Ebola? Yeps, It's Still Around . . .

[Nemo]

and waiting to come visit us over here again.

Nemo


http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/388401-the-ebola-superhighway-why-a-new-outbreak-terrifies-public-health

The Ebola superhighway: Why the new outbreak terrifies public health authorities
By Reid Wilson - 05/19/18 09:27 AM EDT, TheHill.com

A new outbreak of the Ebola virus that has killed at least two dozen people has set public health officials scrambling to contain the epidemic as it threatens to spread far beyond the remote jungles of the Congo River Basin — and raises new questions about the World Health Organization’s (WHO) preparations for the next killer virus.

The U.S. government is preparing its most direct response yet to the outbreak that appears to have begun in April, readying staffers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to deploy to multiple communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ministry of Health officials first identified cases of viral hemorrhagic fever when it reached the town of Bikoro earlier this month. On Thursday, officials said a new case had been identified in Mbandaka, a city of 1.2 million.

The new case in Mbandaka has raised the alarm among public health officials because it is the first time the virus has ever landed in a city that sits directly on the Congo River.

In all eight of the previous known Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the virus has been contained within remote jungle villages or relatively small towns, where isolated populations are less likely to spread the disease.

But the Congo River is effectively the region’s highway system. Barges and boats travel from Kisangani in the east through major cities including Bumba, Mbandaka — and eventually Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC and home to more than 11 million people, as well as Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo.

“The Congo River connects three national capitals and multiple other large cities,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who served as head of USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance during the 2014-2015 outbreak. “The fact that there are now several cases in an urban center of more than a million people underscores the potential for this outbreak to get out of control.”

If the Ebola virus traveled upriver from Bikoro to Mbandaka, some officials wonder, has it also traveled downstream toward Kinshasa, which offers direct air traffic to cities including Brussels, Paris, Dubai and Lagos, Nigeria?

“We don't know what's happening along the river, because the river is used by a lot of barges,” said Pierre Rollin, one of the world’s leading experts on the Ebola virus at the CDC. “None of the outbreaks have been by the river or in the big towns. So we have a lot of caution before claiming we know what's going on.”

Previous outbreaks have been snuffed out in the Congo, Rollin said, because the area is so remote that humans did not have a chance to travel far enough to transmit the virus before succumbing.

That was not the case four years ago in West Africa, where the virus spread widely across international boundaries. Commercial and cultural travel throughout Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — across borders drawn a century and a half ago by colonizers with little regard for traditional tribal boundaries — is far more common than it is in the Congo.

The present outbreak has raised anew questions about WHO and its capacity to respond to deadly viral threats. In the wake of the West African outbreak ago, when the ill-prepared WHO endured withering criticism for its lackluster response to the initial round of cases, the agency has undergone a remarkable round of self-flagellation, reorganizing to prioritize emergency preparedness and response while cutting bureaucracy.

“We’ve seen WHO activate much more quickly, at much larger scale, and in more effective partnership with players like” Doctors Without Borders, said Konyndyk, who sat on an independent panel that advised WHO on reforming its emergency functions after the West Africa outbreak.

The first WHO investigative team arrived in Bikoro on May 5, about a month after the first suspected cases are likely to have emerged in Ikoko Impenge. A logistics team arrived on May 9, and the United Nations began daily flights carrying supplies and personnel between Kinshasa and Mbandaka on May 13.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general, visited Bikoro on May 13, in part to show the urgency of the situation.

“A major lesson learnt from the West Africa Ebola outbreak was that WHO needed a flexible fund to rapidly respond to outbreaks and emergencies,” Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesman, said in an email from Geneva. The agency’s new Contingency Fund for Emergencies, already activated in the Congo, has made cash available to responders far more quickly than in the case of West Africa.

Still, some wonder why it took the Congolese Ministry of Health and the WHO a month to spot the virus in the first place.

“We are doing better at response, but not much better at rapid detection, which is important,” said Tom Frieden, the former CDC director who now runs the public health organization Resolve to Save Lives. “This was spreading for a while before [it was] recognized.”

Aiding the response further is a new vaccine, finalized in the last days of the West Africa outbreak. About 4,000 doses of the vaccine are headed to the epicenter of the new outbreak, where they will be used in two ways: First, health care workers, those most vulnerable to exposure, will be vaccinated. Then, those who have come into contact with anyone infected, and the contact’s contacts, will be vaccinated, a practice known as ring vaccination.

