
CDC director warns that Congo's Ebola outbreak may not be containable - loisaidasam
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/11/05/cdc-director-warns-that-congos-ebola-outbreak-may-not-be-containable/
======
coldcode
The real fear is that one person makes it out of the area and into another
part of the world, similar to what happened in Dallas. The more people are
infected in that area the more the odds of escape go up. Any place in the
world can wind up with an outbreak within a short time. Given the response of
the hospital in Dallas, it's very likely most medical facilities would not
recognize Ebola before transmission had already occurred.

~~~
ams6110
I'd think (hope?) that any hospital ER is trained to recognize hemorragic
fever when it presents.

~~~
ashildr
Whether the patient will see a doctor in the early or late stages of Their
Ebola infection will depend on whether they have health insurance. So here’s
another reason for socialized healthcare.

~~~
newbrict
I don't want to pay my insurance deductible... Many people "worse off" than me
pay nothing and get to go to the hospital no problem... I'd be much more
interested in everyone paying a reasonable amount like it was decades ago

~~~
headShrinker
> Many people "worse off" than me pay nothing and get to go to the hospital no
> problem...

This is terribly misconstruing the facts. They get to go to ER treatement
only, no midterm care. The problem is if they don’t pay, their credit record
is heavily penalized. This may seem like nothing but for someone with out
money or means it spells a quick down hill slide to homelessness. No problem
=/= homeless

FYI the #1 cause of home foreclosures in the US is medical bills

~~~
PopeDotNinja
> This is terribly misconstruing the facts

When you're broke, you're broke. Just because you have health insurance
doesn't mean you can afford to use it. I had better healthcare as a homeless
person than as a massively indebted recent college grad with a health plan
through work.

~~~
caseyscottmckay
How did you have better healthcare as a homeless person than through your
employer? Like what were the numbers (e.g., monthly cost, deductibles,
prescription cost, co-pays, and coverage). This is hard to believe.

If you're referring to EMTALA requiring emergency rooms stabilize all
patients, (1) EMTALA applies to everyone, and (2) EMTALA is not healthcare.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
Medi-Cal was free. Basically everything covered on Medi-Cal was free, or super
cheap, and it covered a lot. While on my health insurance plan provided by
work, the job where I wasn't making enough money to save or meet my
deductible, I got into a bicycle accident & ended up with a $50,000 USD out-
of-network hospital bill.

In case you don't know, one of the reasons that some chronically homeless
people don't have healthcare is that many don't bother to get it. There's guy
in my neighborhood that told me he hasn't gone (but probably should go) to our
local government to get his $100-ish/month, food stamps, and healthcare. Also,
he ends up in a local emergency room because someone calls an ambulance when
he's drunk, passed, and shaking out on the sidewalk. I've called an ambulance
a few times for people in that state myself. He also ends up in the emergency
room because he routinely gets assaulted while sleeping on the street because
there's are not enough shelters for him.

~~~
watersb
I totally believe this.

When we first met, my wife was still in school, and I had been working in
computer stuff for about 10 years. I had good benefits, and thought that
medical insurance was a solution to a big problem.

Then watched as my wife tried to get treated for some routine stuff. Not
available via the campus clinic, and yet her student "insurance" was not
accepted anywhere else within 150 miles without a "co-pay" that was larger
than the cost for uninsured patients.

The situation only got worse when we were married later that year. My
insurance would only apply after she had sought coverage through her school
plan.

We called it "anti-insurance": a form of coverage that, when encountering
actual insurance, annihilates it in a violent explosion of virtual particles
and real paperwork.

Yeah. The system is fucked.

I believe you.

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findyoucef
I didn't even realize there was recent outbreak. This hasn't been in the news
at all.

~~~
cududa
It’s been reported on for months in major outlets, just not with the fervency
of last time. Find new news sources or pay closer attention to your existing
ones behind the outrage cycle.

~~~
makomk
Almost everything is reported in major outlets somewhere, to the point that
it's pretty remarkable when something isn't. There's just so much news out
there that the priority they give to it matters.

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starbeast
[https://www.msf.org/drc-2018-ebola-outbreak-crisis-update-
oc...](https://www.msf.org/drc-2018-ebola-outbreak-crisis-update-october-2018)

[https://www.msf.org/donate](https://www.msf.org/donate)

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runciblespoon
"CDC director warns that Congo's Ebola outbreak may not be containable"
especially as the locals insist on following traditional burial methods such
as washing the deceased and sitting in for days on end with cadaver.

