Ebola outbreak - West Africa

[Si Dread]

We've not been "playing catchup" at all. This is not happening here. We haven't caught up with anything, and we don't need to, because there is nothing to catch up with.

well I was referring to a "we" I thought quite clearly applied to humankind as a species fighting a pathogen kinda "we", rather than a "we lot in Kingston, oooh, we're all terrified it's going to hit us hard, we are".

So given that this is the widest spread of contamination through one outbreak, effecting more countries & killing & infecting more people than ever before by far, some of them for the first time through air travel I would say we are certainly playing catch up with this one.

Dunno if this has been posted, Air-borne Ebola. I'm not sounding quite as paranoid as this guy, he's a bit the "apocalypse sruvivor type" - http://scgnews.com/ebola-what-youre-not-being-told

 

[Shambles]

"We" certainly could be seen as playing catchup as far as giving a shit about stuff like ebola is concerned in general. As long as by "we" you mean Big Pharma who give nary a shit about a few rural Africans dying a horrible death every now and then. The only way they'll ever consider attempting to find drugs to combat such diseases is if/when they start to affect rich Western nations who can afford to pay full price for patented drugs. The more conspiratorially minded may wonder if this is why such risky actions as bring infected people directly into the heart of said rich Western nation may be related to this. If we're doing tinfoilery at least keep it somewhat bounded by reality. Bioweaponisation seems highly unlikely - also not very practical - but would certainly cause panic. Such things only have real chances of making an impact if properly planned and organised. Which is generally best achieved by very rich corporations and government lackeys who have no need to fear cos they've already created the antidote and it ain't going any further than themselves until enough people they consider important enough (ie rich enough) are clamouring for it in abject terror.

Having said that, I suspect it's still mostly sheer stupidity rather than some massive international conspiracy... although history tends to go the latter way no matter how unlikely it seems at the time 8)

 

[ponch]

The BNP have jumped on this now. The blacks are coming to murder europe with their ebola

 

[Shambles]

Well it's obvious really. Those dastardly 'blacks' went and gave themselves ebola purely to infect nice, middle-class, white aid workers so completely unrelated (arguably) nice, middle-class, white politicians could bring them back home... to America (ANP?) to risk creating an outbreak over there which could potentially eventually make it back to Blighty. It's plain as day when you really think about it 8)

 

[parttime crackhead]

well I was referring to a "we" I thought quite clearly applied to humankind as a species fighting a pathogen kinda "we", rather than a "we lot in Kingston, oooh, we're all terrified it's going to hit us hard, we are".

Sorry for misunderstanding, but it wasn't quite clear at all.

We you said "we should be cancelling flights" immediately before it appeared like you were talking about we as in the country rather than humankind as a species cancelling flights. So it would be easy to assume you were to talking about the same we in the following sentence.

 

[Ismene]

I remember reading somewhere that calling chemical and bio weapons "WMDs" in the same breath as nuclear was horseshit. I think they said if you dropped a thousand kilos of sarin from the air across the full size of a densely populated city you might kill between 300 and 10,000 people depending on the wind.

And we all know how the "deadly" anthrax bollocks turned out to be a complete myth.

But maybe Ebola would be worse - thanks to the wonders of multiculturalism I presume we will soon find out I never knew about this roaring trade in fucking bushmeat in London - importing monkey brain for lunch.

 

[parttime crackhead]

"Close the borders! The darkies are bringing in ebola!"


Is that the latest shout? Get a grip. No they're not.

How long before some fuckwitted MP stands up in parliament and says something along those lines?


& monkey brains for breakfast? How about cow's tongue for tea? You wouldn't catch me doing anything but throwing up if someone was eating monkey brains, but I'd do the same with jellied eels.

 

[Ismene]

How do you know the 'darkies' arn't bringing it here ptch? The asians/east europeans have done quite a good job of bringing tuberculosis/hepatitis B/HIV etc here. Nothing much we can do about it - there's fuck-all testing done on people arriving. They arrive heaving with TB and are thrown right into a densely populated urban area.

Hopefully with a better knowledge of basic ideas like washing your hands we won't have such high levels of infection as west africa.

