ebolas of our own...,

dailyimpact |  The world is transfixed right now by the awful spectacle of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. It’s like a horror movie — it has inspired several — this monster that lurks for years in some remote African cave, then lashes out to condemn with its touch hundreds of people to a quick and ghastly death. Like a horror movie, the revulsion it inspires in us Americans is short-lived, a quick thrill of faux fear (it is, after all, in West Africa) somewhat like a child’s anxiety about a monster under the bed. But in our real-life movie, the Americans who hyperventilate briefly about the Ebola under the bed are ignorant of the fact that there are chain-saw mass murderers at the door and window.

Infectious diseases fully as horrible as Ebola are spreading across America like wildfires, ignited in many cases by industrial agriculture (whose overuse of antibiotics for profit maximization has created a raft of infections that antibiotics can no longer treat) and industrial medicine (ditto). Among the worst:

Brain Eating Amoeba. Naegleria Fowleri thrive in warm fresh water, and used to be found everywhere in the South. Now they are found just about everywhere (they reached Minnesota in 2010). When ingested, gastric juices destroy them and they give us no problem.  But if they get into a nose, they drill their way into the brain, attack it and kill it — the fatality rate is 99 percent. Mercifully, cases are few. So far this year a 12-year old boy in Florida and a nine-year-old girl in Kansas have died from it. But pollution — the kind that causes the climate to heat up and the kind that loads rivers and lakes with nutrients — is helping the spread of this deadly critter, who may soon create a horror movie of its own. Last fall it showed up in the public water supply of St. Bernard’s Parish, Louisiana.

Flesh Eating Bacteria.Vibrio vulnificus bacteria thrive in warm salt water (are hosted by shellfish) and when they get into a human body (via a wound, or being ingested) cause an aggressive infection that often requires amputation of a limb and is frequently fatal. According to the Centers for Disease Control there are about 95 cases and 35 deaths every summer, most occurring in Florida, Texas and Maryland. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation this week warned that vibrio infections in its environs are increasing. Maryland alone had 57 cases last year.

Nightmare Bacteria. (As if the others aren’t.) Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae  (CRE) live in our gut, just doing their job, until they get out, usually in a hospital situation, and then they go on a rampage. What sets them apart, even from other drug-resistant superbugs, is that they are resistant to the antibiotic that is the treatment of last resort when the others fail.  CREs were found in one hospital in the United States in 2001. By 2013 they were in 46 states. A new study has found that CRE cases increased fivefold in community hospitals in the southeastern United States between 2008 and 2012. Now, 9,300 people are infected in America every year, and 600 of them die. (Ebola in West Africa so far — 900 fatalities.)

And then there’s MRSA, or methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, also used to refer to staph bacteria resistant to other drugs, which was setting the doctors’ hair on fire five years ago. MRSA infection rates and mortality are down significantly in the past five years, but other superbugs have arisen in that time (see CRE, above) and in all, the CDC estimates that drug-resistant bacteria infect 2 million people a year and kill 23,000 of them.

So by all means shudder at the stories about Ebola, but don’t wait for it to get here before you buy that hazmat suit.

hello, we're from the west and we're here to help you....,

natgeo |  The severity of this outbreak in West Africa reflects not only the transmissibility of the disease, but also the sad circumstances of poverty and the chronic lack of medical care, infrastructure, and supplies. That's really what this is telling us: that we need to try harder to imagine just what it's like to be poor in Africa. One of the consequences of being poor in Africa, especially in a country like Liberia or Sierra Leone, which have gone through a lot of political turmoil and have weak governance and a shortage of medical resources, is that the current outbreak could turn into an epidemic.

It's being spread because people are taking care of their loved ones at home. They're touching them, they're feeding them, they're washing them, they're cleaning up the vomit and the diarrhea that Ebola generates. That's a classic circumstance in which even health care workers are getting infected.

In addition, there are burial practices that involve washing the bodies and in some cases cleaning out the body cavities. In some cases, the funeral practices also involve a final touch or even a final kiss of the deceased person. And one of the things that's particularly nefarious about Ebola is that it continues to live in a dead person for some period of time after death. A person who's been dead for a day or two may still be seething with Ebola virus. So funeral practices can be a big factor in allowing it to be transmitted.

It's a combination of horrible circumstances. But the primary factor is poverty.

There's a cultural dimension to the way that disease is interpreted in Africa, isn't there? A kind of standoff between sorcery and science.

That's absolutely true. I know a little bit more about that element among the ethnic peoples of central Africa than West Africa. But in both regions there's a belief that these mysterious, invisible plagues are caused by sorcery and evil spirits—what we might call putting hexes on people.

There's a belief in some cultures that if a person experiences good fortune in financial terms and does not share the good fortune, when that person becomes ill with a mysterious fever and dies, people tend to say: "Aha! It was because he didn't share. It was the spirits who brought him down." There's also a belief in some cultures that if someone doesn't share, another person will direct these evil spirits to take that person down. There are a lot of different beliefs from culture to culture that involve the idea of sorcery. And that just adds to the confusion and the capacity for transmission.

When and where did Ebola first appear? (Belgian nuns with dirty needles in Yambuku!!!)

The first known outbreaks were in central Africa, in 1976: one in Zaire, the country that's now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and one in Sudan. The Zaire outbreak is the more famous. It began in a place called Yambuku, a little mission town in north central Zaire. People were suddenly dying with these horrible symptoms, but nobody knew what it was. An international team led by Karl Johnson went in, and it was this team that first isolated and identified the virus. They named it after a nearby river, the Ebola River.

u.s. hospitals weigh withholding care to ebola patients...,

reuters |  The Ebola crisis is forcing the American healthcare system to consider the previously unthinkable: withholding some medical interventions because they are too dangerous to doctors and nurses and unlikely to help a patient.