~~~
guilhas
US, UK, France, UAE,... insist on traditional bombing of countries for peace.

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lifeisstillgood
I would love to see regularly updated and triaged "backlogs" for countries,
and subsequently the world. And then maybe just report on the top 100 in each
news cycle.

Just lists of most important tickets in a global todo list - because this
would just rise to the top pretty quickly and make us rethink mid terms,
Brexit and train delays.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Something like [https://ourworldindata.org/](https://ourworldindata.org/) but
with more frequent updates? I ask because I too am interested in the very same
type of dashboard, and instead have a "Dashboard" bookmarks folder with a
variety of links for data.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
More akin to the Copenhagen Institute thingamijig that Biorn Lomborg hosts,
that tries to get bigwig economists to prioritise interventions based on cost
benefit (various low cost high impact projects like innocuoation and medical /
public health top the bill)

Something that takes this concept and runs with it, taking both identifiable
_problems_ (Ebola outbreak) and _solutions_ (do nothing, invade, stop
subsidising petrol in that country)

I suspect that the equivalent of National Security Advisor in each major
country does this. I guess what I want is to steal each of their daily
briefing documents and make a combined one, and have it read out each day
onthe daily news.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus_Center](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus_Center)

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toomuchtodo
Uganda is preemptively vaccinating front line/first responder workers with an
experimental, unlicensed vaccine (with WHO backing) that has shown efficacy in
attempts to contain the virus.

> Country becomes first to administer experimental vaccine without active
> outbreak of the deadly disease, in bid to protect 2,000 medics close to DRC
> border

> “In previous [Ebola] outbreaks, Uganda lost health workers, including the
> renowned Dr Matthew Lukwiya, as they cared for patients,” said Yonas Tegegn
> Woldemariam, WHO’s Uganda representative. “Scientists believe such
> invaluable lives would have been saved had a vaccine been in existence
> then.”

[https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2018/nov/06/u...](https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2018/nov/06/uganda-vaccinates-at-risk-health-workers-ebola-congo-
drc)

~~~
tango24
> including the renowned Dr Matthew Lukwiya

Short video about Dr. Lukwiya's story. He was on a sabbatical, but rushed back
to provide aid, while others were running in panic:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7LpjpuOvc8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7LpjpuOvc8)

~~~
toomuchtodo
"Look for the helpers" \-- Mr. (Fred) Roger's mother.

------
jonawesomegreen
Some interesting data about the efficacy of the experimental vaccine that is
being used to try to control the outbreak.

> Merck's Jakub Simon, MD, MS, addressing a session at the American Society of
> Tropical Medicine's (ASTMH) annual meeting here, showed two charts tracking
> Ebola during this past spring's outbreak in the DRC's Equateur province and
> the subsequent one now raging in the North Kivu and Ituri provinces. In
> both, health workers on the ground have been using the Merck vaccine in a
> so-called ring vaccination strategy to contain the epidemic. Although not
> yet formally approved for marketing, the vaccine has been cleared for
> emergency use.

> In Equateur, immediately after vaccination began with the Merck product, the
> outbreak petered out.

> But the experience in North Kivu and Ituri has been quite different.
> Although new cases dropped significantly after vaccination began in early
> August, they never approached zero, and 2 months later they rocketed back to
> the level seen before vaccinations began.

[https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/astmh/76018](https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/astmh/76018)

~~~
amputect
That's not great! I wonder if Ebola is especially quick to mutate. This
article:
[https://jvi.asm.org/content/early/2015/12/08/JVI.02701-15](https://jvi.asm.org/content/early/2015/12/08/JVI.02701-15)
suggests that it is. A mitigating factor is that it doesn't seem to tolerate
mutations very well (i.e. lots of mutations lead to non-viable strains), but I
guess with a large enough patient pool it could have out-run the vaccine.

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carboy
It’s scary to consider it making it to some of the large slums in Nairobi,
India, or Pakistan.

~~~
the-red-herring
That's a bit racist to call a place a slum

~~~
estsauver
Comment currently says "Slums _in_ " a place.

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bluetwo
Seems like a bigger problem than a bunch of migrants slowly walking towards
the southern border.

