University scientist openly advocated Ebola release to kill off 90 percent of world population

 

University scientist openly advocated

Ebola release to kill off 90 percent of

world population

Monday, October 06, 2014 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Ebola, population control, university scientist

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047143_Ebola_population_control_university_scientist.html#ixzz3FOuKt8gE

(NaturalNews) Why anyone, even an uber-liberal academic, would ever want to see most of the world’s people killed, is a mystery, but sure enough, the FBI has developed an interest in just such an academic, especially now that the Ebola virus has landed in the United States.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, the virus causes a form of hemorrhagic fever in which internal organs eventually deteriorate and liquefy. There is no known cure or vaccine for the disease, and it has an extremely high mortality rate of between 80 and 90 percent in most parts of the world where it strikes.
In addition, as LifeSiteNews further reports:
It is also high on the list of possible bio-terror weapons of concern to international law enforcement and military security agencies. Tom Clancy’s thriller novel, Rainbow Six describes a group of radical environmentalists that wants to rid the world of people using a modified version of Ebola.
Every one will have to bury nine
And that’s why the FBI is interested in speaking with Dr. Eric R. Pianka, a Texas ecologist and herpetologist who suggested during a meeting at the Texas Academy of Sciences that, were Ebola to become airborne, it would likely kill 90 percent of the human population and instantly solve what he called the "overpopulation problem."
Now that Ebola has come to the U.S. in, of all places, Texas, Dr. Pianka has been walking back his comments, telling the Austin American-Statesman that he has never advocated bio-terrorism and that he met with local FBI officials in response to suggestions that bio-terrorism was precisely what he had in mind.
"Someone has reported me as a terrorist," Dr. Pianka told the paper, according to LifeSiteNews. "They think I’m forming a cadre of people to release the airborne Ebola virus into the air. That I’m the leader and my students are the followers."
When Dr. Pianka was named by the academy as a Distinguished Texas Scientist in 2006, he stated that the AIDS virus was not killing off the surplus human population quickly enough. What he said was needed was to have Ebola eliminate 5.8 billion of the world’s then-6 billion people. Even more bizarre — and scary — is that his speech received a standing ovation at the academy’s annual meeting, at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.
Indeed, as LifeSiteNews reported, quoting the Seguin Gazette, Dr. Pianka also stated, "Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine." There is more discussion of that quote and Pianka’s statements here and here.
Continuing in his speech, Pianka said, "[Disease] will control the scourge of humanity. We’re looking forward to a huge collapse. We’ve grown fat, apathetic and miserable," he continued, describing the world as a "fat, human biomass."
Ebola manufactured? Curable?
LifeSiteNews continued:
The syllabus for one of Pianka’s courses reads, "Although [Ebola Zaire] Kills 9 out of 10 people, outbreaks have so far been unable to become epidemics because they are currently spread only by direct physical contact with infected blood…Ebola Reston, is airborne, and it is only a matter of time until Ebola Zaire evolves the capacity to be airborne."
As far as Dr. Pianka’s wish that someone might actually go with the idea of using Ebola as a bio-weapon, LifesiteNews quoted him as saying, "Good terrorists would be taking [Ebola Reston and Ebola Zaire] so that they had microbes they could let loose on the Earth that would kill 90 percent of people."
Is it possible to make a bio-weapon out of Ebola? Radio talk show host Dave Hodges thinks so. He says evidence which he has uncovered convinced him that a) Ebola is a 100 percent manufactured virus; and b) the U.S. had had a vaccine cure for it for nearly a decade. Read his report here.
Learn all these details and more at the FREE online Pandemic Preparedness course atwww.BioDefense.com
Sources:
http://www.allnewspipeline.com
http://www.lifesitenews.com
http://www.pearceyreport.com
http://drrichswier.com
http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com
http://seguingazette.com
http://science.naturalnews.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047143_Ebola_population_control_university_scientist.html#ixzz3FOu9vJso

Congressmen to Obama: Define troops’ Ebola mission

Congressmen to Obama: Define troops’

Ebola mission

‘We in Congress have a responsibility to their families’

Published: 18 hours ago

Garth Kant About | Email | Archive

Garth Kant is WND Washington news editor. Previously, he spent five years writing, copy-editing and producing at "CNN Headline News," three years writing, copy-editing and training writers at MSNBC, and also served several local TV newsrooms as producer, executive producer and assistant news director. He is the author of the McGraw-Hill textbook, "How to Write Television News."

Sierra Leone troops prepare to remove the bodies of suspected Ebola victims.

WASHINGTON – The White House has issued what it calls a “fact sheet” on its plan to send up to 4,000 U.S. troops to the Ebola hot zone in West Africa, but some lawmakers feel that falls short of a detailed plan and a strategy.

Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., a key member of the House Armed Services committee, has seen that fact sheet but told WND he was not reassured about the safety of U.S. troops and still had questions about the nature of the mission.

“I know what they have outlined about building hospitals and housing and things like that, and I understand, but there are so many unknowns about this disease at this point,” and he let the sentence trail off, unfinished.

Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C.

The bottom line for Jones was, “When you put our men and women in uniform right in harm’s way, there must be some answers.” He said he simply wanted a better description of the mission.

WND has been trying to find exactly what the mission will be for U.S. troops in West Africa and what, precisely, they will be doing there.

According to the White House fact sheet, troops will:

• Build a command center to process personnel, equipment and supplies.

• Coordinate int’l relief efforts.

• Build treatment units and recruit medical staff.

• Build a place to train healthcare workers.

But, the Pentagon has confirmed to WND that private contractors will be doing much of what spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said the military would be doing.

As WND reported, global construction company Fluor Corp. will be building temporary housing for U.S. troops in Liberia. Fluor does a variety of construction jobs and employs engineers, electricians and security personnel – many of the same tasks the Pentagon said military personnel would be doing.

So why expose thousands of U.S. troops to the deadly and highly contagious plague? What will troops be doing that is different than what contractors will be doing? The Pentagon has not spelled out those details, and referred WND to the fact sheet released by the White House.

“I just think there is more info we need to know,” a soft-spoken Jones told WND. “We don’t have a firm strategy to fully identify the role of the military and that gives me great concern.”

Jones added, “I don’t want to be an alarmist, but when you look at the number of deaths (caused by Ebola) you want to make sure that we do not put our troops in a situation of danger.”

On Friday, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said U.S. troops would not be “directly” treating infected patients, but WND pointed out to Jones there was no guarantee soldiers wouldn’t come in contact with people who had treated patients, and some degree of exposure would seem almost inescapable.

“That is probably true,” replied Jones, who said he was always wary of unintended consequences. “If we can get the answers we would feel better about the commitment being made to involve our troops.”

Is it worth the risk?

Jones wanted more information, but said he had great respect for the judgment of the nation’s military brass, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. “Our military will go wherever the commander-in-chief sends them, but we in Congress have a responsibility to their families, as well.”

“Congress and the American people have a right to know exactly what is going to be their role and what their responsibilities are going to be.”

The congressman reflected, “We want to believe the troops will not be exposed but how do you guarantee that? I don’t know, there are just so many questions about Ebola, and everyday we learn something new.”

Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs committee, was perhaps even more skeptical, telling WND the administration was struggling to name the mission, let alone define it.

“It’s interesting. The Obama administration won’t give this operation a name. These big operations usually get big names, like Operation Enduring Freedom.”

Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas

Stockman simply stated, “The mission is not clearly defined.”

He said he was worried by reports of  trepidation among the soldiers about the mission.

The congressman acknowledged the Ebola outbreak is a major problem, “But does the U.S. military necessarily have the proper people to conduct a biological war? This is pretty serious stuff and I just hope that someone in charge is making better plans than what I’ve seen.”

“There are no published plans. We don’t have to keep this a secret. It’s not a terrorist group,” said a worried Stockman, adding, “I don’t think they have a strategy.”

“It’d be nice if they published a plan that spells out exactly what they plan to do. This is really putting our troops at risk without a lot of forethought. It doesn’t appear well thought-out.”

Stockman characterized this as another example of an administration caught flat-footed to a crisis and scrambling to react.

“Instead of long term planning you’ve got an administration that literally just responds to crises instead of trying to anticipate them. He (president Obama) has been on more golfing trips than he’s had intelligence briefings. I think it’s time to put down those golf clubs and start reading those briefings.”

Also troubling Stockman, he said he’d heard the military is having trouble acquiring enough protective gear and other needed supplies.

When asked if this was a recipe for a disaster, the congressman said he’d be worried if he had a son or daughter in the military.

The office of Stockman’s fellow Texan, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pointed to a growing concern about Ebola for residents of the Lone Star State.

Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., is receiving treatment in Dallas. A number of people exposed to him have been quarantined and 80 to 100 people are being monitored for symptoms in the Dallas area. Four Dallas schools are undergoing extensive cleanings.

On top of that, 500 of the soldiers departing for West Africa are coming from Fort Hood in Texas, just 150 miles from Dallas.

The White House conceded troops could get Ebola in an interview on “Meet the Press” Sunday.

“It’s a concern that is being dealt with and we’re prepared to deal with,” said White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer. “People will be screened appropriately. We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/congressmen-to-obama-define-troops-ebola-mission/#WSra1P8HgVLd1PXc.99

 

Pentagon Claims Ebola Not a Huge Risk to

Troops in West Africa

Health officials cannot even keep virus from spreading

Image Credits: David B. Gleason / Flickr

by Kit Daniels | Infowars.com | October 7, 2014

The 4,000 service members being deployed to “combat Ebola” in West Africa will be “kept safe” from the virus, the Defense Department claimed, despite the fact that health officials have failed to contain Ebola which is now spreading on multiple continents.

During a Pentagon news conference today, U.S. Army Gen. David Rodriguez, the commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), said the military is using “strict protocols” to protect the troops and will implement “careful reintegration” once they return to the U.S.

“I am confident we can ensure our service members’ safety and the safety of the American people,” he said, adding that any soldier who contracts Ebola will be flown back into the U.S. for treatment.

Considering that efforts to contain Ebola have so far failed, with the disease now spreading in Europe and America, the Pentagon’s reassurances carry little weight.

On Monday, a nurse’s assistant in Spain contracted Ebola from a source outside of Africa in what is now the first confirmed case of Ebola transmission in Europe.

“Meanwhile, Ebola continues to rage out of control in West Africa,” journalist Michael Snyder wrote. “It is being reported that Sierra Leone just added 121 new Ebola deaths to the overall death toll in a single day.”

