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You Are Not Nearly Scared Enough about Ebol

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    Posted: August 14 2014 at 8:02pm

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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/14/you_are_not_nearly_scared_enough_ebola_vaccine_west_africa_outbreak - You Are Not Nearly Scared Enough about Ebola

Experimental drugs and airport screenings will do nothing to stop this plague. If Ebola hits Lagos, we're in real trouble.

ttention 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 absurd http://www.amazon.com/Inferno-Dan-Brown/dp/0385537859 - 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 http://contagionmovie.warnerbros.com/dvd/#/trailer - 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, http://www.cfr.org/diseases-infectious/ebola-outbreak/p33318 - 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 http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/13/opinion/garrett-contagion-virus/ - advised screenwriter http://time.com/3079518/ebola-outbreak-pandemic-fear/ - Scott Burns on his Contagion script.

Inside the United States, politicians, http://www.independent.co.ukews/people/donald-trump-says-ebola-doctors-must-suffer-the-consequences-9646445. - gadflies, and much of the media are focused on wildly experimental drugs and vaccines, and equally wild notions of " http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2014-08-06. - keeping the virus out" by barring travelers and " http://www.nwitimes.comews/local/govt-and-politics/article_6cd84d69-3909-50d7-aa64-cc211b491795. - 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 http:/ews.yahoo.com/us-doctor-ebola-released-hospital-soon-174919099. - 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 http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/ctphases. - 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 http://who.int/csr/don/2014_08_13_ebola/en/ - 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 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/13/us-health-ebola-nigeria-enugu-idUSKBN0GD1F220140813 - escaped her quarantine confinement in Lagos and traveled to Enugu a city that, as of 2006, has a population of http://www.population.gov.ng/index.php/enugu-state - about three million. Though the nurse has not shown symptoms of the disease, the incubation time for infection, which is http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/ - up to 21 days, hasn't elapsed.

Since the Ebola outbreak began in March there have been many reports of isolated cases of the disease in travelers to other countries. None have resulted, so far, in secondary spread, establishing new epidemic focuses of the disease. As I write this, such a case is thought to have occurred  http://citizen.co.za/228640/first-suspected-ebola-case-johannesburg/ - Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city, and another suspected case reportedly http://www.moh.gov.sa/en/Ministry/MediaCenterews/Pagesews-2014-08-06-001.aspx - died in isolation in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, prompting the kingdom to issue http://blogs.wsj.com/middleeast/2014/08/07/ebola-virus-saudi-issues-travel-warning/ - special Ebola warnings for the upcoming hajj. It's only a matter of time before one of these isolated cases spreads, possibly in a chaotic urban center far larger than the ones in which it is now claiming lives: Conakry, Guinea; Monrovia, Liberia; and Freetown, Sierra Leone.

So what does "getting it" mean for understanding what we, as a global community, must now do?

First of all, we must appreciate the scale of need on the ground in the three Ebola-plagued nations. While the people may pray for magic bullets, their health providers are not working in Hollywood, but rather in some of the most impoverished places on Earth. Before Ebola, these countries spent http://.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.PCAP - less than $100 per year per capita on healthcare. Most Americans spend more than that annually on aspirin and ibuprofen.

We must collectively listen to the pleading and anguish coming from those courageous health providers who have seen Ebola claim http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/overview-august-2014/en/ - more than 80 of their colleagues since the crisis began. What do they want?

On Aug. 8, the http://who.int/mediacentreews/statements/2014/ebola-20140808/en/ - World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola epidemic a "public health emergency of international concern." In the agency's pronouncement, WHO noted the urgent need for local government actions, such as the http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/science/using-a-tactic-unseen-in-a-century-countries-cordon-off-ebola-racked-areas. - cordons sanitaires recently erected, and for global mobilization of medical resources. WHO has repeatedly http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2014/ebola-briefing/en/ - warned that this epidemic could persist for a minimum of six months, perhaps a year. The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Tom Frieden, http://www.dailymail.co.ukews/article-2719852/Ebola-s-spread-unprecedented-says-CDC-chief-warns-deadly-disease-spread-US. - has concurred with that grim forecast.