U.S. hospitals have over the years come under criticism for undertaking measures that prolong dying rather than improve patients' quality of life.

But the care of the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States, who received dialysis and intubation and infected two nurses caring for him, is spurring hospitals and medical associations to develop the first guidelines for what can reasonably be done and what should be withheld.

Officials from at least three hospital systems interviewed by Reuters said they were considering whether to withhold individual procedures or leave it up to individual doctors to determine whether an intervention would be performed.

Ethics experts say they are also fielding more calls from doctors asking what their professional obligations are to patients if healthcare workers could be at risk.

U.S. health officials meanwhile are trying to establish a network of about 20 hospitals nationwide that would be fully equipped to handle all aspects of Ebola care.

Their concern is that poorly trained or poorly equipped hospitals that perform invasive procedures will expose staff to bodily fluids of a patient when they are most infectious. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working with kidney specialists on clinical guidelines for delivering dialysis to Ebola patients. The recommendations could come as early as this week.   
The possibility of withholding care represents a departure from the "do everything" philosophy in most American hospitals and a return to a view that held sway a century ago, when doctors were at greater risk of becoming infected by treating dying patients.

"This is another example of how this 21st century viral threat has pulled us back into the 19th century," said medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan.

you are not nearly scared enough about ebola?

foreign policy |  Attention World: You just don't get it. You think there are magic bullets in some rich country's freezers that will instantly stop the relentless spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa? You think airport security guards in Los Angeles can look a traveler in the eyes and see infection, blocking that jet passenger's entry into La-la-land? You believe novelist Dan Brown's utterly aburd description of a World Health Organization that has a private C5-A military transport jet and disease SWAT team that can swoop into outbreaks, saving the world from contagion?

Wake up, fools. What's going on in West Africa now isn't Brown's silly Inferno scenario -- it's Steven Soderberg's movie Contagion, though without a modicum of its high-tech capacity.

Last week, my brilliant Council on Foreign Relations colleague John Campbell, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, warned that spread of the virus inside Lagos -- which has a population of 22 million -- would instantly transform this situation into a worldwide crisis, thanks to the chaos, size, density, and mobility of not only that city but dozens of others in the enormous, oil-rich nation. Add to the Nigerian scenario civil war, national elections, Boko Haram terrorists, and a country-wide doctors' strike -- all of which are real and current -- and you have a scenario so overwrought and frightening that I could not have concocted it even when I advised screenwriter Scott Burns on his Contagion script.

Inside the United States, politicians, gadflies, and much of the media are focused on wildly experimental drugs and vaccines, and equally wild notions of "keeping the virus out" by barring travelers and "screening at airports."Let's be clear: Absolutely no drug or vaccine has been proven effective against the Ebola virus in human beings. To date, only one person -- Dr. Kent Brantly -- has apparently recovered after receiving one of the three prominent putative drugs, and there is no proof that the drug was key to his improvement. None of the potential vaccines has even undergone Phase One safety trials in humans, though at least two are scheduled to enter that stage before December of this year. And Phase One is the swiftest, easiest part of new vaccine trials -- the two stages of clinical trials aimed at proving that vaccines actually work will be difficult, if not impossible, to ethically and safely execute. If one of the vaccines is ready to be used in Africa sometime in 2015, the measure will be executed without prior evidence that it can work, which in turn will require massive public education to ensure that people who receive the vaccination do not change their behaviors in ways that might put them in contract with Ebola -- because they mistakenly believe they are immune to the virus.

We are in for a very long haul with this extremely deadly disease -- it has killed more than 50 percent of those laboratory-confirmed infections, and possibly more than 70 percent of the infected populations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Nigeria is struggling to ensure that no secondary spread of Ebola comes from one of the people already infected by Liberian traveler Patrick Sawyer -- two of whom have died so far. That effort expanded on Wednesday, when Nigerian health authorities announced that a nurse who had treated Sawyer escaped her quarantine confinement in Lagos and traveled to Enugu a city that, as of 2006, has a population of about three million. Though the nurse has not shown symptoms of the disease, the incubation time for infection, which is up to 21 days, hasn't elapsed.

with aid doctors gone, ebola fight grows harder

NYTimes |  On Saturday afternoon, several hundred people in an area of Monrovia known as the West Point slum broke through the gates of a former school that had been converted days earlier into a holding center for people with suspected Ebola. 

Samuel Tarplah, 48, a nurse running the center, said Saturday evening that the protesters wanted to shut it down. “They told us that we don’t want an Ebola holding center in our community.” He said the intruders stole mattresses, personal protective equipment, even buckets of chlorine that had just been delivered. “They took everything.”

Fear is complicating the huge increase in aid that is needed: food for people in areas that have been cordoned off; laboratory supplies to test for the disease; gloves, face masks and gowns to protect health workers; body bags for the dead; bedsheets to replace those that must be burned. Airlines have canceled flights that could have carried in such supplies, despite assurances from the W.H.O. that properly screened passengers pose little risk. Positions on aid teams remain unfilled. 

Hundreds of workers for Doctors Without Borders have fought the outbreak since March. The group’s president, Dr. Joanne Liu, said there was an acute need for materials as well as for more human resources — and not just experts and bureaucrats, but also the kind of person who is ready to “roll up his sleeves.”