“That part should really add another arm to the response. It's not the response by itself, because you still have to do all the rest,” Rollin said.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is also far more prepared to respond to an Ebola outbreak because the virus is known to be endemic to the region. The first modern outbreak of the Ebola virus occurred in the village of Yambuku, about 370 miles from the site of the present one, back in 1976.

[Jackalope]

One little mutation could cause major problems....

[gadget99]

In reflection.

I have noticed that a disease such as this of flu tends to worry me more than many other potential threats.

I guess it is a very human reaction in reality. Being concerned by an unseen threat that can creep through the population laying waste can be scary.

That and with the knowledge that like other potential threats we prepper face. This is another thing that has happened before and is another type that carries the tag of ( not if but when).

Cheers all.

[Kbop]

Gadget99 is right - historically unique or new diseases run their course and then teh host builds up immunity and it becomes a footnote.  Ebola is scary and relatively new but;
Influenza - the flu - keeps coming back and has killed tens of millions.  not if but when - as he mentioned.

[JohnyMac]

It is really funny that so many folks poo-poo pandemics.


Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. - Matthew 5:5

Meek as in microbes?

[gadget99]

I must admit that there are few SHTF potentials that fill me with enough fear to cause me consistent concern.

I have plans on how we will meet the threat and drive on.

Probably due to their natures and my background.

Though I admit that a pandemic is one that  concerns me. The protocols needed to ride one out will be unforgiving. Let your guard down or miss a small detail and you face a infection threat. Not to say you cannot manage the situation. Yet getting the average person to religiously follow protocol is going to be like herding cats much of the time.

As a veteran I get what "attention to detail" means in the true sense. Getting a 19 yr old civilian to get it, is a task that will turn the rest of my hair Gray.

But heck I take the challenge.

[JohnyMac]

Amen Gadget!

[Nemo]

And continuine getting worse with most forgoing treatment. 

Nemo


https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/congo-s-ebola-response-threatened-conspiracy-theories-rumors-n994156

Congo's Ebola response threatened by conspiracy theories, rumors
The outbreak, centered in the opposition stronghold of the DRC, continues to spread as rumors undermine the effectiveness of treatment and health care.

April 20, 2019, 3:00 AM EDT / Updated April 20, 2019, 5:49 AM EDT
By Gabe Joselow and Linda Givetash

People who have contracted Ebola are opting to die at home rather than seek treatment as conspiracy theories fuel distrust of the government and of health workers grappling with the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the workers and aid groups.

Nearly 20 new cases of the deadly illness are being identified daily in two northeast provinces of the country. Both areas are opposition strongholds where political tensions run high.

Many of the victims are being discovered outside treatment centers after they refuse to seek help, officials said. The epidemic has left more than 700 dead and affected more than 1,000 people.

In addition to combating a lethal virus, health workers are having to dispel rumors that the disease is manufactured and that the millions of dollars spent on the response are part of a money-making scheme derisively referred to as the “Ebola business.”

"We have lost the trust of the community," Tariq Riebl of the nonprofit International Rescue Committee told NBC News from Goma.

A study conducted in September, less than two months into the outbreak, found that 25 percent of people surveyed in the affected areas did not believe Ebola was real, while 36 percent thought it was fabricated to destabilize the region.

“It’s all about money, that we’re getting bonuses for cases we find, that prolonging the response helps the business side,” Riebl said, listing some of the lies that have been spreading among local communities.

.     .     .


go read the rest, too broke up by pics to bring it all over

[Nemo]

Still around over there, and getting worse.  Lots worse.

Nemo


https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/national/sharp-increase-in-congo-ebola-deaths-as-medical-teams-hit/article_f42efc86-deee-5029-8136-eb5a09123312.html

Sharp increase in Congo Ebola deaths as medical teams hit by attacks
Apr 30, 2019

KINSHASA, Congo — Ebola cases and deaths in eastern Congo have risen sharply in the past week, authorities said Tuesday, placing the blame on recurrent attacks on treatment centers and health workers.

There were 126 new cases and 83 deaths between April 22 and April 28, according to the Ministry of Health in Kinshasa.

The number of fatalities has risen rapidly, from around 600 at the end of March to over 900 a month later.

“As soon as there is a security incident, such as the destruction of the Ebola treatment centers or the murder of our colleague (from the World Health Organization), the main response activities are suspended for an indefinite period,” ministry spokeswoman Jessica Ilunga told dpa.

“Without these activities, the virus continues to spread and kill more people in the community,” she added.

So far there have been 1,480 cases and 970 deaths, since the outbreak — the second-largest in history — began last year.

Numerous militia groups operate in eastern Congo, most fighting over the country’s rich natural resources.