"It's like fighting a forest fire: leave behind one burning ember, one case undetected, and the epidemic could re-ignite," Frieden http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/global-pulse/ebola-likely-rage-year-or-more - recently told Congress. "Ending this outbreak will take time, at least three to six months in a best case scenario, but this is very far from a best case scenario."

At the same congressional hearing http://www.sim.org/index.php//dr-glover-testifies-before-congress - Dr. Frank Glover, a medical missionary who partners with http://simusa.org/ - SIM, a Christian missions organization, and president of SHIELD, a U.S.-based NGO in Africa, http://simusa.org/latest-news/4476/immediate__needed_to_address_ebola_crisis_in_liberia - warned that Liberia had less than 200 doctors struggling to meet the health needs of 4 million people before the epidemic. "After the outbreak that number went down to about 50 doctors involved in clinical care," said Glover.

I myself have received emails from physicians in these countries, describing the complete collapse of all non-Ebola care, from unassisted deliveries to untended auto accident injuries. People aren't just dying of the virus, but from every imaginable medical issue a system of care usually faces.

Ken Isaacs, vice president of International Programs and Government Relations at http://www.samaritanspurse.org/disaster/ebola-crisis/ - Samaritan's Purse, the aid organization that has two of its members fighting for their lives in Ebola quarantine in Atlanta, http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA16/20140807/102607/HHRG-113-FA16-Wstate-IsaacsK-20140807.pdf - told Congress, "It took two Americans getting the disease in order for the international community and United States to take serious notice of the largest outbreak of the disease in history. That the world would allow two relief agencies to shoulder this burden along with the overwhelmed Ministries of Health in these countries, testifies to the lack of serious attention the epidemic was given."

Despite current response mechanisms, this Ebola outbreak, Isaacs said as he closed his remarks, "is uncontained and out of control in West Africa."

Even if the world dodges a viral bullet and Ebola fails to take hold in a metropolis in a different country (such as Lagos, Johannesburg, Delhi, or Sao Paulo), controlling the disease and saving lives in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea will require resources on a scale nobody has delineated. The http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/08/11/us-health-ebola-doctor-idINKBN0GB1O520140811 - emotionally distraught doctors and nurses on the front lines are screaming for help.

Let's start with simple, on-the-ground manpower. All three countries desperately need doctors, nurses, medical technicians, ambulance drivers, Red Cross volunteers, epidemiologists, and health logistics experts. They do not need novice do-gooders from the wealthy world, but people experienced in working under the stifling conditions of tropical heat, the desperation of supplies deficits, and the fearfulness of epidemics. The lion's share of care to date has been provided by one group -- Médecins Sans Frontières -- which is pleading for others to relieve their exhausted ranks -- 600 people who have been fighting for months on the front lines in this war.

Nothing could be clearer than this http://www.msf.org/article/ebola-official-msf-response-who-declaring-ebola-international-public-health-emergency - MSF press release, dated Aug. 8:

Dr. Bart Janssens, MSF Director of Operations

"Declaring Ebola an international public health emergency shows how seriously WHO is taking the current outbreak; but statements won't save lives. Now we need this statement to translate into immediate action on the ground. For weeks, MSF has been repeating that a massive medical, epidemiological and public health response is desperately needed to saves lives and reverse the course of the epidemic. Lives are being lost because the response is too slow.

Countries possessing necessary capacities must immediately dispatch available infectious disease experts and disaster relief assets to the region. It is clear the epidemic will not be contained without a massive deployment on the ground from these states.

In concrete terms, all of the following need to be radically scaled up: medical care, training of health staff, infection control, contact tracing, epidemiological surveillance, alert and referral systems, community mobilisation and education.

MSF currently has 66 international and 610 national staff responding to the crisis in the three affected countries. All our Ebola experts are mobilized, we simply cannot do more." 

