and consider somewhere else. As I've mentioned to Vurtual - what about mass immigration to areas of Peru occupied by monoculture natives? Would that be positive or negative? Can mass immigration ever be negative?

What about the native north americans when millions of white men went over there to colonise it - were they racist because they wanted some of the land to themselves? Or should they have welcomed the white man in the name of multiculturalism?

 

[ponch]

Its not the Romanian dentists you need to worry about, it's the ones from bongo bongo land. Vote UKIP, never visit a gay dentist again or your money back. Guaranteed.

 

[Vurtual]

I think you might be tying yourself in knots now vurt. Can we agree that a bloke living in West Africa is different in some sense to a bloke living in England? Speaks a different language for example? Nothing negative about that is there?

The knots are just about to get worse . Sorry if it sounded like i was calling you racist there - just saying the language was racist imo. Yes there is obviously a difference between people, but these are cultural differences and nothing to do with race in a physiological sense - i'm sure that's what you're talking about, but it so easily starts sounding racist-y in casual language (it can seem to be ascribing characteristics to someone as inherent to who/what they are as opposed to being a reflection of where they happen to be brought up - a subtle but important distinction psychologically). I agree that we should criticise cultural practices that we think are wrong - we do that anyway - and people who migrate here have to follow the laws of the land. Cultural differences should be kept separate from your actual physical ethnic/racial being though (though there is the suspicion that cultural stuff (like islam) is used as a foil for race by some (on both sides - consciously or otherwise) (of course all racism/xenophobia is itself probably a foil for some 'other' complex lurking away in the root of our subconsciousness (as is the pathetic internet lefty-loon that i am no doubt)). This isn't even thinking about how class intersects these race/culture boundaries (don't start me off...)

Describing a whole country as this or that is easy shorthand for discourse, and we all do it ('the uk did this, america did that, israel did the other'); and stereotypes are sometimes correct (eg germans are good at music software; brits do like getting drunk/high). But i think we should watch how that shorthand, which is just a blob of words/thoughts (culture?), affects how we may think about or act towards the real individual people that everyone is. We're each a beautiful singularity - we all start out a lovely likkle baby and believe the first row of bullshit we're told (or the one after that), and then react to how shit or not life happens to be for us - we're all in the exact same existential boat - the piffling difference of 'race' has got nothing on the variability of the individual human mind ('race' depending how you want to define it is about as useful to understanding any one individual person as ear hair length or something) [sorry for the patronising hypomanic hippy nonsense - i can't help meself - blame mexy].

New discoveries in genetics are suggesting to me that linear genetic heritage (and therefore race) needs to be considered alongside active genetic interaction in realtime (or 'culture' in a sense) when considering (human) evolution - this along with complexity science generally will turn science (and deterministic ideas like racial purity) on its head in the near future i reckon (the lid's being kept on a bit because all the biotech products/government programmes already sold on the basis of the old genetic-determinist thinking).

look at the anglo saxon race for an example - it doesn't even exist, just a cultural/language adoption by celtic welsh people

Dunno about that - apparantly the genetics of english people are pretty much unchanged for the last 5000 years. All that "a nation of immigrants" stuff is bollocks. That's something Bryan Sykes an Oxford professor of genetics says - not the BNP.

Yeah that's sort of what i was saying - the anglo-saxon race doesn't exist - it's just 'welsh' people who adopted the germanic culture after the roman one we previously adopted broke down - but our 'welsh' (cyrmru/comrade is better, welsh means foreigner) genetic heritage had little specific influence on how the cymraeg/celtic, roman and germanic cultures intermingled to create our culture. The point is that vibrant interesting 'races' are the ones that have a load of cultural intermixing, even when the genetics is largely unchanged. Culture is separate from physiological race - it's just words and shit. Shove one bunch of words and shit and mix it up with three others and amazing new ideas often pop up (eg alexandria/10th century baghdad/paris/london/new york). The genetic differences between races are inconsequential compared to culture. I think it's best to think of race in the same way as culture - nebulous, chaotic and non-deterministic (and therefore not much use as an absolute)

and if we're talking cluelessness

You seem to be taking cluelessness about Ebola as something negative. I don't see it as negative - it just is. It's no use pretending that they're experts on the latest virus theories when they arn't.