Authorities and aid groups have also had to deal with a local population suspicious of health workers and on April 19 a WHO epidemiologist, Richard Mouzoko, was killed by armed men.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was in Congo on Tuesday and expressed concern.

“I am also profoundly worried about the situation. Cases are increasing because of violent acts that set us back each time,” he said in a statement.

[patriotman]

And you know that someone, somewhere, is trying to weaponize it through genetic modification or getting an infected person into an airport.

[Nemo]

More info.

Nemo



https://thehill.com/opinion/international/447571-ebola-transmission-rate-triples-in-drc-as-us-expertise-is-sidelined

Ebola transmission rate triples in DRC as US expertise is sidelined
By K. Riva Levinson, opinion contributor — 06/08/19 05:00 PM EDT

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

At the close of the fourth episode of the HBO mini-series Chernobyl, the highest ranked TV show ever scored by Rotten Tomatoes, we learn that Lyudmilla, the pregnant wife of the heroic firefighter Vasily Ignatenko, survives an otherwise fatal dose of radiation because her unborn fetus absorbed the radioactivity. This did happen. Lyudmilla is alive today and living in Kiev.

This reminded me of a story I heard from a doctor who battled the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Ebola is one of the most lethal-known pathogens; the 2014 outbreak left more than 11,000 persons dead, 28,000 infected, and a generation of orphans behind.

Dr. Wannie Scott-McDonald, the administrator of Liberia’s John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center, told me of a young mother who came to the center in full-onset-labor, heavily bleeding, with no outward signs of the virus. Even so, the baby presented still-born, destroyed by Ebola. Once the child was delivered, the active virus latched on to the mother, and within minutes, her fever shot up to 104 degrees. She died eight hours later. Unlike radiation, Ebola spared no one.

When West Africa was declared Ebola-free in January 2016, the international community — having realized how the world’s weakest health systems threaten global health security — vowed that never again would we let such a health crisis fester until it became a calamity. A period of unprecedented attention to global health security began.

We had learned the importance of a rapid mobilization after the World Health Organization’s (WHO) egregious failure to sound the alarm until months into outbreak. We saw the necessity to declare the highest level of global emergency to secure political commitments and mobilize scarce resources.

We discovered that distrust of government often obstructed the response, and that every means must be sought to vest the affected populations, enlisting traditional leaders, priests, imams, midwives, youth leaders, civil society, local journalists, anyone with a trusted voice.

And it was the United States that led the global scale-up, including the deployment to Liberia of the 101st Airborne.

Three years later in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), it feels like many of the lessons learned were learned in vain — and with the White House decision to bar U.S. officials, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), from entering the worst-affected zones as well as a strict interpretation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act resulting in the withholding of non-humanitarian assistance, we have an unprecedented sidelining of U.S. expertise that — until now —has been on the frontlines for every Ebola outbreak.

This first week of June, aid agencies in the DRC announced that more than 2,000 people had been infected with Ebola since the outbreak was declared in August of last year. Even with vaccines and experimental treatments, the rate of transmission is accelerating. It took 224 days for the landmark figure of 1,000 confirmed and probable cases to be reached. It only took 71 days to reach 2,000.

Karin Huster, field coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières, explains: “In the volatile context of North Kivu — a region where armed groups, distrust of government, and socioeconomic injustices violently intersect — the Ebola response has been met with distrust and violent attacks on health workers and health facilities.”

Some think the national government was first to use the Ebola crisis as a political tool. David Gressly, the UN emergency coordinator for Ebola, said that just days before national elections, officials announced that voting would be suspended in the two largest cities in the outbreak zone, Beni and Butembo, both known to be opposition strongholds. That “created a perception that the Ebola outbreak was manufactured,” he said.

Tariq Riebl, emergency response director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said the rage over vote suspension is still palpable: “If you need a seminal turning point, it's that one,” he said.

Today, 10 months into the outbreak, we have a witches brew of political disenfranchisement, distrust of authorities, rebel militias, mercenaries, opportunists, and militants loyal to the Islamic State fueling a deadly epidemic by preventing the medical response from getting ahead of the virus.

This is no longer just a health emergency, it is a political, security and diplomatic crisis, with non-state actors who benefit from disrupting lives and sowing panic. As we learned in 2014, this outbreak will only end when communities are engaged and leading the response efforts themselves.

To stabilize the Ebola outbreak, the international community needs to heed the advice of its first responders, the global charities, including MSF, OXFAM, Mercy Corps, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). 