Here is the list of supplies Emmet A. Dennis, president of the University of Liberia, e-mailed that he needs for his medical school personnel now fighting cases in Monrovia:

Gowns -- Isolation
Underpads -- Disposable
Gloves, Examination -- All Sizes
Body Bags - Adult & Children
Infectious Waste Bag -- Red
Face Mask -- Duckbilled
Face Shield Disposable
Eye Shields -- Disposable
Shoe Covers
Aprons - Disposable
Sanitizer Wipes
Plastic Boots
Surgical Caps -- Disposable
Disinfectant
Scrubs (L & XL)
Thermometer: Infrared -- Thermofocus
Disinfectant Soap
Chlorinated Disinfectant
Rehydration Fluids
R/L Solution
N/S Solution

It simply does not get more basic. As there are no miracle drugs for Ebola, the needs include few medicines, though other local responders tell me that they wish they had sterile syringes, saline drips, and fever modulators such as aspirin.

"Getting it," in this epidemic, means realizing that over the next six to 12 months, these countries will needs millions of dollars' worth of basic supplies, hundreds of highly skilled healthcare workers, including logistics supplies officers, and self-sufficiency for all foreigners (food, water, personal supplies). As the border blockades ending trade to these nations persist, food supplies for the population will also become acutely short, probably necessitating World Food Program assistance. Exhausted, frightened young soldiers and police will need their ranks replaced slowly with United Nations Peacekeepers or soldiers from the African Union.

And of course this list assumes Ebola remains confined in terms of secondary spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. If the virus takes hold in another, more populous nation, the needs will grow exponentially, and swiftly.

John Moore

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/14/you_are_not_nearly_scared_enough_ebola_vaccine_west_africa_outbreak - http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/14/you_are_not_nearly_scared_enough_ebola_vaccine_west_africa_outbreak


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 14 2014 at 8:29pm
Great list copied it and will start getting just in case.

I keep saying no one is going to go and help. It is just not going to happen Doctors and nurses are just not going to show up. What the answer is no one knows at this time. This could get real bad I just hope it burns out!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Elver Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 14 2014 at 8:58pm
FluMom,

You are absolutely right. What nurse in their right mind would expose herself to this kind of disease? Only the ones who are desperate for money will do this. I'm sure there are a few saintly ones out there, but I'm pretty sure their numbers are quite low.

This cannot possibly burn itself out in Africa because the airlines are going to make sure that it spreads around the world first.

Patient zero of any country won't show symptoms on the airplane, but does it in some grandiose fashion while at the theater, restaurant, hotel room, concert, football game, grocery store, museum, or at the craps table in Vegas!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jacksdad Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 15 2014 at 9:45pm
This is starting to remind me of H7N9. Lots of cases within a geographical region, but no international spread despite a multitude of opportunities. Leaky borders, flights to international hubs, and still nothing.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote newbie1 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 16 2014 at 9:24am
Originally posted by jacksdad jacksdad wrote:

This is starting to remind me of H7N9. Lots of cases within a geographical region, but no international spread despite a multitude of opportunities. Leaky borders, flights to international hubs, and still nothing.


Which means....? Where is your train of thought going on this? I hadn't thought of this before but so far...yeah - valid point! Could both these diseases be (Please forgive me for saying it this way - not sure how else to say it) a 'poor persons' or 'traditional followers' disease?

In China, the 'average/poor individual who follows tradition & goes to market to buy freshly butchered bird' in Africa the 'average/poor person who follows tradition and kisses/washes body of loved ones'?

Sorry for my ignorance of these countries customs but do the middle/higher class economic branches of these countries (ie. the ones who can afford to air travel & spread it) stay safer due to more education, more hygiene, more 'western influence'....? By western influence, I mean by watching movies, reading magazines etc - that push/promote 'our' values (kissing a dead body is gross, watching a live chicken get its head cut off is 'yucky' etc) is this changing their lives, maybe in a way protecting them? I know that sounds terrible, just not sure how to say it better
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 16 2014 at 10:25am
Political correctness is laudable when used to avoid offence, inexcusable when used to twist the truth.

