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Using a Tactic Unseen in a Century, Countries Cordon Off Ebola-Racked Areas
- autism_hurts 12y agoQuarantine is one of the BEST ways to stop a disease's spread. These countries don't have the medical infrastructure to risk NOT implementing quarantine.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- autism_hurts 12y agoI guess it's about perception within quarantine -- do you feel like medical, food, etc is getting though? Risk for violence is low.
- harshreality 12y agoIt's not just the medical infrastructure. Most of the locals don't have even the most basic understanding of disease. They don't understand not touching ebola victims. They don't understand not removing infectious ebola victims from treatment/containment and taking them to local healers. Even the foreign aid medical infrastructure is inadequate, not enough resources and too overworked to maintain proper isolation protocol, hence all the foreign aid workers getting infected.
- crassus2 12y agoThis sounds like something that could be taught in a 30 minute lesson. What's the problem?
- lotsofmangos 12y agoTrust. Think about how many folk in Europe or the US are against vaccination, or think that big pharma is trying to wipe out everyone. Now consider how many people are of those opinions in areas that have historically been governed by unbelievably brutal European empires that treated people living there like livestock.
- CDRdude 12y agoSome people there don't even believe that Ebola is real.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- discodave 12y agoRemember that some of these people never went to school, do not trust westerners, believe in witchdoctors etc.
- soperj 12y agoSounds like a great idea until you realize that they think you're bringing the disease, not helping.
- Someone1234 12y agoIt is something someone could teach YOU in a 30 minute lesson. That's because you're taking for granted a lot of "obvious" things which aren't actually that obvious.
- tomjen3 12y agoIt is actually scary how unenformed they are, but on a certain level it makes sense. You have some people who get sick, but people get sick from time to time and they don't feel much worse than they normally do. Then space aliens come and take them away and they never get any healthier. I strongly suspect that a lot more people survive ebola than we hear about because they stay hidden at home with only the hardedst hit cases risk going to the hospital.
- Crito 12y agoMy understanding is that the disease was already wiping out entire families before authorities recognized what was going on and sent in the space aliens. Patient Zero for this outbreak is thought to have died in December of 2013. Local authorities didn't recognize an outbreak of something until mid-March, and it was't until late March that WHO started sending people in. By that time there were already 70 dead. So it is more like "Year after year, you have some people get sick, some die, some live. One day somebody gets sick and dies fast and painfully. A few weeks later the rest of their tribe/family is dead or dying. A few weeks after that, the space aliens start coming in, but people continue to die."
- tomjen3 12y agoNo, it is a horrible way. You are signing the death warrent for anyone being forced to stay inside the area, sacrificing human lives like so many tribes of old. The best way, the only acceptable way, is to have medicine for the decease. We have some that we just aren't putting into trials because we aren't sure that it won't kill them - when they are going to die anyway in an absolutely horrible way.
- kec 12y agoQuarantines are not orthogonal to using or developing medicine. Quarantine is also the only reliable way to prevent the spreading of a disease, and really the only way we have to deal with a disease like ebola which has no known cure. It sucks for the healthy ones in the quarantined zone, but allowing anyone to leave the zone while in the middle of an outbreak risks far more lives.
- ghshephard 12y ago"It sucks for the healthy ones in the quarantined zone," Note - we aren't talking about smallpox/typhus/flu - ebola is pretty hard to get. As long as you don't touch the body or its fluids, you aren't going to get ebola.
- harshreality 12y agoIt is not safe to go into an area in Africa with an ebola outbreak and try to treat it. Medical workers are not properly adhering to safety protocols. The numbers of medical personnel infected during this outbreak demonstrate that. You can't ask medical personnel to take major risks with their lives to help a few people with ebola. If they and their organizations want to continue to render aid, that's their choice, but if there aren't enough foreign aid resources to set up proper treatment centers with proper quarantine, and when the locals for whatever reason are violating quarantines and putting everyone, other locals and medical staff at risk, then it's simply not safe enough. The only remaining option is to quarantine the afflicted areas. It's also only a death warrant if the people in the quarantine zones don't observe proper safety. If my city (in the U.S.) had an outbreak of ebola, I'd stay home, and barring someone purposely trying to infect me, I'd be safe. Ebola is not an evil spirit that infects everyone in the quarantine area who doesn't flee. Even if it were a more easily transmissible strain of ebola, if you're not in a housing unit sharing air with people who are infected, you're pretty safe.
- enraged_camel 12y agoThey also don't have the resources to implement effective quarantines.