 

[Shambles]

There's a fine line between being realistic about things and confusing EADD threads with Daily Heil comment sections, Issy. Whilst the point about no health checks on people entering the UK may or may not have merit, there's a whiff of the UKIPs or even borderline (hehe) BNPs about it too. It almost sounds as though you are suggesting people are deliberately "coming over here with their funny foreign infections" in some of what you've said. It's not like this is a recent problem - we managed to wipe out most of the population of entire countries doing the same ourselves in the past (and indeed had it done to us too). Not always entirely by accident either. I'm not saying you don't have a point there at all but your answer to it sounds more or less like we should just close the borders to anybody from "the wrong type of country". We don't test UK nationals coming back from far-flung foreign travel either so it's not just immigrant populations that are potential risks for bringing in disease is it.

 

[parttime crackhead]

I'm not saying you don't have a point there at all but your answer to it sounds more or less like we should just close the borders to anybody from "the wrong type of country".

I don't think Ismene is claiming they are deliberately bringing diseases over but that above line is basically what he wants. Init, Issy?

 

[Ismene]

We don't test UK nationals coming back from far-flung foreign travel either so it's not just immigrant populations that are potential risks for bringing in disease is it.

I don't know whether the two are the same risk tho Shammy - does spending 2 weeks in Borneo for someone familiar with health care/health risks really equate to someone who has spent 25 years in Romania with zero health care/knowledge where TB is entrenched and rampant? What do you do if you get TB in Romania? My guess is you just live with it and pass it on to whoever is around you.

I don't think Ismene is claiming they are deliberately bringing diseases over but that above line is basically what he wants. Init, Issy?

I can't really see the logic in letting in millions when there's no houses/work/school places etc. The bringing back of diseases we got rid of 60 years ago is just one more thing I'm not too keen on.

 

[Bearlove]

Ebola is (from what I understand) a great risk if your travelling. Person to person contact, lives outside the body etc - Yeah I'm pretty OCD when I travel and clean my tray, headrest, arms, seat belt etc with hand wash but then you have the people handing you stuff, the randoms sneezing and coughing etc. Certain countries actually scan you on arrival to test you temperature - if your ok you get in, they do not test you on departure.

I think within a few days this will turn into a world wide emergency alert.

 

[Shambles]

What about people who've lived in Romania for 25 years who have excellent healthcare knowledge, Issy? Do we let those in? They do have hospitals and doctors and nurses and universities in Romania dontcha know. They have a lot of poverty too I know and disease and poverty often go hand in hand for a variety of reasons. This is not the same thing as saying Romanians know nothing about health care so they'll just sit there all infected in (presumably somewhat less than) blissful ignorance. I hear they even have electricity and running water in parts of the big cities these days 8)

 

[Vurtual]

IMO we can stop people coming to our country when we give back some of the wealth we've extracted from theirs, and stop fucking those countries up stopping them from having democracy because it fucks with our mafia-like 'business interests'. We do all that and they won't need to come here anyway.

Similarly if we're worried about how shit-poor countries have high disease rates, stop making them shit-poor by the same neo-imperialist policies

(imagine what africa would be like if we didn't kill people like Patrice lumumba and support the cunts we do eg in the congo or rwanda; imagine what south/central america would be like if we hadn't supported all those facsists (or killed off liberation theology); imagine what the middle east would be like if we left nasser and mossadeq alone - the world isn't as chaotic as it is by accident - neo-imperialism is still the prime cause for lots of it)

 

[Shambles]

Quite. It's easy to gloss over historical fact when it wasn't us (as individuals) that directly did it. And even if we go the route of the past being the past even that (weak) argument doesn't excuse the ongoing issues you point out. Putting up walls and barriers and trying to keep scary things (scary cos they may encourage having to think about such issues) at arm's length never works. The only solution to these type of problems is to stop creating them and perhaps consider doing something constructive rather than closing our eyes so they can't see us and come give us nasty diseases or whatever.