The good news is, that the UN is beginning to listen. On May 29 the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), confirmed the designation the DRC’s Ebola outbreak as a level-three emergency(L3), activated when agencies are unable to meet needs on the ground, a list which currently includes Yemen, Syria and Mozambique.

Whitney Elmer, country director of DRC for Mercy Corps, said the level-three emergency declaration could bring “manifold benefits”, but noted that, “there has never been an epidemic of this complexity or size in the DRC.”

Last month the UN appointed emergency Ebola coordinator Gressly, a recognition that management of the Ebola response can no longer be left solely to health officials and that the alignment of key political and armed groups behind the response effort is essential to stop the violence against health care workers.

The charities remain skeptical that Gressly can tame the forces that have been unleashed in Eastern Congo. A senior Red Cross official said that while it might lead to stronger leadership and more funding, “it’s not a panacea.”

Moreover, in 2014 it took the creation of the United Nations Mission for Emergency Ebola Response (UNMEER) to establish unity of purpose among responders, and a formal declaration by the WHO of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) to mobilize resources.   

A single UN Ebola response coordinator is no UNMEER, and L3-designation does not come close to the firepower of a PHEIC declaration. And it is unclear if the political will exists to escalate before — not after — the next set of alarming data points makes world headlines.   

Ebola was defeated in West Africa when a global declaration of emergency created the conditions for charities and frontline healthcare workers to get ahead of the Ebola transmission curve. The disease was brought under control only after it was acknowledged that you don’t isolate the communities, you work with them, to isolate the virus. And it was defeated with U.S. leadership.

[patriotman]

https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/06/june-ebola-update.html?m=1

6/1/2019 - Per the latest WHO weekly outbreak bulletin, the 10 month Ebola outbreak continues unabated in DRC. It's up by almost exactly 30% in the last 21 days.

UPDATE: June 3 WHO Ebola Update:

    'the new measures introduced in the past week, along with continued strong reinforcing of community messages, and intense application of proven public health measures, should confine the outbreak to the two provinces currently affected, and bring the outbreak to a close."
     

This happy gas from the UN, despite 118 known new Ebola cases, and an additional 61 deaths, in just the last week. I'd love to be wrong, but it sounds like someone is whistling past the graveyard here. Those new cases alone would be a significant outbreak. That many amidst all possible medical efforts, and nearly 130,000 vaccinations, points to them losing this battle rather decisively. Time will tell.

UPDATE II: London UK Guardian, June 4th:

    "Aid agencies, infectious disease experts and the WHO say it will be very hard to bring this outbreak under control, even though they have had vaccines and experimental drugs from the outset.

    There is almost no functioning state in much of eastern DRC and an almost total lack of basic services such as power, education, roads or healthcare. The authority of the government only extends to the edges of urban areas."

{This is 2014 redux.
WHO is saying in their published reports "We've got this", everyone else is saying "This sh*t's an out of control inferno!"

90 days later we had Ebola in Dallas.

This is also the first official acknowledgement that officially published numbers no longer reflect reality. You can now apply a Fudge Factor of 50% to all published numbers, until further notice.

That's admitting that things are a full-blown disaster.

Best start getting your sh*t together, people.
This one's going to blow containment. -A.}


The Good
They've vaccinated nearly 125K people, with an experimental vaccine that appears to confer >99% effectiveness against Ebola. (For the 1K or less people who contracted it anyways, don't worry, most of them are dead now.)

The Bad

1) Despite vaccinations, progressing at some 1000 per day, for a non-zero number of cases (currently it's something like 5% of all new cases), they have no effing clue where a given case originated, and thus no wild idea whom to vaccinate, or how to throw up a suitable containment ring around them, or how the virus got past them.

2) They are tracing contacts in 17 health zones. The problem with that is there are 22 health zones (think of counties) with active Ebola cases in the last couple of weeks. Imagine being missed by 17 out of 22 cars as you cross in a crosswalk, and you begin to appreciate why this is a problem.

In the five other zones (23%) where there is zero contact tracing, they have no idea what the disease is doing.

The Ugly

In this current outbreak, in 50% of cases, fever as a presenting sign is completely absent.
(Fever, we remind you, is how grade-school dropout customs screeners in 126 countries check people at the airports for Ebola before letting them in. Including our TSA wizards here in the U.S. It's really the only thing they can check that can be mastered by 80 IQ government employees worldwide. Sleep tight.)
Short of laboratory testing everyone (which they aren't and cannot do in nearly 1/4 of the Hot Zone in DRC), and a 40-day quarantine, cases will continue to multiply.
And they are.