“What we have to keep in mind is we are facing today the most devastating and biggest Ebola epidemic of the modern times,” Dr. Liu said. “There is fear, there is a front line, the epidemic is advancing, and there is a collapse of infrastructure.”

A more muscular effort to fight the outbreak began lumbering to life over the past week.

The newly appointed United Nations coordinator for Ebola, Dr. David Nabarro, wrote in an email that he had his “head right down working through some extremely challenging stuff under tight time pressure.” 

“All of us are going to have to perform in an outstanding way over some months,” Dr. Nabarro added in a phone interview. “For many, the image is fearful to a degree that it makes it very hard indeed for them to do anything other than think about their safety and the safety of those they love.”

the political economy of ebola

farmingpathogens |  In spite of writing a long book on diseases spilling over from animals to humans, well-regarded author David Quammen can’t seem to get his mind wrapped around the possibility Ebola has likely evolved a new ecotype, for the first time spreading into a major urban area.

The first outbreak of Flaviviridae Filoviridae Ebola in West Africa apparently began in forest villages across four districts in southeastern Guinea as early as December 2013 before spreading to Conakry and the outskirts of Monrovia, the capitals of Guinea and Liberia respectively.

The number of deaths across West Africa presently stands at 149 killed out of 242 infected. According to the WHO, with a three-week incubation period cases are likely to continue to accumulate for months.

To date, researchers have identified five ebolavirus types. A new clade of Zaire ebolavirus characterizes the present outbreak.

Many of the human outbreaks since 1976, until now limited to Central and East Africa, began with the ingestion of an infected monkey or fruit bat of the Pteropodidae family or some such combinatorial of ecological pathways. In short, one of Quammen’s spillovers.

A human infection typically leads to fever, diarrhea, vomiting, hemorrhage, and death.

Ebola is difficult to contract from another human, however. Much like HIV it spreads by bodily fluid, including, alongside ingestion and accidental cuts, sexually. Its virulence, producing case fatality rates as high as 91%, usually burn out outbreaks. Patients die faster than susceptibles are infected.

And yet this new strain has found the geographic momentum and multiple transmission chains associated with a virus experimenting with evolutionary possibilities, including a more widespread epidemiology.

*

History offers multiple examples of pathogens successfully making such sociospatial transitions.

For most of its evolutionary history the cholera bacterium ate plankton in the Ganges delta. Only once humanity urbanized and by the 19th century became spatially integrated by new modes of transport was cholera able to make its way to the world’s cities. There, in a kind of microbial Bildungsroman, the bacterium transformed from a marginal bug into a roaring success when municipalities began drawing drinking water from the same place they dumped their shit.

The simian immunodeficiency viruses that would evolve into HIV likely emerged from Cameroonian forests when colonial logging broadened the wildlife-human interface.

For eons influenza cycled across waterfowl populations that summered on the Arctic Circle. Influenza expanded into humans once we became farmers and our population densities and connections grew enough to support such an acute infection. After WWII influenza entered  its Industrial Revolution. Billions of livestock monoculture are now pressed up against each other, permitting a new phase in influenza evolution and spread.

In the guise of a liberal paternalism, Quammen errs on the side of an essentialist Ebola instead, denying the virus its capacity to evolve new identities under new circumstances,

Other work documents West Africa is undergoing massive changes in food production and forestry driven by the neoliberal program. “In West Africa,” writes William Moseley and colleagues,

the resulting neoliberal economic policies sought to promote growth and prosperity through structural adjustment programs (SAPs) that generally involved contraction of government services, renewed export orientation on crops or goods deemed to have a comparative advantage, privatization of parastatal organizations, removal or reduction of many subsidies and tariffs, and currency devaluations.

The area is part of the larger Guinea Savannah Zone the World Bank describes as “one of the largest underused agricultural land reserves in the world” that the Bank sees best developed by market commercialization, if not solely on the agribusiness model.

Indeed, the initial outbreaks appear within the cycle migration range–about 120 miles–of recent land deals pursued by the newly democratized government of Guinea.

chasing a rolling snowball...,

economist |  Ebola is now growing exponentially, with the number of new cases roughly doubling every three weeks or so. In Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, it is thought to be doubling every two weeks. Previous outbreaks were usually in rural villages where it was easier to contain. At this rate of progress, small numbers quickly become big ones, and there is a real risk of the disease spreading to cities such as Lagos, which is home to more than 10m people. The longer Ebola is allowed to replicate in humans, the greater the risk that it will become more contagious. Some virologists fret that it might even acquire the ability to be transmitted through the air by coughs and sneezes. 

Although this seems unlikely, nobody wants to find out just how quickly Ebola can adapt to humans.

America’s response is the first by a government on a large scale. Until now the burden has been carried by charities such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which has 2,000 staff in the affected countries. Yet even America’s large commitment may not be enough to get ahead of this epidemic in Liberia, the country most affected. By the time the troops actually get there, the situation in Liberia could be far worse.

Gloves and masks needed

Elsewhere, the response falls far short of what is needed. Sierra Leone, the second-worst-affected country, has received far less help from governments: China is sending 174 people and mobile laboratory teams, Cuba is sending a similar number and Britain will set up a hospital with 62 beds. France is sending 20 people to the region (though it is expected to announce that it will build a hospital).

Two things are urgently needed. The first is the rapid provision of basic (and, frankly, cheap) protective gear such as gloves, gowns, surgical masks and disinfectant. Domestic health systems in affected countries have crumbled as nurses and doctors have fallen ill or died for lack of basic gear.

