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….1kiki
"You mean my repeated suggestions not to trust any source?"

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….1kiki
When Kiev says that Russia is attacking across the border and it's posted from WashPost - do you object?

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….1kiki
No, it's that you say one thing and do another. When Mal4 repeatedly posted 'facts' from Sky News (facts which were not found anywhere else) did you object? When Signy posted irrefitable videos from Odessa, did you accept them?

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….1kiki
Your mistrust, which you claim to wield fairly, is exquisitely selective. If you agree with an item, you accept it whole cloth, source and facts be damned. If you have any kind of personal itch about an item - you don't like the facts or the source - no amount of validity will move you.

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…kiki
Anyway, believe it or not, I have a life. And it doesn't include spending endless amounts of time on people who are so comfortable with their biases they don't even know they have them anymore.

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Are you paying attention Magon? Taking what G says and adapting it as her own as though that is what she has always been about, even though "we" know this to be false.

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Dakar (AFP) - The Ebola epidemic that has killed more than 1,500 people across West Africa spread to a fifth country in the region on Friday with the first confirmed case of the deadly virus in Senegal.

The case marks the first time a new country has been hit by the outbreak since July and comes a day after the World Health Organization warned the number of infections was increasing rapidly....

Senegal's health ministry said the country's first Ebola patient was a young Guinean man who was immediately quarantined at a Dakar hospital, where he was in a "satisfactory condition".

The man is believed to have been infected in Guinea's capital Conakry, and may have travelled to Senegal before Dakar closed its land border with Guinea on August 21.

Authorities are now scrabbling to piece together where he went and who he encountered, in a bid to halt the spread of the deadly virus.

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The UN security council has called the Ebola outbreak "a threat to international peace and security" and urged the world to provide health experts, field hospitals and medical supplies.

A resolution adopted unanimously by the UN's most powerful body at an emergency meeting with an unprecedented 130 countries as co-sponsors reflected the rising global concern at the outbreak.

It was only the second time that the security council has addressed a public health emergency, the first being the HIV/Aids pandemic.

The UN health chief, Dr Margaret Chan, said the "deadly and dreaded Ebola virus got ahead of us" and it was time to urgently catch up.

"This is likely the greatest peacetime challenge that the United Nations and its agencies have ever faced," she said.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said the number of Ebola cases was doubling every three weeks. He called for a 20-fold increase in aid totalling almost $1bn (£600m) to tackle the crisis over the next six months.

Ban said the largest outbreak of Ebola in history "demands the attention of the world" and "unprecedented" action.

The UN is leading the global response to contain and eradicate Ebola and Ban announced that he was establishing a UN emergency mission to tackle the growing challenge.

He thanked the US president, Barack Obama, for sending 3,000 troops to provide expertise in logistics, training and engineering. He also credited about 20 other countries which have responded with contributions and urged all nations coming to the UN general assembly ministerial meeting next week to follow suit.

After the emergency UN meeting, Dr Joanne Liu, the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières, said: "MSF welcomes the emergency Ebola meeting of the UN security council.

"We call on member states and others to follow the lead of countries who have committed to join the fight against Ebola. We need concrete action on the ground now.

"Speed is of the essence. Although dangerously late, the pledges such as those of the US and UK are ambitious, but they must be implemented now. We do not have months or even weeks to wait. Thousands of lives are at stake. Other countries must commit to deploying assets and staff to the affected region as soon as possible.

"We are in uncharted waters. It is impossible to predict if the current pledges are enough because we do not know how the situation will degenerate in the coming weeks.

"There is no response too large. Flexibility to adapt to this unpredictable situation is paramount. Field hospitals, trained staff and coordination are desperately needed bring Ebola under control. Today."

The security council encouraged the governments of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to accelerate the rapid diagnosis and isolation of suspected Ebola cases and launch public education campaigns about the virus. It also encouraged the three governments "to continue efforts to resolve and mitigate the wider political, security and humanitarian dimensions of the Ebola outbreak".

The resolution addresses the "detrimental effect" of the isolation of the affected countries, especially on their economies. It calls for the lifting of travel and border restrictions, a resumption of shipping and air service to the affected countries and increased efforts to deliver health workers and supplies.

Jackson Niamah, a team leader for MSF at a treatment centre in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, told the council by videoconference that there were not enough centres and beds. People "are sitting at the gates of our centres, literally begging for their lives" and "are dying at our front door", he said.

