As of October 5 — the period covered by the World Health Organization’s latest Ebola Situation Report [PDF] — there have been 8,033 cases of Ebola identified, with 3,879 deaths. The one US Ebola death isn’t in that total yet — it will show up in next week’s report.
Using 2011 numbers (I can’t dig up more recent CDC data), forty weeks worth of gun deaths in the US would produce almost 25,000 men, women, kids, dead by homicide, dead in domestic battles, dead by accident, dead of the misery that leads to self-murder. [Trigger warning: troubling image below the fold]
A single US Ebola case has completely deranged the Republican party and their pack of running dogs. There have been calls for summary execution of the ill and scorched earth assaults on some of the world’s poorest; someone managed to conflate Ebola and ISIS; a truly timorous soul (when did the GOP become such cowards?) now demands panic [h/t Edoroso] in response to this (genuinely) terrible disease that has, just to go back to the numbers again, led to the death of one person on American soil.
None of these trembling, vicious GOP hacks offers anything remotely so…determined…in the face of stories like this. Or these. [PDF]. Or all those documented here, until the slaughter became too much for witnesses to bear.
Ebola is a terrifying disease. It is doing immense damage to extremely vulnerable people and societies. We should bring all we can to bear to block further transmission, to care for those already infected, and to discover whatever there is to be found to treat or prevent it. But as we do so, it’s worth remembering that there is an epidemic disease claiming the lives of more than eighty Americans a day, and we aren’t doing anything to stop it.
Image: Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, The Suicide, c. 1836.
Hawes
So, so far Ebola has killed as many Americans as Darren Wilson?
Gene108
Our right to Ebola is not protected by the Consitution. Our right to own guns is.
Roger Moore
A long, long time ago. They’ve been motivated by fear of everything for as long as I remember.
NCSteve
As best I can tell, the Republican Party became the Party of the Fearful in 1912, when TR bolted and took every Republican who didn’t lose bladder control over every loud noise with him. Ever since then, there’s been some damn thing or other they tell people to be terrified of, some Big Terrible Thing That Will Surely Doom the Republic and All we Hold Dear, every two years without fail. And without fail, that thing has ultimately turned out to be either entirely fictitious or else a thing that really wasn’t all that big a threat.
Wobblies, bi-metalism, immigrants from China and Japan, the League of Nations, Social Security, Commie infiltrators in the State Department, Medicare, the seemingly unending and ever-expanding Hippy Problem, communist infiltration of the Civil Rights Movement, Soviet expansionism, the ANC, racial integration and the easy descent into miscegenation (granted, mostly an issue of Southern Democrats, but a fear so hysterical and mean and idiotic that it made their migration to the GOP inevitable), Hillarycare, Obamacare, skary mooslim t’rrsts, the ever present threat of ravening hoards of excitable negros coming to steal your stuff, Mexicans, teh gay, Obamacare, Ebola.
All the same story. Fear and fear and fear and you need to elect us, the party recommending hugely costly, ultra-violent, grandiose symbolic counterproductive gestures to fix the problem. So it’s gone for decade after decade without the MSM taking official note of the strategy or the ephemeral nature of each successive existential threat to all that is good and decent.
raven
They killed the dog that belonged to the nurse in Spain.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Roger Moore: I enjoying lightly trolling here a lot, but let me be totally serious here. What you describe is a disease not limited to those of the Republican persuasion. Americans, all my life, have been living in a state of what could be charitably called “pants-wetting terror”. Fear of Democrats, blacks, Republicans, Mexicans, diseases, weed, independent politicians, bankruptcy, birth defects, immunizations, various forms of music, film, literature and television, environmental poisons, cost of cleaning up said poisons…I could go on and on and on.
We’re a nation of cowards, put nicely, and always have been. And it’s sad, because we have the capacity for greatness. But our fears always have, and at this point in my life, where I’ve got less years to live than years I have lived, I can say confidently will always prevent us from reaching that greatness. It’s too bad. In some areas we have a lot to offer.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: That’s really pointless.
CarolDuhart2
@raven:
my god.