The second need is for trained staff to run the treatment centres and work in them. Poorly run ones with weak infection controls may hasten the spread of the disease. Both are needed soon, as the cost of halting Ebola’s spread is also rising exponentially. In August the World Health Organisation estimated that it would take nine months and cost $490m to contain Ebola. Now it reckons the cost has risen to over $1 billion. The longer the world prevaricates, the harder and costlier it will be to contain this outbreak.

about that broken trust issue: the west ignores the stories of africans in the middle of the outbreak...,

WaPo |  It wasn’t surprising that Western journalists would react with doom-and-gloom when the Ebola outbreak began in West Africa. Or that the crisis would not be treated as a problem confronting all humanity — a force majeure — but as one of “those diseases” that afflict “those people” over there in Africa. Most Western media immediately fell into fear-mongering. Rarely did they tell the stories of Africans who survived Ebola, or meaningfully explore what it means to see your child or parent or other family member or friend be stricken with the disease. Where are the stories of the wrenching decisions of families forced to abandon loved ones or the bravery required to simply live as a human in conditions where everyone walks on the edge of suspicion?

Instead, we have been given news from “the frontlines of Ebola” and “the war on Ebola,” video clips with somber narrators and eerie soundtracks and photographs that capture only sadness and hopelessness, all without the necessary human context. We have seen endless images of Westerners, covered head to toe, amid crowds of healthy-seeming onlookers; given such presentations, it is no surprise that people would begin to think that Ebola is an airborne contagion that might get on a plane and travel around the world, infecting people on its own. Or that all Africans are potential carriers.

Once again, sensationalism and generalization seem to be the only ways that Africa can be presented in the West. Once again, my country, Sierra Leone, along with Liberia, Guinea and, as far as some are concerned, the entire African continent, makes news because of a crisis. Is this the only time we are relevant? Why is it that, once again, even those who have never set foot on our continent seem to think they know all about us?

Given our interconnected world, it’s no longer possible to excuse such treatment as a lack of access to the facts. So what is the explanation? To borrow the words of Ni­ger­ian novelist Chinua Achebe, “Quite simply it is the desire — one might indeed say the need — in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.” 

This thinking is so deeply entrenched in the minds of people in the West that it has become a reflex. Still, the ways in which Africans are portrayed as less human have not lost the power to shock. Each new crisis, it seems, offers a platform for some to exercise their prejudices.

trust issues: u.s. army withheld promise from germany that ebola and marburg wouldn't be weaponized...,

rt |  The United States has withheld assurances from Germany that the Ebola virus - among other related diseases - would not be weaponized in the event of Germany exporting it to the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.

German MFA Deputy Head of Division for Export Control Markus Klinger provided a paper to the US consulate's Economics Office (Econoff), "seeking additional assurances related to a proposed export of extremely dangerous pathogens."

Germany subsequently made two follow-up requests and clarifications to the Army, according to the unclassified Wikileaks cable.

"This matter concerns the complete genome of viruses such as the Zaire Ebola virus, the Lake Victoria Marburg virus, the Machupo virus and the Lassa virus, which are absolutely among the most dangerous pathogens in the world," the request notes.

The Zaire Ebola virus was the same strain of Ebola virus which has been rampaging through West Africa in recent months.

"The delivery would place the recipient in the position of being able to create replicating recombinant infectious species of these viruses," the cable notes.

However, it also points out that Germany has in place an "exceptionally restrictive policy," adding that approval would not be granted to the export until US assurance was provided.

"A decision about the export has not yet been made. Given the foregoing, we would appreciate confirmation that the end use certificate really is from the Department of the Army and of the accuracy of the data contained therein," the document stated.

There is no follow-up document available to confirm whether the US Army eventually provided Germany with the necessary guarantees.

Bioweapons were outlawed in the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 and was signed and ratified by 179 signatories, including Germany, the US and Russia.

It dictates that signatories, "under all circumstances the use of bacteriological (biological) and toxin weapons is effectively prohibited by the Convention" and "the determination of States parties to condemn any use of biological agents or toxins other than for peaceful purposes, by anyone at any time."

clear thinking on what makes an airborne and highly contagious disease a weapon - no fancy gimmicks required!

shtfplan |  The Centers for Disease Control and medical experts around the country say they have procedures in place to deal with Ebola and pandemics.

But according to one paramedic in Dallas, neither he or anyone else was told that the ambulance they were driving was the same one used to transport Ebola patient Thomas Duncan to the hospital.

A Dallas paramedic claimed he drove the ambulance that the US Ebola patient was transported in and that he was not contacted by anyone about the potential exposure. He claims he drove the ambulance sometime after the patient was transported. The Dallas Fire Department left the ambulance that transported Ebola patient Thomas Duncan to the hospital in service for at least 48 hours before putting it in quarantine on Wednesday. 
Breitbart

It is not known how many paramedics drove the ambulance during the 48 hour period or how many patients were transported.

The incident is the latest in a string of procedural breakdowns that included initially sending Duncan home from the hospital with antibiotics and failing to properly decontaminate the apartment in which he stayed during the onset of symptoms.

Officials continue to insist that America’s medical infrastructure is prepared to handle Ebola.

In about 21 days we’ll know if they are right.

People are already starting to panic. What happens in three weeks if this starts showing up in schoolchildren or other metro areas?  Fist tap Big Don.

if by "animal link" you mean homo sapiens sapiens...

Reuters | Liberia confirmed a third Ebola case on Thursday, nearly two months after it was declared Ebola free, and officials said they were investigating whether the disease had managed to lurk in animals before resurfacing.