Agreed it just is; but i don't think it's accurate across the whole country was my point (there are cities and stuff), just like the brit's cluelessness (cos there's us (we think)). And that cluelessness seems to be common or garden peasant-based cluelessness which could be solved if the world's economic rules were changed. We (humanity) could share what we've learned/got around the world if we wanted to - the elites just have a hubris/ideology around being 'leaders' (conveniently/understandably), and fight against what will happen in the end naturally (ie more just distribution of resources in a new stable self-organised system (if we survive the phase change/revolution). Anarchy is order (A) (it's supposed to go in a circle like (c) (oh that didn't either)

...

BlindHelperMonkey: good god this guy must be the whitest, self-flagellation-obsessed, misinformed loony, limp-wristed, gap-year-syndrome, middle-class suburban imbecile ive seen on here for quite a while. well done there, youve out crackheid'ed old ewan-mcgreasy himself. quite a feat

Why thank you kind sir. Would you happen to know when this income and education you've ascribed to me is going to arrive? You don't have to not be poor to read books like (just feckless). And as i'm not wealthy (except in the sense that poor in this country is wealthy globally), it's not self-flagellation, it's flagellation of a load of rich bastards that run my country with a sense of privelige. I happen to have more alleigance to poor people of all countries than to the elites of mine or anyone elses - birds of a feather (we are many, they are few, etc) [edit: i'll do you newer post later so i don't double post (i'll try and make it shorter]

[sorry about late and rambling reply - i stand by nothing i've written, it's all bollocks etc - i should have done this post in about five sentences (i go on like this in real life too)

 

[Shambles]

Lets get away from the England my england tone for a minute them shammy and consider somewhere else. As I've mentioned to Vurtual - what about mass immigration to areas of Peru occupied by monoculture natives? Would that be positive or negative? Can mass immigration ever be negative?

What about the native north americans when millions of white men went over there to colonise it - were they racist because they wanted some of the land to themselves? Or should they have welcomed the white man in the name of multiculturalism?

It's quite a stretch to compare the two quite as directly as that but I'd probably say that given that such peoples are essentially an endagangered subset of peoples who mostly all got killed off by catching colds and the clap from Europeans marching about claiming stuff, naming stuff and nicking all their best shiny things (and burning their entire written culture and history other than (I think) half a dozen or so known surviving books that the Spaniards (but could and probably would have happened whichever country won the race to smash and grab and leave 'em with summat to remember you by... for as long as there were enough people to know there once were lots of people around all over the place doing all kindsa stuff rather than scant handfuls of small tribes who "forgot" most of history cos the church didn't like the funny foreign writing and burnt the lot. It's what Jesus would have wanted - that's why he gave 'em all nasty diseases they had no immunity to presumably. Is quite scarily easy to see just how easy you can make it on yourself when you have the lord on your side actually.

Digression aside, we are a (very) rich Western populous nation with a (very) long history of ever-shifting populations, language and culture. Extinction is unlikely no matter how many goats get left to tend the villages back home. It would - quite literally - amount to deliberate extinction of those peoplle if this arbitrary million people did all turn up one day (although they'd actually mostly just starve to death cos wouldn't have a clue how to survive let alone thrive). The tribesfolk would actually be swamped out of existence because they would no longer be able to get enough food to survive and they're quite good at it generally. Once the huge populations were wiped out (up to 90% of an entire continent - one bigger and more populous and (in some areas) as advanced and cosmopolitan as any part of Europe and probably quite a bit more so than virtually anywhere in the "Old World" - completely wiped out in just a few years. The type of tribes you mean also often don't have resistance to common Western disesases cos they don't go to Europe on their hols and rarely get many visitors cos... welll you'd have a job finding the address I suspect.

