This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Ebola Remains a Risk - Deaths in Nebraska and New York
Ebola Remains a Risk - Deaths in Nebraska and New York
The Ebola crisis has faded from headlines but remains a risk after the death of another Ebola patient in Nebraska and the death of a suspected victim in New York yesterday. This brings the number of confirmed deaths to two in the U.S. and possibly three if the New York victim is confirmed as having had Ebola.
The toll in the Ebola epidemic has risen to 5,420 deaths out of 15,145 cases in eight countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today. Transmission of the deadly virus still "intense and widespread" in Sierra Leone.
The figures, through November 16, represent a jump of 243 deaths and 732 cases since those issued last Friday. Cases continue to be under-reported, the WHO said in its latest update.
Tragic scenes unfolded in Brooklyn yesterday afternoon when a woman collapsed, dead, in a salon with reports of bleeding from her mouth and nose. This is frequently how Ebola victims die as Ebola disables the body’s coagulation system, leading to uncontrolled bleeding. By the time the body can rally its second line of defense, the adaptive immune system, is frequently too late.
The unfortunate woman, who had travelled from Guinea three weeks ago and was on a watch list of the New York Health Department, showed no prior symptoms of having Ebola and was apparently being checked daily.
Her remains were collected by an emergency medical team wearing hazmat suits and the salon was later sterilized. While she is believed to have died of a suspected heart attack it seems protective measures to prevent the spread of the virus, if tests determine that Ebola was indeed the cause of death, were rather lax.
The salon remained open for business and none of the staff were decontaminated.
A death also occurred yesterday of Martin Salia, a doctor who was flown into the U.S. on Saturday for treatment. Initial tests for the virus came back negative but as his condition deteriorated he was found to have contracted Ebola.
Salia is the second person to die of Ebola in the United States. Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man living in Texas, contracted the disease in his native country but was not diagnosed until after his return to Dallas.
“We are reminded today that even though this was the best possible place for a patient with this virus to be, that in the very advanced stages, even the most modern techniques that we have at our disposal are not enough to help these patients once they reach the critical threshold,” said Jeffrey Gold, chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, lamenting Salia’s death.
The latest Ebola death shows danger remains and the fact that U.S. trained doctors working in west Africa have been contracting Ebola demonstrates the virulent nature of the virus. It also contradicts the suggestion that it is the incompetence on the part of African healthcare professionals that has allowed Ebola to get out of hand.
It also suggests that the means by which Ebola spreads are not fully understood. The government of Liberia have achieved some success in bringing the epidemic under control. Public transport is rigorously monitored. Bus passengers are scanned with laser thermometers. Those with high or low temperatures are not admitted and are reported. Passengers must wash their hands upon boarding.
The statistics relating to the epidemic are difficult to interpret. In the three countries where Ebola has been most prevalent there is quite a discrepancy between the death rates of those that contract the virus.
In Guinea the death rate has been about 60%, in Sierra Leone it has been around 21% and in Liberia it has been 40%. One would expect Guinea to have the least proportion of fatalities given the dire poverty suffered by the other two nations who are emerging from civil wars.
In war-ravaged Congo the fatality rate is very high although the number of incidents has been quite low at 66.
Ebola has spread from Africa to the U.S, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
All the focus has rightly been on the medical implications and the tragic human consequences in Africa. Understandably, there has been little attention on the financial and economic consequences of a pandemic. Unless it is contained in the U.S. and Europe, it will likely soon impact consumer confidence and already fragile economic growth.
The outbreak and spread of Ebola is a worrying development and should remind people and companies, the world over, to be aware of the risks and become prepared.
A primary focus of ours is on financial and economic risk which we believe is underestimated by people, companies and governments. Our modern financial and economic systems are more complex and this more fragile than is realised.
We warned of this prior to the Irish and global financial crisis and believe there are many unappreciated financial and economic risks again today - one of which is a global pandemic.
Global economic growth remains weak and vulnerable and the global financial system remains fragile. Confidence and psychology is key.
Concerns about the Ebola virus and the likelihood of a pandemic are likely overblown. However, more cases in the western world will likely badly impact on already fragile economic confidence. This has the potential to be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back with ramifications for financial markets and the global economy.
Get Breaking News and Updates On Gold Markets Here
MARKET UPDATE
Today’s AM fix was USD 1,194.00, EUR 953.60 and GBP 762.65 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,200.75, EUR 957.61 and GBP 766.08 per ounce.