"They rightly feel alone, neglected, denied left to die a horrible, undignified death," Naimah said. "We are failing the sick because there is not enough help on the ground. If the international community does not stand up, we will be wiped out."

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Sierra Leone has commenced a three-day shutdown intended to contain the spread of the Ebola virus, as the UN security council declared the deadly outbreak a threat to world peace.

Most of Sierra Leone's population of six million were confined to their homes from midnight, with only essential workers such as health professionals and security forces exempt.

Almost 30,000 volunteers will go door to door to educate residents and hand out soap, in an exercise that could lead to scores more patients and bodies being discovered in people's homes.

Health experts have criticised the shutdown, arguing that coercive measures to stem the epidemic could backfire and will be extremely hard to implement.

Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) said lockdowns may end up driving people underground and could "jeopardise the trust between people and health providers".

Sierra Leone's president, Ernest Koroma, said that if the population heeded the volunteers' advice, "the campaign will greatly help to reverse the increasing trend of the disease transmission and become a very big boost to our collective effort to stop the outbreak."

In a message broadcast on television and radio, Koroma said: "These are extraordinary times and extraordinary times require extraordinary measures."

There is mounting global concern over the Ebola epidemic, which has killed more than 2,600 people in west Africa. In Guinea, paranoia over Ebola is so rife that seven people sent to educate villagers on the disease were found dead after being attacked by locals who apparently feared the delegation meant them harm.

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"The eight bodies were found in the village latrine. Three of them had their throats slit," Damantang Albert Camara told Reuters by telephone in Conakry.

However, Guinea's Prime Minister Mohamed Saïd Fofana, speaking in a television message that had been recorded earlier, said 7 bodies of 9 missing people had been found.

He said six people have been arrested following the incident, which took place on Tuesday in Wome, a village close to the town of Nzerekore, in Guinea's southeast, where Ebola was first identified in March.

Since then the virus has killed some 2,630 people and infected at least 5,357 people, according to World Health Organization (WHO), mostly in Guinea, neighbouring Sierra Leone and Liberia. It has also spread to Senegal and Nigeria.

Authorities in the region are faced with widespread fears, misinformation and stigma among residents of the affected countries, complicating efforts to contain the highly contagious disease.

Fofana said the team that included local administrators, two medical officers, a preacher and three accompanying journalists, was attacked by a hostile stone-throwing crowd from the village when they tried to inform people about Ebola.

He said it was regrettable that the incident occurred as the international community was mobilising to help countries struggling to contain the disease.

(Reporting by Saliou Samb; Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Ken Wills)

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
But Ebola isn't airborne, so why should it spread so easily ?

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Ebola then spreads through human-to-human transmission via direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g. bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids.

Health-care workers have frequently been infected while treating patients with suspected or confirmed EVD. This has occurred through close contact with patients when infection control precautions are not strictly practiced.

Burial ceremonies in which mourners have direct contact with the body of the deceased person can also play a role in the transmission of Ebola.

People remain infectious as long as their blood and body fluids, including semen and breast milk, contain the virus. Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness.

Symptoms of Ebola virus disease

The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms is 2 to 21 days. Humans are not infectious until they develop symptoms. First symptoms are the sudden onset of fever fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, symptoms of impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding (e.g. oozing from the gums, blood in the stools). Laboratory findings include low white blood cell and platelet counts and elevated liver enzymes.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It seems to me that the WORST parasites and diseases come from regions that have been heavily populated by humans for a very ling time- Africa and China - because the microbiota has had time to co-evolve with human hosts.

But that's just me.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It seems to me that the WORST parasites and diseases come from regions that have been heavily populated by humans for a very ling time- Africa and China - because the microbiota has had time to co-evolve with human hosts.

But that's just me.

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There appears to be something to do with the amount of animals that can be/were domesticated in these regions.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Just as an aside, while TPTB are busy telling us how unheard-of/ unlikely it is that Ebola would mutate to an airborne form, how viruses "just don't change their mode of transmission", the fact is that one of the Ebola variants has ALREADY mutated into an airborne form, as evidenced by The Hot Zone's recounting of the Reston airborne infection of an entire monkey-house.

Yes, it was a monkey virus. But it was an Ebola variant, now called Ebola Reston. And where Ebola could mutate once, it can surely mutate again in the same fashion.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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