“If Ebola continues to spread at an exponential rate, it is inevitable that more people will leave West Africa with the virus and take it to other parts of the globe.”

Researchers have concluded there is a 50% chance Ebola could reach the UK later this month and a 75% chance it could spread into France in a study released Monday.

“France is among countries most likely to be hit next because the worst affected countries – Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia – are French-speaking and have busy travel routes back, while Britain’s Heathrow is one of the world’s biggest travel hubs,” reported Sarah Westcott with Express News.

The study also suggested that many more can bring Ebola into Europe without knowing because the symptoms for the disease can take weeks to develop.

“If this thing continues to rage on in West Africa and indeed gets worse, as some people have predicted, then it’s only a matter of time before one of these cases ends up on a plane to Europe,” Dr. Derek Gatherer, a virus expert with Lancaster University, said.

This study is particularly alarming considering the UK and France took precautions against the spread of Ebola, including limiting air travel to West Africa back in August, which the Obama administration has failed to do.

And yet the Pentagon now believes it can somehow protect U.S. troops from Ebola in West Africa.

“We want to believe the troops will not be exposed but how do you guarantee that?” Asked Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-NC). “I don’t know, there are just so many questions about Ebola, and everyday we learn something new.”

ERIC DUNCAN THE MAN WHO INFECTED AMERICA WITH EBOLA LIED TO GET OUT OF LIBERIA… IF HE LIVES HE SHOULD GET LIFE IN PRISON

Man who brought Ebola to US facing prosecution

By Chris Perez and Joe Tacopino

October 2, 2014 | 1:25pm

Liberian authorities say they will prosecute Eric Duncan (inset) for lying on his airport health questionnaire. Photo: AP, Facebook (inset)

The man who brought Ebola into the United States lied on his exit form so he could leave Liberia — and now authorities in the West African nation want to prosecute him if he returns, government officials said Thursday.

As the deadly virus sweeps across West Africa, people leaving all nations in the region have been required to be screened for fever and have also been questioned about exposure to infected patients.

The Red Cross delivers supplies to the quarantined family of Eric Duncan in Dallas.Photo: James Breeden/Splash News

Thomas Eric Duncan — who is in serious but stable condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital — had been staying in Monrovia before flying to visit with relatives in Dallas.

Children disembark from a school bus in Dallas.Photo: Reuters

On the form, Duncan answered “No” in the portion that asked if he had been in contact with anyone who had contracted Ebola, according to a questionnaire obtained by The Associated Press.

It was reported Thursday that Duncan had helped a 19-year-old pregnant woman in Monrovia to an ambulance. She ended up dying from the virus.

Her brother, 21-year-old Sonny Boy, also helped carry his sister and later became ill — eventually dying on his way to the hospital for treatment.

Duncan was screened and cleared for travel before flying out of Liberia, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tom Frieden said during a media briefing Thursday.

Duncan had his temperature taken by a trained CDC individual with an approved thermometer — recording a temperature of 97.3, Frieden said.

Dr. Gil Mobley, a Missouri doctor, checked in and boarded a plane dressed in full protective gear.Photo: AP

“The individual did not have a fever,” he said. “The status of his possible exposures prior to departure is being investigated further.”

Frieden added that the CDC — with help from Liberian authorities — were the ones who actually created the official exit form used at West African airports. Frieden said Duncan may have had no clue how serious his exposure was at the time of his departure.

Liberia Airport Authority’s chairman of the board of directors said Duncan would be prosecuted immediately upon returning to the West African nation.

Texas is now monitoring more than 100 people for the Ebola virus, health officials told The Post on Thursday.

“This situation is constantly evolving,” Dallas County Health and Human Services spokeswoman Erikka Neroes told The Post. “No one is symptomatic, and we are doing everything within our power and our procedures to maintain this.”

Twelve to 18 people came in contact with Duncan while he displayed symptoms, Neroes said.

Connecticut Governor Declares State of Emergency Over Ebola as a Precaution

The order gives the state the authority to quarantine and isolate people who may have been exposed to the virus

 

Getty Images

HARTFORD, CT – OCTOBER 5: Stamford Mayor and Democratic nominee Dannel Malloy addresses the press after his debate with former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, businessman and Republican nominee Tom Foley outside the Belding Theater at the Bushnell Center for Performing Arts October 5, 2010 in Hartford, Connecticut. Malloy and Foley, who are in a close race for Governor, spoke about creating jobs, the death penalty among other issues. (Photo by Bettina Hansen-Pool/Getty Images)

Tuesday, Oct 7, 2014 • Updated at 12:40 PM EDT

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy has declared a public health emergency for the state as a precaution during the Ebola epidemic that is affecting several countries in western Africa.

He signed an order declaring the emergency on Tuesday and it gives the commissioner of the state Department of Public Health the authority to quarantine and isolate people whom the commissioner “reasonably believes has been exposed to the Ebola virus.”

• Obama Ready to Ramp Up Ebola Airport Screening

  Malloy said this is not in response to any specific case, but is meant to provide state health officials with the authority necessary to “prevent any potential transmission of the Ebola virus within the State of Connecticut,” the letter says.

“We are taking this action today to ensure that we are prepared, in advance, to deal with any identified cases in which someone has been exposed to the virus or, worst case, infected,” Malloy said in a statement. “Our state’s hospitals have been preparing for it, and public health officials from the state are working around the clock to monitor the situation. Right now, we have no reason to think that anyone in the state is infected or at risk of infection. But it is essential to be prepared and we need to have the authorities in place that will allow us to move quickly to protect public health, if and when that becomes necessary. Signing this order will allow us to do that.”

• Journalist With Ebola Being Treated in U.S.

  Without the declaration of emergency, officials have no statewide ability to isolate or quarantine people who might have been exposed or infected. Instead, each individual local public health director would have the authority, according to the governor’s office.

“While local health officials are certainly on the front lines of this effort, at the ready to address any situation, having this order in place will allow us to have a more coordinated response in the event that someone in Connecticut either tests positive for Ebola or has been identified as someone who is at risk of developing it,” DPH Commissioner Jewel Mullen said in a statement. “We have had numerous conversations with both local public health officials in the state and senior officials at the Center for Disease Control. We have no reason to believe that anyone in Connecticut is infected or at risk of infection, but if it does happen, we want to be ready.”

• Dr. Rick Sacra Released from Hospital

  Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s office said the laws in the Bay State are different than Connecticut, so a State of Emergency is not needed to give the state health commissioner the authority to quarantine and isolate people believed to have been exposed to the Ebola virus.

There Will Be Pestilences Ebola, Marburg, Enterovirus and Chikungunya

There Will Be Pestilences:

Why Are So

Many Deadly Diseases Breaking Out All

Over The Globe Right Now?

So why is this happening?

by Michael Snyder | Economic Collapse | October 7, 2014

 

Ebola, Marburg, Enterovirus and Chikungunya – these diseases were not even on the radar of most people coming into 2014, but now each one of them is making headline news.  So why is this happening?  Why are so many deadly diseases breaking out all over the world right now?  Is there some kind of a connection, or is the fact that so many horrible diseases are arising all at once just a giant coincidence?  And this could be just the beginning.  For example, there are now more than a million cases of Chikungunya in Central and South America, and authorities are projecting that there will be millions more in 2015.  The number of Ebola cases continues to grow at an exponential rate, and now an even deadlier virus (Marburg) has broken out in Uganda.  We have gone decades without experiencing a major worldwide pandemic, and many people believed that it could never happen in our day and time.  But now we could potentially see several absolutely devastating diseases all racing across the planet at the same time.

On Monday, we got news that the first confirmed case of Ebola transmission in Europe has happened.  A nurse in Spain that had treated a couple of returning Ebola patients has contracted the disease herself…

A nurse’s assistant in Spain is the first person known to have contracted Ebola outside of Africa in the current outbreak.

Spanish Health Minister Ana Mato announced Monday that a test confirmed the assistant has the virus.

The woman helped treat a Spanish missionary and a Spanish priest, both of whom had contracted Ebola in West Africa. Both died after returning to Spain.

Health officials said she developed symptoms on September 30. She was not hospitalized until this week. Her only symptom was a fever.

How many people did she spread the virus to before it was correctly diagnosed?

Meanwhile, Ebola continues to rage out of control in West Africa.  It is being reported that Sierra Leone just added 121 new Ebola deaths to the overall death toll in a single day.  If Ebola continues to spread at an exponential rate, it is inevitable that more people will leave West Africa with the virus and take it to other parts of the globe.

In fact, it was being reported on Monday that researchers have concluded that there is “a 50 percent chance” that Ebola could reach the UK by October 24th…

Experts have analyzed the pattern of the spread of the disease, along with airline traffic data, to make the startling prediction Ebola could reach Britain by October 24.

They claim there is a 50 percent chance the virus could hit Britain by that date and a 75 percent chance the it could be imported to France, as the deadliest outbreak in history spreads across the world.

Currently, there is no cure for the disease, which has claimed more than 3,400 lives since March and has a 90 percent fatality rate.

I have written extensively about Ebola, but it is certainly not the only virus making headlines right now.

Down in Uganda, a man has just died from a confirmed case of the Marburg Virus…

A man has died in Uganda’s capital after an outbreak of Marburg, a highly infectious hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola, authorities said on Sunday, adding that a total of 80 people who came into contact with him had been put under quarantine.

Marburg starts with a severe headache followed by haemorrhaging and leads to death in 80% or more of cases in about nine days. It is from the same family of viruses as Ebola, which has killed thousands in West Africa in recent months.

There is no vaccine or specific treatment for the Marburg virus, which is transmitted through bodily fluids such as saliva and blood or by handling infected wild animals such as monkeys.

The Marburg Virus is an absolutely horrible disease, and many consider it to be even more deadly than Ebola.  But the fact that it kills victims so quickly may keep it from spreading as widely as Ebola.

We shall see.

Meanwhile, a disease that sounds very similar to Ebola and Marburg has popped up in Venezuela and doctors down there do not know what it is…

“We do not know what it is,” admitted Duglas León Natera, president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation.

In its initial stages, the disease presents symptoms of fever and spots on the skin, and then produces large blisters and internal and external bleeding, according to data provided week stop by the College of Physicians of the state of Aragua, where the first cases were reported.

Then, very quickly, patients suffer from respiratory failure, liver failure and kidney failure. Venezuelan doctors have not been able to determine what the disease is, much less how to fight it.

Why aren’t we hearing more about this in the mainstream news?