Let's look at that over time, since we're at the 10-month anniversary of this outbreak today:

Index case      Aug 1
2 cases           Aug 1
4                      Aug 1
8                      Aug 1
16                    Aug 1
32                    Aug 3
64                    Aug 3
128                  Aug 31
256                  Oct 15
512                  Dec 3
1K                    Feb 24
2K                    May 12
4K                    probably about Aug 1

That would be an 11 on the 34-point Scale Of Whether It's Time To Panic, with 34 being Global Extinction Event. And headed to 12 at about 100 new cases/wk, give or take.

And we repeat, as the virus doesn't kill overnight, the correct  death ratio number, we pound home, is not the WHO/Wikistupidia math-retarded posted lie of 65% of dead vs. infected, it's those dead now vs. number infected 21 days ago, which gives a consistent and far more reliable lethality percentage around 75%. Because it takes about that long to get it, and then die from it, on a rough average.

USAMRIID and CDC refer to that level of lethality as a "slate-wiper"; it erases populations.

And bear well in mind "surviving" Ebola means you now have it functionally forever, and get to suffer the sequellae of Post-Ebola virus syndrome. {TL;DR: You're still screwed, and life, as you knew it, is over. You aren't going back to your old life ever again. Short answer: don't catch it to begin with.}

Note that by the time it was confirmed as an outbreak this time, it had already doubled 4 times, meaning it probably started two to four weeks earlier, at minimum, but no one noticed until literally 20 people dropped dead with blood shooting out of all orifices. Nominally, on Day One. Proof of this is that it doubled two more times in the next 48 hours.
Growth slowed notably, mainly because the vaccine and ring vaccination slowed the brushfire down. At first.

And then the local superstition and ignorance kicked in, they started stealing bodies from morgues, burning Ebola treatment centers, and chasing the health teams out at gunpoint, and all hell has broken loose, probably never to be contained, because we don't have the 82nd Airborne in hazmat suits available to shoot idiots at gunpoint to get this back in the bottle.

You know this because it keeps escaping to neighboring health zones and provinces, having now moved some 100 miles outward.
It has surged notably since March of this year, both in terms of numbers, and affected areas. That is an ominous sign.

Bear in mind once again that this area is
a) equatorial jungle, literally right on the Equator
b) listed in all maps relevant as "ungoverned"
c) listed in all relevant maps as "armed conflict zone"

The UN and all local organizations are doing their usual Headless Chicken, thrashing about, but to little effect, and the literature continues to try and paint a happy picture, while ill-concealing their ultimate despair that they'll get ahead of this one.

It continues to be a slow roll-out compared to 2014, but is notably picking up steam.

For the record: The current outbreak in DRC is where West Africa was in mid-August 2014.
Six weeks later, Ebola got to the U.S.
{BLUF: You should start thinking that you've got maybe twelve weeks before it gets here. Again. It may take longer, or less time, or it may not make it here at all. But it looks like it's on the same trajectory, and we're all just one passenger flight away from doing this all over again.}

1000 vaccinations a day is great when you have 100 cases.
When you're working on 2200 cases and counting, and nearly 1/4 of the regions you need to be in are untouched by any effort, the horse left the barn, and you're just marking time on three sides while the whole show departs through the gaping holes in containment.

It's going to get much worse, much faster, probably in a week to a month, when cases start popping up farther afield, where there are no resources or testing, let alone contact tracing, and the percentage of cases with no clear infection chain will go from single digit percentages to mid-double digits rapidly.

And now comes unconfirmed word that we have a number of potential infected refugees in custody on the Southern border of the US. Nobody's saying they have Ebola, just getting all flustercated because they might. {Emphasis added for clarity. -A.}

My default answer is to ignore these reports until it's confirmed, because most of them are indeed false reports, so we'll wait and see how it pans out, as you all should.

But if it breaks out here, we have 11 BL-IV beds, max, to adequately contain that outbreak.
For reference, Mexico has zero beds.
I repeat, Mexico has zero beds.

If it breaks out south of the border, one case becomes 100 cases in about a month, tops, (probably more like a week to ten days) and then the flood of refugees coming here becomes a tsunami (actually, we're there now completely without a pandemic to drive it faster, so picture that when it gets turned up to 11). At that point, f**k a wall. The only way you stop that flow is AC-130s doing minigun sweeps of anything moving within 1/4 mile of the international border, which is going to be hard on the millions of people who already live inside that zone on both sides of the line.


So if Mexico gets one active case, you can cancel Christmas.
America (North, and particularly Central and South) becomes Africa at that point.
Ditto if we get more than 10 cases here in the U.S.