As a point of interest I am short, fat and middle aged.  I am not vertically challenged, pleasingly plump or in my prime!

I am Irish and female too. Tongue  Make of that what you will.

I could not agree more Newbie1 LOL
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jacksdad Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 16 2014 at 10:54am
To be honest, I'm not sure that anyone has figured out why H7N9 stayed put (other than the Taiwan cases that originated in China anyway, and then dead ended), or MERS didn't do much outside Saudi. H5N1 has covered an impressive amount of ground over the years, but that's because it's a virus of migratory wildfowl that occasionally spills over into humans and commercial flocks. It's always been assumed that a novel human virus would have modern travel on it's side to spread more efficiently than any contagion before it, but we've now seen several examples that didn't pan out that way just in the last few years. In contrast, Spanish Flu hitched a ride on steam ships and horses and managed to make it clear around the globe in the time its taken Ebola to meander around a corner of West Africa.
Despite all the expectations that Ebola would spread fast and far by air travel, it hasn't popped up anywhere else yet. I know I'm in the minority on this one, but that suggests to me that efficient airborne transmission isn't close to happening, but it does leave a lot of questions unanswered as to why contact transmission hasn't facilitated international spread if it's as contagious as many believe. Why such a severe outbreak centered exclusively in West Africa, and why has it slowed it's spread to other countries while the numbers of sick/dead continue to climb in the four currently affected? Lots of unknowns with this bug.

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JB hopefully you are right.

Guinea hasnt given accurate data since 10 april when they already had 150 cases. Taking into account that the cases 4-fold every 30/40 days, we have now about 5/6000 cases ( there we can also take into consideration a 60 % lethality... (there where already some doctors that told that the numbers are significantly higher that presented officially)

lets hope that the "cordon sanitaire" will keep the propagation limited, and ppl will not die because of starvation...
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote onefluover Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 16 2014 at 12:13pm
JD, maybe most of the Africans who've so far gotten Ebola are of the so-impoverished group that Ebola hasn't had a good chance yet to viably leave their culture. Maybe even some have but in these early stages a few isolated cases were cought by foreign governments and hushed up in hope that no more show up on their turf. Because in light of what you said, which is interesting, the Spanish Flu began (as far as we know) in a part of the world where it had the greatest means to escape borders and travel far and wide with such swiftness. (The heartland of America and our military.) To me that may be the difference between the two's rate and distance of spread. Had Mr Sawyer made it here as planned before ending up in hospital and doing the urine thing, etc, we may have had some kind of outbreak here involving ten to dozens of people by now. And once again. Would be virtually impossible to know each and every person he closely contacted or virtually every surface he could have contaminated. Ebola hasn't, -in my opinion, left Aftica yet. per se, because most of the people infected by it so far, don't even have shoes let alone cars or jet-tickets. And you may end up bèing proved correct and I hope you are but I'm preparing for the worstest in this case. Respects.
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Personal theory:

I think that the emerging economies of the third world will slowly but inexorably see a increase of cases. 

Eventually there will be sufficient numerical pressure to carry cases here.  First a few but rising in number.  I do not expect that for months, maybe a year.

If our MSF, WHO, CDC, red cross/crescent and maybe some military are able to both raise suffcient volume of control AND coordinate their efforts soon, then maybe these outbreaks can be "headed off at the pass".  I am not holding my breath for that though, nor for the level of cooperation, financial support or foresight that is needed.  Nigeria's president is more of the ilk I expect.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote KiwiMum Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 16 2014 at 2:12pm

Sorry for my ignorance of these countries customs but do the middle/higher class economic branches of these countries (ie. the ones who can afford to air travel & spread it) stay safer due to more education, more hygiene, more 'western influence'....? By western influence, I mean by watching movies, reading magazines etc - that push/promote 'our' values (kissing a dead body is gross, watching a live chicken get its head cut off is 'yucky' etc) is this changing their lives, maybe in a way protecting them? I know that sounds terrible, just not sure how to say it better[/QUOTE]



I've gotta say Newbie that I think you are wrong on many levels. My mother is Irish and we have yet to leave a dead relative in the hands of strangers in a funeral parlour. Our dead stay in our house with us, in an open coffin and they are guarded and kept company until the moment they leave for the graveyard. 

