Daily Ebola Update!

The WHO has reported that the number of confirmed deaths due the West African ebola outbreak is now at 1,350.

In other ebola news a hospital patient in Sacramento, CA is being tested for ebola. Just why the media keeps reporting that "ebola doesn't spread through airborne....methods" when ebola has been definitively shown to capable of spreading via this very method under unusual circumstances. A flat out denial is false. People in Africa need the truth. Sure, it would be uncommon, but not out of the bounds of the possible. The True Story of Ebola in Reston, Virginia. See esp. the quote by Peter Jahrling.

It seems to this interested person that Africans need all the data.

Did you know that the contiguous 48 states have seen ebola(unrelated to the current outbreak) fully three times? Reston, Va was the site of two of these ebola zones, and the third was Alice, TX. All three contaminations were with the Reston strain of ebola which appears to be asymptomatic in at least healthy humans..immunocompromised individuals may be susceptible to ebola-type symptoms. I don't think that anyone really knows at this juncture.

Warning: Political post ahead!

Some things you just cannot make up. Oh-what-a-Rush Limbaugh blamed Robin Williams' suicide on some sort of leftist ideology. How does this opiate addict stay on the air? Has Rush succumbed again to the draw of the altered sap of Papaver somniferum? I have no idea. Since uttering this baseless blather, Rush has since taken the "I don't know" why Williams' committed suicide.

At least one more station has dropped Rush from their line-up, and it seems likely that he is in damage control mode.

Oy!

Your daily ebola update and a bit more..The Sciencey Olympics!

First, West African ebola death toll officially passes 1200. I will extend my little graphic found in this post at the end of August to reflect the new reality. Any reader can see that the slope is headed towards the vertical in the y axis. Things are so bad that no news source is reporting that the worst is past, and the WHO--according to this report is only admitting to some 'encouraging signs.'

Oh, that remainds me, if you use a news aggregator to follow things, news.google, bing news, and Yahoo! news, all pale in comparison to newsnow.co.uk. More sources, and NewsNow's feed setup--presumably an AJAX function--is fresher than fresh. NewsNow gets you the story before it hits the 'Net.

I think I'll call this one "The Sport of Science"

I know just how big a part a some people's lives the viewing of sports is..sports viewing, along with religion and politics are the three things that most people seem to care about as it is these areas where they have the deepest knowledge bases. Of course most of what people think that they really know about both politics and religion can easily be disassembled via facts and/or reason. Not so with sports.

In the end none of what they believe sans data to back it up is worth anything at all. That's why I get a wee bit excited when scientific disciplines get sportsy labels. These events have been going on since 1959--in mathematics, at least--yet who knows about the International Science Olympiad?

In the USA, where almost everything is dependent on science and technology, almost no one knows anything substantive about science and technology. Lest you think I jest, ask a fellow citizen for a working description of radio. A technology that has been with us for more than a century. It may as well be magic to most. I know that I am not going to make any difference, as I don't believe anyone reads this blog, but it is good to read that in some parts of the world science and technology indeed have their superstars.

I have intellectual heroes. Two living Americans that I admire greatly for their intellectual agility are Stephen Wolfram and Alan Guth. I met Alan Guth and Noam Chomsky while I did summer work at MIT. Chomsky is certainly no intellectual lightweight, but mathematicians are a special kind of genius. Murray Gell-Mann has to receive a word as well.

I am not often thought a blockhead, but intelligence is a sliding scale. These people are giants.

Stupid 911 tricks, and Ebola Outbreak confirmed as worser and worser

Dammitalltahell! I am receiving a new shiny new street address due to some weird 911 non-compliance issue. I have had this address for thirty years. 911 has been mistakenly called from my humble abode, and the local constabulary was here in perhaps two minutes. The error was due to a one-time calling issue wherein the party being caleed had "911" within the sequence of her phone number. So, I have to notify everyone on the planet that our fair municipality has left me with this albatross. Much profanity has been issued from my mouth, and no doubt ore will be forthcoming.

In real sciency news the West African ebola outbreak is far worse than expected. I have posted about this very likelihood a few times. Time for another blockquote!

"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak."

Canada offers up to 1,000 Ebola vaccines Husband: Ebola victim 'getting stronger' How Ebola got out of control Ebola claimed many lives in this family Dr. Gupta: Why we shouldn't fear Ebola Though the United Nations agency did not provide an estimate of unreported cases, it said it's teaming up with the affected countries to gather more intelligence from the ground.

"WHO is mapping the outbreak, in great detail, to pinpoint areas of ongoing transmission and locate treatment facilities and supplies," the statement said.

It's also working with other agencies, including the World Food Program, to feed about 1 million people quarantined in villages in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"Our team are not in direct contact with Ebola quarantine and treatment centers," said Fabienne Pompey, spokeswoman for World Food Program. "We deliver food to the medical staff and they are in charge of the distribution."

As experts scramble to contain the outbreak, health officials are considering the use of experimental treatments and vaccines, since no proven ones exist.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the outbreak could last another six months. Leave it to the business press to not sugar coat issues. I think that WSJ stinks as a source for editorial comment, but the entire business press is the least likely to don the rose colored glasses before penning an article.

Beware of statements made by non-ebola experts. I have read everything I can about ebola since circa 1980, and I only trust a few sources for straight talk about ebola. United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases(USAMRIID)has been at the forefront of ebola research, and some members of the CDC have like experience. Although it is likely that there a members of the World Health Organization(WHO) that have expertise in ebola, I don't use the WHO as a source for ebola data save for counting numbers.

One odd thing is that during the US ebola episode involving crab eating monkeys imported from Asia it was confirmed that "Ebola Reston" was transmissible via the aerosol route. This is NOT the same as airborne transmission.

Here's the latest dope. The situation in Reston, VA was admittedly odd as large numbers of simians were packed together in cages, but when a health worker and/or family member is caring for a person stricken with ebola similar proximities are established.

I will wrap this up as I need to go for a run.

What really needs to be established--and this has been explored since 1976 with only limited success--is finding and controlling the host species in nature in which ebola circulates. The natural reservoirs need to be fleshed out so that humans are at least alerted to the possibility that this or that critter in the forset could be a vector.

Here is an interesting look at a possible means for the current devastating outbreak. Dead it. It is speculative, but raises really important questions.

Off to abuse my cardiovascular system.