We saw what happens when people at the local big hospital tried to be Emory or Nebraska or The Vault at USAMRIID: it fails, and you knock a 1000-bed major tertiary care facility out for months, for the whole community.
And the virus doubles, despite your best efforts.

With EVD, close isn't good enough, and only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons.

I'm working, and have been, in level I and II trauma centers, and major high-volume ERs my entire career. More since 2014 than before, BTW.

And I'm here to tell you, by the numbers:

1) We aren't ready to deal with this, in any meaningful way, any better than in 2014
2) By "we" I mean any hospital in any city anywhere in North America, and
3) when, not if, this breaks out here, it's going to take out health care as you know it in every affected city, starting with the people who work in them, then patients and visitors. Hospitals will become abbatoirs, morgues, then ghost towns.
4) 911 responders (firefighter rigs and EMT units, and to a lesser extent, law enforcement) will become potential carriers to spread the disease back into the community.
5) anybody, anywhere, with whatever certifications, who tells you anything different is either lying out their ass at both ends, or doesn't know what they're talking about, and anything further they say can be completely discounted as utter bullsh*t from someone too stupid to live, or irredeemably evil.

Good times, huh?

That means no ER, no 9-1-1, no 50 other things people come to hospitals or call the police and fire department to handle. Trauma, heart attacks, strokes, diabetic emergencies, appendicitis, and the whole plethora of modern medicine.
Imagine the police not wanting to get within 20 feet of people on a stop or a call.
Car accidents will become morgue calls.

Because Ebola.

The Monster

The little filovirus in the masthead for these updates is magnified tens of thousand times, in pics that have been around since the mid-1970s.
A period at the end of this sentence would be a ball of virus that numbers 100,000,000 of them.
The number necessary to give you full-blown Ebola is one.

We don't know in what species Ebola resides between outbreaks. Anywhere. Ever.
We don't know how it gets transmitted from them to humans.
No idea whatsoever.

Flecks of infected blood from a human victim who has it can be coughed and sneezed 25', and may linger in the air for up to 10 minutes afterwards.
And that's only considered droplet precautions, because those particles are heavier than air, and eventually settle, unlike true airborne precautions, for something like TB, or pneumonic plague.

Your body won't care which it is if you suck in one of those droplets at the movie theater, theme park, supermarket, or mall, whenever you simply breathe it in anytime you walk within 25' of anywhere anyone has coughed in the last 10 minutes.

Have fun at WalMart, Target, the airport, a theme park, a movie multiplex, a ballpark or auditorium, and the supermarket then.

And before someone starts asking (again?!) about how to "deal" with this, by suiting up:
1) You need a 20-piece hazmat ensemble, a spotter to put it on and take it off, a metric fuckton of disinfectant and disposable items, including gloves, splash-proof goggles, gloves,  suits, gloves, hoods, gloves, booties, gloves, droplet barrier masks, and gloves.
2) One break in protocol will be a terminal error.
3) And potentially expose everyone you come into contact with to the virus.
4) And require you to start all over again getting suited up for, or deconned out of, any hot zone
5) Oh, and lest we forget, it's June, and the ensemble inside is hot-as-fucking-hell, and gives the average person maybe two hours' time before they're ready to pass out from heat stroke, before we factor in dehydration, claustrophobia, and sheer panic.
6) Did we mention that hot, tired, dehydrated, exhausted, and panicky people make fucktons of sloppy mistakes?
7) Did we also mention that one mistake can get you and everyone you love or contact killed?

So yeah, fuck the idea of working in hazmat gear. Professionals hate it. With all the resources mentioned above you'll never have.
You?
You don't stand a chance.

Proper protective equipment for Ebola, we repeat and belabor, is several lengths of military-grade concertina, warning signs, a shotgun and supply of buckshot, and small breakable containers with a suitable flame accelerant, for emergency decontamination beyond the perimeter.

Chance of Ebola sneaking up your driveway and into you behind such a perimeter: 0%.

Odds of seeing this material again before the end of the year: better than even.

Happy Summer, kids!
Now do you see why I don't want to bring this up any more frequently?

UPDATE: 116 Africans, including Congolese refugees, caught crossing Rio Grande
What could possibly go wrong?

UPDATE II:
I repeat for the record, as of June 5th, based on available evidence, and barring any changes in worldwide response,

this one's going to blow containment.

Get your preps in order.
When it gets out, if it's near you, it'll already be too late.

[Erick]

I already said my piece on this Ebola thing in separate threads fellas 

Even if u get sporadic infections here due to legit travel and/or leftist encouraged invasion it will not become an epidemic in the US.

