I do not like them, Sam I am.
I do not like these green plagues and sham.
The two most gripping topics in the media as of late are the Ebola and ISIS crises.
Both situations have been grossly underestimated as to their gravity.
The Ebola virus threatens a pandemic.
The extremists of Sham threaten genocidal retribution to the apostate.
From the family filoviridae, Ebola viral infection results in a heamorrhagic fever.
From the family al-Qaeda, ISIS results in terrible consequences as well.
The Ebola epidemic currently raging in West Africa has been likened to the Black Death.
Extremely contagious and virulent, the virus boasts a Case-Fatality Rate (CFR) of over 70%.
This means that for every 10 people who contract the virus, 7 will perish in horrible fashion.
Most alarming to infectious disease experts analyzing the situation, is the rate at which health care workers are contracting the disease.
Despite (supposed) adherence to Universal Precautions (UP), workers providing care to infected persons are becoming infected at an alarming rate.
According to statistics compiled by The New England Journal of Medicine (September 23, 2014DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1411100), over 10 percent (11.1%) of the case fatalities associated with Ebola viral disease (EVD) are accounted for by health care workers directly caring for those infected.
This is alarming, considering the fact that most workers engaged in caring for those ill are keenly aware of the highly infectious and virulent nature of the virus they are dealing with.
The fact that the walking epidemic was not recognized as potentially disastrous at the outset is illustrative of how complacent the West has become.
With their steamed mochaccinos and frappes, they're too fuckin' pre-occupied to notice death at their doorstep.
With ISIS as well, the West vastly underestimated the threat and hence facilitated dissemination of both virus and radical ideology.
According to health care workers on the front lines of the current Ebola outbreak, the resources necessary in order to properly contain and control the viral epidemic are not being provided by the West / 1st world nations.
This may be because the virus has yet to directly affect them and it is easy to distance oneself from the marginalized components of a marginalized nation / continent.
Similarly, ISIS is easy to ignore or obscure into abstraction when they do not pose an immediate threat to the West.
Damascus is a little too far from Washington, D.C. to be of pressing import.
West Africa is also a little too far from home to be of immediate concern.
One thing history should have taught us regarding both outbreaks of infectious disease and proliferation of seditious and fundamentalist fervor is that, no matter how small and insignificant such beginnings may seem, they can very rapidly blossom into full scale plagues and genocidal wars.
But, rather than be prudential, those imperial powers that be are nothing short of slovenly and sloth.
Will our epitaph read "too little, too late", or will none be left to scribe the details of the next great plague upon humanity. Y. pestis (YP) was child's play compared to EVD, whose CFR is nearly double that of the so-called black death (estimated at approx. 40%).
Now, when faced with the new "black death", the new heamorrhagic plague, we must ask ourselves:
What sort of perverse self-destructive tendencies would lead so many within the health care system to assume that the virus (EVD) is only transmissible after symptoms appear in an infected individual?
Every infectious disease has an incubation period which spans from the time when a person is infected to when the first symptoms appear, and an infectious period which is the time during which the person can transmit the infection to other people. The infection is followed by a latent period during which germs multiply until the victim becomes infectious. If this latent period is shorter than the incubation period, an infected person will be infectious before the symptoms appear and he or she may unknowingly transmit the disease to others.
Should we not assume that, like many other viruses (and bacterium), Ebola Heamorrhagic Fever (EHF) is indeed transmissible prior to presentation of symptoms?
"Ring-a-ring of roses
Pocket full of posies
Atishoo, atishoo
We all fall down."
By the time the so-called "God's tokens" had presented themselves, a victim of the bubonic / pneumonic plague had been infectious for weeks, unknowingly harbouring and shedding the bacterium / virus.
Similarly, understanding that EVD is transmissible through body fluids (i.e. blood, semen, vomit / bile, breast milk), should it not be safe to assume that with an incubation period lasting as long as three weeks, infectious levels of virus could be shed by the infected individual prior to becoming symptomatic?
Indeed, had biological (and viral) evolution not been able to account for so-called silent transmission (i.e. taking place prior to symptomatology), disease would not be able to efficiently spread as people tend to avoid and /or take great pre-caution with those exhibiting signs of an illness, particularly one of epidemic / pandemic proportions.
So, it only makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that a microorganism adapt and be able to transmit silently if it plans on succeeding and proliferating much the way us humans have so exhaustively demonstrated.
Also, there is presently no talk of asymptomatic carriers (AC), which are always present in any outbreak.
The AC are the most effective means of prolonged and proficient transmission as they are the truly silent transmitters, able to infect others while never exhibiting any symptoms whatsoever.
Communicability is a function of virulence and transmission.
Ebola is both extremely virulent (i.e. low infective dose) and easily transmissible (as seen by the number of infected health care workers).
The number of infected people is doubling as every week passes.
HERE BEGONNE THE PLAGE (GOD PUNISMET)
The symptoms and necropsy reports of haemorrhagic plague are closest to those of Ebola and Marburg, particularly the necrosis of the internal organs and the haemorrhagic manifestations, suggesting that the pathogen may have been a filovirus.
Filoviruses are the prototypical emerging pathogens: they cause a haemorrhagic disease of high case-fatality associated with explosive outbreaks due to person-to-person transmission, have no known treatment, occur unpredictably, and have an unknown reservoir.
Some have suggested, therefore, that the plagues were an emergent haemorrhagic fever, probably caused by a filovirus.
So, if we are to "lose the fight" against EVD / EHF, it is not because we didn't feebly attempt to convince the masses that the authorities were fully engaged in all preventative measures possible (i.e. screening passengers for febrile illness at major American airports).
Rather, it is because we vastly underestimated our opponent and once again assumed that our eminence was immanent.
\\\\\\\\\\Ebola: the zoonoses with the mostest.!!!!!!!!!!!
