"We should leave the monkeys in the trees"

[seesthru]

https://www.cnn.com/2014/04/03/health/africa-ebola/index.html

85 dead so far in the latest Ebola outbreak.It's not the death toll that is surprising, it's the fact that there are 2 outbreaks on opposite sides of Africa, both the most deadly strain ( Zaire) and it's spreading. They say it's hard to catch. It's not THAT hard to catch. The survival rates for this strain are low.

Also someone landed in the US with a case of Lassa fever... another Hemorrhagic fever unrelated to Ebola and more survivable, but still note-worthy. Then there was the suspected case in Canada, but he was negative. He had malaria.

We are one flight away from Ebola hitting the US. One plane flight away from the next flu pandemic.. One flight away from the next new outbreak of the next new disease. Add to that the people not vaccinating their kids? There are parents burying their children now who died form Pertussis. One set of parents bringing home a child with no limbs because they were amputated after he contracted meningitis. Children dying form measles...

It's like the world sees and hears, but ignores.

I'm not a fear-monger... not consciously. I just keep hearing MLM quotes when I read the news these days.

Regarding Ebola, I was interested in that back before I'd heard of "Millennium" either the show or the real life event... Which wasn't SO long ago, lets just say I was very isolated and still am, so sometimes terminology and importance of events escapes me. Anyway, I read the Preston book "The Hot Zone" and it scared the daylights out of me. When I saw "The time is now" episode, The outbreak type scenes with the bio- hazard suits and the blood and screaming monkeys was so very chilling... I was taken right back to the book.

And now that I read the news, and see the news on the outbreaks.....I'm taken right back to the episode and I can hear Jordan say: "We should leave the monkeys in the trees."

[Walkabout]

Ebola is at most bio-hazard labs that handle level 5 , so its already here. One day a natural disaster [ hurricane, tornado, earthquake ] could release it and only those with access to the anti-virus serum or isolation facilities will be left to tell the tale.

[Sigil]

Is there even an anti-virus for ebola? I was under the understanding that they were close on developing one for Marburg, but none of the other hemmoragic fevers out there.

I wonder what sort of person is willing to be the first to be injected with the Marburg vaccine.

And I agree... The Hot Zone should scare the #^%$ out of you. Ebola...here in the US. And it is a true story.

[seesthru]

Up to now there is no vaccine no antiviral, no treatment for Ebola at all. I'd recently read they were working on a vaccine and were close to having one. I'm thinking they aren't close enough.

Just knowing there is a virus out there, anywhere, that can make you liquify inside and out and there is nothing you can do but lay there and die, or if you are very lucky, suffer unimaginably, then live? Scares the breath out of me. They don't even know what todo about survivors, because they can pass this virus on through blood, sex, etc... I'm not sure if that is "forever" or not, or if they even know. The survivors can and are being treated like pariahs.

As far as number of people infected since it's "discovery", it's a drop in the bucket. AIDS has killed far more than any other virus out there, ever. However, weaponization of this, or even the accidental release into a city like NY, London, Sydney, Toronto? Yyu get the picture. By the time it's obvious something is amiss, we can't contain it.

[Earthnut]

Now we have to say "We should have left the monkeys in the trees."

This site explains what it is, how it's spread, and so on.......with a video.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/04/07/ebola-africa-explainer-outbreak/7411889/

I see the only way of coming close to possibly surviving anything is to strengthen your immune system now, so you can fight it until they come up with some kind of vaccine that works, or at least to slow it down if not to prevent or cure it.

HIV attacks and kills crucial immune system cells, and another reason to strengthen our immune system. HIV has become so widespread that nowadays anyone can get it.

So sad to hear these stories.

[Libby]

I was reading recently about the Flu epidemic in 1918 (as well as other infectious diseases). Some of the reasons why that Flu pandemic was so severe are the same as if there's an outbreak of a nasty disease these days. Vast numbers of people crowded together, poor general health/sanitation, rapid transport of vast numbers of people to elsewhere in the world.

