15 ms·

Nigeria 'on red alert' over Ebola death in Lagos

125 points by richardwigley 12y ago

richardwigley 12y ago
The alert has been caused by a patient flying to Nigeria - the theory is that it isn't easy to catch Ebola [1] so this is a test. The disease has spread from Guinea to Liberia [2] so this would be a jump Eastward [3] [1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/06/25/324941229/could-the-ebola-outbreak-spread-to-europe-or-the-u-s http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/06/25/324941229/could-t... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_outbreak#mediaviewer/File:Guinea_Sierra_Leone_Ebola_Map_April_14_2014_png.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_outbreak... [3] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/West+Africa/@14.6336215,-1.8552252,5z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0xe26e8142c8c27c9:0xd456c5cbdb66949 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/West+Africa/@14.6336215,...
- kmfrk 12y ago
  Use this Google map of the outbreaks instead: https://maps.google.com/maps/u/0/ms?msid=202977755949863934429.0004c658eb30f9c4fb1c0&msa=0&dg=feature https://maps.google.com/maps/u/0/ms?msid=2029777559498639344.... Not sure how to filter the non-2014 outbreaks, though.
- TillE 12y ago
  Not sure what you mean by "the theory." Ebola is not airborne. It's relatively easy to isolate in areas with good hygiene and medical care.
  - richardwigley 12y ago
    Indeed, my 'theory' comment was a response to an infected case arriving on an airplane - which this is news story is an example of. I'm only aware of these cases (are there others?) Hence, I used theory until you've had a few more occurrences. The first link in the previous comment documents: 1) 1996 a man in Gabon travelling to Johannesburg and he didn't infect anyone. 2) 2004, a man with Lassa fever, similar to Ebola, travelling to the US and not infecting anyone.
    - EdwardMSmith 12y ago
      3) 2014 Lassa fever to Minnesota: http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0404-lassa-fever.html http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0404-lassa-fever.htm...
- steven2012 12y ago
  The lead doctor in Sierra Leone in charge of fighting ebola himself got Ebola. If it's not that easy to contract ebola, you would have thought the foremost expert would have easily been able to avoid this.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Doctors are always at risk of exposure. If you deal with patients with virulent diseases all day long then that's equivalent to playing the lottery every day all your life. All it takes is a single mistake, or one vector of transmission that was not yet known, or one patient sneezing at exactly the wrong moment or simply not having the tools and supplies to do the work safely. Being a doctor in this field is a very high risk occupation, doing it in Africa is simply very brave.
  - jonnathanson 12y ago
    Actually, you might expect him to be a lot more likely to catch Ebola. He's coming into deliberate vicinity of the virus on what one assumes is a weekly or even daily basis. Frequency effect is in play. For similar reasons, you'd expect the world's foremost expert on avoiding shark attacks to be attacked by a shark more often than the general population. He's out there practicing his theories and doing his research every day. The rest of us aren't going in the water as often. The best way to avoid being attacked by a shark in the ocean is not to go in the ocean. The best way to avoid contracting Ebola is to stay as far away from Ebola as possible. An expert might be better able to handle himself around Ebola, or around sharks, than the rest of us. But he's also more likely to be around Ebola (or sharks) in the first place.
  - jahewson 12y ago
    On the other hand if it were easy to contract, he would have got it ages ago.
rustyconover 12y ago
It's not quite time to go into full Dustin-Hoffman-killer-virus-movie paranoia yet, but the it seems the inability to safely process the biohazards, bodies and healthcare paraphernalia is a real problem. Even if you're quarantined, someone eventually has to cleanup the mess you leave behind and its becoming tricker to do. Ebola is a incurable and statistically fatal disease, but it is being made worse by people wanting to see their families and friends before their will likely expire. This behavior places infected persons in communities and situations where proper care and quarantine may not be available therefore the disease has spread. People acting in their own self interest when confronting their mortality is nothing new. We'd likely all do the same. Maybe we need to start treating this outbreak we fight wildfires. Start digging a proverbial fire line. Setting broad travel restrictions and geographical quarantines and hope that the virus fades away over time. Of course this is cruel and inhumane to people with the disease not to mention impractical to implement physically over such a wide area because people inside any area would rush out possibly taking the virus with them.
- XorNot 12y ago
  The first problem you identify leads into the second. This is Africa. The same reason you can't quarantine and dispose of medical waste is the same reason you can't set travel restrictions and the like.
- Havoc 12y ago
  >Setting broad travel restrictions There is an "African" border near me. Its got a fence - which is impressive. The fence does double duty as a washing line and is about waist high.
  - smcl 12y ago
    Which border? I'm curious
    - Havoc 12y ago
      That would be South Africa - Lesotho. Frankly Lesotho barely qualifies as a country though...its 100% surrounded by SA, 100% dependent on SA and its currency is linked 1:1 to SA. It was more of an example though...borders pretty much don't exist in Africa. The only people that get formally checked are those using the roads & border posts. Once you're on foot its a free for all. Hell there are people repeatedly using deportation mechanisms as a free ride home after doing migrant work. As for the issue at hand...I have little faith in Ebola being contained to be honest. The overall social setup is uniquely incompatible with containment. That being said Rwanda etc have demonstrated a reasonably approach to AIDS (awareness driven) which did impress me.
confluence 12y ago
Can anyone give me an idea on what would happen if Ebola ever did get airborne? I know that its high mortality rate is a massive curb on its ability to spread, but is that enough to put a dampener on spread if it became more easily transmittable?