Dog Belonging to Spanish Nurse With Ebola Euthanized
raven
@Gin & Tonic:
Violet
They’ve always been cowards. There’s no “become” about it. The entire conservative movement is about not wanting things to change. Fearing change. Fear is baked in.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: The GOP of Abe Lincoln and Radical Reconstruction begs to differ.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: True enough. I’ll defer to NCSteve‘s assessment. It’s far enough back that I used “always” as shorthand. It was incorrect.
Tom Levenson
@Violet: Good to see you in the thread, Violet.
NotMax
A little early in the month still, but expect the first mendacious (and ludicrous) rumor mongering mentioning Ebola-laced Halloween candy to surface late in October.
JPL
The real pandemic occurring now was pointed out the New Yorker.
We all know someone with this illness. I just sent information on it to a friend.
Violet
@Tom Levenson: Thank you, Tom. Good to be feeling well enough to participate.
JPL
@Violet: In order to test how you are feeling, I suggest you link on the New Yorker in my comment above yours. If it doesn’t make you smile, rest up a tad more.
JPL
I have a long time friend who started watching Fox a few years back. She has become someone, I don’t recognize anymore. It’s really sad that they are able to sell their filth on the air.
Anoniminous
@JPL:
Brilliant.
Violet
Posted this in a previous thread, but it’s more appropriate here:
Apparently UNICEF workers have seen a man infect his girlfriend this way. She later died.
Violet
@JPL: It did make me smile. Thanks for the laugh.
Trollhattan
In the period since the current ebola outbreak began, how many gunshot deaths in the US? Factoring populations, how many African ebola versus US gunshot deaths per million?
There’s your epidemic.
Trollhattan
@Violet:
Okay, that’s creepy.
Anoniminous
@Violet:
WHO agrees:
ETA: so one may postulate women can pass it to their partners as well.
Violet
And what about the Enterovirus that is hospitalizing kids, seems to be leaving some paralyzed and now there is one death attributed to it. That’s much more of an actual threat to Americans and also is transmitted more easily.
jl
@raven: I have no idea whether killing the dog was justified or reasonable. I have heard some reports on the case of the transmission in Span, which puts it in perspective.
The attendant was a nurse assistant, not a registered nurse, so not as highly trained. The nurse assistant admitted to at least one (seems to layman me) very serious violation of protocol: touching her face with exposed glove used to care for patient. Face is absolutely last place you want to touch, since eyes and nostrils great routes for viral infection (from what I know as layman).
And protocol for monitoring the nurse assistant and her own decisions very troublesome after she developed fever close to threshold for Ebola. Interesting to compare the very disciplined thoughtful and conscientious behavior of the Nigerian doctors and nurses when they observed initial symptoms of infection in themselves and others in a link posted by a commenter a few days ago.
So could be that Spain’s initial response to Ebola infection not as good as in Nigeria or U.S.
Belafon
@Violet: The way I read it, the UNICEF workers only heard the story of a woman dying that way.
Violet
@Anoniminous: The WaPo link in my comment discusses various bodily fluids and their possibility as infection vectors–like sweat, tears, etc. Those are less likely than if an Ebola victim vomits on you or you’re the poor nurse who has to change the victim’s diapers. So yes, theoretically a woman could transmit the virus via sexual intercourse. I think it’s less likely but not impossible.
Violet
@Belafon: I think you are correct. Perhaps it is not true. I’m sure in the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak a lot of rumors are flying around.
Anoniminous
@Violet:
There are a number of diseases endemic in the US getting scant attention from our Infotainment Industry: drug resistant tuberculosis, enterovirus, drug resistant gonorrhea. Other diseases are making a come back as the herd immunity wanes due to idiots not vaccinating their little disease susceptible rug-rats.
My own feeling is these are not and will not be given attention because the next step is examination leads inevitably to the disastrous condition of the US Public Health system due almost entirely to the imposition of Conservative Public Policy.
JR in WV
I think there is a terrible plague that could destroy all we hold dear in America. That could destroy everything good or noble about our people!
It is infectious, and spreads from person to person orally; more dangerous that any other known infectious agent!
Deprogramming is sometimes effective in curing a single person of this brain disorder, but there is no way to cure groups of people together yet discovered.
