Post: #1

Ebola, the disease with the 6th highest case fatality rate (55%) of any measured by man.
No cure, no vaccine, death is excruciatingly painful as your organs essentially liquefy.

If you haven't heard that it is currently having an outbreak in West Africa, then you'd be excused. The media has done very little to cover the current spread of the disease that Doctors without borders are calling "completely out of order".

This is something that truly scares me. Not only is the inattentiveness of the media appalling but the disease itself and the potential it has to wipe out a good percentile of the human race chills me to the bone.

The wiki article actually has some good info on the matter. Do check out the graphs on the deaths by month. The trend is horrifying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_A...a_outbreak

Now, the one mitigating factor in this is that Ebola kills its victims so fast (keyword being incubation time) that it has previously had little opportunity to spread. Also it thrives mainly in hot and humid climates which makes it unlikely we'd see it spread outside Africa. Still there are some 300 million people living within the potential reach of this disease. An outbreak in Abidjan (4M), Casablanca (4m) or Accra (2M) could alter the global economy.

Google news alerts set all around. No mater what way you slice it this event will not have a Hollywood ending.

Post: #2

Terrifying disease. Even if you defy the odds and survive, you still carry the virus for weeks:

Quote:Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/

Post: #3

It's been well covered here in the UK. What's sad is how it's actually come about..silly africans.

Post: #4

It's the largest ebola outbreak ever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks

There is no treatment for it. They hook you up to an IV and that's it. That's not much better than getting infected with the plague in the 14th century.

Good news is that it's not that easy to get..

Quote:Human-to-human transmission occurs via direct contact with blood or bodily fluids from an infected person (including embalming of an infected dead person) or by contact with contaminated medical equipment such as needles

It's not transmitted through the air.

Post: #5

As terrifying as this shit is, it's not a big threat to people living in far off parts of the sanitary world.

I'm way more scared of something like a highly contagious SARS or MERS type airborne virus taking us by storm, like in 1917-1918.

Post: #6

There are 4 stages of Biosafety Level when it comes to research labs/hospitals

Level 1.
Your basic college or hospital is at this stage. Dealing with non-pathologic bacteria and some viruses. For those who took mid level biology classes in college this is basically it. For some who did not this all hospitals are at this level. These infections have a cure and are very hard to contract via respiration.

Level 2.
Include small pox, many of the sexual transmitted diseases, the cold virus, and some others that can still be cured. Again..most are hard to contact via respiration. Test are done in a vacuumed hood.

Level 3
A big step up between Level 2 and 3 exist. Mostly because these diseases can directly lead to human death but a cure does exist for them. SARS, West Nile, Yellow Fever, Rabies are some to be named. These are the labs you see in movies where the scientist work in protective gear.

Level 4.
Another big jump. Remember the movie Outbreak (for those in America) with Dennis Hoffman. Many of these viruses can be contracted via respiration, so therefore a suit with an independent oxygen system is needed. Many of these diseases have no cure and the majority of them are fatal. There are only a handful of these and many work with just one agent. Ebola and many other hemorragic diseases are included in this group.

Here in the US it really has not been talked about. As Vicious has stated the fatality rate can be 50% but can go as high as 90% depending on the strain. You'll find that the newest strains are more deadly then others. It's a virus that causes hemorrhaging from all parts of the bodies. This include the lungs and other important body parts. Most people die due to dehydration caused by the destruction of the gastric and renal systems. There in lies the viruses best attack, the bleeding the virus causes is extreme. 90 percent of hospitals are not trained to handle such a deadly disease (Let alone Africa) so that is why you hear many health officials getting sick and transmitting the disease.

Fortunately or unfortunately, it does kill very quickly, spreading the disease needs direct contact, ingestion of fluids, and the incubation period is very quick.

I just hope they can find a way to contain this virus and hopefully it will extinguish itself.

Post: #7

(07-02-2014 07:16 PM)Roosh Wrote:  It's the largest ebola outbreak ever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks

There is no treatment for it. They hook you up to an IV and that's it. That's not much better than getting infected with the plague in the 14th century.

Good news is that it's not that easy to get..

Quote:Human-to-human transmission occurs via direct contact with blood or bodily fluids from an infected person (including embalming of an infected dead person) or by contact with contaminated medical equipment such as needles

It's not transmitted through the air.

Yet. These particularly bad viruses seem to find a way to evolve, especially if their spread is contained.

Post: #8

Things like this are nature's way of keeping human population in check.

Post: #9

Misread the title and thought this was going to be a thread on Julius Evola.

Post: #10

Misread the title and thought this a datasheet on Enola, Pennsylvania. Was about to move it to travel.

   

Post: #11

I was imagining the Enola Gay when I saw the thread title haha..

Post: #12

over a BILLION people live on the continent of Africa and 500 people have died.

330 million Americans and 5000-10,000 die a year from the flu... wake me up when the ebola wipes out 10,000 plus people

Post: #13

Scary as all Hell. Your organs liquify except for the pancreas. Your pancreas turns into a rock. I pray this shit never mutates into an airborne strain.

Post: #14

(07-02-2014 07:53 PM)Mentavious Wrote:  There are 4 stages of Biosafety Level when it comes to research labs/hospitals

Level 1.
Your basic college or hospital is at this stage. Dealing with non-pathologic bacteria and some viruses. For those who took mid level biology classes in college this is basically it. For some who did not this all hospitals are at this level. These infections have a cure and are very hard to contract via respiration.

Level 2.
Include small pox, many of the sexual transmitted diseases, the cold virus, and some others that can still be cured. Again..most are hard to contact via respiration. Test are done in a vacuumed hood.