- placeybordeaux 12y ago
  I don't think that is a thing that is really in the realm of possibility. We should probably be more concerend about a strain of the flu becoming deadlier.
  - confluence 12y ago
    How would the world cope with a Spanish Flu like situation in 2014?
    - tomjen3 12y ago
      Badly. We can't cut of international commerce, the world would starve. We can't cut of international travel, the world would starve and there would be a ton of riots. If the outbreak is localized then we may have a change of putting a quarantine on the area, but I doubt it.
      - kryptiskt 12y ago
        On the other hand, international commerce is largely mechanized in the age of container and bulk shipping and happens without much human contact.
      - dredmorbius 12y ago
        The good news is that there's a pretty good capacity to move massive amounts of goods with very little human interaction. The bad news is that there's a hell of a lot of human movement, and you'd have to shut down much of that, as well as isolate carriers and exposed individuals as quickly as possible. Often in places (such as the present African outbreak) in which infrastructure, governance, and resources are exceptionally limited. The task of effectively controling all vectors would be a very high challenge. I'd say it would be an ugly time, all told.
robinduckett 12y ago
http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/56667 http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/56667
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Better to link to full description: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-down-everything http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-down-everything. While the "meme" is quite crude, I have to admit that the whole Ebola situation constantly reminds me of Pandemic II and a clone I recently played on Android.
  - robinduckett 12y ago
    Knew I'd get downvoted, but knew it had to be done.
    - psychometry 12y ago
      It really didn't have to be done, though. Remember that for next time.
      - larvaetron 12y ago
        Please don't post obnoxious comments.
    - M2Ys4U 12y ago
      This isn't Reddit...
      - larvaetron 12y ago
        Please don't post obnoxious comments.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nemo44x 12y ago
Tekmira Pharmaceuticals has a cure for Ebola that has success in non-human Primates. Is it unethical to try using this on infected humans that are going to die soon?
- nolok 12y ago
  With or without each person's approval ? What is your control group ?
  - nemo44x 12y ago
    With their approval, naturally. Why not explain what we have, that there unknown risks, etc, but it could save you. The alternative is a painful, awful death anyhow so why not? I feel like a control group is immoral at this point.
  - PeterisP 12y ago
    It's not like we need a special control group if that control group is supposed to receive no treatment - we know rather well how untreated Ebola works and the mortality rate. If we try out drug X and only 50% of those people die, then we know that drug X is good for Ebola. Once there is drug Y to try, then we can use drug X for a control group.
    - gus_massa 12y ago
      You must be sure that you are measuring the same mix of virus strains, that the patients are receiving the same medical care and food, that the hygienic conditions are the same (the patient was going to survive, but a diarrhea just killed him), room conditions (is the room temperature important?). You must be sure that you are using the same criteria to count the patients. Are you going to count the almost dead patients as a drug failure, or drop it from the list? Are you going to give the drug to suspected cases or only to confirmed cases? Do you count small children (they usually have a smaller survival rate)? Are you counting the people that die before going to the hospital? Are you counting the (few) people that survive without going to the hospital? If you get a 30% cure rate, (and suppose that the standard cure rate is 20%), it's very difficult to be sure that the improvement is in the mew drug and not in a change in all the other factors or some unwanted statistical trick. Most of the rules for double blind studies are there because in the past there have been many "successful" test of new drugs, that were later retracted. It's very easy to measure incorrectly, especially when you really want the experiment to be a success. (Another rules are there to prevent the consequences of previous "unsuccessful" test, were the "cure" was much worse than the illness.)
richardwigley 12y ago
Update to the story: "Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said that all other passengers on board the flight with the infected man had been traced and were being monitored." Freetown, the Sierre Leone Capital, has had it's first case and seems to be having problems controlling the movement of infected people, one (now unfortunately dead) was 'rescued' from quarantine by relatives. "The woman had been one of dozens of people who tested positive but were unaccounted for, the BBC's Umaru Fofana reports from the capital, Freetown." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-28505061 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-28505061
abozeman8466 12y ago
The United States and ALL of our allies need to restrict travel from every country where at least ONE case of Ebola has surfaced. We also need to restrict travel to and from ANY country that is not doing the same. We need to start practicing isolation/quarantine of certain sovereign nations immediately. I don't think Obama will do it. He's going to get us all killed.
- vfclists 12y ago
  > The United States and ALL of our allies need to restrict travel from every country where at least ONE case of Ebola has surfaced When did this become an 'us versus them' issue, as though any people or governments are glad to have an Ebola outbreak on their hands. Ebola is spread through physical contact with infect matter or fluids. It isn't airborne. This looks like racism coming into play. Obama is black, Nigeria is also an African country. And what does it have to do with Obama? Is he an expect on medical issues or is something for him to leave to the experts health issues are delegated to decide? And to think that you only signed on make this comment. Don't let your fears let your behaviour degenerate into panic and racism.