It is called republicanism, and no one knows how to keep it from infecting weak-minded people who don’t like to think.
jl
@Anoniminous: Examination of more serious infectious disease threats to people in U.S. would require consideration of things that might inconvenience or impose risks and costs on corporate media’s (perhaps accurate, perhaps not) conception of what average Joe and Josephine want to hear. So, best not talk about it.
Panicking and advocating immediate blame, discipline and punish on other types of people far away much nicer and easier way to spend time, at least for some people.
jl
@JR in WV: ‘republicanism’ is an ambiguous term, especially without a capital R. People might think you are the Hungarian Prime Minister (of a NATO country) who says he wants to end liberal democracy in his country.
Maybe ‘movement conservatism’ or ‘GOPerism’ would be better terms.
Anoniminous
@Violet:
Likely, unlikely it doesn’t matter. Since ebola is running around 48% mortality it would be wise for people to refrain for the 21 day incubation period.
pluege
republicans are ALWAYS cowards, whether its their: ‘arm everyone’, ‘all war all the time’, or ‘its OK to be a bully’ – all acts of cowardice, requiring cowardly character to think any of those positions/viewpoints are OK.
JR in WV
@jl: Mostly a joke, plus I don’t really think the American conservative party deserves a capital letter….
jl
@Anoniminous: Is there any evidence that the virus can be transmitted by any bodily contact, with man or woman, during the incubation period? I haven’t read about any. And not sure how people can take precautions during incubation, when no or few signs or symptoms present.
Taking precautions after recovery seems more reasonable. Is that what you meant?
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: Yes, it would have a vastly different meaning if one were discussing Spain in the 1930s.
Anoniminous
@jl:
It’s all about eyeballs and Those People. The greater the blame on the latter, the more of the former.
Sad_Dem
FDR: We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
GOP: Be very afraid. (And FDR was a commie!)
jl
@JR in WV: OK. At least it doesn’t look like you are not Prime Minister of Hungary.
Violet
@Anoniminous: The virus can persist in semen for up to 90 days. A 21-day quarantine isn’t going to work in that situation.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Those are FREEDOM(tm) Life Changes, so utterly different from a socialist disease like Ebola
(on a more serious note – perhaps the Right is so frantic about Ebola because Ebola shows there is a reason for big government? It’s very clear the difference between whether Ebola is a statical curiosity in a community or Elbola is a health disaster is how effective the government is)
jl
@jl: “At least it doesn’t look like you are Prime Minister of Hungary.”
I cannot type at all sometimes.
Anoniminous
@jl:
According to WHO:
So while it’s possible for a woman to transmit ebola sexually it is, as Violet said, “unlikely.” I urge of abstinence during the contagious period because I’m an overly cautious wuss. :-)
Note: the “shared needle” thing is a warning bell that the next population at risk is intravenous drug users which overlaps prostitutes. IOW, pretty much how AIDS spread across Africa and so forth and yadda-yadda.
Anoniminous
@Violet:
You’re right. I don’t know where the 21 day time period came from.
jl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Good point. But if that is the motive of the GOPerists, scary that they refuse to understand that science, reality and facts trump their ideology.
Unless they are so butt stupid arrogant and complacent they figure things like infectious disease epidemics, Ebloa or other, can never touch them.
John Glowney
@NCSteve: Our Republican friends
resemble nothing so much as medieval villagers.
jl
@Anoniminous:
I will follow up the link and read up on it later when I have time. I think the problem is the terms
‘infected people’ and ‘patient’s’, which seemed to be used as synonyms in your block quote. From what I have read and heard from experts in media, they are not same wrt to transmission of infection.
A patient is an infected person who has developed symptomatic clinical disease, and can transmit the virus. I have read that infected people cannot spread the disease during the incubation period (when no or very few specific symptoms) or prodromal stage when specific symptoms are just emerging.
And that distinction is what makes Ebola a manageable disease if good standard of care with strict protocols exists, as opposed to an uncontrollable nightmare, even without airborne transmission.
If you have seen anything to contradict that distinction, please post a link.