Here in the United States, enterovirus D-68 has sickened hundreds of children all over the country.  So far cases have been confirmed in 43 different states, several children have been paralyzed by it, and one New Jersey boy has died…

Parents in New Jersey are concerned after a state medical examiner determined a virus causing severe respiratory illness across the country is responsible for the death of a 4-year-old boy.

Hamilton Township health officer Jeff Plunkett said the Mercer County medical examiner’s office found the death of Eli Waller was the result of enterovirus D-68. Waller, the youngest of a set of triplets, died in his sleep at home on Sept. 25.

The virus has sickened more than 500 people in 43 states and Washington, D.C.— almost all of them children. Waller is the first death in New Jersey directly linked to the virus.

The CDC seems to have no idea how to contain the spread of enterovirus D-68.

So why should we be confident that they will be able to contain the spread of Ebola?

Last but not least, the Chikungunya virus is at pandemic levels all over Central and South America.

We aren’t hearing that much about this disease in the U.S., but at this point more than a million people have already been infected…

An excruciating mosquito-borne illness that arrived less than a year ago in the Americas is raging across the region, leaping from the Caribbean to the Central and South American mainland, and infecting more than 1 million people. Some cases already have emerged in the United States.

The good news is that very few people actually die from this disease.

The bad news is that almost everyone that gets it feels like they are dying.

In a previous article, I wrote about the intense suffering that victims go through.  According to Slate, the name of this virus originally “comes from a Makonde word meaning ‘that which bends up,’ referring to the contortions sufferers put themselves through due to intense joint pain.”

Right now, the number of cases of Chikungunya is absolutely exploding.  Just check out the following excerpt from a recent Fox News report…

In El Salvador, health officials report nearly 30,000 suspected cases, up from 2,300 at the beginning of August, and hospitals are filled with people with the telltale signs of the illness, including joint pain so severe it can be hard to walk.

“The pain is unbelievable,” said Catalino Castillo, a 39-year-old seeking treatment at a San Salvador hospital. “It’s been 10 days and it won’t let up.”

Venezuelan officials reported at least 1,700 cases as of Friday, and the number is expected to rise. Neighboring Colombia has around 4,800 cases but the health ministry projects there will be nearly 700,000 by early 2015.

So why is this happening?

Why are so many absolutely horrible diseases emerging all at once?

 

 

Some Ebola experts worry virus may spread more easily than assumed

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

World Health Organization instructors watch as health workers in protective suits take part in a training session in Monrovia, Liberia.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

Matua Fallah waits to receive a ration of rice at a makeshift distribution center in Dolo Town, Liberia, in August.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

Relatives of a local government official are escorted from the West Point slum of Monrovia, Liberia, in August after unrest erupted in response to a government quarantine.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

Saah Exco, 10, lies in a back alley of Monrovia’s West Point slum in August. The boy was one of the patients pulled out of a holding center for suspected Ebola patients when the facility was overrun by a mob.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

A resident looks from behind a gate during the Liberian government’s 11-day Ebola quarantine in the West Point district of Monrovia.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

Residents of Monrovia’s West Point slum wait for a food aid distribution during the government-imposed quarantine there.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

A burial team from the Liberian Ministry of Health unloads the bodies of Ebola victims onto a funeral pyre at a crematorium in the town of Marshall.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

Residents in New Kru Town, Liberia, complain they have not received enough disinfection kits being distributed by the aid group Doctors Without Borders.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

Liberians in New Kru Town wait before dawn for disinfection kits being distributed by Doctors Without Borders.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore, Getty Images

A health worker speaks with a boy at a center for suspected Ebola patients, formerly the maternity ward at Redemption Hospital in Monrovia.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

A woman carries a disinfection kit distributed by Doctors Without Borders in New Kru Town.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

Residents walk home with disinfection kits distributed in New Kru Town.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

Sanitized gloves and boots hang to dry at a Liberian Ministry of Health center for cremation in Monrovia.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

An Ebola awareness mural is displayed in Monrovia.

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John Moore / Getty Images

A Liberian Ministry of Health worker speaks to Banu, 4, in a holding center for suspected Ebola patients at Redemption Hospital in Monrovia.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

U.S. Air Force personnel offload a mobile command center from a transport plane outside Monrovia to assist Liberia’s Ebola response.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore / Getty Images

A man walks past the residence in Monrovia, Liberia, where Thomas Eric Duncan, the first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, had rented a room.

Caption Ebola crisis

John Moore, Getty Images

A health worker watches as a burial team collects the bodies of Ebola victims from a Ministry of Health center for cremation in Monrovia.

By David Willman contact the reporter

NationMedical ResearchAfricaScientific ResearchDiseases and IllnessesEbolaU.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Ebola researcher says he would not rule out possibility that the virus spreads through air in tight quarters

‘There are too many unknowns here,’ a virologist says of how Ebola may spread

Ebola researcher says he thinks there is a chance asymptomatic people could spread the virus

U.S. officials leading the fight against history’s worst outbreak of Ebola have said they know the ways the virus is spread and how to stop it. They say that unless an air traveler from disease-ravaged West Africa has a fever of at least 101.5 degrees or other symptoms, co-passengers are not at risk.

"At this point there is zero risk of transmission on the flight," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said after a Liberian man who flew through airports in Brussels and Washington was diagnosed with the disease last week in Dallas.

Three more were placed under quarantine at Madrid hospital where a Spanish nurse became infected, the first case infection outside of West Africa.

Other public health officials have voiced similar assurances, saying Ebola is spread only through physical contact with a symptomatic individual or their bodily fluids. "Ebola is not transmitted by the air. It is not an airborne infection," said Dr. Edward Goodman of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where the Liberian patient remains in critical condition.

Yet some scientists who have long studied Ebola say such assurances are premature — and they are concerned about what is not known about the strain now on the loose. It is an Ebola outbreak like none seen before, jumping from the bush to urban areas, giving the virus more opportunities to evolve as it passes through multiple human hosts.

Dr. C.J. Peters, who battled a 1989 outbreak of the virus among research monkeys housed in Virginia and who later led the CDC’s most far-reaching study of Ebola’s transmissibility in humans, said he would not rule out the possibility that it spreads through the air in tight quarters.

"We just don’t have the data to exclude it," said Peters, who continues to research viral diseases at the University of Texas in Galveston.

Dr. Philip K. Russell, a virologist who oversaw Ebola research while heading the U.S. Army’s Medical Research and Development Command, and who later led the government’s massive stockpiling of smallpox vaccine after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, also said much was still to be learned. "Being dogmatic is, I think, ill-advised, because there are too many unknowns here."

If Ebola were to mutate on its path from human to human, said Russell and other scientists, its virulence might wane — or it might spread in ways not observed during past outbreaks, which were stopped after transmission among just two to three people, before the virus had a greater chance to evolve. The present outbreak in West Africa has killed approximately 3,400 people, and there is no medical cure for Ebola.

"I see the reasons to dampen down public fears," Russell said. "But scientifically, we’re in the middle of the first experiment of multiple, serial passages of Ebola virus in man…. God knows what this virus is going to look like. I don’t."

The deteriorating conditions in Africa make it more likely additional cases of Ebola will appear in the United States and officials are pushing for increased screenings at airports.

Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the CDC in Atlanta, said health officials were basing their response to Ebola on what has been learned from battling the virus since its discovery in central Africa in 1976. The CDC remains confident, he said, that Ebola is transmitted principally by direct physical contact with an ill person or their bodily fluids.

Skinner also said the CDC is conducting ongoing lab analyses to assess whether the present strain of Ebola is mutating in ways that would require the government to change its policies on responding to it. The results so far have not provided cause for concern, he said.

The researchers reached in recent days for this article cited grounds to question U.S. officials’ assumptions in three categories.

One issue is whether airport screenings of prospective travelers to the U.S. from West Africa can reliably detect those who might have Ebola. Frieden has said the CDC protocols used at West African airports can be relied on to prevent more infected passengers from coming to the U.S.

"One hundred percent of the individuals getting on planes are screened for fever before they get on the plane," Frieden said Sept. 30. "And if they have a fever, they are pulled out of the line, assessed for Ebola, and don’t fly unless Ebola is ruled out."

Individuals who have flown recently from one or more of the affected countries suggested that travelers could easily subvert the screening procedures — and might have incentive to do so: Compared with the depleted medical resources in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the prospect of hospital care in the U.S. may offer an Ebola-exposed person the only chance to survive.

Relatives pray over a weak Siata Johnson, 23, outside the Ebola treatment center at a hospital on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia. (John Moore / Getty Images)

A person could pass body temperature checks performed at the airports by taking ibuprofen or any common analgesic. And prospective passengers have much to fear from identifying themselves as sick, said Kim Beer, a resident of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, who is working to get medical supplies into the country to cope with Ebola.

"It is highly unlikely that someone would acknowledge having a fever, or simply feeling unwell," Beer said via email. "Not only will they probably not get on the flight — they may even be taken to/required to go to a ‘holding facility’ where they would have to stay for days until it is confirmed that it is not caused by Ebola. That is just about the last place one would want to go."

Liberian officials said last week that the patient hospitalized in Dallas, Thomas Eric Duncan, did not report to airport screeners that he had had previous contact with an Ebola-stricken woman. It is not known whether Duncan knew she suffered from Ebola; her family told neighbors it was malaria.

The potential disincentive for passengers to reveal their own symptoms was echoed by Sheka Forna, a dual citizen of Sierra Leone and Britain who manages a communications firm in Freetown. Forna said he considered it "very possible" that people with fever would medicate themselves to appear asymptomatic.

It would be perilous to admit even nonspecific symptoms at the airport, Forna said in a telephone interview. "You’d be confined to wards with people with full-blown disease."

On Monday, the White House announced that a review was underway of existing airport procedures. Frieden and President Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counter-terrorism, Lisa Monaco, said Friday that closing the U.S. to passengers from the Ebola-affected countries would risk obstructing relief efforts.

CDC officials also say that asymptomatic patients cannot spread Ebola. This assumption is crucial for assessing how many people are at risk of getting the disease. Yet diagnosing a symptom can depend on subjective understandings of what constitutes a symptom, and some may not be easily recognizable. Is a person mildly fatigued because of short sleep the night before a flight — or because of the early onset of disease?

Moreover, said some public health specialists, there is no proof that a person infected — but who lacks symptoms — could not spread the virus to others.

"It’s really unclear," said Michael Osterholm, a public health scientist at the University of Minnesota who recently served on the U.S. government’s National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. "None of us know."

Russell, who oversaw the Army’s research on Ebola, said he found the epidemiological data unconvincing.