Dr Moses Massaquoi, case management team leader for Liberia's Ebola task force, said the three villagers who had tested positive for the disease had shared a meal of dog meat, which is commonly eaten in Liberia.

"They come from the same time and have a history of having had dog meat together," he said.

The response team was investigating whether domestic animals might be carrying the virus, he said, referring also to mysterious deaths of hundreds of cattle in remote Lofa county.

Liberia, the country worst hit by the West African Ebola outbreak discovered last year, was also its biggest success story: the only one of the three hard-hit countries so far to be declared Ebola free.

in 1976 I discovered Ebola - now I fear an unimaginable tragedy

guardian |  Yes, and our first thought was: "What the hell is that?" The virus that we had spent so much time searching for was very big, very long and worm-like. It had no similarities with yellow fever. Rather, it looked like the extremely dangerous Marburg virus which, like ebola, causes a haemorrhagic fever. In the 1960s the virus killed several laboratory workers in Marburg, Germany.

Were you afraid at that point?

I knew almost nothing about the Marburg virus at the time. When I tell my students about it today, they think I must come from the stone age. But I actually had to go the library and look it up in an atlas of virology. It was the American Centres for Disease Control which determined a short time later that it wasn't the Marburg virus, but a related, unknown virus. We had also learned in the meantime that hundreds of people had already succumbed to the virus in Yambuku and the area around it.

A few days later, you became one of the first scientists to fly to Zaire.

Yes. The nun who had died and her fellow sisters were all from Belgium. In Yambuku, which had been part of the Belgian Congo, they operated a small mission hospital. When the Belgian government decided to send someone, I volunteered immediately. I was 27 and felt a bit like my childhood hero, Tintin. And, I have to admit, I was intoxicated by the chance to track down something totally new.

In the end, you discovered that the Belgian nuns had unwittingly spread the virus. How did that happen?

In their hospital they regularly gave pregnant women vitamin injections using unsterilised needles. By doing so, they infected many young women in Yambuku with the virus. We told the nuns about the terrible mistake they had made, but looking back I would say that we were much too careful in our choice of words. Clinics that failed to observe this and other rules of hygiene functioned as catalysts in all additional Ebola outbreaks. They drastically sped up the spread of the virus or made the spread possible in the first place. Even in the current Ebola outbreak in west Africa, hospitals unfortunately played this ignominious role in the beginning.

After Yambuku, you spent the next 30 years of your professional life devoted to combating Aids. But now Ebola has caught up to you again. American scientists fear that hundreds of thousands of people could ultimately become infected. Was such an epidemic to be expected?

Before Its Ukraine Skullduggery - Metabiota Had A Hand In Ebola Outbreaks In Africa

thesaker.is |  The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation continues analysing the military-biological activity of the USA and its allies in Ukraine and other regions of the world in view of new information received at the liberated territories and at the branch offices of the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) that form a unified information network.

We have previously stated that the Ukrainian project of the Pentagon do not meet the pertinent healthcare problems of Ukraine, while their implementation has not led to any improvement of the sanitary-epidemiological situation.

The special military operation has led to forming the final report on DTRA activity dated from 2005 to 2016.

The document contains the data on evaluation of healthcare, veterinary and biosecurity system efficiency prepared by a group of U.S. experts in 2016.

This report is a concept document designed for further planification of military-biological activity of the Pentagon in Ukraine that contains conclusions on implementation of the programme guidelines.

Despite the more than 10-year-long period of cooperation in the alleged '...reduction of biological threats...', the experts have stated:

'...There is no legislation on the control of highly dangerous pathogens in the country, there are significant deficiencies in biosafety... The current state of resources makes it impossible for laboratories to respond effectively to public health emergencies...'

The document emphasises that '...over the past five years, Ukraine has shown no progress in implementing international health regulations of the World Health Organisation'.

The report pays particular attention to non-compliance with biosafety requirements when working and storing microbial collections.

It has been stated '...that most facilities are characterised by numerous gross violations, such as unlocked fencing systems, unlatching windows, broken or inactive pathogen restriction systems, lack of alarm systems...' The results of the review conclude that there is no system for protecting dangerous pathogens in Ukraine.

At the same time, the activities of the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) have been assessed positively: the organisation has managed to bring the national collection of microorganisms to the United States, to organise biological assessment work and to implement projects to study particularly dangerous and economically significant infections that could cause a worsening (changing) epidemic situation.

The report makes the case for continuing this work on behalf of the Pentagon that has cost more than $250 million since 2005.

The document is annexed with ambiguous comments about the sponsors and implementers of the Biological Threat Reduction Programme in Ukraine that have nothing to do with biosecurity issues. In particular, the Soros Foundation is mentioned with the notation '...contributed to the development of an open and democratic society...'

It confirms again that the official activities of the Pentagon in Ukraine are just a front for illegal military and biological research.

We have repeatedly mentioned the role of U.S. Democratic Party representatives in funding bioweapons activities in Ukraine and the intermediary organisations that have been used for this purpose.

I would like to refer to one of the key Pentagon contractors receiving money from Hunter Biden's investment fund, Metabiota.

The available data suggests that the company is merely a front for internationally dubious purposes and is used by the U.S. political elite to carry out opaque financial activities in various parts of the world.

There is a specific example: Metabiota was involved in the response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The activities of the company's employees have raised questions from the World Health Organisation (WHO) in terms of their compliance with biosafety requirements.

This is the report of the international panel of experts from the Haemorrhagic Fever Consortium who were involved in the fight against Ebola virus disease in Sierra Leone in 2015.