Level 3
A big step up between Level 2 and 3 exist. Mostly because these diseases can directly lead to human death but a cure does exist for them. SARS, West Nile, Yellow Fever, Rabies are some to be named. These are the labs you see in movies where the scientist work in protective gear.

Level 4.
Another big jump. Remember the movie Outbreak (for those in America) with Dennis Hoffman. Many of these viruses can be contracted via respiration, so therefore a suit with an independent oxygen system is needed. Many of these diseases have no cure and the majority of them are fatal. There are only a handful of these and many work with just one agent. Ebola and many other hemorragic diseases are included in this group.

Here in the US it really has not been talked about. As Vicious has stated the fatality rate can be 50% but can go as high as 90% depending on the strain. You'll find that the newest strains are more deadly then others. It's a virus that causes hemorrhaging from all parts of the bodies. This include the lungs and other important body parts. Most people die due to dehydration caused by the destruction of the gastric and renal systems. There in lies the viruses best attack, the bleeding the virus causes is extreme. 90 percent of hospitals are not trained to handle such a deadly disease (Let alone Africa) so that is why you hear many health officials getting sick and transmitting the disease.

Fortunately or unfortunately, it does kill very quickly, spreading the disease needs direct contact, ingestion of fluids, and the incubation period is very quick.

I just hope they can find a way to contain this virus and hopefully it will extinguish itself.

Dude, the smallpox is definitely NOT handled by Level 2 facilities, in fact it's not handled at all. It's a lethal, highly infectious disease that has been completely eradicated decades ago, meaning there is absolutely no resistance to it among the current world population. This is the shit that wiped out the Native Americans, except that in this day and age the whole world is Native American. The smallpox virus exists in only two locations: a lab in the US and one in Russia. These labs are, if anything, Level 4s on steroids.

The Ebola is some epic shit. It's basically a Hollywood disease, a virus that kills in such an inexorable and brutal way that you'd think it was created by a highly imaginative screenplay writer rather than nature. The whole family of hemorrhagic fevers is pretty damn fascinating. The names are epic too: Ebola, the Marburg Virus, Lassa Fever, etc.

Post: #15

If anyone's interested in reading more about this, pick up "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston. It's dramatized a bit but is still fairly accurate, and it's a quick read.

Post: #16

This is why I don't worry too much about "cultural decadence," "the decline of western civilization," or the like.

Much bigger shit is just as or more likely to roll our way.

Post: #17

I saw this in the news but didn't take it seriously because the news publishes a ridiculously fear-mongering story every week, most of it bullshit. It's a classic case of "boy who cried wolf".

Post: #18

The issue with Ebola is that it kills very fast and there is nothing but supportive care (that is, basically comfort, fluids, etc) as treatment. Just hope you are in the 10-30% who might survive.

The fact that it kills people so fast, makes it hard for it to spread great distances - they would die before they got very far, and the virus would "die" also. There is some other host involved, that doesn't die fast from it. And that is where it stays most of the time (the "reservoir" host).

A scarier thing about it, is that the time from infection to showing symptoms can be several days. I'm not sure if someone is infectious at this stage however.

Post: #19

Quote:over a BILLION people live on the continent of Africa and 500 people have died.

330 million Americans and 5000-10,000 die a year from the flu... wake me up when the ebola wipes out 10,000 plus people

This is exactly the kind of fly-by analysis that keeps the western world comfortably numb to the reality of the matter.

The people that die from the flu are usually toddlers, elderly or people with reduced immune systems. The mortality rate is usually below 0,1% while being far more contagious than Ebola (flu is in most strains airborne).

Ebola on the other hand is indiscriminate in its reaping. By the time 10K people have died from it there's such a critical mass of people that carry the virus that only a nationwide quarantine (we're talking daily curfew, suspension of business hours) would restrict a disaster.

Post: #20

It doesn't help that Africans have completely irrational and stupid beliefs about the disease. I saw a report from some brave journalist where they visited the area and the locals STILL don't get that they shouldn't let a dead corpse with ebola lie in their house for a damn week while they do funeral rites. I just hope no one from that area gets on a plane to the west.

Post: #21

Quote:Swine flu, Ebola and HIV were produced in laboratories
The reported from Mexico City claims that one of the leading UN scientists discovered certain joint transmission vectors, that is, the transmission of the swine flu virus is similar to the transmission of the Ebola virus and of the HIV/AIDS virus, which indicates that they were genetically modified with the aim of being military bio-weapons.
The UN scientist is convinced that the swine flu virus, A-H1N1, and Ebola and HIV viruses were in fact manufactured biological weapons.
As proof, they state that the usual process of transmission is that the virus is transmitted from a pig to a human, which is not the case in this outbreak because no case of a pig being infected with the A-H1N1 virus has been registered. Furthermore, the A-H1N1 virus partly contains American pig genes, partly human and bird flu strains and the virus of the Euro-Asian swine flu.

http://dalje.com/en-world/swine-flu-crea...pon/254118

Post: #22

I easily buy swine flu being engineered and HIV has a shady history of experiments in the Congo on monkeys, so would buy that too, but Ebola is a very local virus, there is zero evidence of it being engineered.

Post: #23

HIV a military bio weapon?

Better be a long ass war....

Post: #24

Fuck it this thread has scared me so much I'm cancelling the trip to west Africa I had planned in October- not to Guinea but a neighbouring nation

Call me an irrational pussy if you want I don't care.

Why the Fuck isn't this on the news? I had to read the Roosh Forum to find this out and I'm very well read

You would think this would be a big story

Post: #25

(07-03-2014 12:01 AM)iop890 Wrote:  If anyone's interested in reading more about this, pick up "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston. It's dramatized a bit but is still fairly accurate, and it's a quick read.

I really enjoyed this book. I read it once and loved it and then read it again 8 years later and it was still great.

It's a fun, interesting read.