125 points by richardwigley 12y ago

The alert has been caused by a patient flying to Nigeria - the theory is that it isn't easy to catch Ebola [1] so this is a test. The disease has spread from Guinea to Liberia [2] so this would be a jump Eastward [3] [1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/06/25/324941229/could-the-ebola-outbreak-spread-to-europe-or-the-u-s http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/06/25/324941229/could-t... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_outbreak#mediaviewer/File:Guinea_Sierra_Leone_Ebola_Map_April_14_2014_png.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_outbreak... [3] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/West+Africa/@14.6336215,-1.8552252,5z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0xe26e8142c8c27c9:0xd456c5cbdb66949 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/West+Africa/@14.6336215,...

kmfrk 12y ago
Use this Google map of the outbreaks instead: https://maps.google.com/maps/u/0/ms?msid=202977755949863934429.0004c658eb30f9c4fb1c0&msa=0&dg=feature https://maps.google.com/maps/u/0/ms?msid=2029777559498639344.... Not sure how to filter the non-2014 outbreaks, though.
TillE 12y ago
Not sure what you mean by "the theory." Ebola is not airborne. It's relatively easy to isolate in areas with good hygiene and medical care.
- richardwigley 12y ago
  Indeed, my 'theory' comment was a response to an infected case arriving on an airplane - which this is news story is an example of. I'm only aware of these cases (are there others?) Hence, I used theory until you've had a few more occurrences. The first link in the previous comment documents: 1) 1996 a man in Gabon travelling to Johannesburg and he didn't infect anyone. 2) 2004, a man with Lassa fever, similar to Ebola, travelling to the US and not infecting anyone.
  - EdwardMSmith 12y ago
    3) 2014 Lassa fever to Minnesota: http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0404-lassa-fever.html http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0404-lassa-fever.htm...
steven2012 12y ago
The lead doctor in Sierra Leone in charge of fighting ebola himself got Ebola. If it's not that easy to contract ebola, you would have thought the foremost expert would have easily been able to avoid this.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Doctors are always at risk of exposure. If you deal with patients with virulent diseases all day long then that's equivalent to playing the lottery every day all your life. All it takes is a single mistake, or one vector of transmission that was not yet known, or one patient sneezing at exactly the wrong moment or simply not having the tools and supplies to do the work safely. Being a doctor in this field is a very high risk occupation, doing it in Africa is simply very brave.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  Actually, you might expect him to be a lot more likely to catch Ebola. He's coming into deliberate vicinity of the virus on what one assumes is a weekly or even daily basis. Frequency effect is in play. For similar reasons, you'd expect the world's foremost expert on avoiding shark attacks to be attacked by a shark more often than the general population. He's out there practicing his theories and doing his research every day. The rest of us aren't going in the water as often. The best way to avoid being attacked by a shark in the ocean is not to go in the ocean. The best way to avoid contracting Ebola is to stay as far away from Ebola as possible. An expert might be better able to handle himself around Ebola, or around sharks, than the rest of us. But he's also more likely to be around Ebola (or sharks) in the first place.
- jahewson 12y ago
  On the other hand if it were easy to contract, he would have got it ages ago.

