
How scientists across three continents produced an Ebola vaccine - bookofjoe
https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/07/inside-story-scientists-produced-world-first-ebola-vaccine/
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pdm55
I recall that another fortuitous concurrence was that when Ebola arrived in
Lagos, the Nigerian megacity, a nightmare scenario was avoided thanks to the
containment skills of the polio eradication team that had been recently
trained using Gates Foundation money. Here's one link I found:
[https://fortune.com/2015/10/14/polio-surge-ebola-gates-
found...](https://fortune.com/2015/10/14/polio-surge-ebola-gates-foundation/)

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crmrc114
This article is an awesome write-up. I love how it walks through the process
of discovery from the beginning- or as close to it as readers will bear. Its
insane to think that we are at a point where we can just swap a coating on a
virus as easily as I can un-solder a component from a motherboard. Its also
scary as hell to think about what plagues could be created in these labs for
biological war.

Like sure we get atomic power its super clean- but now we also have nukes.
Tasty yummy nukes.

Where is the biological nuke equivalent here? I don't want to spread Microsoft
style FUD about such exciting news but it does make me wonder what classified
work is being done in Andromeda strain style labs.

I am both excited and scared as hell about what we can do these days.

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Pigo
The account of the German researcher pricking her finger with a needle
containing the Ebola virus... Oh man, that's terrifying. It's very reassuring
to hear the vaccine worked out for her.

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bookofjoe
Reminds me of the first week of my internship at Los Angeles County-University
of Southern California Medical Center in July 1974. I needed to get an
arterial blood gas from one of my patients — a drug addict with hepatitis and
so-called "cannonball" fungal lesions in both lungs. I couldn't find the
radial artery in either of his wrists, so I took the syringe and needle and
moved down to his groin and tried a femoral stick. He was really obese and I
couldn't feel his femoral pulse, so I tried to separate his abdominal fat
pannus from his thigh with my right hand while plunging the needle into what I
hoped would be his femoral triangle. The blind stick impaled my right index
finger. My heart sank. I was sure I was gonna get hepatitis and/or his fungal
infection, and spent the next month or so on tenterhooks waiting to wake up
one day feeling sick. By some good fortune, I didn't get either of his
illnesses.

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chenning
Call me crazy, but I felt like this story was perhaps a little too specific.

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behringer
Haha reminds me of a story a psychiatrist once told about how he/she would
generalize people's problems that happen to all sorts of patients and yet
would routinely be accused of sharing a unique and deeply embarrassing story
by their patients, who don't realize it but all face the same problems.

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mercora
if it happens to all or just almost all or even just some of the patients it
would still be sharing a somewhat private story from all of them, no? Being
accused of sharing this (not so) unique story tells me it was even told to
somebody that knew both people. I think you should refrain from that in this
profession...

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behringer
Psychiatrists have to tell these stories in order to train new psychiatrists.
The only thing they cannot share is personally identifiable information.
Sadly, so many people think they are struggling alone and their situation is
completely unique, which is rarely ever the case.

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Stierlitz
[https://www.rug.nl/rechten/onderzoek/expertisecentra/ghlg/bl...](https://www.rug.nl/rechten/onderzoek/expertisecentra/ghlg/blog/ebola-
burial-practices-and-the-right-to-health-in-west-africa-02-10-2017)

“The WHO identified burial rites for the dead as one of the contributing
factors in the disease’s spread. The burial rites included family members
washing and oiling the corpse, and sometimes physically modifying it for
burial .. Additionally, the practice of moving the body to be buried in a
different village impeded efforts to quarantine certain areas.”

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sneak
It’s the cynic in me that notices that over a thousand poor brown deaths is a
nonstarter for human trials to move the vaccine forward, but when the white
researcher lady might die, suddenly the machinery all kicks into gear.l

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robocat
> white researcher lady

How do you know she was white?

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sneak
Same way I can assume the majority of the 1000+ ebola deaths mentioned by the
article were people of color: the majority of people from Germany are white.