Gold prices fell $13.80 or 1.15% to $1,183.00/oz yesterday. Silver slipped $0.08 or 0.49% to $16.14/oz.
Gold in USD - 5 Days (Thomson Reuters)
Gold declined for a second day in volatile trade. The market rose following the Russian central bank gold announcement but priced were then capped in mid morning trading in London.
Some attributed the weakness to the negative gold poll in Switzerland. However, gold had fallen prior to the release of the Swiss poll and was trading below $1,180/oz and near the lows of the day at 1600 BST when the poll results were released.
The poll yesterday showed Swiss voters will likely reject an initiative that would require the nation’s central bank to boost bullion holdings. 47% percent of voters are seen as voting “no” on the Nov. 30 Swiss gold proposal and 15 percent were undecided, according to a gfs.bern poll for Swiss public broadcaster SRF. It was conducted Nov. 7 to Nov. 15 and had a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.
Although many such polls favouring the establishment position have been very wrong in recent years.
Silver in USD - 5 Days (Thomson Reuters)
One way or another, gold and silver quickly bounced higher again. Gold retested $1,200/oz prior to further weakness set in once again in less liquid markets after the close in New York.
Besides ongoing manipulation, gold’s weakness may also be related to traders selling as the dollar remains firm and oil prices weak. For now they are ignoring the continuing ultra loose monetary policies globally and focussing on the Fed’s ‘jawboning’ and signalling that they will increase interest rates. We will believe it when we see it.
Monetary policies globally have actually become looser in recent days due to Japan’s monetary ‘bazooka’ and the threat of ‘Super Mario’s’ bazooka.
Futures trading volume on the Comex was more than double the 100-day average for this time of day, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Holdings in gold ETFs fell 1.9 metric tons to 1,616.7 tons yesterday, the lowest since May 2009 as traders and weak hands sell and gold flows to stronger hands in allocated storage and in Asia.
Buy Gold Bars in the Safest Way and at the Lowest Prices
»
- advertisements -
"The salon remained open for business and none of the staff were decontaminated."
Proof?
Seems to really spread once a person starts ejecting bodily fluids and dies. Wonder if any of the patients that have survived were having the runs and vomiting? I can see this going on for years in the third world. It certainly does considerable economic damage wherever it crops up.
FEAR FEAR FEAR! YOU NEED TO BUY GOLD NOW! BE AFRAID!!!
Or I could just relax, smoke some PCP, be a guest on CNBC. You know, the usual.
Ebola evolved to hide .
See
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2014/08/ebola-friendly-reaper_6.html
Despite all the health, freedom of speech and manipulation concerns, you have to admit, the control of the media in such a short time is impressive. Evil, but impressive.
perhaps Race, that ebola is a nothing story??? ever occurred to you? or maybe you have been shitting your pants and hiding under a rock too long, compliments of the zh brainwashing.....
Finding that you have been removed from the guest list is all it takes in D.C.
Reel them in with 'Ebola risk' and then close with 'buy gold' arguments, eh, GoldCore.com. Clearly, if the banking superstructure fails the entire capitalist infrastructure will fail leaving gold hoarders holding the bag of worthless
gold investments when no goods or services are available for purchase. One cannot eat gold bullion and one cannot make soup from it either, GoldCore.com.
Move along , nothing to see here.
Ebola death in NYC ??? Whaaaaa?
How come CNN didnt report on this??
because its bullshit. propaganda works both ways. goldcore is pathetic in their attempt to create fear and panic. the woman in brooklyn died of a heart attack. AND her body tested negative for ebola. ZH is a few steps away from a supermarket aisle rumor rag for doomers........................
Yes, there are times that ZH is just steps away from a supermarket rag... however, it is not lost on me that the main stream media IS A supermarket rag.
Flounder only has to nod in the direction of the media to wipe their minds of the facts.
You don't want to see Flounder when he's pissed.
Let it go. It never happened.
I thought we were all supposed to have died an agonizing bloody death by now - according to the ZH comments section.
Keep your head in the sand and be patient.
It's coming to you - one beauty shop at a time.
She licked the handrail on the NYC subway escalator despite my advice to avoid this unhealthy practice
Fucking please. The bigger fear is whatever forced vaccination that will be imposed on the plebes - to the massive financial windfall for the pharma company and their parasitic fund managers stand to make billions on.
