Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

I was promised a recession.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

People are complicated. Love is not.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

You are here: Home / And now for some more news

And now for some more news

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Via the World Health Organization:

The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared a new outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Bikoro in Equateur Province today (8 May). The outbreak declaration occurred after laboratory results confirmed two cases of EVD.

The Ministry of Health of Democratic of the Congo (DRC) informed WHO that two out of five samples collected from five patients tested positive for EVD at the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale (INRB) in Kinshasa. More specimens are being collected for testing.

Right now this is a local outbreak. If it becomes a regional outbreak, the response requires nuance, international collaboration, expertise and the ability to plan and act under pressure.

In other words, nothing that the United States government can do at the highest levels any more.

Reader Interactions

51Comments

  6. 6.

    TenguPhule

    Right now this is a local outbreak. If it becomes a regional outbreak, the response requires nuance, international collaboration, expertise and the ability to plan and act under pressure.

    In other words, nothing that the United States government can do at the highest levels any more.

    I can see this getting out of hand easily.

  11. 11.

    trollhattan

    @BGinCHI:
    He’d glide for a long damn distance–looks like a stiff breeze would knock him flat as it is. Squirrelboy Kushner!

  15. 15.

    MJS

    Eric and Donald, Jr., having been to Africa in the past few years to murder defenseless animals, should be quarantined immediately. As should anyone they’ve been in contact with.

  16. 16.

    TenguPhule

    @dmsilev:

    Can we also send Rudy as well, or would that count as a war crime?

    Depends on whether or not he survives the landing.

  17. 17.

    ruemara

    *sigh*
    This is going to be a wonderful day in nationalism. Picked the wrong week to give up meat & carbs.

  19. 19.

    TenguPhule

    @ruemara:

    Picked the wrong week to give up meat & carbs.

    You can always say fuck it and try again next week.

  20. 20.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    So, according to NBC, the Ebola scare gave Repubs a boost in 2014. Will Ebola give Dems a boost?

  21. 21.

    Chyron HR

    Republicans: “We told you to start scaremongering Ebola in OCTOBER, dammit! Nobody ever heard of a MAY surprise!!”

  22. 22.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    He did. If I remember, the squealing white assholes that vote conservative basically wanted to close the borders to all international inbounds, including American citizens so they could “feel” safe.

    I suppose that we could all spend our vacations driving to Branson, Ruby Falls, Rock City, Gatlinburg and Destin (all in red locales), but I fucking refuse.

  23. 23.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @TenguPhule:

    I’m thinking he should be shrink wrapped to a pallet of medical supplies (bandages and tongue depressors) with a faulty parachute.

  25. 25.

    Elizabelle

    Just saw an informative and nonhysterical article in The Guardian on that. Says the Congo generally sees less death tolls from their sporadic Ebola outbreaks. Perhaps they’re better prepared; that question not addressed. In its entirety:

    DRC: at least 17 people dead in confirmed Ebola outbreak

    At least 17 people have died in the north-west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where health officials have confirmed an outbreak of Ebola, the health ministry has said.

    It is the ninth time Ebola has been recorded in the DRC, whose eastern Ebola river gave the deadly virus its name when it was discovered there in the 1970s, and the outbreak comes less than a year after one that killed eight people.

    The health ministry said: “Our country is facing another epidemic of the Ebola virus, which constitutes an international public health emergency.

    “We still dispose of the well-trained human resources that were able to rapidly control previous epidemics.”

    Ebola is believed to be spread over long distances by bats, which can host the virus without dying, as they infect other animals with which they share trees, such as monkeys. Ebola often spreads to humans via infected bushmeat.

    Before the outbreak was confirmed, local health officials reported 21 patients showing signs of hemorrhagic fever around the village of Ikoko Impenge, near the town of Bikoro. Seventeen of those later died.

    Medical teams supported by the World Health Organization and Médecins Sans Frontières were dispatched to the zone on Saturday and took five samples from suspected active cases.

    Two of the samples tested positive for the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus, the ministry said.

    After DRC’s previous Ebola flare-up, authorities approved the use of a new experimental vaccine, but in the end did not deploy it owing to logistical challenges and the relatively minor nature of the outbreak.

    The worst Ebola epidemic ended in West Africa two years ago after killing more than 11,300 people and infecting about 28,600 across Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

    Despite regular outbreaks every few years, death tolls in the DRC have been significantly lower.

  26. 26.

    Cermet

    The last outbreak in the Congo was handle extremely well and quickly contained and then put out. With the new and extremely effective vaccine – and there even is some established expertise in and by the Congo government – I am certain, this outbreak will also be stopped and quickly. They (various international health groups and keys places in sub-sharia Africa) have some excellent systems in place and there are stock piles of the needed vaccine available.

  28. 28.

    Peale

    @Major Major Major Major: Ummm. Yeah. Its the way to show that great contrast between the Democrats and Republicans all summer long, again. Its not like African Leaders are lining up to be invited to this White House anyway, but I’m sure their ambassadors being detained for hours on end at airports will go over well.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    @Cermet:

    For the sake of the people who could die, I really hope that Congo and its neighbors are up to the challenge. The US will be worse than useless in a crisis, unfortunately.