JPL
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Unfortunately the right does not understand that when you decrease the funding to NIH and CDC, it might have consequences. The Pharmas had no incentive to produce vaccines for ebola. We still don’t have vaccines for malaria. The right doesn’t understand that free enterprise means we are free only to produce products that make a profit.
Roger Moore
@Anoniminous:
One might postulate that, but men and women have sufficiently different reproductive organs that the analogy isn’t necessarily very good. Spermatogenesis is a very slow process, so viruses can take quite a while to work their way through the system. Women don’t have anything that takes comparably long.
scav
@Anoniminous: The 21 day thing is the outer edge of how long it takes someone to display symptoms of the disease once possibly infected (2-21 is what’s usually given). The period of how long they’d be infectious once they have it is entirely a different beast.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: Aside from the pants-pissing GOP, greed is the other enemy of this country.
And, more importantly, of the species.
Roger Moore
@jl:
My hovercraft is full of eels.
Elizabelle
PBS NOVA tonight on “Surviving Ebola” on WETA (DC PBS station).
Immediately after a show on disappearing airplanes, a la Malaysian 370.
It’s CNN tonight, gone highbrow.
Anoniminous
@jl:
If I’m reading you correctly what you are getting at is vector: a carrier of a communicable disease that can transmit the disease.
A person can be, e.g., a patient (infected person undergoing clinical treatment,) without being a vector. A person can be infected – have the disease – show no clinical signs of the disease (thus not a patient) and still be a vector. And a person can contract a disease, show signs of the disease, receive medical care for the disease, be released from medical care free of symptoms, and still be a vector.
jl
@JPL: There is plenty of theoretical reason to believe, and empirical evidence that for-profit free market provision of infectious disease control will under treat, because the firms providing preventive and other care cannot capture all the benefits that accrue to society through disease eradication or reduction in prevalence. So, best for them to keep the disease rolling along at higher than socially optimal levels to keep selling their goods and services.
This is an example of the problem of capturing externalities involved in health care that Richard Mayhew discussed in one of his posts earlier today.
Since I have worked in this field, I do take time to read right wing attacks on any government involvement in public health or provision or coordination of goods and services for infectious disease control. I usually take a look in hopes of discovering some aspect of the problem that has been overlooked by more mainstream analysts. So far, those things have all devolved into unhinged incoherent logic and fact free rants after a few introductory sentences.
Edit: and there is a lot of empirical evidence that public actions wrt to market based individually optimal market based contagious disease very adaptive with very short memory. You have to be willing to commit yourself to very strong assumptions and do lots of theoretical gymnasitcs and contortions to rationalize public behavior (and that very probably includes you and me) as optimal intertemporal decision making. But anything can be rationalized as such, if you are willing to do whatever it takes. That is a theorem in economics.
Cermet
@jl: All medical writers to date have said that you cannot get Ebola during its incubation period in another person no matter the type of contact; only when the infection is full blown and causing massive symptoms (the virus is at very high levels in the blood and in the liver destroying it).
Someone recovering from Ebola is not the same as someone who has just gotten it but most viruses require a significant number of viral agents to enter into you in order to cause infection (not the flu (only two or three live viruses in the nose can cause infection(!), which is why it is so contagious.)) There is no scientific data on Ebola’s viral load required to infect but many people in Africa work around it day in and day out and are exposed to low levels much of the day and don’t get ill. Draw your own conclusions on whether and if that proves anything.
Roger Moore
@Anoniminous:
FWIW, people usually use “vector” to refer to a non-human carrier, and will often refer to the whole class as vectors whether they’re actually spreading the disease or not, e.g. mosquitoes are vectors for malaria. Humans who can transmit the disease to others are usually called “carriers” rather than vectors. Asymptomatic carriers can be very dangerous because they make the disease hard to control through quarantine. A big reason not to panic about ebola is because the US doesn’t have any known non-human vectors and because human carriers don’t become contagious until they start presenting symptoms, so quarantine is a plausible response.
jl
@Anoniminous: Yes. My understainding is that in general all sorts of combinations are possible, when considering different diseases. A person can be infected, never develop symptomatic clinical disease, and still transmit it for some diseases.