Whether starvation, disease or even slow assimilation through interbreeding, this would be a deliberate and avoidable act of genetic annihilation. You and I may be Heinz when it comes to genetics but that is quite handy cos we've picked up all kindsa handy stuff from all over cos we are the descendents of all those that managed to not die of plague or all the other reasons people didn't expect to see much beyond their 40th if they were lucky - most didn't make 4 let alone 40. Extremely isolated communities are fundamentally different in the sense they actually are still rather - or indeed very - similar to their fairly distant ancestors compared to any other nation I can think of - as close as any people could ever come to this imaginary "racial purity" that doen't exist in any society that hasn't been almost completely isolated for a very long time by Western - and indeed Asian and almost anywhere you care to name's standards anyway. Also culturally very specific and somewhat rigid and frozen in time comparatively because there's so llittle possibility of exchange of knowlesge and ideas beyond the village that is all generations have ever known to exist in some cases.

Really not at all comparable but I think it's the least we can do to let those people decide whether they want to remain in the village, whether they want to interact with the outside or just keep to themselves doing their thing with nobody much notciing other than illegal loggers and the like shooting a few now and then cos they can and cos they'll be wanting to chop down their larder soon enough anyway so may as well start as you mean to go on. If they (any particular individual or group or entire tribal nation) want to sell off the homestead and go spunk it in las Vegas they can do that too. Don't think we have any bizniz deciding for them considering why they are in the situation they are in. No it wasn't a deliberate genocide initially cos nobody had yet imagined teenytiny invisible things could exist let alone kill many, many millions of people almost overnight. When they came back and found the place mostly empty was when the deliberate genocide started. Being "allowed" to not be wiped out doesn't seem a lot to ask for in context, but hypothetically that would be an incredibly mean thing to do and serve no purpose whatsoever and acively harm an ecosystem they're much better at looking after than McDonald's cow factories are when they buy up vast swathes of land cos we all know soy bean is a lot more valuable than people - and foreigners at that no less.

Those would be some reasons why it would obviously be both negative and futile to attempt mass-migration to a place like that. If we'd only been invaded enough to leave tiny, isolated pockets of farfllung people who didn't know the other ones existed let alone anybody else entil one day a million people arrived I'd say that would be negative and short-sighted to say the very least. Although mostly deliberate and complete genocide is a bit extreme no matter how forieign you may or may not be. That's not our sutation though cos we're quite the other way around really and positively thrive on migration in both directions.

 

[Vurtual]

Lets forget about the euro-centric model then. Would you support mass immigration into areas currently occupied by indigenous tribes in South America for example? Would it be racist on the part of the tribes if they didn't want to share their land with a million foreigners? Is it for the best that those cultures become multicultural?

I did state clearly that i don't agree with mass immigration as is, which is a neoliberal policy (though i wouldn't turn anyone away personally (but i'm not the government) - people don't want to have to come to places like ours, they want their place to be that good too (or maybe everyone (including us) having about half of what we have would be enough). The people who make the immigration happen and benefit from it are the same corporate elites that the politics of immigration fear and division gives succor to (a brucie bonus for them) - they tell us to blame the immigrants so we don't blame them.

I'd rather we sort out a fair distribution of resources so they wouldn't have to leave their ravaged countries in the first place. Pie in the sky maybe, but it will happen in the end or we'll die (by the laws of evolution)

 

[Vurtual]

its not even misanthropy, its common sense. why did an all time immigration boom coincide witH the deepest recession on record. why were national corporations encouraged/allowed to advertise vacancies abroad for which quaified nationals were excluded. why were tensions actively encouraged by the permitted ghettoisation of poor urban communities along with the inexcusabe-derogation of affordable housing and bare minimum services that may have gone some way to alleviate the perceived favoritism that not only exists, but festers and thrives down the bottom cramped recesses of the barrel-scraping fight for survival the liberal loons have no concept of , never mind capacity form. the actual comprehension of such matters being inversely proportional to the distance from the urban sprawl where the manifestations of need, envy and resentment naturally take root. you generally find that inverse proportion thing with family money and common sense too btw.we used to call it the paydar
yeah yeah, fuck you laughin at the back

Are you blaming the recession on immigrants and not banking fraud? Do you know that you're describing the results of thatcherism/neoliberalism? - Financialise the economy (with guarantee of periodic boom and bust) and reduce manufacturing jobs to curtail union power, causing high unemployment; discipline the workforce to make them 'flexible' by deregulating; and drive wages down by encouraging immigration (with the bonus of some added fear politics) - and then we're supposed to have loads of growth which trickles down; except it doesn't, it trickles up (and they knew that (except the dim innocent ones)).