According to the document, Metabiota staff had failed to comply with handling procedures and concealed the involvement of Pentagon staff who were using the company as a front. The main purpose of these activities was to isolate highly virulent variants of the virus from sick and dead people, as well as to export its strains to the USA.

In view of the apparent failure of Metabiota's activities to meet the goals of controlling the spread of the disease, the World Health Organisation's Ebola coordinator, Philippe Barbosa, recommended to recall the staff of the company saying he was extremely concerned about the potential risks of such collaboration to WHO's reputation.

The U.S. military contractor's heightened interest in the Ebola virus is not a coincidence: the disease is one of the most pathogenic to humans. During the outbreak that began in 2014, 28,000 people were contaminated, over 11,000 of them died, the mortality rate was around 40%.

The special military operation has led to receiving documents that reveals the plans of Metabiota and the Ukrainian Scientific-Technological Centre to study the Ebola virus in Ukraine.

This is the request for U.S. funding to diagnose highly dangerous pathogens in Ukraine, including Ebola virus. This kind of requests are part of U.S. strategy to redeploy high-risk work with dangerous pathogens to third countries.

The research was to be carried out at the Mechnikov Anti-Plague Institute in Odessa. As the disease is not endemic and has never been recorded in Ukraine indeed, there is a legitimate question about the need for such research and its true purpose.

We have already noted that Ukraine and other post-Soviet states have become a testing ground for biological weapons not only for the USA, but also for its NATO allies; on the first place, Germany. Various projects have been carried out on behalf of the Joint Medical Service of the German Armed Forces.

Bundeswehr professionals paid particular attention to the Congo-Crimean fever pathogen. A large-scale screening of the susceptibility of the local population to this infection was carried out and included summarising demographic, epidemiological and clinical data. This kind of approaches allows to identify new regional virus genotypes and to select strains that cause latent clinical forms.

The study of natural foci of Crimean-Congo fever was carried out under the pretext of improving the Ukrainian epidemiological surveillance system, with the participation of the Institute of Veterinary Medicine in Kiev and the Mechnikov Anti-Plague Institute in Odessa.

Bundeswehr's interest in Crimean-Congo fever stems from the fact that mortality can be as high as 30% and its outbreaks create a need for lengthy and costly treatment, preventive and special handling measures.

This is a quote from Bundeswehr's instructions: '...pay particular attention to fatal cases of infection with Crimean-Congo fever as it allows the virus strains with maximum pathogenicity and virulence for humans to be extracted from the dead individuals...'

Apart from Germany, microbiologists from the USA have shown a keen interest in tick-borne infections; research in this area has been funded by DTRA through the UP-1 and UP-8 projects.

A separate project on ixodid ticks that are vectors of a number of highly dangerous infections (tularemia, West Nile fever, Congo-Crimean fever) has been implemented by the University of Texas.

Ticks used to be collected in the south-eastern regions of Ukraine, where natural foci of infections characteristic of the territory of the Russian Federation are located. At the same time, the period of implementing this work coincided with a rapid increase in the incidence of tick-borne borreliosis among the Ukrainian population, as well as the increase in the number of ticks in various regions of Russia bordering Ukraine.

This issue is being studied by competent Russian professionals in coordination with professionals from the Ministry of Defence of Russia.

We have previously pointed out the significance of the results of the military-biological projects codenamed UP for the Pentagon.

Note the report prepared for the U.S. Defence Department by Black & Veatch and Metabiota. According to the document, Veterinary Projects codenamed 'TAP' were implemented simultaneously with the UP projects in Ukraine.

Their main guideline lies in economically significant quarantine infections capable of damaging the agriculture of several countries and entire regions, such as glanders, African swine fever (ASF), classical swine fever, highly pathogenic avian influenza and Newcastle disease.

African swine fever with two projects dedicated to this pathogen represented particular interest to U.S. military biologists.

The TAP-3 project was aimed to study the spread of ASF pathogen through wild animals. The migration routes of wild boar through Ukraine had been examining within its framework. The TAP-6 project scaled this process up to Eastern European countries.

The study of vector populations of dangerous zoonotic infections was carried out by staff of the Institute of New Pathogens of the University of Florida (Gainesville) in Volyn, Rovno, Zhitomir and Chernigov regions of Ukraine, as well as in the areas bordering Belarus and Russia.

Note the worsening situation of African swine fever in Eastern European countries: According to the International Office of Epizootics, since 2014, outbreaks have been recorded in Latvia (4,021 cases), Estonia (3,814) and Lithuania (4,201). In Poland, more than 13,000 cases of ASF have been detected, and agricultural losses from the disease have exceeded 2.4 billion euro.

We have already emphasised the use of biological weapons in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, I would like to focus on U.S. military-biological activities during the Korean War.

In March 2022, the U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute published a report on the U.S. chemical and biological weapons programme during the Korean War. This report was aimed to create a possible line of defence against allegations of illegal activities carried out by U.S. biolaboratories in Ukraine.

The document attempts to refute the testimony of 38 U.S. military pilots who have admitted using biological weapons in China and Korea.

According to the document, while preparing for the Korean campaign, '...the U.S. Air Force secured additional funds to purchase large quantities of chemical and biological munitions, obtained a testing range for them in Canada and carried out an extensive conceptual work on their use...'

At that time, the Americans considered brucellosis pathogens and economically important infections, including wheat stem rust, as priority biological agents. 2,500 munitions of this type the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command planned to use, including '...to attack Soviet grain crops...'