"The definition of ‘symptomatic’ is a little difficult to deal with," he said. "It may be generally true that patients aren’t excreting very much virus until they become ill, but to say that we know the course of [the virus’ entry into the bloodstream] and the course of when a virus appears in the various secretions, I think, is premature."

The CDC’s Skinner said that while officials remained confident that Ebola can be spread only by the overtly sick, the ongoing studies would assess whether mutations that might occur could increase the potential for asymptomatic patients to spread it.

Finally, some also question the official assertion that Ebola cannot be transmitted through the air. In late 1989, virus researcher Charles L. Bailey supervised the government’s response to an outbreak of Ebola among several dozen rhesus monkeys housed for research in Reston, Va., a suburb of Washington.

What Bailey learned from the episode informs his suspicion that the current strain of Ebola afflicting humans might be spread through tiny liquid droplets propelled into the air by coughing or sneezing.

"We know for a fact that the virus occurs in sputum and no one has ever done a study [disproving that] coughing or sneezing is a viable means of transmitting," he said. Unqualified assurances that Ebola is not spread through the air, Bailey said, are "misleading."

Peters, whose CDC team studied cases from 27 households that emerged during a 1995 Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo, said that while most could be attributed to contact with infected late-stage patients or their bodily fluids, "some" infections may have occurred via "aerosol transmission."

Ebola patient Ashoka Mukpo is loaded into an ambulance after arriving in Omaha. The American photojournalist became ill while working in Liberia and was taken to Nebraska Medical Center, where he will be kept in isolation. (James R. Burnett / World-Herald)

Skinner of the CDC, who cited the Peters-led study as the most extensive of Ebola’s transmissibility, said that while the evidence "is really overwhelming" that people are most at risk when they touch either those who are sick or such a person’s vomit, blood or diarrhea, "we can never say never" about spread through close-range coughing or sneezing.

"I’m not going to sit here and say that if a person who is highly viremic … were to sneeze or cough right in the face of somebody who wasn’t protected, that we wouldn’t have a transmission," Skinner said.

Peters, Russell and Bailey, who in 1989 was deputy commander for research of the Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, in Frederick, Md., said the primates in Reston had appeared to spread Ebola to other monkeys through their breath.

The Ebola strain found in the monkeys did not infect their human handlers. Bailey, who now directs a biocontainment lab at George Mason University in Virginia, said he was seeking to research the genetic differences between the Ebola found in the Reston monkeys and the strain currently circulating in West Africa.

Though he acknowledged that the means of disease transmission among the animals would not guarantee the same result among humans, Bailey said the outcome may hold lessons for the present Ebola epidemic.

"Those monkeys were dying in a pattern that was certainly suggestive of coughing and sneezing — some sort of aerosol movement," Bailey said. "They were dying and spreading it so quickly from cage to cage. We finally came to the conclusion that the best action was to euthanize them all."

david.willman@latimes.com

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

Ebola, Obama and Oil

Obama’s “War on Ebola” or War for Oil?

Sending 3000 Troops to African “Ebola”

Areas that Happen to Export Oil to China

 

The most vague and unsubstantiated basis lies behind President Obama’s new War on Ebola

Image Credits: Eric Kounce, Wikimedia Commons

by F. William Engdahl | New Eastern Outlook | October 4, 2014

For a Nobel Peace Prize President, Barack Obama seems destined to go down in history books as the President who presided over one of the most aggressive series of wars ever waged by a bellicose Washington Administration. Not even George Bush and Dick Cheney came close.

First, before the ink was even dry on his Nobel Prize certificate, Obama announced the Afghanistan “surge”, pouring another 30,000 US military into that destroyed part of the world. Then came Obama’s war against Libya’s Qaddafi, followed rapidly by his war to try to topple Syria’s Bashar al Assad. Soon after came Obama’s “war for democracy in Ukraine,” otherwise better called Obama’s attempt to provoke Russia into a new war confrontation with NATO by backing a gaggle of Ukrainian oligarchs, criminals and outright neo-nazis in Kiev. In July of this year, Obama’s Administration was pushing the President to launch a second try at bombing Syria back to the Stone Age, allegedly to destroy ISIS, a looney Jihadist Sunni sect that was said to be a joint venture of the CIA and Israeli intelligence.

Now Obama’s advisers, no doubt led by the blood-thirsty National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, have come up with a new war. This is the War Against Ebola. On September 16, President Obama solemnly declared the war. He announced, to the surprise of most sane citizens, that he had ordered 3,000 American troops, the so-called “boots on the ground” that the Pentagon refuses to agree to in Syria, to wage a war against….a virus?

In a carefully stage-managed appearance at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Obama read a bone-chilling speech. He called the alleged Ebola outbreaks in west Africa, “a global threat, and it demands a truly global response. This is an epidemic that is not just a threat to regional security. It’s a potential threat to global security, if these countries break down, if their economies break down, if people panic,” Obama continued, conjuring images that would have made Andromeda Strain novelist Michael Chrichton drool with envy. Obama added, “That has profound effects on all of us, even if we are not directly contracting the disease. This outbreak is already spiraling out of control.”

With that hair-raising introduction, the President of the world’s greatest Superpower announced his response. In his role as Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America announced he has ordered 3,000 US troops to west Africa in what he called, “the largest international response in the history of the CDC.” He didn’t make clear if their job would be to shoot the virus wherever it reared its ugly head, or to shoot any poor hapless African suspected of having Ebola. Little does it matter that the US military doesn’t have anywhere near 3,000 troops with the slightest training in public health.

Before we all panic and line up to receive the millions of doses of untested and reportedly highly dangerous “Ebola vaccines” the major drug-makers are preparing to dump on the market, some peculiarities of this Ebola outbreak in Africa are worth noting.

Certified Ebola Deaths?

The World Health Organization, under the Director, Dr Margaret Chan, in a press conference on September 13, sounded the alarm, warning that Ebola in west Africa was surging out of control. “In the three hardest hit countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the number of new patients is moving far faster than the capacity to manage them,” Chan claimed. WHO claims that almost half of 301 health-care workers dealing with alleged Ebola patients have themselves died, and that 2,400 people out of 4,784 cases in Africa have died of Ebola. On August 8, Chan declared the African Ebola situation a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

A major problem for Chan and her backers, however, is that her Ebola statistics are very, very dubious. For those whose memory is short, this is the same Dr Margaret Chan at WHO in Geneva who was guilty in 2009 of trying to panic the world into taking unproven vaccines for “Swine Flu” influenza, by declaring a Global Pandemic with statistics calling every case of symptoms that of the common cold to be “Swine Flu,” whether it was runny nose, coughing, sneezing, sore throat. That changed WHO definition of Swine Flu allowed the statistics of the disease to be declared Pandemic. It was an utter fraud, a criminal fraud Chan carried out, wittingly or unwittingly (she could be simply stupid but evidence suggests otherwise), on behalf of the major US and EU pharmaceutical cartel.

In a recent Washington Post article it was admitted that sixty-nine percent of all the Ebola cases in Liberia registered by WHO have not been laboratory confirmed through blood tests. Liberia is the epicenter of the Ebola alarm in west Africa. More than half of the alleged Ebola deaths, 1,224, and nearly half of all cases, 2,046, have been in Liberia says WHO. And the US FDA diagnostic test used for the lab confirmation of Ebola is so flawed that the FDA has prohibited anyone from claiming they are safe or effective. That means, a significant proportion of the remaining 31 % of the Ebola cases lab confirmed through blood tests could be false cases.

In short, no one knows what 1,224 Liberians in recent weeks have died from. But WHO claims it to be Ebola. Note that the countries affected by the Ebola alarm are among the poorest and most war-torn regions in the world. Wars over blood diamonds and colonial genocidal tribal wars have left a devastated, mal-nourished population in its wake.

WHO’s official fact sheet on Ebola, which now they renamed EVD for Ebola Virus Disease, claims, “The first EVD outbreaks occurred in remote villages in Central Africa, near tropical rainforests, but the most recent outbreak in west Africa has involved major urban as well as rural areas…” WHO further notes that, “It is thought that fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are natural Ebola virus hosts. Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals such as chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest.”

Then the official WHO Ebola Fact Sheet dated September, 2014, states, “It can be difficult to distinguish EVD from other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever and meningitis.”

Excuse me, Dr Margaret Chan, can you say that slowly? It can be difficult to distinguish EVD from other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever and meningitis? And you admit that 69% of the declared cases have never been adequately tested? And you state that the Ebola symptoms include “sudden onset of fever fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhea, rash, symptoms of impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding”?

In short it is all the most vague and unsubstantiated basis that lies behind President Obama’s new War on Ebola.

War on Ebola or War for Oil?

One striking aspect of this new concern of the US President for the situation in Liberia and other west African states where alleged surges of Ebola are being claimed is the presence of oil, huge volumes of untapped oil.

The offshore coast of Liberia and east African ‘Ebola zones’ conveniently map with the presence of vast untapped oil and gas resources shown here

The issue of oil in west Africa, notably in the waters of the Gulf of Guinea have become increasingly strategic both to China who is roaming the world in search of future secure oil import sources, and the United States, whose oil geo-politics was summed up in a quip by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970’s: ‘If you control the oil, you control entire nations.’

The Obama Administration and Pentagon policy has continued that of George W. Bush who in 2008 created the US military Africa Command or AFRICOM, to battle the rapidly-growing Chinese economic presence in Africa’s potential oil-rich countries. West Africa is a rapidly-emerging oil treasure, barely tapped to date. A US Department of Energy study projected that African oil production would rise 91 percent between 2002 and 2025, much from the region of the present Ebola alarm.

Chinese oil companies are all over Africa and increasingly active in west Africa, especially Angola, Sudan and Guinea, the later in the epicenter of Obama’s new War on Ebola troop deployment.

If the US President were genuine about his concern to contain a public health emergency, he could look at the example of that US-declared pariah Caribbean nation, Cuba. Reuters reports that the Cuban government, a small financially distressed, economically sanctioned island nation of 11 million people, with a national budget of $50 billion, Gross Domestic Product of 121 billion and per capita GDP of just over $10,000, is dispatching 165 medical personnel to Africa to regions where there are Ebola outbreaks. Washington sends 3,000 combat troops. Something smells very rotten around the entire Ebola scare.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

Ebola Friday October the 3rd 2014.

The Pandemic’s First Casualty — The Truth

Truth succumbed to Continuity of Government, Continuity of Career

by Infowars.com | October 3, 2014The government lies about risks, about border control and immigration, about preparedness and even about how Ebola is transmitted.