rustyconover 12y ago

It's not quite time to go into full Dustin-Hoffman-killer-virus-movie paranoia yet, but the it seems the inability to safely process the biohazards, bodies and healthcare paraphernalia is a real problem. Even if you're quarantined, someone eventually has to cleanup the mess you leave behind and its becoming tricker to do. Ebola is a incurable and statistically fatal disease, but it is being made worse by people wanting to see their families and friends before their will likely expire. This behavior places infected persons in communities and situations where proper care and quarantine may not be available therefore the disease has spread. People acting in their own self interest when confronting their mortality is nothing new. We'd likely all do the same. Maybe we need to start treating this outbreak we fight wildfires. Start digging a proverbial fire line. Setting broad travel restrictions and geographical quarantines and hope that the virus fades away over time. Of course this is cruel and inhumane to people with the disease not to mention impractical to implement physically over such a wide area because people inside any area would rush out possibly taking the virus with them.

XorNot 12y ago
The first problem you identify leads into the second. This is Africa. The same reason you can't quarantine and dispose of medical waste is the same reason you can't set travel restrictions and the like.
Havoc 12y ago
>Setting broad travel restrictions There is an "African" border near me. Its got a fence - which is impressive. The fence does double duty as a washing line and is about waist high.
- smcl 12y ago
  Which border? I'm curious
  - Havoc 12y ago
    That would be South Africa - Lesotho. Frankly Lesotho barely qualifies as a country though...its 100% surrounded by SA, 100% dependent on SA and its currency is linked 1:1 to SA. It was more of an example though...borders pretty much don't exist in Africa. The only people that get formally checked are those using the roads & border posts. Once you're on foot its a free for all. Hell there are people repeatedly using deportation mechanisms as a free ride home after doing migrant work. As for the issue at hand...I have little faith in Ebola being contained to be honest. The overall social setup is uniquely incompatible with containment. That being said Rwanda etc have demonstrated a reasonably approach to AIDS (awareness driven) which did impress me.

confluence 12y ago

Can anyone give me an idea on what would happen if Ebola ever did get airborne? I know that its high mortality rate is a massive curb on its ability to spread, but is that enough to put a dampener on spread if it became more easily transmittable?

placeybordeaux 12y ago
I don't think that is a thing that is really in the realm of possibility. We should probably be more concerend about a strain of the flu becoming deadlier.
- confluence 12y ago
  How would the world cope with a Spanish Flu like situation in 2014?
  - tomjen3 12y ago
    Badly. We can't cut of international commerce, the world would starve. We can't cut of international travel, the world would starve and there would be a ton of riots. If the outbreak is localized then we may have a change of putting a quarantine on the area, but I doubt it.
    - kryptiskt 12y ago
      On the other hand, international commerce is largely mechanized in the age of container and bulk shipping and happens without much human contact.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      The good news is that there's a pretty good capacity to move massive amounts of goods with very little human interaction. The bad news is that there's a hell of a lot of human movement, and you'd have to shut down much of that, as well as isolate carriers and exposed individuals as quickly as possible. Often in places (such as the present African outbreak) in which infrastructure, governance, and resources are exceptionally limited. The task of effectively controling all vectors would be a very high challenge. I'd say it would be an ugly time, all told.