Other diseases, like flu and measles, can be transmitted during incubation or prodromal stage, when practically impossible to impose quarantines or take preventive measures, since transmission occurs with no direct or close contact between people at all from people who cannot practically know they are coming down with the disease. If Ebola were like that it would be a nightmare and practically impossible to control even without airborne transmission.
You seem to be talking about a person being a carrier, through sexual contact, long after symptoms disappear and patient recovered from symptomatic clinical disease. From what I have read, a person cannot transmit Ebola after symptoms resolve, so after a short period (a few days) after recovery, the patient is disinfected and free to go about their business. But maybe this is not true for sexual contact.
The carrier status issue and appropriate control measures has been a big public policy problem for a long time. At least as far back as Typhoid Mary, and as soon as the different forms of TB infection were understood. I think that is well over 100 years. And then there are some forms of hepatitis. So, it is not a new problem or unique to Ebola at all.
elftx
A deputy who was at the apartment of the Dallas patient has been admitted for precautionary reasons. New is reporting the person is exhibiting some but not all symptoms. The person’s son says it is highly unlikely his father has it based on discussions with the CDC.
JPL
@jl: Your comment is why I like this blog. I get frustrated trying to explain to people that free enterprise isn’t free for us.
jl
@jl:
To clarify, by ‘public actions’ in that context I meant decentralized individually welfare maximizing actions taken by the mass of individuals in the general public, not ‘public’ in the sense of actions by public or government agencies.
Trollhattan
@elftx:
Yeah, now that we’re swinging into winter flu season there’s a decent possibility of somebody who deals with the public, such as a cop, being exposed to that. In this unfortunate case they have to presume it’s that OTHER thing and quarantine the guy. Here’s hoping it’s just the flu, I wouldn’t wish ebola on dead Breitbart. Who’s still dead.
JPL
Tom’s post about guns causing more deaths is so important but once again I’m going to mention the ongoing news pandemic. What is going to happen during flu season when thousands exhibit symptoms similar to ebola? Richard is going to have to write a post about the increase in health insurance next year, because unnecessary visits to the e.r. will cause that.
Mike in NC
@Elizabelle: It took the media 4-5 years to get over reporting the wingnut obsession with Obama’s birth certificate. Expect the same with the Ebola foolishness.
Calouste
@Roger Moore:
Rule of thumb numbers for “being in the clear” after a vasectomy is 50% within 6 weeks, 90% within 3 months and 100% within 6 months. If the Ebola virus can survive within sperm, it could well follow the same timeline.
jl
@JPL: Free market greatest for some things, needs to be managed carefully for others in order to create lots of bennies for all, and not very good for others, and downright dangerous for a few things.
Economics itself is responsible for movement away from that position, which I think is consistent with clear thinking and knowledge of history. Current widespread extreme free market fanaticism is a recent development in economics, due to misinterpretation of very abstract and not all scientifically or even vaguely empirically operational notions in high theory (general equilibrium theory).
But that stuff works to the advantage of powerful sharp operators in business and politics, so you get VSP saying crazy things over the last 30 to 40 years.
Trollhattan
O/T If you’d like to see how to kill football by starting at the roots, check out this. As vile as the main story is, the coda may actually be worse.
Yeah, I’m totally letting my kid try out for the team.
skerry
My local school district distributed questions/answers and an information sheet about Ebola today. Haven’t seen anything about enterovirus 68.
Roger Moore
@Trollhattan:
Boys will be boys. Or something.
jl
@Trollhattan: So, the assistant coach was supposed to have been using all those steroids on himself. Easy to check. Does he have a hat size of 100 and balls the size of hydrogen atoms?
delk
You can’t get a deferral from an illness.
The Very Revered Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Trollhattan: This kind of homo/sado rape (let’s call it what it is, forcible penetration is nothing less than rape) is disgustingly common in high school athletics. I’ve read about several cases in the last few years, and have personally known at least three kids who have been assaulted in this or similar fashion, at three different high schools in three different states.