 

PRESIDENT EBOLA: In 2010 Obama Administration Scrapped CDC Quarantine Regulations Aimed At Ebola

12:11 AM 10/03/2014

In October 2014, the first patient on American soil infected with the Ebola virus sits in isolation in a Texas hospital, prompting calls for travel restrictions between the United States and Ebola-stricken countries.

Meanwhile, four years ago, the administration of President Barack Obama moved with virtually no fanfare to abandon a comprehensive set of regulations which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had called essential to preventing international travelers from spreading deadly diseases inside the United States.

The CDC had proposed the regulations in 2005 under the administration of George W. Bush, reported USA Today in 2010. The original impetus for the regulations was fear that avian flu would spread unchecked.

The regulations proposed under the Bush administration would have granted the federal government a power of “provisional quarantine” to confine airline passengers involuntarily for up to three days if they exhibit symptoms of certain infectious diseases. Federal officials would also have been able to quarantine passengers exposed to people with those symptoms.

There was a fairly long list of diseases. It included smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, pandemic flu, infectious tuberculosis, cholera — and viral fevers such as Ebola.

Before the Obama administration withdrew the proposed new rules, CDC officials had emphasized that they would only invoke the involuntary “provisional quarantine” when someone exhibiting a set of symptoms refused to work with federal officials voluntarily.

The proposed rules also would have compelled airlines to inform the CDC about sick passengers and to maintain contact information about all fliers in case the CDC and other federal agencies need to investigate a serious disease outbreak.

Airline lobbyists vehemently opposed the regulations. It would be too expensive, they said.

“We think that the CDC was right to withdraw the proposed rule,” Air Transport Association spokeswoman Elizabeth Merida told USA Today in March 2010. Merida also called the regulations “unprecedented” in terms of cost and red tape.

Civil liberties advocates also strongly opposed the CDC regulations.

“The fact that they’re backing away from this very coercive style of quarantine is good news,” ACLU legislative counsel Christopher Calabrese said in 2010, according to USA Today.

Other critics suggested that air travel regulations make no difference concerning disease outbreaks.

“They probably learned during H1N1 that this hope of preventing diseases from entering the country by stationing people at airports is unrealistic,” Jennifer Nuzzo of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center told the newspaper.

The H1N1 flu virus caused a worldwide pandemic in 2009.

The first man in the United States to be diagnosed with the deadly Ebola virus is Thomas Eric Duncan. He picked up the virus after traveling to Liberia in September.

The State Department has dismissed calls for restricting travel from West Africa.

“I don’t believe that’s something we’re considering,” a Foggy Bottom spokeswoman said this week, according to The Washington Times.

Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, among others, has a called for such restrictions. Grayson, one of the earliest proponents for federal action on Ebola, wants a 90-day ban on travel from countries where the virus has broken out.

Other critics of the tepid Obama administration response have warned of “Ebola tourism.” The concern, as the Times explains, is that people will become infected with Ebola and come to the United States seeking its exceptional level of medical care.

http://launch.newsinc.com/?type=VideoPlayer/Single&widgetId=1&trackingGroup=69016&siteSection=dailycaller_nws_us_sty_vmpp&videoId=27443530

Report: Liberians Flood Airport Attempting to Flee Ebola-Struck Country

Africans infected with Ebola may be trying to seek treatment in U.S., other countries

by Kit Daniels | Infowars.com | October 3, 2014

Liberians are apparently flooding Roberts International Airport in Harbel, Liberia, in an attempt to flee the Ebola-struck country, raising fears that more people infected with Ebola will fly into America.

Thomas Eric Duncan, the 40-year-old Liberian national who was diagnosed with Ebola a few days after arriving in Dallas, Texas, may have started a trend of “Ebola tourism” in which Liberians leave their country to seek better treatment for the disease.

“That’s not something we should be encouraging or allowing,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told the Washington Times.

Overall, around 200,000 people from the West African countries hit hardest by Ebola hold temporary visas to the U.S., but the Obama administration has rejected calls to enact a visa ban.

“Based on State Department nonimmigrant visa issuance statistics, I estimate that there are about 5,000 people in Guinea, 5,000 people in Sierra Leone, and 3,500 people in Liberia who possess visas to come to the United States today,” Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, told the Washington Examiner.

Temporary visas given to Nigerians have recently skyrocketed, with nearly 195,000 Nigerians currently holding visas, she added.

The Obama administration has similarly refused to impose a ban on travel from the Ebola hot zone into the U.S., despite pressure from a Florida Democrat and the fact that other countries have enacted similar bans.

Back in July, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) suggested the State Dept. ban citizens from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone from entering the U.S. and foreign travelers who have visited those countries in the previous 90 days.

Grayson grew concerned after an American who contracted Ebola in Liberia died in Nigeria after flying into the country through an international airport.

“This latest case is particularly troubling because Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria, is the third busiest airport in Africa, and it offers direct flights to the United States,” Grayson wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry. “I urge you to consider the enhanced danger Ebola now presents to the American public, and therefore request that appropriate travel restrictions be implemented immediately.”

The administration ignored Grayson’s plea but, in contrast, British Airways, Air France, Korean Air and Kenya Airways decided to suspend flights to the Ebola hot zone in August.

“If [the Obama administration] instituted the travel ban when Alan Grayson, of all people, demanded it, [Duncan] wouldn’t be here,” Krikorian added.

 

Ebola Patient’s Family Under Armed Quarantine

Disobeyed request from authorities not to leave home

Image Credits: Facebook

by Steve Watson | Infowars.com | October 3, 2014The family of Thomas Duncan, the Dallas man diagnosed with Ebola, are now under armed guard, quarantined in their home, following an attempt to breach the restrictions and leave the apartment building, reports the AP.

“We didn’t have the confidence we would have been able to monitor them the way that we needed to,” Texas State Health Commissioner David Lakey said when asked about the controversial control order.

Those under armed guard include a woman identified as Louise Troh, thought to be in a relationship with Duncan, a 13-year-old boy, said to be the woman’s son, and two nephews in their 20s.

The family were ordered by state health officials Wednesday to stay in their apartment for 21 days, the incubation period for Ebola. However, it seems that the family are not keen to comply.

“Who wants to be locked up?” miss Troh, told the AP.

“I’m not sick with Ebola,” she informed CNN in an interview, adding that she wanted “for [health officials] to leave me alone, leave my kids alone.”

The AP also reports that the family are due to be moved from the apartment so it can be decontaminated, a process that has still not been carried out, days after the diagnosis was made.

Troh told the AP that there are still towels and sheets in the apartment that were used by Duncan while he was there.

Officials have not made it clear where the family is to be moved to. An attempt to clean the apartment was thought to have been made Thursday night, but did not occur as proper permits had not been obtained.

On Thursday, it also emerged that five members of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department who were briefly inside the apartment have been temporarily put on leave.

According to reports, the officers were forced to enter the apartment on the orders of Sheriff Lupe Valdez in an effort to get the family to sign a court order forbidding them from leaving the building.

Patient Being Evaluated for Possible Ebola at D.C.’s Howard University Hospital

Patient had traveled to Nigeria recently; is being isolated

Howard University Hospital is evaluating a patient for Ebola. Meanwhile, at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, Maryland, a patient is in isolation with "flu-like symptoms and a travel history that matches criteria for possible Ebola." News4’s Derrick Ward reports.

Friday, Oct 3, 2014 • Updated at 5:43 PM EDT

A patient is being evaluated for Ebola at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., a hospital spokesperson confirmed Friday.

That person has been admitted to the hospital in stable condition and is isolated. The medical team is working with the CDC and other authorities to monitor the patient’s condition.

• What You Need to Know: How the Ebola Virus Is Spread

"In an abundance of caution, we have activated the appropriate infection control protocols, including isolating the patient," said hospital spokesperson Kerry-Ann Hamilton in a statement. "Our medical team continues to evaluate and monitor progress in close collaboration with the CDC and the Department of Health."

Hamilton did not share further details about the patient, citing privacy reasons, but said the hospital will provide updates as warranted.

In a White House briefing Friday, Sylvia Burwell, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, said of the Howard case,  "What you see are people taking precautions."

The D.C. Department of Health released a statement shortly before 1 p.m. Friday, saying that the department has been working with the CDC and Howard University Hospital to monitor "any patients displaying symptoms associated with the Ebola virus."

There are no confirmed cases of Ebola in D.C., said the statement.

• Ebola in Dallas: What We Know About the 1st U.S. Case

Meanwhile, at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, Maryland, a patient is in isolation with "flu-like symptoms and a travel history that matches criteria for possible Ebola," according to a statement from the hospital. Lab results indicate the patient has another illness, though the patient’s Ebola status is not known.

"We are working closely with the Montgomery County Health Department and State Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) as well as the CDC to manage this case and to ensure we continue to be prepared to care for patients with Ebola symptoms," the statement said.

“We will only be making an announcement if and when there is a laboratory confirmed case, and that announcement would be made in conjunction with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the CDC,” Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Mary Anderson said.

U.S. officials said at the White House briefing Friday that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was not just an international health crisis but a national security priority.

The health systems of some West African countries are "inadequate" and not capable of stemming the outbreak that they face, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, who runs the infectious disease division of the National Institutes of Health. But, he said, the U.S. system is able to handle any cases of Ebola that emerge safely.

Between July 27 and Oct. 1, there have been 100 consultations between the CDC, state and local health departments, and healthcare providers regarding persons suspected of Ebola, according to a CDC spokesperson. Only 15 warranted testing by CDC or one of the labs certified to do Ebola testing because they met the profile and symptoms were consistent.

Fourteen labs in the U.S. can test for Ebola, and most will still send a sample to the CDC for confirmation.

So far, only one of those 15 cases tested by the CDC has tested positive for Ebola.

• Dallas Ambulance Crew Who Brought Ebola Patient to Hospital Is Quarantined

Ebola is contagious only when infected people are showing symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People who have been exposed to Ebola will show signs of it within 21 days of exposure, the CDC said.

"There is no risk to people who have been in contact with those who have been sick with Ebola and recovered, or people who have been exposed and have not yet shown symptoms," said Dr. Thomas Frieden of the CDC.

On Tuesday, the CDC confirmed the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed in the United States. The patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, flew from his hometown of Monrovia, Liberia, and through Brussels, Belgium on Sept. 20 before entering the United States via Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia. He then traveled on to Dallas-Fort Worth.