  30. 30.

    lol chikinburd

    As for the U.S., political divorce has to happen. Either the U.S. becomes two countries, one part of the world and one pariah, or it’ll be one big pariah, and be destroyed by global concensus.

    Yeah, yeah, who’d get custody of the nukes. We’d have to, to (one hopes) deter them. Just make it happen, world.

  32. 32.

    HeleninEire

    @BGinCHI: You make me cry and laugh all with the same sentence.

    They are too early. The Ebola scare needs to come 2 months before the election. Amateurs. But we knew that.

  34. 34.

    The Moar You Know

    Watch us close our borders entirely to the “shithole countries” in the name of some sort of national biological security.

  36. 36.

    Elizabelle

    LOL: headline up at NY Mag:

    Trump Worried Aging, Loudmouth New Yorker Can’t Stay on Message

    About Giuliani.

  37. 37.

    TeezySkeezy (formerly the T S you hate)

    @Citizen_X: Nah, we’ll let a client states taunt Ebolastan until it makes the first move.

  38. 38.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Haaretz is reporting that Israeli jets are blowing shit up in Damascus in “anticipation” of Iranian retaliation for a previous Israeli raid.

    I’m eager to see Netanyahu and the rest of his Likud cabal stand some human rights/war crimes trials.

  40. 40.

    Jeffro

    @The Moar You Know:

    Watch us close our borders entirely to the “shithole countries” in the name of some sort of national biological security.

    This is exactly what noted germaphobe Trumpov panic-tweeted about endlessly back in 2013 or 2014. Betting that he will close the borders entirely to every non-majority white country on Earth is as close to a sure thing as you’ll get in this lifetime.

  41. 41.

    Elizabelle

    For some happier news, gonna pop in some background on the new acting AG for New York, Barbara Underwood, state’s longtime solicitor general (she’s argued 20 cases before the US Supreme Court) and a former clerk to Thurgood Marshall in 1971 and 1972. She’s 73, and apparently not running for AG this fall.

    NY Daily News: Everything you need to know about Barbara Underwood — the first woman to head AG office after replacing Schneiderman

    … An Indiana native, Underwood was raised in New Jersey and got her undergraduate degree from Harvard University’s Radcliffe College. She received her law degree from Georgetown Law School.

    After clerking for Marshall, Underwood taught at Yale for 10 years and then Brooklyn Law School and New York University School of Law.

    During her career, she also worked for several different district attorneys’ office in New York City. And she served as counsel and as chief assistant in the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office. From 1998 to 2001 she was the acting U.S. solicitor general and principal U.S. deputy solicitor general.

    Shell-shocked Schneiderman staffers welcomed her appointment.

    “This morning, I’m grateful to work with the best colleagues in the business – including Barbara Underwood, who will be acting NY AG. She’s argued 20 cases before SCOTUS, clerked for Thurgood Marshall, & much more. The work continues,” press secretary Amy Spitalnick tweeted.

    We have to look for the good things. I can’t take gloom and doom and “we’re going to war, war I tell you!” (says who?) around here.

  42. 42.

    Cermet

    @Mnemosyne: I read some of the details of how the Congo (with help from the stock piles of vaccine) organized, delivered and used the vaccine so that the Ebola outbreak last time was quickly stopped. No reason they can’t again. Great strides have been done in controlling Ebola thanks to that breakthrough vaccine developed in no small part, thanks to the massive effort caused by that previous, large outbreak that so scared the US. Some great good has been achieved in the world. The vaccine even helps people who already have the illness (early stages) – it is extremely effective in preventing the illness.

  43. 43.

    J R in WV

    @ruemara:

    give up meat & carbs.

    Say whut!??? You’re going to live on kale, broccoli, and lettuce? How?

    Ooh, Ooh, I see, lots of cheese and bacon and dressing on the kale salads…

    ;-)

  44. 44.

    TenguPhule

    @J R in WV:

    Ooh, Ooh, I see, lots of cheese and bacon and dressing on the kale salads…

    After throwing away the kale.

  45. 45.

    J R in WV

    I know this is very seriously bad news, and I apologize if I offend anyone with my lame attempts at humor, but it really helps me deal with the terrible nature of most of the news recently.

    My friends and relatives on the Big Island of Hawaii are all OK, the folks in Hilo were jounced around pretty badly but my cousins were just a little shaken up. Volcano still erupting!

    NY state AG’s office – wholly crap!!!

    Trump’s foreign mismanagement – not a policy at all, just wow. So lame, so ignorant AND so stupid. Is the stupid the cause of the ignorance, or are they two independent factors?

    And now Ebola, an excuse for Trump to shut down all travel between North America and Africa! Or even people who once lived in Africa, because he doesn’t understand the germ theory of diseases…

    I wonder what next? I mean, who could have guessed that the same day Trump stomps on the international order, Ebola crops up again… Plus the volcano, and the NY State AG, what a news week so far!

  46. 46.

    TenguPhule

    @J R in WV:

    My friends and relatives on the Big Island of Hawaii are all OK, the folks in Hilo were jounced around pretty badly but my cousins were just a little shaken up. Volcano still erupting!

    In better news, its at least cleared enough for some people to go back and rescue pets and livestock left behind during the initial evacuation.

  49. 49.

    TenguPhule

    @Sab: Birds and fish might have been too problematic to move in the first frenzied rush to get the hell out of the danger zone.

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