EBOLAWATCH: 5000 false claims last week. 0 new cases.

mentalfloss

Prickly Curmudgeon Smiter
Jun 28, 2010
39,778
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It sure is. If Ebola, ISIS or tranny hookers don't get us, climate change will?

Ebola and ISIS could become a serious concern, but they aren't yet.

Climate change will not have a significant impact for another 100 years imo. But you don't here doomsday as much as you do about gradual changes in an ecosystem when it comes to climate change.
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
109,536
11,500
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Low Earth Orbit
Climate change has shown to be major driver of evolution. Life adapts to change and does it extremely fast. We are blessed to be in an interglacial period.
 

Tonington

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 27, 2006
15,441
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I wish the pharmaceutical companies would work on cures for Ebola, Cancer and so on..

They are, maybe not as much as one would hope. But ebola, for instance, is an infrequent disease. That means it's pretty hard to design a clinical trial to show that your product is effective, especially so for vaccines. But, an American pharmaceutical has purchased the license for a vaccine that the Public Health Agency of Canada owns the intellectual property for, and that is starting safety trials in the US right now. Should be into clinical trials in West African health workers by the end of the year or beginning of next year.

Works very well in non-human primate models, so chances are it will most likely work for humans.
 

Sal

Hall of Fame Member
Sep 29, 2007
17,135
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Canada has at least found a potential prevention.

Canada supplies small amounts of Ebola treatment for patients in Spain, Norway | Fox News

Canada has supplied small amounts of an experimental Ebola treatment to Spain and Norway to treat infected healthcare workers, the Public Health Agency of Canada said on Wednesday.

The agency's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba transferred the treatment ZMAb to Spain in September and to Norway this month, at the request of the countries, spokesman Robert Cyrenne said. The treatment is laboratory grade, meaning it was made for use on animals.

A nurse remained seriously ill this week after catching the virus in Madrid while caring for infected patients. A Norwegian healthcare worker working for Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone was infected and brought home for treatment, the organization said last week.

At least 4,447 people have died in West Africa in the worst Ebola outbreak on record.

ZMAb is a monoclonal antibody treatment designed to find, attach and coat the Ebola virus, preventing it from multiplying within the body.

The treatment is a precursor to ZMapp, which Canada licensed to California-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. ZMapp was used this summer to treat two American aid workers, who recovered.

Another experimental drug developed in Canada by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp was used last month on an infected U.S. medical missionary, who also recovered.

The Public Health Agency sent enough ZMAb for Spain and Norway to each treat one person and plans to keep all remaining inventory in Canada for research or possible domestic use.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has not yet received Canada's donation of 800 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine. Cyrenne and WHO spokeswoman Nyka Alexander could not immediately say when Canada would ship the vaccine to WHO in Geneva.

Phase 1 clinical trials of the vaccine on a small group of people are underway in the United States, with results expected in December. Canada has licensed the commercial rights to the vaccine to NewLink Genetics Corp.
 

Twila

Nanah Potato
Mar 26, 2003
14,698
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10,000 is a very small number of people by the way. One more week and we'll have that number of false claims lol

It's 10,000 a weekof new cases. Not in total. They've said it's only a possibility but they are just being prepared. Considering it was believed it'd be contained in West Africa and it travelled. Probably a good idea to be prepared for any possiblity.
 

CDNBear

Custom Troll
Sep 24, 2006
43,839
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63
Ontario
It's 10,000 a week. Not in total. THey've said it's only a possibility but they are just being prepared. Considering it was believed it'd be contained in West Africa and it travelled. Probably a good idea to be prepared for any possiblity.
He's only worried about ladders, cuz Colbert told him to be.
 

Twila

Nanah Potato
Mar 26, 2003
14,698
73
48
He's only worried about ladders, cuz Colbert told him to be.

well truth be told I'm worried about ladders too. There are too many cool uses for them and I don't even have one. I'd head to China town and pick up a couple of cheap bamboo ones, but can't figure out how to get 'em home without killing someone on the skytrain...
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
109,536
11,500
113
Low Earth Orbit
well truth be told I'm worried about ladders too. There are too many cool uses for them and I don't even have one. I'd head to China town and pick up a couple of cheap bamboo ones, but can't figure out how to get 'em home without killing someone on the skytrain...

Red flags on either end.
 

Cliffy

Standing Member
Nov 19, 2008
44,850
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Nakusp, BC
 

Twila

Nanah Potato
Mar 26, 2003
14,698
73
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Red flags on either end.

You clearly haven't "enjoyed" a ride on a skytrain lately. It's not that it's crowded...it's that it's crowded with people. Red Flags would draw the idiots to me...
 

SLM

The Velvet Hammer
Mar 5, 2011
29,151
3
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London, Ontario
Nurses share true feelings about Ebola outbreak on confessions app

The deadly Ebola outbreak has not arrived in Canada, but two cases of health care workers who became infected after treating a patient in Texas have left nurses and other front-line workers on both sides of the border fearful.
Dallas nurses who treated Thomas Eric Duncan – the first person to be diagnosed and die from Ebola in the U.S. – worked for days without proper protective gear. A statement released by the largest U.S. nurses' union Tuesday alleged that:

  • Duncan was kept in a non-isolated area of the hospital for hours
  • Nurses treating Duncan were also caring for other patients
  • The only Ebola preparation at the hospital was an optional seminar
Meanwhile, north of the border, the vice-president of the United Nurses of Alberta provided her own example of poor guidance: Nurses have been told they could wear regular masks when they should only be wearing N95 masks when treating possible Ebola patients.
The bad advice and lack of training has the Alberta union calling for more education.
It also has nurses in Canada and the U.S. posting anonymous messages admitting what they really want to say about Ebola on the secret-sharing app Whisper. CTV News cannot independently verify the authenticity of the users, but all of the users identify themselves as nurses or front-line workers.





