- There is no natural reservoir in the US
- Its very fragile and not very transmissible

But maybe if we get a couple of infections due to some illegals and we get panic in the country that would be a good thing to wake up the mainstream to the dangers of the invasion.

This may also reduce trust in the concept of Gov't as the great protector  which may make the party of Gov't , the left, less palatable to the people.

[patriotman]

Oh trust me Erick I keep your words in the back of my head when I read these things. Still interesting to read though

[patriotman]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-12/ebola-jumps-borders-drc-epidemic-rages

Three cases of cross-border Ebola transmission have been reported in Uganda since the outbreak began in eastern Congo last year, according to the Financial Times. One of the victims, a five-year-old boy, has died of the disease while two of his relatives also tested positive.

      On Wednesday, health experts in both countries were scrambling to understand how the boy's relatives crossed the border on June 9th, and who they may have infected along the way. The boy was taken to a Ugandan hospital after vomiting blood and exhibiting other symptoms, while two relatives of the boy also tested positive for Ebola. Uganda has been heavily screening visitors from Congo for signs of fever, and has vaccinated more than 4,700 health workers against the disease according to a joint statement by WHO and Ugandan officials.

    Uganda’s health ministry said the boy’s mother, who is Congolese but married to a Ugandan and living in the Kasese district of Uganda, had travelled back to Congo to nurse her sick father, who subsequently died of Ebola. On returning to Uganda, the boy had started coughing up blood and vomiting and was taken to Kagando hospital where health workers immediately suspected Ebola.

    A sample of his blood tested positive for Ebola and on Wednesday two of the boy’s relatives were also confirmed to have contracted the disease. -Financial Times

Over 2,000 cases of the disease have been recorded in the Congo over the last 10 months, with over 1,400 deaths since August. It's still the second most deadly Ebola outbreak behind the 2013-2016 West Africa epidemic which killed 11,310 people. While it took seven months for the outbreak to reach 1,000 cases - it took just three more months for that figure to double.     

[Jackalope]

       The Raconteur Report has an update regarding the virus crossing into Uganda: https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/06/told-you-so.html   The comments are entertaining, especially regarding all the Congolese that were picked up by the Border Patrol, and no special precautions were taken.  Given the long incubation period, and the lack of awareness by the Border Patrol, it does make me concerned.

[JoJo]

 It jumped the boarder.

https://www.breitbart.com/africa/2019/06/17/kenya-tanzania-high-alert-illegal-border-crossings-bring-ebola-uganda/

Kenya identified a potential Ebola patient on Monday and Tanzania announced heightened security measures this weekend amid a growing Ebola outbreak that spilled over into Uganda from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) last week, the second-worst outbreak of the virus on record.

The director general of World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, landed in Uganda on Monday to evaluate the situation after the nation documented its first two Ebola deaths, a five-year-old boy and a woman believed to be his grandmother. The boy, his younger sibling, his grandmother, and several other relatives crossed the border into DRC from Uganda to attend the funeral of his grandfather, a confirmed Ebola victim. A third person has died of the virus since the government announced the first two cases.

The Ugandan Ministry of Health confirmed Ghebreyesus’s visit on Monday. In a statement, spokesman Emmanuel Ainebyoona said that the WHO chief had “come to assess the readiness of the teams on the ground.”

The ministry said Uganda has identified 96 people who have come into contact with the victims and begun administering the Ebola vaccine, which did not exist during the 2014 outbreak, the worst in history, and experts credit it in part with containing the outbreak in the DRC until now. The spokesman added that news of growing numbers of Ebola cases were unsubstantiated.

Despite the effective contact tracing, Ugandan media reported last week that three people identified as potential Ebola patients escaped their local hospital and are believed to have fled into DRC. Among the biggest challenges facing medical staff in the region trying to contain the outbreak is widespread distrust from the locals, who trust traditional healers and believe that either Ebola does not exist or that Western-style health workers are deliberately infecting people with Ebola.

Ugandan health workers have also expressed concern that they are unprepared for a major influx of Ebola patients if they have to act to save them. Hospital staffers in key border regions have complained of not having a reliable isolation ward to keep the virus from spreading, lacking key supplies like gloves, and lax rules on letting individuals potentially exposed to Ebola sit out the incubation period at home, where they may endanger others.

In Kenya, authorities announced Monday that they were testing a woman for Ebola after visiting Uganda, but not DRC, along with several relatives also under observation. The woman is reportedly the only one showing symptoms of Ebola virus disease, which typically presents with fever, hemorrhaging, and vomiting. Medical authorities put the suspected patient in isolation.