There is nothing "gross" about caring for a corpse. It is an act of respect and love. We'll all be dead one day, it is part of life. The fact the Africans care for their dead is not because they are less developed than us. Look at the western world, we send our dead to stacked in a morgue or funeral parlour when they are stripped of their jewellery by poorly paid strangers and then burnt in an incinerator or buried in the ground, again by strangers  - people who don't care because they didn't know the deceased.

Now for chickens. I rear about 35 meat chickens every year. They live in an orchard and are healthy and well cared for. When we're ready to eat them, we chop off their heads. There is nothing gross about this either. Their death is very quick, it happens in the dark and they are not stressed or treated cruelly. 

Compare this to the chickens in your local KFC or supermarket. The variety for sale there is a Ross Cobb. Even the largest one is 8 weeks old when it is slaughtered. For the last 3 weeks of it's life it is so grossly overweight that it can't support itself on its own legs. It sits all day in a cage in its own faeces and the ammonia and filth is so bad that it has often scorched the skin off its legs (you can see this if you look closely enough at the knee caps on the oven ready bird).

The last hour or so of the Ross Cobb is one of pain and fear as it's taken through to the slaughter area with hundreds of other birds.  

So which is the more "yucky", your Ross Cobb or my old breed chickens? We killed 2 geese and 3 chickens two days ago. The geese each received one shot through the head, and the chickens were beheaded. I plucked, gutted and processed these birds.

I take real pleasure and have a sense of pride in the food we produce. All our animals have a healthy natural life. Our chickens are about 9 months old when we kill them and they have well developed muscles and feathers. They are positively glowing with health. The same goes for our pigs and cows. 


Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jacksdad Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 16 2014 at 4:39pm
Absolutely right, onefluover. Spanish Flu started in the US, a country that was moving troops around the country and on to Europe at the time the virus first appeared. But here's the problem - from there it continued to spread around the globe through countries at least as impoverished as West Africa is now, and practically nobody had access to air travel. It was essentially unstoppable whether it was in affluent or poverty stricken countries - nothing seemed to affect it's ability to spread. Something's nailed Ebola to the floor in West Africa though.
There is no way that regional borders that lie deep in the bush can be anything but porous - people have to be crossing them, and yet this thing's stuck in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria. I'm not saying it won't spread because I fully expect cases to show up soon - but why is it taking so long?

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 16 2014 at 4:59pm
I could not agree more about the chickens Kiwi mum.  That is the main reason I wanted a smallholding. 

Though I eat a proportion of both veggie and vegan food, I am not quite prepared to give meat up completely.  But I will not eat the tortured.  I prefer to despatch things myself.  That way I can insure they do not suffer, in life as well as death.  We are not alone.  There are others locally with a similar outlook.  My friend accidentally bought the wrong eggs to hatch and found she had the 8 week variety.  She sat and cried when their legs gave out.  Humans can be so callous.  I am horrified at the very idea of that breed.

Onefluover is still correct about the safety inherent in the "ew!" factor.  Unwell chickens are isolated and if treatment fails disposed of hygenically instead of being eaten.  I confess I have kissed a human corpse goodbye, but he died of motor neurone disease.  I am sure his shade would have understood, had he died of something unknown or contageous and  I had declined.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote KiwiMum Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 16 2014 at 6:37pm
Technophobe, I don't even try to treat a sick chicken, we just kill them and then compost them. We only eat the healthy ones. I'm not happy about giving antibiotics to animals we are going to eat so we just kill them asap. 

As much as anything it is education about Ebola that the Africans need. It is swinging from one extreme to another to expect them to go from a hands on, extended contact funeral preparation and ceremony to one of plastic bags and contamination suits where they don't even get to glimpse the body let alone touch it. 