If you're against neoliberalism i'm with you all the way.

(and i'd be happy if you could tell me specifically how i'm misinformed (rather than insults (status enhancing though they may be ))

 

[Ismene]

It's quite a stretch to compare the two quite as directly as that but I'd probably say that given that such peoples are essentially an endagangered subset of peoples who mostly all got killed off by catching colds and the clap.

Well lets assume they've gone to America in their millions and simply done it peaceably. Forget the diseases etc. Lets assume 600,000 east europeans move into isolated areas of Peru because they can do peaceful work there. They're harmless but it means the Peru native culture is replaced by Polish Delis etc. Is the native american culture worth preserving in and of itself? Or would multiculturalism have benefitted them? I just think the debate here has been poisoned so much by this IDS/hard tory right view of the english - they're all lazy and feckless, watching Jeremy Kyle, Vicky Pollard types and the east europeans will work twice as hard for half as much money etc. The idea that the farts of the Bullingdon Club is the sweetest fresh air that the poor english can breathe.

Really not at all comparable but I think it's the least we can do to let those people decide whether they want to remain in the village, whether they want to interact with the outside

The villagers can do their own thing but obviously as the human population skyrockets they have less space to do it in. Their way of life alters simply through size of human population.

What if the mass immigration brought "benefits"? What if instead of living in tents the immigrants worked so hard they built comfortable houses for everyone? Would that be good for the native americans? What if they brought guns that made it possible to hunt animals more efficiently? So the native americans didn't go hungry in the winter? Would that be positive or negative? What if they could undercut native american blanket makers and sell their own blankets for a third of the price? Would that be positive?

 

[Ismene]

I did state clearly that i don't agree with mass immigration as is, which is a neoliberal policy (though i wouldn't turn anyone away personally (but i'm not the government) - people don't want to have to come to places like ours, they want their place to be that good too (or maybe everyone (including us) having about half of what we have would be enough)

Interesting that you think it's neo-liberal - that's not how it's sold is it. The EU assures us that it's simply "free movement of labour". That they're "freeing" the poor to migrate. Putting the word "free" before something is a tried and trusted way of making something shit sound good.

I suppose if they keep emigrating to new countries then their own countries are never going to get any better tho. Presumably that's partly why the health service in India is so shit - because all the doctors would rather make more wedge abroad.

Have we assraped this thread enough and should we go back to Ebola?

 

[Vurtual]

Interesting that you think it's neo-liberal - that's not how it's sold is it. The EU assures us that it's simply "free movement of labour". That they're "freeing" the poor to migrate. Putting the word "free" before something is a tried and trusted way of making something shit sound good.

I suppose if they keep emigrating to new countries then their own countries are never going to get any better tho. Presumably that's partly why the health service in India is so shit - because all the doctors would rather make more wedge abroad.

Have we assraped this thread enough and should we go back to Ebola?

That is neoliberalism: liberal in the economic sense, 'freeing' the market (so the people who already have a head start can dominate (and convince themselves it's cos they're superior rather than lucky/priveliged)). We don't get asked to vote on neoliberalism (who even can define it?) - it's as if it's science and we just have to accept it (it's very much not science) - all the main political parties accept it after all, and you don't want to be weird do you?

Don't get me wrong, i'm all for universal free migration of people - people should go where the fuck they want to as far as i'm concerned (nearly everyone boringly wants to stay right where they are anyway (unless it's really shit). But i can separate that noble goal of human freedom from the business reality of mass immigration. Modern mass immigration is just 'outsourcing' by other means.

(ahem, um, ebola

 

[Shambles]

Well lets assume they've gone to America in their millions and simply done it peaceably. Forget the diseases etc. Lets assume 600,000 east europeans move into isolated areas of Peru because they can do peaceful work there. They're harmless but it means the Peru native culture is replaced by Polish Delis etc. Is the native american culture worth preserving in and of itself? Or would multiculturalism have benefitted them? I just think the debate here has been poisoned so much by this IDS/hard tory right view of the english - they're all lazy and feckless, watching Jeremy Kyle, Vicky Pollard types and the east europeans will work twice as hard for half as much money etc. The idea that the farts of the Bullingdon Club is the sweetest fresh air that the poor english can breathe.