robinduckett 12y ago

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/56667 http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/56667

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Better to link to full description: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-down-everything http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-down-everything. While the "meme" is quite crude, I have to admit that the whole Ebola situation constantly reminds me of Pandemic II and a clone I recently played on Android.
- robinduckett 12y ago
  Knew I'd get downvoted, but knew it had to be done.
  - psychometry 12y ago
    It really didn't have to be done, though. Remember that for next time.
    - larvaetron 12y ago
      Please don't post obnoxious comments.
  - M2Ys4U 12y ago
    This isn't Reddit...
    - larvaetron 12y ago
      Please don't post obnoxious comments.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

nemo44x 12y ago

Tekmira Pharmaceuticals has a cure for Ebola that has success in non-human Primates. Is it unethical to try using this on infected humans that are going to die soon?

nolok 12y ago
With or without each person's approval ? What is your control group ?
- nemo44x 12y ago
  With their approval, naturally. Why not explain what we have, that there unknown risks, etc, but it could save you. The alternative is a painful, awful death anyhow so why not? I feel like a control group is immoral at this point.
- PeterisP 12y ago
  It's not like we need a special control group if that control group is supposed to receive no treatment - we know rather well how untreated Ebola works and the mortality rate. If we try out drug X and only 50% of those people die, then we know that drug X is good for Ebola. Once there is drug Y to try, then we can use drug X for a control group.
  - gus_massa 12y ago
    You must be sure that you are measuring the same mix of virus strains, that the patients are receiving the same medical care and food, that the hygienic conditions are the same (the patient was going to survive, but a diarrhea just killed him), room conditions (is the room temperature important?). You must be sure that you are using the same criteria to count the patients. Are you going to count the almost dead patients as a drug failure, or drop it from the list? Are you going to give the drug to suspected cases or only to confirmed cases? Do you count small children (they usually have a smaller survival rate)? Are you counting the people that die before going to the hospital? Are you counting the (few) people that survive without going to the hospital? If you get a 30% cure rate, (and suppose that the standard cure rate is 20%), it's very difficult to be sure that the improvement is in the mew drug and not in a change in all the other factors or some unwanted statistical trick. Most of the rules for double blind studies are there because in the past there have been many "successful" test of new drugs, that were later retracted. It's very easy to measure incorrectly, especially when you really want the experiment to be a success. (Another rules are there to prevent the consequences of previous "unsuccessful" test, were the "cure" was much worse than the illness.)

richardwigley 12y ago

Update to the story: "Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said that all other passengers on board the flight with the infected man had been traced and were being monitored." Freetown, the Sierre Leone Capital, has had it's first case and seems to be having problems controlling the movement of infected people, one (now unfortunately dead) was 'rescued' from quarantine by relatives. "The woman had been one of dozens of people who tested positive but were unaccounted for, the BBC's Umaru Fofana reports from the capital, Freetown." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-28505061 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-28505061

abozeman8466 12y ago

The United States and ALL of our allies need to restrict travel from every country where at least ONE case of Ebola has surfaced. We also need to restrict travel to and from ANY country that is not doing the same. We need to start practicing isolation/quarantine of certain sovereign nations immediately. I don't think Obama will do it. He's going to get us all killed.

vfclists 12y ago
> The United States and ALL of our allies need to restrict travel from every country where at least ONE case of Ebola has surfaced When did this become an 'us versus them' issue, as though any people or governments are glad to have an Ebola outbreak on their hands. Ebola is spread through physical contact with infect matter or fluids. It isn't airborne. This looks like racism coming into play. Obama is black, Nigeria is also an African country. And what does it have to do with Obama? Is he an expect on medical issues or is something for him to leave to the experts health issues are delegated to decide? And to think that you only signed on make this comment. Don't let your fears let your behaviour degenerate into panic and racism.