 

[Allein]

Ebola is (from what I understand) a great risk if your travelling. Person to person contact, lives outside the body etc - Yeah I'm pretty OCD when I travel and clean my tray, headrest, arms, seat belt etc with hand wash but then you have the people handing you stuff, the randoms sneezing and coughing etc. Certain countries actually scan you on arrival to test you temperature - if your ok you get in, they do not test you on departure.

I think within a few days this will turn into a world wide emergency alert.

It's my understanding that you have to have close person to person contact with someone in the later stages of the infection to become infected yourself. These people would likely be hemorrhaging blood, it seems the likelihood of a major outbreak in any country with a good medical / general infrastructure is highly unlikely as sufferers would quickly be isolated.

I guess if your travelling you might be one of the few unlucky ones but it isn't like a flu epidemic where the virus is airborne and you can be spreading the condition whilst relatively well.

So stay away from ill looking folk with blood running out of every orifice and you'll be fine.....this probably sums up many a local town centre at about 2am on a saturday

 

[Ismene]

A doctor I was listening to the other day said he'd sit beside someone with ebola. I think you need close contact with them in the later stages of infection to actually catch it.

What about people who've lived in Romania for 25 years who have excellent healthcare knowledge, Issy? Do we let those in? I hear they even have electricity and running water in parts of the big cities these days 8)

I suppose they'd be a better bet than the ones with TB. I didn't think the health care system in Romania was that sparkling tho - last I read it was in total collapse. And the last Romanian I read said "The only thing left in my village when the border controls lift will be the goat" - they had a picture of the goat stood there tragically alone. They don't have electricity or running water in those villages - you shit in a hole at the bottom of the field.

IMO we can stop people coming to our country when we give back some of the wealth we've extracted from theirs

Did the general population of England see any of that wealth tho? Or was it big oil corporations who got the bulk of it?

imagine what the middle east would be like if we left nasser and mossadeq alone

I thought Saddam had introduced better health care and education than Nasser ever did in Egypt before the Iran-Iraq war.

 

[Vurtual]

...Did the general population of England see any of that wealth tho? Or was it big oil corporations who got the bulk of it?

imagine what the middle east would be like if we left nasser and mossadeq alone

I thought Saddam had introduced better health care and education than Nasser ever did in Egypt before the Iran-Iraq war.

Of course the general population saw some of that wealth, though obviously the top kept most of it - but that's irrelevant to the injustice - it's our responsibility to get rid of them (which we wouldn't because we still benefit from that wealth). The wealth of this country is based on the industrial revolution that we fuelled by reducing west bengal's economy from a rich producer of high quality finished textiles to producer of raw materials for our mills oop north (before we turned up bengal was doing very nicely thank you, and could well have had it's own industrial revoultion). We are now the ~5th richest country in the world because of that head start based on pinching wealth and piracy (of course we innovated as well, but bengal might have too if we hadn't come along). Obviously most of the wealth is at the top, but the average british person is still much better off than average people in less wealthy countries (and so we all owe them).

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).

Saddam's secular tendency wouldn't have existed without nasser (via the baath party). For all the troubles of the baath party, they have been a force for secularism and a modicum of state-socialism. I think you can tell that nasserism left alone might have lead to better regimes in the ME by how much US and UK wanted to crush it (and support saudi nutters in its place). Mossadeq was the more important example though - if the Shah hadn't been a constant threat in the ME (alongside israel), developments could have been so different.

 

[Ismene]

So if this is about righting wrongs why are we allowing immigrants from Romania? As far as I know Britain hasn't exploited the Romanians - they were on Hitlers side in the last war as well. Why do they deserve a share in UK wealth? Why not invite over the population of a country that we wronged?

And why don't the disabled in those countries get our help and a share in the wealth? Why not give a hand to the disabled in a wronged country instead of only those young enough to travel here? I'd rather a foreign kid in a wheelchair got a share in UK wealth instead of some shifty looking cunt in Page Hall with a vest stretched over his beer gut.

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

'ebola-pox' actually exists, the russkis apparently used recombinant DNA technology to create a chimaera, the result being a virulent strain of confluent, hemorrhagic smallpox.

Another lovely cuddly little pathogen from our friends at the biopreparat cooked up 'veepox., venezuelan equine encephalitis, hybridized with smallpox.