If I had a contagious family member who died I certainly wouldn't have them in an open coffin at the end of the dining room, but I also wouldn't have them loaded on a cattle truck to be put in a landfill. There must be some middle ground and education about the implications of handling an Ebola victim surely would help.

On an unrelated subject about food, it really bugs me that so many children think meat comes from cellophane packages in supermarkets. If people are going to eat meat then they should man up and see where the meat they are buying comes from and what happens to the animals they choose to eat. 

If more people were aware of factory farming and misery it causes, then more people would make ethical choices with their eggs, meat and dairy products and ultimately the cost of better quality animal products would come down. 

I don't agree with the yuck factor and people being squeamish about it. 100 years ago and we'd all know how to gut a chicken. If someone can't stand the thought of killing and gutting, or at least watching someone else kill and gut then they really should become a vegetarian.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote onefluover Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 16 2014 at 7:40pm
Originally posted by jacksdad jacksdad wrote:

Absolutely right, onefluover. Spanish Flu started in the US, a country that was moving troops around the country and on to Europe at the time the virus first appeared. But here's the problem - from there it continued to spread around the globe through countries at least as impoverished as West Africa is now, and practically nobody had access to air travel. It was essentially unstoppable whether it was in affluent or poverty stricken countries - nothing seemed to affect it's ability to spread. Something's nailed Ebola to the floor in West Africa though.
There is no way that regional borders that lie deep in the bush can be anything but porous - people have to be crossing them, and yet this thing's stuck in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria. I'm not saying it won't spread because I fully expect cases to show up soon - but why is it taking so long?



'I met a little elfman once,
Down where the lillies grow.
I asked him why he was so small,
And why he did not grow.
He stepped a little closer,
And looked me through and through.
"I am just as big for me, " he said,
"As you are big for you."'

Time and distance are relative to each situation I guess. This virus is becoming known as a slow mover. Taking all other considerations out of the equation (and you have many ones), using its current trend, my math indicates that in 18 months from now, it has a growth rate to infect seven billion people. Plenty fast enough fer me.


Techno I'm not sure what you mean by oneflu and the '"ew" factor". I'm missing something. As for chickens, as I sit here typing away on my 1" by 1 1/2" iPhone screen, watching the sun set over Death Valley, I have a dozen of various-breed chickens doing the pimp-stroll and pooping just a few inches from my feet. These are the layers. A month ago we had the Rock Hens, the 8 week ones and had to do what we had to do and I agree that was not cool but I didn't buy them but it was all in a days work anyhow. They cooked up nicely.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jacksdad Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 17 2014 at 7:54am
It's certainly a slow mover, but that's definitely to our advantage. With a viral sprinter like influenza, vaccines have to be guessed at six months in advance because the speed of an outbreak gives us no opportunity to decide at the time. With Ebola, preparations can be made ahead of it and vaccines/treatments can be fine tuned. I still believe it's predominantly a disease of the third world though, and when it shows up in the developed world (which it will) it'll find itself at such a disadvantage that widespread contagion will be impossible. I don't see any evidence of efficient airborne transmission or mutations to a more virulent strain yet, but in West Africa I do see a region that has turned out to be perfect for the spread of Ebola. That said, there are undoubtedly other places it can gain a foothold (India, Pakistan, South America, maybe Southeast Asia) and our experience with the virus in the Congo suggests it'll find a natural animal host and simmer away in the environment, causing sporadic outbreaks for the forseeable future. We're probably going to see a lot more of Ebola now it's jumped from the relative isolation of the Congo, but seven billion infections isn't possible. Don't forget that a significant percentage of the population is always going to be genetically immune to any given pathogen, and even with the disease as widespread as it is in the four affected countries, after six months we're maybe looking at a fraction of one percent of their population infected so far.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote onefluover Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 17 2014 at 8:36am
I know JD. Those are all valid points and I generally agree. The seven billion is for shock value. It's what I come up with based on uninterrupted doubling of the current trend without takung into consideration yours and many other points. I in no way believe this will actually happen. No way near. But I do believe it will escape Africa soon and do in other countries something similar to what it's now doing there. My underlying cincern is what chalenges it will present to the world economy and how that may effect the War Machines. This whole debate about Ebola to some degree is just a tea brewed up by our friend Astro anyways. If nothing else, its livened up things around here for the moment. Lets just hope that that is the extent of it. H5N1 is still my biggest fear.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jacksdad Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 17 2014 at 8:49am
I hear you. Pandemic influenza and the general unpleasantness it can cause is why I prep. Well, that and zombies. Zombies with flu.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 17 2014 at 10:16am
Originally posted by onefluover onefluover wrote:


Techno I'm not sure what you mean by oneflu and the '"ew" factor"
  Oneflu wondered if the revulsion modern people feel at the rather more hands-on part of meat preparation (gutting, skinning, drawing and singeing) helped to protect them from the meat-born diseases. 

I think it probably does.  But, only those sufficiently ignorant or stupid to approach the messy stuff unsafely.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote onefluover Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 17 2014 at 3:26pm
Originally posted by Technophobe Technophobe wrote:

Originally posted by onefluover onefluover wrote:


Techno I'm not sure what you mean by oneflu and the '"ew" factor"
  Oneflu wondered if the revulsion modern people feel at the rather more hands-on part of meat preparation (gutting, skinning, drawing and singeing) helped to protect them from the meat-born diseases. 

I think it probably does.  But, only those sufficiently ignorant or stupid to approach the messy stuff unsafely.


Oh. I think I remember now. About the Costco chickens? Yeah I agree with that. There are ways to properly dress and prepare any meat source. I've also gone through though I didn't complete Vocational Meat Cutting. (A riot in the class ended that) but I learned about food-borne illness and cross-contamination, etc. Most of it is elementary. Sadly though, most people don't seem to have a clue that they should as its repeatedly explained to us throughout life. But the Costco chickens my two points were that (one), if they ever were to become infected with something like H5N1, etc, at least they are prepped and cooked before we get them and (two), at $5.00 US each, they are cheaper and usually larger and tastier and already cooked than grocery store raw ones. I don't know about GMO and all that other stuffages but they're about the best value pound for pound of meat I can find anymore. I've bought hundreds of them over the last ten years, 90% for my Chihuahuas. They are pound for pound of meat content, ten times cheaper than dog food and I once painted 7 huge silos for the Purina Plant in Raleigh and learned they use saw dust as a filler. So suffice it to say I buy dog food that is quite tasty for me too.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jacksdad Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 17 2014 at 5:15pm
Free range birds like the ones KiwiMum raises are relatively healthy and disease free. The store bought ones (get ready to look at chicken differently) are processed in such a way that they don't always die as they're hung upside down by their legs and dunked in a tank charged with electricity. The live ones are boiled, gutted, etc while conscious and consequently poop all over themselves and the equipment, which is unfortunate as many broiler hens in the States carry things like E.Coli in their gut.
Here's the best part - banned in Europe, chill tanks await the carcasses. Cold water which is supposed to add weight ($) to the birds as they sit in it for an hour becomes a fecal soup, which is why as many as 90% of all frozen birds test positive for fecal contamination outside and inside the carcass. Now you know why it's recommended that you disinfect every surface that chicken touches - because much of it is saturated with poop, and fecal contamination is used as a pretty accurate indicator of the presence of E. Coli.
Sorry...

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 17 2014 at 5:18pm
And I thought plucking one was unpleasant!  That is disgusting as well as cruel.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jacksdad Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 17 2014 at 5:21pm
Yep, and they're only about seven weeks old by the time they're ready to be slaughtered and processed.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote onefluover Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 17 2014 at 6:27pm
We've got a dozen with a quarter acre back yard to roam. Not huge at all but not a dog pen either. Can't have roosters so layers only. Well , some were roosters but they've since been sent as a message to Long Beach. (Most of you won't get that. Albert should. Sorry Albert.) I get it on the Factory Farming. Much can be said of most every meat at the store. I always wanted my own farm to grow and raise much of my own food but you need many acres to do that viably and full time and still an income. Maybe someday...
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