Ebola, what you're not being told

[Walkabout]

Libby .. is that just food birds like chickens , ducks etc , or inside birds as well ?

[Earthnut]

Now ~ "Soldiers to spend Thanksgiving in Ebola isolation"

This is getting ridiculous.

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. (AP) — A group of military service members returning to Joint Base Lewis-McChord from Africa will spend Thanksgiving in isolation while the Army monitors their health for signs of Ebola.

The group arriving Tuesday evening includes 15 service members and one Defense Department civilian who built facilities in Liberia to fight the fatal disease, the Army said.

They were not exposed to Ebola-infected patients and the risk that they picked up the fatal disease is very minimal, said I Corps Maj. Mary Ricks. Because they have no symptoms, the isolation is called controlled monitoring rather than quarantine, Ricks said Tuesday.

They'll have their temperature taken twice a day during their stay, which won't be a full 21 days because they've already spent some time in Germany.

Lewis-McChord is not their home base. They come from all over the country and one is stationed overseas, Ricks said.

The base near Tacoma is one of five around the country set up for Ebola monitoring. The first troops returning from the Ebola mission in Africa went to Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia earlier this month, Ricks said.

This is the first group for Lewis-McChord, which has room for two groups of 50 for a total of 100. That could go up to 1,000 if necessary, Ricks said.

The isolation area has computers and exercise equipment. Also a dining facility will make Thanksgiving dinner for the group, she said.

"We're trying to make this experience as much like home as we can, realizing they won't be home for Thanksgiving," Ricks said.

They shouldn't miss another holiday, she said. "They'll be home for Christmas."

[Libby]

It's very sad that those soldiers have to wait a while until they can get back to their families and friends, especially as they're missing Thanksgiving. But until an effective vaccine is produced in sufficient quantities, it has to be a case of watchful waiting. There's a huge risk to everyone if Ebola escapes into Western countries, because it could spread very far quite quickly.

I watched the documentary on Ebola that I had recorded. I'll have to watch it again and take some notes. But one rather scary thing that it said was that Ebola isn't the same shape as usual viruses. It isn't shaped like, say, the bird flu virus, instead it's like a thread or a filament, much the same as Marburg, which is regarded as a "cousin" of Ebola.

There seem to have been known outbreaks of Ebola going back to the 1960s, but they seem to have burned out almost as quickly as they arrived. But, back then, there wasn't the ease of transport as there is now, and that might have been a factor.

I almost forgot about Walkabout's question. Those infected birds in the UK were ducks, being bred on a poultry farm. Presumably, if migratory birds were the vector, they got into the breeding barns. There's an exclusion zone around that farm, so poultry on other farms in that zone can't be moved without permission, and a wider monitoring zone where all poultry farms will be inspected.

[Walkabout]

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/germany-unveils-evacuation-aircraft-ebola-patients-n257371 more progress made .

[Walkabout]

I almost forgot about Walkabout's question. Those infected birds in the UK were ducks, being bred on a poultry farm. Presumably, if migratory birds were the vector, they got into the breeding barns. There's an exclusion zone around that farm, so poultry on other farms in that zone can't be moved without permission, and a wider monitoring zone where all poultry farms will be inspected.

thanks Libby , hopefully the quarrenteen will be enough to halt the spread .

[Earthnut]

Birds and a farm sure does remind me of a particular MLM episode.

Ebola report for today ~

GENEVA (Reuters) -

The death toll in the world's worst Ebola epidemic has risen to 5,689 out of 15,935 cases reported in eight countries by Nov. 23, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

Almost all cases and all but 15 deaths have been in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia - the three hardest-hit countries, which reported 600 new cases in the past week, the WHO said in its latest update.......

Rest of the story ~ https://news.yahoo.com/ebola-cases-near-16-000-sierra-leone-overtake-171705005.html

[Earthnut]

Ebola outbreak drives 5 million W African kids out of school

U S medical worker that had been in W Aftica possibly exposed to Ebola is in Emory University Hospital

[Earthnut]

https://news.yahoo.com/ebola-boy-index-patient-zero-bat-tree-182151708.html

The 2-year-old boy believed to have triggered the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa was likely infected by playing in a bat tree, scientists say.

According to an investigation published by the scientific journal EMBO Molecular Medicine on Tuesday, the current epidemic in West Africa stems from "a single zoonotic transmission event" in Meliandou, Guinea, where the boy, Emile Ouamouno, "may have been infected by playing in a hollow tree housing a colony of insectivorous free‐tailed bats."

The bats have been identified by researchers as potential sources for Ebola transmission and "monitoring data show that larger wildlife did not experience a recent decline and is therefore unlikely to have served as the source" of the current Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the journal said. And fruit bat hunting and butchering are common in southern Guinea, even among children, "facilitating direct human contact" needed to transmit the disease.

Emile died in December 2013, followed by his mother, sister, and grandmother. Within months, the virus spread from Guinea to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, the United States, Spain, Mali and the United Kingdom — the largest outbreak ever recorded, health officials say.

Dr. Fabian Leendertz led a four‐week field mission in southeastern Guinea in April to examine human exposure to bats and other bushmeat, survey local wildlife in the last remaining forests of the area, and capture and sample bats in the village as well as in neighboring forests.

The team of researchers discovered the possible cause of the boy's Ebola during a visit to the "index village" of Meliandou, where locals reported that children would frequently play in a hollow tree about 50 meters from Emile's home.

Villagers reported that the tree caught fire on March 24, releasing a “rain of bats” that were collected for bushmeat. "We found no evidence of additional zoonotic transmission events stemming from the consumption of these bats, but villagers reported disposing of them after a ban on bushmeat consumption was announced the following day," the scientists said.

But bad bushmeat was probably not the cause of the outbreak:

Consumption of fruit bats in the household is an unlikely source of infection for the index case; no hunters were members of this household and a food item‐borne transmission would likely have affected adults before or concurrently with the index case. Under the assumption that the 2‐year‐old boy was indeed the index case, a source of infection unrelated to food items consumed in the home might be more plausible. The close proximity of a hollow tree housing a large colony of free‐tailed bats (i.e., insectivorous bats), of a species for which serological evidence also suggests EBOV exposure (Pourrut et al, 2009), provided opportunity for infection. Children regularly caught and played with bats in this tree.

Since the start of the current outbreak, there have been a total of 19,695 cases of Ebola in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and 7,693 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. In Guinea, there have been 2,630 Ebola cases and 1,654 deaths — the highest death rate among the three countries.

Researchers warn that while the village of Meliandou "had the misfortune to be where the zoonotic transmission event occurred, care needs to be taken to avoid retribution attacks" against bats in the region.

"We need to find ways to live together with the wildlife," Leendertz told the BBC. "These bats catch insects and pests, such as mosquitoes. They can eat about a quarter of their body weight in insects a day.

"Killing them would not be a solution," he added. "You would have more malaria."

[seesthru]

THere's over 7 thousand dead now. Horrible.

[Beerbelch]

BEER---> I'll tell you about a worse one. Let's hope the 'Spanish Flu' never resurfaces. It killed upwards ot 100 million in 2 years.

BELCH