- agravier 12y agoI question "Unseen in a Century". I lived in Gabon in 2001-2002, and I remember that this was pretty much the way Ebola outbreaks were handled then and there.
- ekianjo 12y agoIt's also the same tactics described in "The Plague" from Camus. With very rational reasons.
- upofadown 12y agoWe have recently seen stories associated with the current outbreak where medical aid teams were being prevented from moving around freely due to local quarantines. Those stories strongly implied that it was all about fear and ignorance. Now suddenly quarantines are being presented as the smart thing to do...
- ceejayoz 12y agoI don't see why you think the two are contradictory. The point is to quarantine the general populace, not the medical teams.
- richardwigley 12y agoOr Flu in 2009 by Chinese - they kept people in their hotels [1]. I'm guessing the Journo wanted to 'big' the story up. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/05/02/idUSHKG2279 http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/05/02/idUSHKG2279
- nostrademons 12y agoThe article is describing a form of quarantine much more severe than keeping people in their hotels. They're talking about cordoning off the entire affected area - basically, the area around all infection sites becomes one big border with armed guards that only allow food, water, and medical supplies in, and nobody out. The reason this is controversial is because there are close to 2 million people in the affected districts, and only about 500 of them currently have Ebola. At best, you're severely inconveniencing 99.975% of the population, and at worst, you're leaving them to die. It'd be like cutting San Francisco off from the outside world, with armed guards on the bridges and San Bruno Mountain, because measles was found on BART. I don't know what the situation in Gabon was like, but as I understand it they depended upon local quarantines of villages, and didn't close the border of the whole country, right?
- arjn 12y agoI recall reading about how they did this back during the plague days in France. Cordon off an affected town and don't let anyone in our out.
- vidarh 12y agoThere are also cautionary tales that were handed down in Europe from plague affected areas, about how a single person violating quarantine caused the death of large portion of a town.
- VLM 12y agoFrom the article "Health workers protected themselves with gloves, coveralls, masks, bleach spray and the burning of used gear." From the WHO website: "Health-care staff fear for their lives. To date, more than 170 health-care workers have been infected" http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/overview-august-2014/en/ http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/overview-august-2014/en... From the wikipedia article: "The virus may be acquired upon contact with blood or bodily fluids of an infected animal (commonly monkeys or fruit bats).[1] Spread through the air has not been documented in the natural environment." Something about this story isn't adding up if you combine multiple legitimate sources. So you can only catch it via bodily fluid (like AIDS). But if you wear the health care worker space suit and bleach and burn everything, then you're probably gonna die. My theory is its converting into an air-transmission disease. In that case, a military quarantine sounds quite wise. (edited to add, my point being that if its known not to be caused by a civil engineering fixable problem like mosquitos or infected sewage or whatever, then human guards closing the borders to humans is the wisest possible solution, and if we're not being given the whole story which is probably true, this would indicate that what is known, to folks other than us, is that it is definitely not civil-engineering-fixable like if it was spread by contaminated water or vampire bats or wtf. Which is a mildly interesting analysis.) In submitting too fast punishment mode: cwal37 is quite possibly correct. I am attempting to find death stats from the numerous historical outbreaks. Presumably "20% of the dead being medical workers" should apply in past outbreaks. cwal37 - Update: from CDC MMWR wrt the Uganda '00 outbreak, with lower tech and less experience the Gulu district of Uganda had 393 total cases of which 22 were health care workers. So the infection percentage of healthcare workers under slightly worse conditions was documented at about 5.6%. The stat for this time around is 170 medical workers some time ago vs a CDC reported 1848 confirmed cases or about 9%. There are several ways to interpret these stats. One is that the rate is increasing despite experience and technology getting better. Maybe. Another is the reported number of infected might be half or less of total infected. Maybe. If you assume "about 1 in 20 infected will be health care workers" from historical experience, then 170 infected workers would imply the total number actually infected as of some time ago is closer to 3500 or so rather than the official count of 1800 or so. So that's the numbers. I continue to research to figure out which of many possible interpretations is most likely. "That is straight up fear-mongering." LOL if I wanted to do that, I could do a better job. "Its all obama's fault" "Buy overpriced ammo from me" "I'm getting a commission on these MREs" etc. disputin - I see I have been scooped by zerohedge. Embarrassing because I often scan zerohedge headlines. On the other hand a bunch of stock traders are not going to have much of anything intelligent to say about non-economic issues, beyond being pretty good at making "isn't that odd" connections, like this post.