Analysis of the data mentioned in the report shows that the U.S. command uses the results of the research received from the Japanese military-biological programme and a certain 'continuity' of the works previously carried out by the Detachment 731 led by Shiro Ishii.

This is the record of the closed session of CIA, State Department and the Pentagon representatives dated July 7, 1953. The document clearly shows that the Americans are focusing on techniques to manipulate public opinion and launch an aggressive counter-attack within their strategies aimed to defend from allegations.

The report states that the officials are reluctant to actual investigations of chemical and biological incidents due to fears of revealing the activities carried out by the U.S. Eighth Army.

Thus, the comparative analysis of U.S. activities during the Korean War and currently in Ukraine demonstrates the persistence of the U.S. policy of building up its own military and biological capabilities in circumvention of international agreements.

In conclusion, I would like to present real data on the health condition of the voluntarily surrendered Ukrainian servicemen. This diapositive presents the data on presence of antibodies to contagious disease agents without mentioning personal data of these servicemen.

The results are as follows: 33% of the examined servicemen had had hepatitis A, over 4% had renal syndrome fever and 20% had West Nile fever. The figures are significantly higher than the statistical average. In view of active research of these diseases held by the Pentagon within the Ukrainian projects, there is reason to believe that servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) were involved as volunteers in experiments to assess the tolerance of dangerous infectious diseases.

The lack of therapeutic effect of antibacterial medication has been reported during in-patient treatment of AFU servicemen in medical facilities. High concentrations of antibiotics, including sulphonyl amides and fluoroquinolones, have been detected in their blood.

This fact may indicate preventive use of antibiotics and preparation of personnel for operating in conditions of biological contamination, such as cholera agent, that indirectly proves the information of the Russian Defence Ministry that Ukrainian special units were planning to use biological agents.

The data will be included in the U.S. military-biological dossier and we will continue to examine it and keep you informed.

ebola virus in pigs

Financial Times | Philippine officials tucked into servings of lechon, the popular dish of roasted whole pig, in front of television cameras on Thursday to reassure the public of the safety of the national staple meat after the discovery among hogs near Manila of a strain of the Ebola virus.

Arthur Yap, agriculture secretary, and Francisco Duque, health secretary, said the Ebola Reston virus, which had never been found in pigs before, presented a low health risk for humans and was different from the deadly African variety.

The World Health Organisation was reported to be looking into whether there was any chance humans could have become infected.

The outbreak could deal a blow to Philippine plans to build a pork export industry. The government halted an inaugural shipment of frozen pork to Singapore and quarantined three swine farms.

Pork vendors in public markets in Manila sought to assure buyers that their products had passed government inspection and met safety standards.

“December is the month when we sell the most pork at relatively higher price,” said Evelyn Reyes, who operates a small pork stall in Quezon City. “I really hope the government does a good work of calming people’s fears about the Ebola virus.”

Pork accounts for more than half of the average 61g of meat consumed daily by each Filipino.

The virus was first discovered in 1989 in macaque monkeys imported from the Philippines by a laboratory in Reston, Virginia. Scientists are trying to determine how the virus spread to pigs.

the ebola done partying in december

motherboard | Part of the allure of epidemiology is being able to describe and predict highly dynamic outbreaks with simple, clean mathematical models. But how close can models really get to perfectly mapping the spread of disease? 

Modeling how disease spreads early in an outbreak is a major challenge as sample sizes remain low and variables high. But a recently-developed method of making short-term outbreak projections called the IDEA model has shown promise, and is even doing an excellent job of tracking the current Ebola outbreak.

"If validated, the implications of such a finding may be profound," wrote the model's creators in an open-access 2013 paper in PLOS One, "e.g., the ability to project, with a high degree of accuracy, the final size and duration of a seasonal influenza outbreak within 2 weeks of onset."

The graph above shows how the model is faring with the current Ebola outbreak. So far, it's nearly perfect. If the IDEA model continues to predict the epidemic with the same accuracy, we can expect Ebola to start burning out in December, with a total of 14,000 cases. Currently, according to the CDC there are or have been 8,400. We have a ways to go

tsa checks your temperature and your lunchbox for bushmeat - this is all....,

theatlantic |  The Washington Post's Todd Frankel described having an infrared thermometer gun pointed at his head in the Freetown, Sierra Leone airport, along with hundreds of other passengers. In some countries, individuals whose temperatures seem high later undergo a blood test for the virus.

But these temperature checks aren't always effective. In the Dallas case, the man left Liberia on September 19, had his temperature checked at the airport, and arrived in America on September 20. He only developed symptoms on the 24th, however, and he was isolated four days later. Patients are only contagious when they're symptomatic, so there's no risk the people on the flight with the man caught Ebola. There is, however, a four-day window in which he might have infected others in the U.S.

In July, an Ebola-infected man flew from Liberia to Nigeria, even though airport screenings were already in place, and he infected healthcare workers in Lagos. And of course, fevers are usually caused by flu and other illnesses that aren't Ebola.

Twenty different ports of entry in the U.S. have been equipped with quarantine centers that are on the lookout for passengers with Ebola-like symptoms. “If you’re a passenger on a plane and you say you’re sick, you will be met when you land by the CDC,” agency spokesman David Daigle told The New York Post.

 

At arrival gates, border protection officers keep their eyes peeled for passengers who show signs of fever, sweating, or vomiting. They also try to confiscate any monkey meat or other bushmeat that passengers might have in their luggage.

rule of law: trust us, we're the u.s. government and we're here to help..,

WaPo |  Last week, President Obama announced an ambitious — and expensive — plan that effectively placed the U.S. military at the forefront of the global fight against the worst Ebola outbreak in history. In an effort that could cost as much as $750 million in the next six months, he assigned up to 3,000 military personnel to West Africa to “combat and contain” what officials call “an extraordinarily serious epidemic.”