Duncan, a Liberian man with family in the United States, first went to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Sept. 25 but was sent home. He returned to the hospital via ambulance Sunday.

On Friday, he was listed in serious but stable condition.

Thursday, news broke that a freelance NBC cameraman covering the outbreak in Monrovia, Liberia had tested positive for Ebola after experiencing symptoms of the disease.

The cameraman, Ashoka Mukpo, had been working with chief medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman. NBC News is flying Mukpo and the entire team back to the U.S. so Mukpo can be treated and the team can be quarantined for 21 days.

Snyderman told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that she and the rest of her crew have shown no signs of the disease and have taken precautions while covering the outbreak, including washing their hands with bleach.

The crew are quarantining themselves as a precautions

Dallas Schools to Install Remote Temperature Monitors to Detect Ebola

Five schools to be monitored until further notice

by Mikael Thalen | Infowars.com | October 3, 2014

Five schools in Dallas are set to install remote temperature monitors in order to detect fevers among students as the fear of an Ebola outbreak spreads among residents.

Produced by Wello Inc., the “WelloStation” devices will provide “fever surveillance” detection in order to alert school faculty to possible fluctuations in body temperatures according to the company’s website.

“The WelloStation measures your body’s core temperature using a patented, non-contact and non-invasive process,” the product description reads. “An elevated body temperature is the number one indicator of infection. WelloStation quickly screens for fevered individuals so you can either prevent them from entering or perform additional medical checks.”

The announcement follows more than a week of countless fumbles by local and federal authorities as suspected Ebola cases begin popping up across the country.

Law enforcement officers were outraged Thursday after finding out that five unprotected employees with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department were ordered to enter the apartment of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan to present his quarantined family with a court order barring them from leaving their home.

Later that day, Americans were shocked to find an unprotected cleaning crew using pressure washers to blast potentially tainted vomit off the sidewalk outside of the Ebola patient’s home.

Texas health officials also admitted Thursday that the apartment had not yet been cleaned despite protocol. A Hazmat crew finally called out to the scene more than three days after the initial prognosis was delayed further after being ordered to obtain a permit in order to clean the apartment.

A growing number of experts including the United Nations’ Ebola response chief and professors at the University of Illinois are warning that the current situation could spiral out of control if federal authorities do not begin taking more drastic measures.

 

Missouri Doctor: ‘It’s Just A Matter Of Time Before [Ebola] Is Carried To Every Corner Of The World’

October 3, 2014 12:26 PM

In this handout from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), a colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of a Ebola virus virion is seen. (Photo by Center for Disease Control (CDC) via Getty Images)

Dom Giordano

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Dom Giordano talked with Dr. Gil Mobley, who believes the CDC is lying about the threat posed by Ebola and staged a protest at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport to expose it.

Mobley, a doctor in Missouri, is convinced that Ebola will soon be infecting people all over the globe.

“For months, doctors in my community — since we had a meeting six weeks ago — have been convinced that the United States will be importing clusters regularly. Right now, on the continent of West Africa, there are a million people in isolation, in quarantine, because of Ebola, and ten thousand passengers leave West Africa every single day. It’s just a matter of time before this disease is carried to every corner of the world.”

READ: University Of Pennsylvania Alum Dr. Nancy Snyderman Quarantined Over Ebola

He insists the CDC is underplaying the threat posed by the disease and is intentionally misleading the public.

“They said the chance of importing a cluster — just two weeks ago — was extremely small, yet we knew that it was a sure thing. And the very same day that the President echoed [Director Tom] Frieden’s sentiment at the CDC that it’s very small, that very same day, they made the misdiagnoses in Dallas and sent this infectious guy home to infect these other people.”

READ: NJ Man Accused Of Shooting Down Neighbor’s Remote Control Drone

Mobley said it is inevitable that an Ebola crisis will break out in the United States.

“That disease is going to consume every third world country on the planet, and then we will be importing these clusters on a regular basis. I have no question that we will be able to stomp out this cluster in Dallas, but what happens when it happens on a weekly basis? Already the Dallas Health Department is overwhelmed; they’re flying people to Atlanta. I don’t care how advanced any industrialized nation is, there is a threshold where we will outstretch the resources and it becomes uncontrolled.”

Doctor Dons Ebola Protection Suit to Protest CDC

Microbiologist calls out CDC lies

by Infowars.com | October 3, 2014Two days after a man in Texas was diagnosed with Ebola, a Missouri doctor Thursday morning showed up at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport dressed in protective gear to protest what he called mismanagement of the crisis by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Is IT Time To Worry about Ebola Yet OBAMA

 

Is IT TIME To Worry about EBOLA Yet KING DICTATOR OBAMA

Canadian Health Agency Deletes Info on “Airborne Spread” of Ebola

Text amended amidst concern over first confirmed case in America

by Paul Joseph Watson | October 1, 2014

The Public Health Agency of Canada has deleted information from its official website which indicated that the “airborne spread” of Ebola was strongly suspected by health authorities, amidst efforts by officials in Texas to calm concerns about the first outbreak of the virus in America.

The image below shows the original Public Health Agency of Canada website’s information page on the Ebola virus as it appeared on August 20th compared to how it appears now.

Under a section entitled “mode of transmission,” the original text stated that, “airborne spread among humans is strongly suspected, although it has not yet been conclusively demonstrated.”

However, the amended text states that, “airborne transmission has not been demonstrated between non-human primates.”

Both passages refer to a 2012 study by Canadian scientists which indicated that the Ebola virus could be transmitted by air between different species.

“Researchers from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the country’s Public Health Agency have shown that pigs infected with this form of Ebola can pass the disease on to macaques without any direct contact between the species,” reported BBC News.

Although there is no confirmation that Ebola has gone airborne, Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, acknowledged in a recent New York Times op-ed that virologists are “loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private” the possibility that Ebola has gone airborne.

Some have questioned why hundreds of health workers have become sick and died from Ebola given that they take extreme precautions to avoid bodily contact with victims.

 

How Bad Could It Get? US Government Order Of 160,000 HazMat Suits Gives A Clue

What do they know the we don’t?

Image Credits: ssoosay, Flickr

by Zero Hedge | October 1, 2014

Now that Ebola is officially in the US on an uncontrolled basis, the two questions on everyone’s lips are i) who will get sick next and ii) how bad could it get?

We don’t know the answer to question #1 just yet, but when it comes to the second one, a press release three weeks ago from Lakeland Industries, a manufacturer and seller of a “comprehensive line of safety garments and accessories for the industrial protective clothing market” may provide some insight into just how bad the US State Department thinks it may get. Because when the US government buys 160,000 hazmat suits specifically designed against Ebola, just ahead of the worst Ebola epidemic in history making US landfall, one wonders: what do they know the we don’t?

From Lakeland Industries:

Lakeland Industries, Inc. (LAKE), a leading global manufacturer of industrial protective clothing for industry, municipalities, healthcare and to first responders on the federal, state and local levels, today announced the global availability of its protective apparel for use in handling the Ebola virus.  In response to the increasing demand for specialty protective suits to be worm by healthcare workers and others being exposed to Ebola, Lakeland is increasing its manufacturing capacity for these garments and includes proprietary processes for specialized seam sealing, a far superior technology for protecting against viral hazards than non-sealed products.

“Lakeland stands ready to join the fight against the spread of Ebola,” said Christopher J. Ryan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lakeland Industries.  “We understand the difficulty of getting appropriate products through a procurement system that in times of crisis favors availability over specification, and we hope our added capacity will help alleviate that problem.  With the U.S. State Department alone putting out a bid for 160,000 suits, we encourage all protective apparel companies to increase their manufacturing capacity for sealed seam garments so that our industry can do its part in addressing this threat to global health.

Of course, purchases by the US government are bought and paid for by taxpayers. For everyone else there’s $1200 mail-order delivery:

That said… 160,000 HazMats for a disease that is supposedly not airborne? Mmmk.

 

Flashback: World Health Organization Rejects Ebola Travel Ban

U.N. organization downplays risk of Ebola spreading via air travel

Image Credits: Kuba Bożanowski / Flickr

by Kit Daniels | Infowars.com | October 1, 2014

The World Health Organization rejected a travel ban to and from Ebola-stricken countries several weeks before an airline passenger infected with Ebola unknowingly brought the disease from Liberia into America.

In its Aug. 14 press release, WHO disapproved of a potential ban on international travel to and from the West African nations hit hardest by Ebola, suggesting instead that governments provide “their citizens traveling to Ebola-affected countries with accurate and relevant information on the Ebola outbreak and measures to reduce the risk of exposure.”

In explaining the reasoning behind the decision, WHO said “the risk of transmission of Ebola virus disease during air travel remains low,” which completely ignores the possibility that someone infected with Ebola could spread the disease weeks after flying back to his home country.

“On the small chance that someone on the plane is sick with Ebola, the likelihood of other passengers and crew having contact with their body fluids is even smaller,” the press release states. “Usually when someone is sick with Ebola, they are so unwell that they cannot travel.”

“WHO is therefore advising against travel bans to and from affected countries.”

That small chance became reality on Tuesday when the U.S. Center for Disease Control confirmed a person in Dallas, Texas, contracted Ebola after visiting Liberia, which is the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States.

The man had arrived in the U.S. by plane from Liberia on Sept. 20 and went to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital with symptoms of Ebola a few days later.

“The patient was discharged with antibiotics and returned again days later with watery diarrhea and other symptoms, tested for both malaria and Ebola, and put in isolation on the 28th,” Erick Erickson with Red State wrote, quoting a source reportedly from the CDC.

Earlier this morning, Dallas health officials announced they are now monitoring a second person who may have contracted Ebola after coming into contact with the first patient.

“Let me be real frank to the Dallas County residents: the fact that we have one confirmed case, there may be another case that is a close associate with this particular patient,” Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson said in an interview with local ABC affiliate WFAA. “So this is real.”

Despite the WHO’s recommendation against a travel ban, multiple countries decided to terminate air service to and from West African nations back in August, further indicating that WHO downplayed the risk of Ebola spreading via air travel.

 

Ebola Case in Texas Validates Concerns Over Open Border

Concerns that virus could enter US proven valid

by Adan Salazar | Infowars.com | October 1, 2014

As the first American case of Ebola was confirmed in Dallas yesterday, some laid blame on the Obama administration’s lax immigration policies for the ease at which the illness penetrated the nation’s borders.

During the past year, the federal government has struggled to deal with an influx of immigrants, 75 percent of which have arrived from countries other than Mexico.