I agree on that last part but hypotheticals like these don't really work so well without context. In the example you give there's no obvious reason why these Eastern Europeans would necessarily replace the indiginous culture. You say they move to isolated areas. There are presumably far more than 600000 native Peruvians in all of Peru so to actually replace that culture would take a concerted effort with the Peruvians doing nothing to continue their usual ways of doing things. That's just not how the world works. Presumably you're meaning this as an analogy of sorts to Eastern Europeans migrating to the UK. There is precisely zero chance of British culture being replaced by Eastern European culture any more than would happen in Peru. There's a Chinese takeaway on the High Street here. I still don't speak Mandarin.

Is the native American (I presume you meant Peruvian but it matters not - any indiginous culture will be fine for the sake of argument) culture worth preserving? As much as any other culture is worth preserving. That is, not preserved in aspic for all eternity no. Culture and custom changes over time or it stagnates. Whilst I'm sure any given society has cultural elements well worth preserving at any given stage of its history there's also always going to be things of no import - and indeed things which would probably be best off consigning to historical footnotes at best. Multiculturalism and migration of peoples enriches cultures, never replaces.

I wonder if you're confusing conquest with migration? Even then it's hard to completely replace a culture. Can certainly do massive amounts of damage to it but difficult to actually fully replace. Damage - perhaps permananent and irreperable damage - can certainly be done though and this is why conquest is bad whilst migration is good. The former seeks to destroy or replace existing cultures, the latter seeks to integrate, broaden and enrich. And long may it continue.

Really not at all comparable but I think it's the least we can do to let those people decide whether they want to remain in the village, whether they want to interact with the outside

The villagers can do their own thing but obviously as the human population skyrockets they have less space to do it in. Their way of life alters simply through size of human population.

This is true for sure. However, you seem to be taking it to illogical extremes again. The population has been growing at quite a pace this last century. It's set to tail off in the not-too-distant for the planet as a whole but there's obviously wide variation from country to country (and indeed various subdivisions of each country). Most Western nations are experiencing a decline in native population. Without immigration this leads to major problems - far too many old people to be supported by native-born younger people. We could start a programme of enforced euthanasia, or perhaps just leave people to sink or swim by whatever means they are capable of when they get past working age. Alternatively, we can appreciate immigrant populations stepping in to close the gap so society as a whole can improve its overall standard of living.

What if the mass immigration brought "benefits"? What if instead of living in tents the immigrants worked so hard they built comfortable houses for everyone? Would that be good for the native americans? What if they brought guns that made it possible to hunt animals more efficiently? So the native americans didn't go hungry in the winter? Would that be positive or negative? What if they could undercut native american blanket makers and sell their own blankets for a third of the price? Would that be positive?

Again, you're missing out the bit about the vicious and vehement suppression of those Native American cultures by the immigrant population. When was the last time the Polish Plumber's Guild decided to sterilise native-born Brits en masse without their knowledge or permission? Or separate children from parents and force them to go to Polish-only schools? As I said, the situations you are trying to compare are not comparable.

Leaving aside the historical facts of the matter, the situation you describe could easily be a positive one. It was all the nasty, underhanded, downright morally repugnant stuff that we all did on the side that buggered that for the poor sods.

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

Anybody know if this is being called an outbreak of EBV-zaire, or if it has been classed as a new strain? there is some 2-3% genetic difference between this ebolavirus isolate and ebola zaire, the worst of the lot. EBV-zaire has a ~90% fatality rate, with ebola sudan its much less, sometimes as low as 50, but typically 50 to 70 percent lethality rate, whereas ebola tai forest and the ugandan strain, bundibugyo ebolavirus haven't really gone storming round the place causing outbreaks, only isolated infection/infection localized clusters of a few victims thus far. Ebola reston is an oddball. Infectious in man, asymptomatic yet induces seroconversion post infection clearance, with antibody production which will neutralize at least reston EBV. Worryingly, it can be airborne, unlike the other ebola strains (not counting aerosolization of bodily fluid from patients directly). A live virus-free antisera could maybe perhaps be of use, and producible in immunocyte-containing human cell line culture, or even used to innoculate volunteers.