Nurses share true feelings about Ebola outbreak on confessions app | CTV News

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's not the disease that worries me necessarily. It's the gaping holes that I firmly believe the healthcare system is riddled with that can and probably will allow contagion to spread that causes concern.
 

mentalfloss

Prickly Curmudgeon Smiter
Jun 28, 2010
39,778
454
83
​The Anti-Vaxxers Are Spreading Ebola Conspiracy Theories

The anti-vaccination movement sees itself fighting against the shadowy forces of the CDC, Big Pharma, the media and their "lies" about immunization. And now, with the Ebola outbreak, they've cranked their crazy-meter up to 11, declaring the disease to be everything from an autism cover-up to a complete fraud.

I'm something of a connoisseur of conspiracy theories. Every time there's a major world event, I play my own version of the Kevin Bacon Game and try to see how many steps it will take for people to draw a connection between Russia's annexation of Crimea and the faked Apollo Moon landing. (Bonus points if either extraterrestrials or the Freemasons are involved.)

But, rummaging through the anti-vaxxer websites gets downright creepy, given that there's already enough misinformation and panic about Ebola—and it adds yet another layer of ugliness to the psyche of people who embrace junk science at the expense of children's health.

As with all conspiracy theorists, the anti-vaxxer crowd is all about the "strange coincidences" of the Ebola outbreak. Thus, the tragically misnamed site, Child Health Safety, noted that the disease became big news at around the time that discredited CDC whistleblowers were preparing to make a statement about autism:

How is it we suddenly have an Ebola "outbreak" and it is coming to the USA too?

The Ebola outbreak is quite a coincidence – senior CDC scientist Dr Thompson has been talking with Dr Hooker for 10 months about the CDC knowing the MMR vaccine causes autism. The Ebola "problem" was introduced gently to the US public earlier in the year.

Now we have an Ebola "outbreak" in the west just when Hooker's paper has been published and the admissions about the CDC knowing the MMR vaccine causes Autism issue are breaking news which the mainstream media refuse to report.

And today's news of a "vaccine" will of course be certain to ensure editors will publish nothing about MMR vaccine causing autism.

Of course to test a new vaccine and a new drug one needs a clinical trial. But people tend not to get Ebola – it has been pretty quiet for a very long time – until now.

And suddenly they ship the sick people off to the USA with all the attendant risks of spreading the disease instead of treating them where they got sick.

Seems a gift for WHO and the CDC but who wrapped it and how long ago?

So it is impossible to supply to Africa an emergency medical unit and equip it to treat the victims? They have to be shipped back to the USA with all the risk of spread of the disease? Isn't that reckless?

And what a miracle that so many of the "victims" have managed to survive. "Don't worry – the US government and CDC will save you".

So it looks like being proven right and Donald Trump's triumph over that is trumped by trumpeting from WHO and the CDC with the Ebola vaccine news.

Another story making the rounds is that the Ebola outbreak coincided with UN vaccine campaigns:

The Ebola pandemic began in late February in the former French colony of Guinea while UN agencies were conducting nationwide vaccine campaigns for three other diseases in rural districts. The simultaneous eruptions of this filovirus virus in widely separated zones strongly suggests that the virulent Zaire Ebola strain (ZEBOV) was deliberately introduced to test an antidote in secret trials on unsuspecting humans.

The cross-border escape of Ebola into neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia indicates something went terribly wrong during the illegal clinical trials by a major pharmaceutical company. Through the lens darkly, the release of Ebola may well have been an act of biowarfare in the post-colonial struggle to control mineral-rich West Africa

Yes, some of them actually believe Ebola is biological warfare. A lot of sites are reprinting an editorial written for a Liberian newspaper by Dr. Cyril Broderick, a former professor of Plant Pathology, who claimed that Ebola is a genetically modified organism, deliberately introduced either by the U.S. military for "bio-war research" or by pharmaceutical companies.

That's, of course, if you believe that the Ebola virus actually exists. The Vaccination Information Network informs us that this is "yet another fake pandemic set up to poison is with drugs and vaccines." Here's a portion of an interview with self-declared investigative journalist Jon Rappoport:

Q: But people are sick and dying.

A: People are always sick and dying. You can find them anywhere you look. That doesn't mean they're Ebola cases.

Q: In other words, medical authorities can place a kind of theoretical grid over sick and dying people and reinterpret them as "Ebola."

A: Exactly. The map can be drawn in any number of ways

Q: So the symptoms of Ebola, like cough, fever, fatigue, diarrhea—these can be attributed to many causes?

A: Absolutely. The flu, for example.

Q: What about the health workers in West Africa who have died?

A: Since unreliable diagnostic tests would have been run on them, we don't have any idea why they died. But at least some of them were suffering greatly from working inside hazmat suits, sealed off from the outside. In a one-hour shift, in boiling heat, they were losing five quarts of body fluid, then coming out, rehydrating, disinfecting with toxic chemicals, putting their suits on again, going back to patients for the next shift, losing extraordinary amounts of body fluid again, and so forth and so on. That would cause anyone to collapse.

Other anti-vaxxer news sites say the disease does exist, but that the CDC and the media is deliberately pushing vaccines as the only cure, when there are plenty of natural alternatives available, including red algae extract, coffee, fermented soy, homeopathic spider venom and vitamin C.

At least the anti-vaxxers haven't jumped on the zombie-virus rumor bandwagon—since, after all, that would be crazy.

?The Anti-Vaxxers Are Spreading Ebola Conspiracy Theories