No-one knows where the 1918 virus came from (probably somewhere in Asia), but it first appeared in the US, in Kansas. It could have ended up as an isolated outbreak, but there were huge numbers of young men being mobilised to go to Europe to fight in the war. Crowded military camps and crowded troop ships just spread the virus, and the conditions in the trenches made things even worse. It spread to the civilian population and it was civilians who brought an even more lethal version back to the US. Obviously, it wouldn't have been possible to put military camps into isolation, because of the war situation.

But something similar could happen again. Cities have grown larger, housing is often more densely packed than in the past (at least in the UK), commuter trains are crowded. And putting people or neighbourhoods into isolation wouldn't be acceptable; nor would preventing travel.

HIV is understood to have come from some of the higher primates - most likely chimpanzees. In some parts of Africa, chimpanzees are killed for eating (known as "bushmeat"), and chimpanzees sometimes kill other animals for meat. So, there's a food-chain thing going on. But that is now becoming more common in South America, in the Amazon rainforest, where logging teams are sent out into remote areas to clear areas for growing cash crops. They're expected to live off the land, which often means eating bushmeat. So there's the possibility of other diseases crossing the species boundary.

Earthnut's point about the immune system has reminded me of a scare in the UK some years ago. A higher than usual incidence of childhood leukemia occurred near the site of the Sellafield nuclear processing plant. But it was eventually discovered was that it wasn't anything to do with the plant itself. Other clusters of childhood leukemia were found in areas that had nothing to do with nuclear sites. It was about people and their families moving to an area from all over the UK, i.e. from very different environments, and with very different immune systems, all coming together in one place. Children don't have fully-fledged immune systems, so what would be an easy viral infection for some to deal with, can be challenging or overwhelming for others. That's why immunisation/vaccination is such a good idea. I know that many parents have concerns about that, as did I when there was a scare about the whooping cough/pertussis vaccination when my daughter was very young, such that we decided to opt out; and there was a more recent scare about measles vaccination such that there was a very low take-up, and a consequent severe outbreak (that scare being an unwarranted link between the measles vaccination and autism). Both those scares were subsequently found to be unfounded.

The thing is, we don't live in a "natural" world any more.

Edited to add: The reason why the 1918 Flu pandemic is called "Spanish Flu" is because the news media only started to take notice as it hit Spain.

[seesthru]

The sellafield operation has a pipeline that dumps nuclear waste into the Irish sea. I was reading about it recently. It is a toxic area, the plant and it's surroundings too. I saw some documentary about radioactive waste recently. They bypassed some kind of law, so it's legal for them to pipe the waste and flush it into the sea instead. the UK used to dump barrels of nuclear waste into the English Channel and into the North Sea and Irish sea. as well. I don't know if they still do that or not. The barrels down there are rusting away, much like the barrels of chemical waste from WWI and WWII rusting away and blending with the toxic oil and Corexit in the Gulf of Mexico here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUYJFlObhtA

[seesthru]

If you're into reading check out "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston. It tells some scary stuff about Ebola. It's outdated really, it's from the 90's. But that's the one that scared the daylights out of me.

[seesthru]

They are guessing bushmeat, or bat guano, or primates, or a combination. They really don't know where this thing comes from. ( Ebola) . Not really. They know primates get sick from ebola viruses and die. But, birds and pigs get sick from flu and die too. That doesn't tell us where the virus originates, just tells ups some stops on the way to the human lung.

I do think logging, and going back into the murkiest recesses of the forests and jungles stirred up viruses like Ebola that we have no resistance to . We need to put our biofilters back up there, plant forests and leave them standing, and pit the wild things back where the wild things go.

[Earthnut]

I have no doubts that the origin of it all is man. Mankind has become a parasite on his own planet polluting everything, and it started a long time ago. Some people believe the industrial revolution was the beginning of the end.