It looks like seroconverted plasma from those who have thus far survived ebola is of some use in neutralizing the virus in vivo, not sure how widely, if at all such sera are polyvalent against multiple strains. If so, then reston EBV, I have to wonder if its antigens could be used to immunize patients against the deadly strains. Although there is the question of reston ebolavirus being of asian origin, whereas the rest are african. I bet there is significant genetic drift. IMO reston EBV should be studied very closely indeed, to discover just what, on the protein/gene expression level is lacking that results in it not being a causative agent of haemorrhagic fever, with the intent of producing an antisense oligonucleotide that could be packaged into a harmless (not filovirus) virus species directed against the specific intracellular RNA sequences coding for the seven (or refined down to target the aetiology of its attack against blood vessel tissues) proteins, or something vital, like the RNA polymerase encoded by the ebolavirus genome, in the hope of impeding viral transcription/translation and thus replication.

But reston most certainly kept the hell away from (as a live infectious virus) anyone who could be infected with the african strains. Hybridization in vivo to result in an airborne, deadly strain would be seriously bad news for everybody concerned.

Just my thoughts on the current outbreak, and virus in general, ideas for how to target it. AFAIK antisera from surviving patients who have recovered from this ebola outbreak have been used to treat patients with active disease.

 

[Si Dread]

Anybody know if this is being called an outbreak of EBV-zaire, or if it has been classed as a new strain? there is some 2-3% genetic difference between this ebolavirus isolate and ebola zaire, the worst of the lot. EBV-zaire has a ~90% fatality rate, with ebola sudan its much less, sometimes as low as 50, but typically 50 to 70 percent lethality rate, whereas ebola tai forest and the ugandan strain, bundibugyo ebolavirus haven't really gone storming round the place causing outbreaks, only isolated infection/infection localized clusters of a few victims thus far. Ebola reston is an oddball. Infectious in man, asymptomatic yet induces seroconversion post infection clearance, with antibody production which will neutralize at least reston EBV. Worryingly, it can be airborne, unlike the other ebola strains (not counting aerosolization of bodily fluid from patients directly). A live virus-free antisera could maybe perhaps be of use, and producible in immunocyte-containing human cell line culture, or even used to innoculate volunteers.

It looks like seroconverted plasma from those who have thus far survived ebola is of some use in neutralizing the virus in vivo, not sure how widely, if at all such sera are polyvalent against multiple strains. If so, then reston EBV, I have to wonder if its antigens could be used to immunize patients against the deadly strains. Although there is the question of reston ebolavirus being of asian origin, whereas the rest are african. I bet there is significant genetic drift. IMO reston EBV should be studied very closely indeed, to discover just what, on the protein/gene expression level is lacking that results in it not being a causative agent of haemorrhagic fever, with the intent of producing an antisense oligonucleotide that could be packaged into a harmless (not filovirus) virus species directed against the specific intracellular RNA sequences coding for the seven (or refined down to target the aetiology of its attack against blood vessel tissues) proteins, or something vital, like the RNA polymerase encoded by the ebolavirus genome, in the hope of impeding viral transcription/translation and thus replication.

But reston most certainly kept the hell away from (as a live infectious virus) anyone who could be infected with the african strains. Hybridization in vivo to result in an airborne, deadly strain would be seriously bad news for everybody concerned.

Just my thoughts on the current outbreak, and virus in general, ideas for how to target it. AFAIK antisera from surviving patients who have recovered from this ebola outbreak have been used to treat patients with active disease.

what a crock of shit, why are you distracting the folk above from their discussion on xenophobia? You clearly havent got a clue Limpy! Joke obviously, you seem about the only person here truly aware of the risks of this illness in dense cities/societies. A Nigerian man was admitted & isolated yesterday in Alicante, dsiplaying symtoms of Ebola. Could be anyting, but the reaction islotating the victim is indicative of the fear of this illness spreading in Europe. It seems almomst inevitable to me, hope I'm wrong.