The scale of diseases entering the US became apparent earlier this year when several Border Patrol agents working in crowded detention facilities began contracting illnesses, such as H1N1 swine flu, scabies and chicken pox, stemming from contact with diseased illegals.

Indeed, as more cases of tuberculosis and other contagious illnesses surfaced, experts began predicting that, given the lack of border security enforcement and health screenings, viral outbreaks occurring in parts of the world such as West Africa had a higher chance of reaching the U.S.

“Why are more doctors in the southern border states not already on alert to handle sudden increase in TB, adult chicken pox, measles, H1N1 influenza, dengue, Ebola, plus other unknown but lethal diseases?” asked practicing medical doctor Elizabeth Lee Vliet back in June.

Dr. Vliet and a host of politicians and medical professionals, including radio host and epidemiologist Michael Savage, were long ago warning of the dire threats posed to public health by the Obama administration’s de facto open border policies, which allowed illegals into the U.S. absent proper health screenings.

“These diseases are highly contagious,” wrote Vliet, “especially in crowded and poor sanitary conditions in the detention and processing centers where thousands of illegals are housed until sent to other areas of America, without full screening for such diseases.”

“Many of the diseases of concern, such as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, have NO effective treatments,” wrote Dr. Vliet, noting infectious disease is the leading cause of death worldwide.

Others, such as Texas Rep. Phil Gingrey, expressed concerns that “the border poses many risks, including grave public health threats.”

“Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning,” Gingrey wrote in a letter to the CDC back in July.

While the CDC claims the Ebola patient did not cross through the southern border, last month, Dr. Vliet cast a prediction that the “global array of viral illnesses,” in addition to the nation’s porous borders, were a recipe for disaster.

“Ebola is one of the most lethal diseases we face, with a death rate from 60-90 percent of infected patients. It is a horrible death as the virus attacks the blood vessels leading to hemorrhaging internally and externally. There are no good treatments or vaccines,” she wrote.

Additionally, the doctor highlighted, the CDC unbeknownst to the public has already established emergency health facilities across the country to deal specifically with an Ebola outbreak.

“If risk is so low for the U.S., why is the CDC quietly setting up Ebola Quarantine Centers in 20 cities across the U.S.? Why did the Congressional Record report that Ebola bio kits have been deployed to National Guard units in all 50 states?” Dr. Vliet questioned last month.

Alarmingly, the CDC has also proceeded to issue guidelines to U.S. funeral homes on how to deal with the corpses of dead Ebola patients, and the U.S. State Department has also put out a bid for 160,000 Hazmat suits in anticipation of a viral outbreak.

Concerns over an American Ebola outbreak were also raised last month when the US decided to fly patients infected with the disease back into the US for treatment, rather than restricting flights from affected regions.

With fears of an Ebola pandemic coming to fruition inside the United States, the administration can now drop its facade of securing the border and move forward with efforts to scale up emergency powers, such as those outlined in the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act – which among other things would “Force persons to be vaccinated, treated, or quarantined for infectious diseases” – and President Obama’s executive order mandating the apprehension and detention of “well persons” who merely show signs of “respiratory illness.”

 

 

Obama Still Refuses to Halt Flights From Ebola Hot Zone

Multiple nations stopped flights over a month ago

Image Credits: Intel Photos / Flickr

by Kit Daniels | Infowars.com | October 1, 2014

After U.S. officials disclosed another potential case of Ebola in Dallas, Texas, this morning, the question remains whether the Obama administration will finally stop flights from Ebola-stricken countries as multiple nations did over a month ago.

In mid-August, Korean Air and Kenya Airways announced they were halting flights to the West African countries ravaged by Ebola, and British Airways and Air France also decided to suspend service to the Ebola hot zone a few weeks later.

“France is recommending that its citizens leave Sierra Leone and Liberia, two of the countries hardest hit by the worst ever outbreak of the disease,” Jessica Plautz reported for Mashable. “The government said the increasing spread of the disease prompted its request that the airline to suspend flights.”

Yet the Obama administration made no such request to U.S. airlines and government flights, despite the Center of Disease Control advising Americans to avoid “non-essential travel” to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea several weeks ago.

“CDC urges all US residents to avoid non-essential travel to Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone because of unprecedented outbreaks of Ebola in those countries,” the CDC travel health advisory states. “CDC recommends that travelers to these countries protect themselves by avoiding contact with the blood and body fluids of people who are sick with Ebola.”

The patient in Dallas, Texas, who the CDC confirmed as the first case of Ebola virus diagnosed in the United States, flew into the U.S. on Sept. 20 after contracting the disease in Liberia.

This morning, Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson said officials are currently monitoring another person who they fear may have Ebola after coming into contact with the patient currently being treated in Dallas.

“Let me be real frank to the Dallas County residents: the fact that we have one confirmed case, there may be another case that is a close associate with this particular patient,” Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson said Wednesday in an interview with local ABC affiliate WFAA. “So this is real.”

So far, the White House has done little to prevent the spread of Ebola in the U.S. and may have in fact encouraged an outbreak by sending thousands of U.S. troops into West Africa earlier this month who could potentially contract the disease.

 

Five Dallas ISD students may have had contact with Ebola patient, none are sick

By Tawnell D. Hobbs

thobbs@dallasnews.com
12:21 pm on October 1, 2014 | Permalink

A Dallas ISD police officer arrives Wednesday at Sam Tasby Middle School, one of four Dallas schools attended by students who may have had contact with the man being treated for Ebola at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas. (Andy Jacobsohn/Staff Photographer)

Five Dallas ISD students at four schools may have had contact with the Ebola patient in Dallas and stayed home from school as a precaution, according to a district email (see below) sent to employees today.

The kids are not showing symptoms of having the virus.

The students, who were not named, attend Tasby Middle School, Hotchkiss Elementary School, Dan D. Rogers Elementary and Conrad High School. The schools are in the Vickery Meadow area in northeast Dallas where many refugee families and other immigrants have settled in apartments.

DISD is also monitoring Lowe Elementary since it is connected to Tasby.

Mikey Terrell, a Conrad volunteer who lives in downtown Dallas, said news was spreading around the school that the man with Ebola lived or was visiting family nearby.

“It’s just getting around, just a few minutes ago,” he said today. He said he’d read about symptoms and prevention tips.

“I’ll just keep my hands to myself,” he said.

Click here for more information on the Ebola virus. Here’s a link on DISD’s website with more information.

More information, 12:49 p.m.:

Superintendent Mike Miles said during an afternoon news conference that impacted schools would have additional health professionals and custodial staff. He said that the district was informed this morning by Dallas County Health and Human Services of the five students that could have had contact with the Ebola patient.

“They possibly had contact with the patient over the weekend, and they have been in school since,” Miles said.

More information from Staff Writer Melissa Repko, 12:55 p.m.:

Tammy Brown, a mother of two students at Conrad, drove to pick up her daughter for a doctors appointment. She was greeted by a closed gate.

Her daughter, a junior in high school, came home Tuesday and said she didn’t want to go to school. She’d heard the man diagnosed with Ebola lived in a nearby apartment or was visiting there.

“She was real freaked out about it,” Brown said. “She worried someone was floating around with it.”

Brown spent Tuesday night researching on Google where the virus came from and how it spreads. She said she wishes the school district had sent home informational fliers to notify parents and tell them the virus’ symptoms. They could also make courtesy calls like they did when a middle school student was diagnosed with tuberculosis nearby, she said.

Her daughter’s fears concerned her, too.

“It made me nervous,” she said. “I had to stop because she was asking me questions and I didn’t have answers. I didn’t want to scare her.”

But Wednesday, Brown said her daughter decided to go to school anyway. “She tries to keep good attendance.”

More information from Staff Writer Jeff Mosier, 2:17 p.m.:

Shortly after lunch, a handful of Hotchkiss Elementary parents showed up to pull their children out of class.

Mayra Duarte, mother of a Hotchkiss first grader, said she first heard about the Ebola connection on the DISD Facebook page. “I don’t think I’m going to bring him until we go to the doctor and check him and see if he’s okay,” Duarte said.
This as well as the start of flu season has her worried about her son’s health.

One woman, who declined to give her name and appeared frantic, rushed up to the school and would only say: “I’m picking up my baby. ”

On her way out, she said she was hurrying to another of the schools to get her other child.

Deatra Allen, the aunt of a Hotchkiss kindergarten student, was unaware of the Ebola exposure until she was surrounded by members of the media in front of the school. She said this was a little too close to home.

“I don’t know if I want him to come back tomorrow,” she said.

More information, 2:38 p.m.:

The NEA-Dallas employees association urged health officials “to quarantine the five children” until they are satisfied that the kids have not contacted the disease.

“As always, their teachers will go the extra mile to help them get caught up on their studies after they return to class,” the group said in a statement.

Dallas ISD Ebola Notice

Urgent! Ebola Hits The US: Feds to Enact Emergency Measures?

Doctors give dire warnings as feds attempt to downplay

by Infowars.com | October 1, 2014

Infowars reporter Joe Biggs is on the scene where The Centers for Disease Control confirmed today that an Ebola victim was admitted to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas

CDC WARNS FUNERAL HOMES IN U.S. TO PREPARE FOR EBOLA VICTIMS

CDC WARNS FUNERAL HOMES IN U.S. TO

PREPARE FOR EBOLA VICTIMS

Recommendations caution workers not to embalm corpses

by PAUL JOSEPH WATSON | SEPTEMBER 30, 2014

The Centers for Disease Control is advising funeral homes in the United States on how to handle the remains of Ebola victims, although officials are keen to stress that the development is not a cause for alarm.

A three page list of recommendations instructs funeral workers to wear protective gear while handling Ebola victims, as well as warning them not to carry out autopsies or to embalm corpses.

“If the outbreak of the potentially deadly virus is in West Africa, why are funeral homes in America being given guidelines?” asks WFSB.com.

Last night it was revealed that a Dallas hospital is holding a potential Ebola victim in “strict isolation” after the patient was admitted based on symptoms and “recent travel history.”

Alysia English, Executive Director of the Georgia Funeral Directors Association, dismissed suggestions that Americans should be alarmed by the recommendations.

“Absolutely not. In fact, if they weren’t hearing about it, they should be a whole lot more concerned,” said English.

As we reported earlier this month, the U.S. State Department ordered 160,000 Ebola hazmat suits, prompting concerns that officials were preparing for an outbreak within the United States.

While Ebola has so far been confined to the continent of Africa, speculation has arisen that the virus could have gone airborne to at least a limited extent.

Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, acknowledged in a recent New York Times op-ed that virologists are “loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private” the possibility that Ebola has gone airborne.

Top German virologist Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit caused consternation recently when he suggested that the battle against Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia was lost and that the virus would eventually kill 5 million people.

As we reported back in 2009, the State of New York Division of Cemeteries sent out “Mass Fatality forms” to cemeteries in that state to collect data about their ability to deal with the high volume of casualties that would occur if their were a flu pandemic or other disaster.

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Ebola in Africa

Inside the Ebola quarantine in Liberia

Monday, August 25, 2014

A man lies under a car after being put there in detention by the Liberian army on the second day of the government’s Ebola quarantine on their neighbourhood of West Point on August 21, 2014 in Monrovia, Liberia. An army officer said that he was showing symptoms of Ebola and was caught trying to escape from West Point. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Listen

The quarantine in the slum of West Point is driving street prices sky high, making an already bad situation worse. But the government says its necessary in its attempts to get ahead of the Ebola outbreak. Today we get an insiders look at West Point, and talk about the ethical implications of sealing 75,000 people in a cramped area that’s rife with the deadly Ebola virus.

A West Point resident looks on from closed gates on the second day of the government’s Ebola quarantine in Monrovia, Liberia. The government delivered bags of rice, beans & cooking oil to residents. (John Moore/Getty Images)

"The government love their people and they want to see their people doing well and to stay healthy and to make sure that this disease is serious."

Meata Flowers, West Point Commissioner

Last week, Liberian authorities implemented a nation-wide curfew and put the entire West Point district under quarantine. That’s roughly 75,000 people, sealed into a densely-packed slum. No one gets in. No one gets out.

• Ebola outbreak: Why Liberia’s quarantine in West Point slum will fail — CBC News

Since the outbreak was identified in March, Ebola has taken more than 1,400 lives in the West African countries of Nigeria, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. But Liberia has been hardest hit, with at least 1,000 cases and 624 deaths recorded so far.

The few images that are emerging from quarantined West Point are especially harrowing. They show a frightened, confused population trapped with little access to food and water. This forced containment suggests that Liberia is becoming increasingly desperate in its effort to limit the spread of Ebola — a disease that, while difficult to get, is fatal up to ninety per cent of the time, according to the World Health Organization.

John Moore is a staff photographer with Getty Images who’s had rare access to the community of West Point since the quarantine has been put in effect. The pictures he’s taken there show the raw emotion of the situation. John Moore joined us earlier, on the line in Monrovia.

Putting entire neighborhoods under quarantine may seem like a drastic measure, but as the Ebola outbreak continues to devastate Liberia and the region, finding a solution to the spread is paramount. A key part of that solution is reaching out to those communities most affected, urban and rural.

Aphaluck Bhatiasevi is with the World Health Organization. She works with communities to determine the best way to fight against Ebola, and how people can best help each other with information and resources. We reached her in Montrovia, Liberia.

Health professionals around the world are watching the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, and how local authorities deal with it. Dr. Kamran Khan is a scientist and physician who specializes in infectious diseases. He has been a policy advisor for the Canadian government, the World Health Organization and the US Centres for Disease Control.

Have thoughts you want to share on this discussion?

Tweet us @thecurrentcbc. Or e-mail us through our website. Find us on Facebook. Call us toll-free at 1 877 287 7366. And as always if you missed anything on The Current, grab a podcast.

This segment was produced by The Current’s Naheed Mustafa and Howard Goldenthal.

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Ebola Outbreak: Why this time is different

Monday, August 18, 2014

  

Workers prepare the new Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Ebola treatment centre near Monrovia, Liberia. The Ebola epidemic has killed more than 1,000 people in four African countries, and Liberia now has had more deaths than any other country. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Listen

Experts say the Ebola outbreak is potentially more dangerous then ever before because it’s in countries that have never seen this. Now the outbreak is seriously depleting health care resources. We’re heading to the front lines in Liberia today.

Hanah Siafa lies with her daughter Josephine, 10, while hoping to enter the new Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Ebola treatment center in Monrovia, Liberia. The facility initially has 120 beds, making it the largest such facility for Ebola treatment and isolation in history,

and MSF plans to expand it to a 350-bed capacity. (John Moore/Getty Images)

"The disease is not contained and it is out of control in West Africa. The international response to the disease has been a failure."

Ken Isaacs, the Vice President of the Christian aid group Samaritan’s Purse testifying at a US congressional hearing earlier this month

The much-dreaded and deadly Ebola virus is back with a vengeance. Over the weekend the World Health Organization reported over 150 new cases of the virus in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

Here’s a little background about the health crisis threatening Africa today:

• The Ebola virus first appeared in 1976 in simultaneous outbreaks — in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.

• It’s not known for certain but fruit bats are the most likely host of the virus.

• Researchers believe that the first case of Ebola in the current outbreak was that of a 2-year-old boy in Guinea who died early last December.

• Over the next few days his mother, sister and grandmother all died as well.

• The infection was carried by two mourners at the grandmother’s funeral to another village, where a health worker picked it up.

• People who come into close contact with a patient — like family, friends and health care workers are most likely to be infected.

• Ebola is transmitted through direct contact of broken skin or mucus membranes with bodily fluids.

• It takes Ebola between 2 and 21 days to develop.

• Symptoms are typically a rapid onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and sore throat.

• It can progress to vomiting and diarrhea, organ failure and in some cases both internal and external bleeding.

• Ebola is fatal in up to 90% of cases.

"It is like a war time. General fear. All over. And they need help. They need leadership, co-ordination … they will not be able to over come this by themselves."

Dr. Joanne Liu, head of Medicines Sans Frontier

On Friday, Joanne Liu, the head of Medicines Sans Frontier said the key to bringing the outbreak under control is to limit and reduce its spread in Liberia. That country had its first outbreak of Ebola in April and in June it resurfaced. What little healthcare resources Liberia has are being seriously depleted fighting the outbreak.

The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that this Ebola outbreak is on track to infect more people than every other Ebola outbreak combined. A grim forecast.

To understand how and why this outbreak is different, we spoke to three people.

• Tarnue Karbbar is program unit manager for Plan International in North and Western Liberia. He’s been working in Lofa in northern Liberia since January and now he’s helping co-ordinate the government and international response to the Ebola outbreak.

• Nyka Alexander is the WHO’s Outbreak Coordination Center’s spokesperson. In July, the World Health Organization set up the Sub-regional Outbreak Coordination Centre in Conakry, Guinea. It functions as a hub for coordinating technical support and mobilizing resources needed by field staff in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

• Tara Smith is an Epidemiologist at Kent State University.

  Have thoughts you want to share?

  Tweet us @thecurrentcbc. Or e-mail us through our website. Find us on Facebook. Call us toll-free at 1 877 287 7366. And as always if you missed anything on The Current, grab a podcast.

  This segment was produced by The Current’s Gord Westmacott, Naheed Mustafa and Sujata Berry.

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  Why is West Africa’s Ebola outbreak so hard to contain?

  Friday, August 1, 2014

  The head of the WHO has planned to meet with leaders of several West African nations in Guinea to launch a $100-million campaign to help fight the Ebola outbreak. (Reuters/Tommy Trenchard)

  Listen

  As the Ebola virus continues to spread, it’s becoming clear that a lack of knowledge about the disease and cultural factors are hindering treatment and containment.

  Tomorrow, the head of the WHO meets with leaders of several West African nations in Guinea to launch a $100-million campaign to help fight the Ebola outbreak. The WHO says that the scale of the outbreak and its continued growth make it necessary to take the fight to a new level.

  Dr. Kent Brantly was flown back to the U.S. for treatment after contracting the virus while helping patients in Liberia.

  If even the doctors who take elaborate precautions still manage to catch the lethal disease, it’s no wonder many Ebola patients and their families fear hospitals. Health workers say it’s often hard to convince patients infected with Ebola to seek treatment, and many are suspicious of health workers who show up during an outbreak.

  And the oubreak spreads across West Africa, many wonder if it can remain there. We asked Dr. Jay Keystone, a Senior Staff Physician at Toronto General Hospital’s Tropical Disease Unit, if Canadians should worry.

"Certainly if you look at the news media, and the pictures, I would be afraid, but my answer is no…in terms of spread to the community, and in Canada, it’s highly highly unlikely."

Dr. Jay Keystone

To find out more, we were joined by three guests:

– Jean-Pierre Taschereau is the Head Emergency Operations for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. He returns to West Africa next week.

– Reine Lebel is a psychologist who worked with Ebola patients and their families in Dikidou, Guinea.

– Melissa Leach is Director of the Institute of Development Studies and the Leader of the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium.

Have thoughts you want to share?

Tweet us @thecurrentcbc. Or e-mail us through our website. Find us on Facebook. Call us toll-free at 1 877 287 7366. And as always if you missed anything on The Current, grab a podcast.

This segment was produced by The Current’s Sujata Berry, Catherine Kalbfleisch and intern Wanyee Li.

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Are drugs the best way to curb the Ebola outbreak?

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

As health care officials remind us, there is no proven cure for Ebola. But the WHO has ruled that experimental treatments should be made available to those who are suffering.(Reuters/Thomas Peter)

Listen

The World Health Organization has ruled that experimental drugs should be made available to countries dealing with the outbreak. We look at the science and ethics of using an unproven Ebola treatment, and if focusing on drugs is the best way to curb the outbreak.

"Countries affected to date simply do not have the capacity to manage an outbreak of this size and complexity on their own. Our collective health security depends on support for containment operations in these countries.

Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization

More than 1000 people have now died during this outbreak, and that number is growing.

This morning, a Spanish priest with the Ebola virus has died. He had received an experimental drug called Zmapp — the same drug used to treat two American relief workers who contracted Ebola in recent days. They are now in the United States recovering.

As health care officials remind us, there is no proven cure for Ebola. But some say that if the West has therapies that might work, it should move to mass produce the experimental treatment and get it to those who are suffering. Others caution that rushing ahead with unproven treatments is a serious mistake.

To discuss the ethics and effectiveness of using drugs to curb the outbreak, we were joined by two guests:

– Dr. Michael Osterholm is the Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

– Ubaka Ogbogu is the Katz Research Fellow in Health Law at the University of Alberta.

What do you think?

Tweet us @thecurrentcbc. Or e-mail us through our website. Find us on Facebook. Call us toll-free at 1 877 287 7366. And as always if you missed anything on The Current, grab a podcast.

This segment was produced by The Current’s Idella Sturino, Naheed Mustafa and intern Wanyee Li.