- awakened 12y agoEbola is a Level 4 Biohazard. Try getting into or out of a CDC certified Level 4 facility. All of this is documented and easily understood. It's highly contagious, there is no cure and and there is no telling how long the outbreak will last: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_hazard#Classification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_hazard#Classificatio...
- rtkwe 12y agoI wouldn't call it highly contagious. That should be reserved for things that can spread through the air not things like Ebola which require contact with bodily fluids to transmit.
- Fomite 12y agoIndeed, one of the criteria for being a BSL4 pathogen is either being likely to cause severe or fatal disease in humans and not having a readily available treatment. Ebola qualifies as that regardless of its contagiousness. Similarly, one of the most contagious diseases out there, measles, does not, because it is easily vaccinated against.
- ghshephard 12y agoSmallpox has a vaccine and is not considered a BSL4 pathogen - so, available treatment isn't the only component.
- pessimizer 12y ago>one of the criteria for being a BSL4 pathogen is [...] not having a readily available treatment.
- bkeroack 12y agoEbola Reston (which fortunately only affected non-human primates) did spread through the air, or at least that's the only plausible explanation as to how it spread. While the outbreak strain of Ebola may not be airborne now, it's not inconceivable that it could mutate at some point.
- coldcode 12y agoYou can see how effective is can be in the app "Plague Inc". Even though it's a game and obviously simplified, the model does give you a reasonable idea on how to deal with outbreaks who options there are. The CDC even suggested it was a great way to educate people about the real world problems.
- kazinator 12y ago> "When cordons are imposed, “human rights have to be respected,” said Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the World Health Organization," Glib words there, Mr. WHO Spokesman! How do you restrict people to a cordoned area, while respecting their rights? "Please don't cross this barricade, because I can't do anything to stop you. This gun is a plastic prop issued by the WHO because of your human rights." Come on, this is purely about sacrificing the few to protect the many. These is no "human rights" about it. It's about the lottery of life handing some people the short straw, and tough luck.
- anigbrowl 12y ago'any cordon must let food, water and medical care reach those inside.' This should be obvious, even to someone with your boolean approach to these issues. I don't think your snark advances the discussion.
- kazinator 12y agoI don't agree that those allowances constitute respect for human rights. At least, not full respect. If that is so, it follows that, for instance, kidnappers respect human rights because they provide food, water and any needed medical care. Kidnappers respect human rights only to the extent to which their actions up to any point in time have not shown them to be complete savages. Using phrases like "human rights" is obviously not applicable in this situation. We must acknowledge that the rights of people who are forcibly confined in a cordoned are are in fact being trampled on (separately from whether or not we agree with the justification for doing so.) Pretending that human rights are not trampled on if food, water and medicine are provided into the cordoned doesn't help anything. The question is: can you agree with it, while properly acknowledging that it involves violation of rights. That's my angle, not "boolean thinking".
- deciplex 12y agoIs there a net positive utility to a kidnapping, like there is (or, can be) with a cordon sanitaire?
- vfclists 12y agoThis discussion of Ebola is simply degenerating into the the usual prejudices about Africa and African people, masquerading as informed speculating and I'm finding it very irritating.. I want to ask a few questions here: 1. Is there any recorded instance of the particular strain of Ebola in West Africa being transmitted from a bat or another forest animal to a human being? 2. Has that that strain of Ebola virus been found in any bats or other animals in the infected areas? 3. Is there some hard knowledge about the migratory patterns of bats or some other forest creatures to indicate that they have been able to carry the virus all the way from Central Africa to the far end of West Africa without infecting any other people of animals in between? Why don't people check these facts before they start blaming everything on African backwardness, cultural practices and beliefs? Instead all we have is innuendo from so called experts maligning Africans and ignoring the most likely fact. This Ebola outbreak was most likely transmitted by humans of which there are two kinds. 1. People who got infected with the disease or harboured a strain of it from Central Africa, travelled to West Africa and infected someone people there. But it doesn't explain how those people did not infect any locals or trigger an outbreak at the source before leaving for West Africa. 2. Researchers who have access to the virus and through carelessness or otherwise managed to infect West Africans with it, said researchers being mainly Westerners working for state institutions, universities or corporations with access to the virus. Unless there is hard evidence explaining how some animals infect with Ebola travelled over a 1000 miles without infecting whole areas in between whether animals or humans, the search for its origin must focus on the most likely cause, and that means human beings. If some angry West Africans are attacking western medical personnel in the belief that they are the source of the Ebola virus, they are quite logical in doing so, as Western medical personnel and researchers are the visible common link between the presence of Ebola in Central Africa and West Africa. This comment may not be focused on how the outbreak may be contained, but it needs to get out there.