Good news that anti-bodies & other moves to resist the infection are being explored.

I read alot about this sort of thing in the wake of Sept 11th bcause of the fear of Chemical/Biological attack next, instead of airliner missiles. The US even tries to "weaponise" (deliberately rendering them aireborne is they can!) illnesses such as Ebola & Marburg in order to use them as aerosoles from the air to disable armies of citizens. The chances of some hybrid of Ebola & some similar, but more trsnsmissable Haemoragic fever & creating a much more devestating & uncontrollable illness are worrying. While American scientists attempt this sort of thing in Labs, the natural world is quite capable of the same & the process is completely unpredictable.

This isn't paranoia, this is possible.

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

Possible? its been done. The soviet/russian biopreparat HAS weaponized hybrid derivatives of ebola, mainly one with smallpox, creating a confluent haemorrhagic smallpox varient. Smallpox has likewise been fucked with in this manner, (note, its NOT a virus, but a spore-forming bacterium) to create an agent dubbed 'veepox', by splicing its genome with venezuelan equine encephalitis virus.

Charming or what? I'd be surprised if they hadn't experimented with the likes of dengue, yellow and lassa fever, as well as hantavirus and/or hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (dubbed sin nombre virus).

And the russkis have experimented with anthrax itself, with a test release on the Urstyurt plateau. An informer has stated that on OUTSIDE these bioweapon facilities, speficially one producing weaponized anthrax, organism levels were scarily high. I'd think with a virus like one of the filoviridae, excluding of course restonvirus and quevavirus which do not appear pathogenic, or at least not dangerous to humans, that they would take greater care, although having no protective DNA (or RNA of course in the case of viruses having an RNA genome) repair mechanisms nor cell wall, nor spore forming capacity, would be denatured much more quickly by sunlight, although I bet weaponization technology has been looking at ways to address this if indeed it hasn't already happened.

And yes, I am probably pretty well aware of such things, I've read up quite a lot on chemical and biological warfare agents and technologies, and to a lesser extent, nuclear weapons and related things like isotope enrichment technology (not mind you with any desire for my own nukes, I don't approve of the mass damage to wildlife habitats done by nuclear weapons and contamination of the environment by fallout)

IMO we ARE going to see ebola over here. And I figure on it eventually possibly hybridizing with Cuevavirus, as this is a filovirus recently discovered and found on the european continent, including france, although apparently like EBOV-reston not pathological in humans, although I wouldn't be surprised if like reston it can infect. It doesn't appear to produce haemorrhagic fever though. Fuck knows what a hybrid between the two, or between it and marburg virus would do.

The incubation period before first symptoms of ebola, is long enough for an infected, but nevertheless asymptomatic individual to fly over here. And IMO the aggressive isolation procedures of the ebola patients shipped to the US, like that doctor, is justified. Whilst its reservoir appears to be fruitbats, which might mean it doesn't end up entrenched as an endemic pathogen here or in the US, still, an infected individual could easily infect a lot of people via close contact and then close contact of infected people with secondary hosts, travel before aggressive efforts to trace and isolate possible secondary transfer victims before the disease is identified for what it is, get on planes, and reproduce the same elsewhere, causing multiple 'hotspot' localized outbreaks.

Its coming, the only question is when, IMO, and what we DO about it before it gets here to be able to treat the virus.

In a remote african village in congo, gabon, etc. etc. then its probably going to burn itself out by wiping out every host it infects, aside from a few that might recover, but in a dense metropolitan city, it is not going to be pretty.

Xenophobia? no. Not at all. But it would be a great idea to carpet bomb africa with mustard gas or VX and wipe the all the bloody foreign bastards out before any of the plague-ridden fuckers get over here (sorry, I had to)


However, testing possible cures directly at the site of african outbreaks would indeed be a good idea.

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

An urban outbreak in a civilized country of ebola, marburg or ravn virus would be catastrophic IMO. Best we use the existing outbreak in africa as a test lab for cures than we let it get over here and remain unable to help those infected and contain its spread.