As those military doctors and officials begin what will be a difficult task, among the challenges they face are rumors that spread fear — fear of Ebola, fear of quarantine measures and fear of doctors. Already, several medical workers have been murdered in Guinea — throats slit, bodies dumped in a latrine. Then six Red Cross volunteers were attacked earlier this week while they tried to collect the body of an Ebola victim.

And now, in what may plant further seeds of mistrust and suspicion, a major Liberian newspaper, the Daily Observer, has published an article by a Liberian-born faculty member of a U.S. university implying the epidemic is the result of bioterrorism experiments conducted by the United States Department of Defense, among others.

And while some commenting on the article were critical, the number who praised it was telling. “They are using” Ebola, wrote one, “for culling the world population mainly Africa for the…purpose of gaining control of the Africans resources criminally.”

cdc director: window is closing on containing ebola

thedailybeast |  At a press conference Tuesday, CDC Director Tom Frieden warned that time is running out to contain West Africa’s Ebola outbreak.

Days after returning from West Africa, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thomas Frieden opened a press conference with a sobering admonition about the effort to contain the Ebola epidemic to West Africa: “The window is closing.”

In an impassioned call to action, he urged American doctors, nurses, and health care professionals to join Africa in its fight. “This isn’t just the countries’ problem,” he said. “It’s a global problem.” With vivid detail, Frieden painted a gruesome picture of overcrowded isolation centers in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, where health care workers are struggling to keep up with “basic care.” He mentioned deficiencies not only in the number of doctors, nurses, and health managers available, but the protective gear needed to keep them safe. Without an immediate change in the current landscape, he said, the worst is yet to come. “The level of outbreak is beyond anything we’ve seen—or even imagined,” Frieden said.

At one particular 35-bed facility, Frieden described the chilling sight of more than three-dozen Ebola patients without beds, left with no other place to fight their infections but the floor. The health care workers, too, face “distressing” conditions. “Roasting hot” personal protective gear including robes, masks, boots, and goggles, make simply drawing an IV a near impossible task. “It is very difficult to move…sweats pours into goggles, [the health workers] see the enormous need but the great risk, too,” he said.

But even more alarming than the disturbing images, was the lack of outside support. “The most upsetting thing I saw was what I didn’t see,” he said. “No data from countries where it’s spreading, no rapid response teams, no trucks, a lack of efficient management,” he said. “I could not possibly overstate the need for an urgent response.”

ed, feed, august in chicago sounding better by the minute about now...,

npr |  An isolation unit at Emory University's hospital in Atlanta will be used in the coming days to house and treat a patient infected with Ebola, the virus that has killed more than 700 people in a recent outbreak in West Africa.

Announcing the pending transfer of the patient Thursday, Emory, which like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based in Atlanta, issued a statement saying it will use "a specially built isolation unit set up in collaboration with the CDC to treat patients who are exposed to certain serious infectious diseases."

The unit is one of four such facilities in America, Emory said, describing it as being "physically separate from other patient areas."

Officials at Emory University Hospital say they don't know when the patient will arrive.

They also didn't give any details about the patient — but the person being treated could be an American who was infected with Ebola while working in Africa, according to a that cites an anonymous source as saying a charter plane has been sent from Georgia to retrieve two patients.

As NPR reported this week, are among three Americans who contracted the disease while working with the charity Samaritan's Purse. CNN says at least one of the two (the third patient has died) could be taken to the Emory facility.

Health experts are calling this Ebola outbreak large, complex, and difficult — and it still hasn't slowed down.

"In only four days, the total number of cases has risen by 122, or about 10 percent," NPR's global development blog said of the Ebola outbreak today.

On Thursday, the CDC issued an advisory against non-essential travel to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, urging Americans to avoid potential exposure to the disease in West Africa.

machete and club killings of outbreak teams jeopardize trust

bbc |  Eight members of a team trying to raise awareness about Ebola have been killed by villagers using machetes and clubs in Guinea, officials say.

Some of the bodies - of health workers, local officials and journalists - were found in a septic tank in a village school near the city of Nzerekore.

Correspondents say many villagers are suspicious of official attempts to combat the disease.

More than 2,600 people have now died from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

It is the world's worst outbreak of Ebola, with officials warning that more than 20,000 people could ultimately be infected.

Neighbouring Sierra Leone has begun a controversial three-day curfew to try to stop the spread of the disease.

The team disappeared after being pelted with stones by residents when they arrived in the village of Wome - in southern Guinea, where the Ebola outbreak was first recorded. 

A journalist who managed to escape told reporters that she could hear villagers looking for them while she was hiding. 

A government delegation, led by the health minister, had been dispatched to the region but they were unable to reach the village by road because a main bridge had been blocked.

 

'Killed in cold blood'

On Thursday night, government spokesman Albert Damantang Camara said the victims had been "killed in cold blood by the villagers".

The bodies showed signs of being attacked with machetes and clubs, officials say.

Six people have been arrested and the village is now reportedly deserted.

The motive for the killings has not been confirmed, but the BBC's Makeme Bamba in Guinea's capital, Conakry, says many villagers accuse the health workers of spreading the disease.

Others still do not believe that the disease exists.

Last month, riots erupted in Nzerekore, 50 km (30 miles) from Wome, after rumours that medics who were disinfecting a market were contaminating people.