Yeah, I'd be more worried about the general population being forced to take a vaccine (I'm sure provided at a reasonable price!)
Other thing is, would you, if you were starting to feel really sick, go to a nail salon-- and continue to sit there-- if you started feeling worse?! The fact that the health dept or the CDC didn't inspect/quarantine this place feels like a setup more than just "incompetence".
Anyone notice that the non-black folks who say they're infected all magically look awesome when they get out of the hospital? Imagine your system being ravaged by something that's actually causing internal bleeding. Sepsis alone would be dibilitating. You probably wouldn't be up to hug the head of the CDC or the handsomest president ever. But note the black guys who got it-- dead within a week. No pictures. Maybe social engineering to get blacks to clamor for vaccine?
The real problem is managing these cases. Not only the technology to prevent hospital spread which Ebola is notorious but also the requirement for masses of clotting factors to keep the patient alive. These are not artificially engineered but only available through blood donation.
Once a certain case load is achieved it will become unsupportable and the nightmare scenario seen in Africa could occur in areas hard hit.
Miffed
Miffed: how fast can they produce the assay (if that's the right word) for ebola RT-PCR detection?
How long does it take for a lab to do one? Is this like a hospital lab or are they done in specialized labs?
Isn't there a limitation on our healthcare system to do them? I can't imagine a city suddenly having the resources to do several tens of thousands of tests a day.
As long as you have got a good conserved region of RNA/DNA and primers, all it takes is standard PCR ( real time is fastest) to get good detectable product quickly. It depends on the processing. Some viruses like influenza we can take a nasopharyngeal swab ( god that hurts. Had one done and I thought they were going for a brain biopsy), sputum or bronchial washings, place it in a stabilizing viral transport media and place it and the PCR components together and let it run. This takes about an hour. Other viruses need " cleaning up" and we must extract the RNA first before running. This takes usually 3-5 hours. Also, PCR is susceptible to inhibition. This is like dominos lined up and you push the first one. It will go until one domino fails to strike the next and the whole thing stops. I look for product and find nothing but this is not a true negative. Most PCR employs a known internal control in a small concentration that being amplified at the same time in the same sample. If I can detect the internal control at the end of thermocycling then I can at least say PCR did occur to the end.
My other concern is the high rate of mutation in this virus. How long are these templates good until they fail to detect the new strains?
The other thing is the danger of people like myself doing these tests. Once denatured this virus is safe to handle but prior to that one mistake could be deadly. There will be considerable time to get these samples to facilities that can handle them. My job is not worth my life.
Miffed
The mutation rate also concerns me. The doctor who just passed away tested negative for the virus while he was sick from it. With the large numbers of mutations occurring it could all ready be undetectable using the current tests. This lady who dropped dead in the beauty salon dying of Ebola seems a bit far fetched. Is it possible to feel good enough to go get a haircut or whatever and then suddenly start leaking blood and drop dead a short time later? It seems that the government's method of burying all the probable cases could put health care professionals and lab people in danger as they will not know exactly what they are dealing with.
When the CDC handles these viruses in a lab it is in biocontainment level 4, but now it seems like they ok any sealed hospital ward. How do you think the virus is passed? It would seem that high viral load is critical in transferring it otherwise all of Duncan's family and pressure washer guy would have caught it along with many others exposed to the various carriers.
That's kind of the problem with taking the South African Dr. Mengele guy's research on ethnic-specific DC membrane binding and combining it with USAMRIIDs own Frankenstein-like Lassa envelope glycoprotein genetic manipulation.
Sure, the champagne flows in rivers at Ft. Detrick when you stuff ebola RNA inside a Lassa fever envelope, but it's damn hard to tell if your bio-weapon works until it's too late. When you test the vaccine and it doesn't work quite the way you expect in humans, you have an enormous PR headache. It only gets worse when your unwitting test subjects start infecting everyone else. Hell, who can keep up with all the mutations?
Israel, the Gates/Soros foundation and Monsanto are all delighted, but now you have to worry about your kid coming home from school or your wife coming home from the beauty parlor bleeding from all orifices.
Why can't the psychopaths just stick to nukes? They kind of had that under control (relatively speaking).
Have no fear, the CDC is here.....
OMG EBOLA!