“The rapid surveillance and response team, which has been sent to examine the patient who is in stable condition, has confirmed that she does not fit the case definition of Ebola. Allow me to repeat to Kenyans that the patient does not meet the case definition of Ebola,” Kenyan Health Minister Sicily Kariuki said. “Precautionary measures have, however, been put in place including isolation of the patient and submission of blood samples … for testing.”

Tanzania issued an Ebola “alert” Sunday despite not yet having evidence of any potential cases, citing the geographical proximity of the country to the area where doctors have identified cases. Unlike the government of Kenya, which emphasized the low likelihood of an Ebola outbreak there, Tanzania’s health minister issued a stern warning to all to remain vigilant.

“I want to alert the public that there is the threat of an Ebola epidemic in our country,” Health Minister Ummy Mwalimu said on Twitter. “Given that this disease transmits very easily and very quickly from one person to another, nearly the entire country is in danger.”

Tanzania borders Kenya and Uganda and shares a border across Lake Tanganyika with DRC.

Experts have noted that the failure of governments in the region to implement strict border crossing procedures could allow the virus to spread throughout the continent rapidly. Ebola spreads through the bodily fluids of an infected person. In the 2014 outbreak, many people fell ill after handling the body of a deceased relative in traditional burial procedures that require touching and cleaning fluids. Western African governments ultimately forced families to burn the bodies to stop the outbreak, but those who did the difficult job of violating tradition and burning the bodies never recovered from the social stigma.

As noted above, the Ugandan Ebola cases resulted from the victims’ presences at a funeral for another Ebola victim. Border authorities did not identify the family as an Ebola threat when they crossed because they did not enter legally.

“We now know that a family of 14 travelled from the DRC to Uganda. Most of them crossed at the formal border, but five evaded the main port of entry,” Professor Mosoka Fallah told Africa’s the Conversation in an interview published Saturday. “Instead they crossed over informally. Those five arrived with symptoms that included diarrhoea and bleeding. This implies a period of illness in the DRC and that they were most likely symptomatic while travelling.”

“It appears they knowingly evaded the official check point that would have monitored their temperature and physical signs to pick them up as possible Ebola cases,” Fallah suggested.

The professor noted that these behaviors also helped Ebola to spread in 2014, saying:

There are a lot more informal crossings than the formal ones. The surveillance system for scanning people who are crossing into Uganda are at these formal crossings. This isn’t always foolproof. When I was working in Liberia during the West African epidemic between 2014 and 2016, we found that some people would take antipyretic medications to avoid being detected at the formal border crossings. These drugs bring fevers down so that scanners don’t detect a high temperature.

You may wonder why people would do this. The reality is that people across geographical boundaries don’t have any physical boundaries in their minds. When they are in the DRC and fall ill, they will do what anyone would: seek support from their relatives and friends, some of whom are in border towns.

Uganda and DRC agreed to send six now-confirmed Ebola patients related to those who died in Uganda back to the DRC.

“They proposed to repatriate six Ebola patients back to DRC to enable them access medicines for therapeutic treatment which are available in the DRC as well as receive family support and comfort since they had six other relatives who had remained behind in DRC and five of whom had also been confirmed positive for Ebola,” Ugandan Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng stated.

According to the WHO, the current outbreak has affected over 2,000 people. About 70 percent of those have died.

[Nemo]

Treatments generally refused.  Its all caused by the government.  Sounds like it could happen here.

Nemo


https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/794395/ebola-outbreak-unstoppable-victims-refuse-treatment-government-conspiracy

Ebola outbreak unstoppable as victims REFUSE treatment fearing Govt ‘behind disease’
THE Ebola outbreak is only going to get worse as people are refusing treatment, according to an aid worker on the frontline.
By Jamie Micklethwaite / Published 27th July 2019

Ebola is sweeping through central Africa with the current outbreak becoming the second worst in history.

Experts even believe it could equal or surpass the worst on record, where 11,323 people died from December 2013 to January 2016.

WHO has called for the world’s superpowers to do more to help combat the disease, with 1,743 people killed.

But an aid worker on the frontline told Daily Star Online more needs to be done to fight the disease at a local level in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

.   .   .

continued

[Kbop]

 
Combine the antivaxers with the people who refuse help Then; the fun known and even more fun unknown zoonotic bugs and it sounds like a vignette from a Douglas Adams book. 

Hitchhikers Guide; a part of the story that explains how the earth got populated.
here is a 'cliff notes' version.
https://www.h2g2.com/entry/A2163520