As for steroid use, concussion risks and death from training “accidents”, I’ve read three accounts of high-school football related deaths in the last week alone. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that this culture doesn’t engage in human sacrifice.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL: Apropos of that piece, Media Matters is reporting that Hannity decided not to cover today’s CDC press conference because he “doesn’t trust them.”
scav
@Roger Moore: I can’t wait for all the upcoming tales about hetero-normative manly xian males that ate nothing other than a solid diet of their own manly fudge on the way to sequential state titles and happy marriage to their HS homecoming princess wife.
jl
@SiubhanDuinne: Fine. Hannity is total jerk. Maybe someone from Fox News marketing and demographics research will come down and moneysplain to him that if he keeps this up, his audience will ignore flu immunization advice. Them all being ancient, more will die off prematurely from flu.
But, I am sure Hannity will not care a fig about having those deaths on his head. For he is total jackass.
aimai
@Violet: No, the article did not say they had “seen” this but that they heard about it second hand.
Elizabelle
@jl:
The idea of Hannity’s audience being carried off by the flu …. sounds like the Lord calling them home, to wear their immortal crowns.
Violet
@aimai: Thanks for making a point of correcting me without reading further in the thread to see that I had acknowledged my error.
Cermet
@Calouste: WTF? If this is a joke – its in bad taste; otherwise, are you someone who is just desperate to type anything ” that makes me look like I have something useful to add to this topic?” If so, please stop because that advice is beyond stupid – I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say it is a terrible attempt that very bad humor.
Rex Everything
What is the point of calling gun death “an epidemic”? That’s stupid.
Gun death isn’t an infectious disease that’s spreading precipitately. It’s the long-observable result of wrongheaded policy. I can’t for the life of me see what’s gained, either in clarity, insight, or rhetorical force, by referring to it as an epidemic.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cermet: It’s in direct response to earlier discussion of how long ebola can survive in the body of someone who has had it and has recovered, and how long they can still infect others even though they are in the clear.
So it’s not a joke, it’s a legitimate comment on the issue at hand, and you need to take a chill pill.
Villago Delenda Est
@SiubhanDuinne: Hannity is the posterboy for Backpfeifengesicht . I’ve always contended his mug is screaming to be impacted by a Louisville Slugger.
WereBear
The part that really upsets me is that the man from Texas was trying to help a pregnant sick woman… and being sent home with inadequate medication might have helped kill him for that kind deed.
Texas. I try to like you but I find it difficult.
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
Guided by a heat-seeking missile.
Hannity is a horrible person.
Duane
after mad cow, bird flu and swine flu…I am just glad it’s not livestock trying kill us now….of course from what I heard of those scourges, I can’t believe there is anyone left to get sick and die from ebola.
mikefromArlington
There’s probably some close correlation between the fear of god folks and the fear of anything that fox hypes folks. I’m too lazy to find it though.
sempronia
@Rex Everything:
Actually (and I can’t find the references or remember her name – she’s getting kind of famous in the trauma field), only in the last few years did a researcher describe gun violence as an infectious disease, using the same epidemiological methods to study it as for Ebola, TB, etc. Turns out that there are patterns of transmission and risk factors for violence that are very similar as for infectious diseases. It was a pretty significant paradigm shift to consider gun violence as a disease instead of a purely social/policy problem, because it means that you can use established methods to study and, possibly, control it.So calling gun violence an epidemic is actually pretty useful. For academics. The media just likes to panic.
Villago Delenda Est
@sempronia: Not to worry….the ammosexual teatards in Congress will do the bidding of their Merchants of Death masters and try to ban any such research.
WereBear
@raven: That seems needlessly upsetting.
I know people have died, and that’s upsetting too… but nobody (in authority) seems to have tried to save the dog. And then people get scolded for caring.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@WereBear: Had he been admitted and hydrated when he first arrived at the hospital and told them he’d just come from Liberia instead of being sent away because
he had no insuranceno one passed along travel information, he might have survived. Texas will kill you however it can.@sempronia: Gun violence is certainly a public health problem.
Rex Everything
@sempronia: Thanks for the info. It’s interesting that a researcher is approaching gun violence with infectious disease methodology, and that gun violence shows similar patterns to diseases caused by microbes. However, gun violence isn’t an infectious disease.
Elie
@Anoniminous:
What they said was that women can pass it to their babies in their breastmilk. I didnt read that women could pass it on sexually
Misterpuff
@Gene108: Can I bear weaponized ebola?