"First Confirmed Ebola case in Dallas." Topic

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That plus this Ebola "Zombie" news story:

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And who says Zombie Apocalypse gaming is a waste of time.

Why does no one listen to me?

A bit late now, I suspect, for halting all flights from the region (Africa).

Glad I haven't flown in some time, and don't live there, or I'd really be worried.

Best of luck to you Texans, and/or anyone that happened to be on the flight, or coming in contact with this individual.

We are about 3 hours south of Dallas. Heebie Jeebies.

If it's here then I am sure its already in NYC and LA.

Ebola "can't" become airborne, but maybe it's time to break out the hazmat suits and rebreathers.

Well if there IS a Zombie outbreak the world's best hope is that it starts in TX.

"Ebola "can't" become airborne".

Actually, technically, that is incorrect, since if someone coughs, or sneezes on you, and has it, you are being exposed to their body fluids. That's part of the reason you see non-suited people in Africa not getting within 6 feet of those infected with the disease when talking to them.

AND, of course, no one is venturing to guess how all those nurses and doctors who know how to avoid getting Ebola came down with it, so……..

Yes, breaking out the hazmat suits and rebreathers sounds wise to me.

I'm sure there are plenty of televangelists and faith healers in the Dallas area. Get them on the case. Problem solved.

Don't need Faith. We have guns. LOTS of guns.

Why the hell aren't they qaurantining these countries?

It's easy to stop people from travelling out in this day and age.

It's not the PC thing to do…….

I live 20 miles north of Dallas. I'm not too happy right now. :(

Don't forget to buy extra ammo!

Bite proof Nomex bodysuit, helmet, kevlar reinforced gloves. Kel-tec makes a nifty .22 magnum semiautomatic pistol with a 30 – round capacity. Get a can for it and a few thousand rounds and I'm ready for the Zed Alpha.

No, I don't need to buy a gun. I need to buy More gun.

Large caliber firearms draw more Zeds. Little .22 Magnum with a suppressor is the perfect little equalizer.

Zeds, the Manitoba version:

Scene one: Survivors huddled together in a shopping mall. Camera pans over a calendar showing it's late November.

Scene Two: Zeds shuffling down street. Wind gusts blow leaves along the gutter. Then the first wind-driven snowflakes start falling.

Scene Three: Front-end loaders scooping up snow covered frozen bodies and dumping them into a dump truck.

There are no Zed problems that can't be resolved by a night-time temperature of -25 degrees.

After seeing the Cowboys the last few years it is kind of amazing that anyone caught anything in Dallas.

Read the Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton

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The "captured" organism begins to mutate and escapes…….

Roflmao Pictors!

Pictors for the win!!

I hate to rain on the panic-train, but ebola has been in the continental USA many times before and no zombie apocalypse has come of those previous outbreaks. Ebola can mutate to become transmissible by airborne transmission. The only time this ever happened was in an animal storage facility in Reston Virginia. Fortunately that strain of ebola was a simian (ape) strain which could not infect humans. The building was quarantined, decontaminated as much as possible and then sealed in concrete, just in case the virus mutated again to become infectious to humans.
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Oh, and by the way, we socialist Canadians with our universal, single-payer, "broken-down", medicare system have a vaccine and very possibly a cure for the ebola strain that is working its way through central West-Africa. So you better be nice to us!
Rod Robertson

LOL Pictors.

I'm sure they'll find a chili vaccine.

After seeing the Cowboys the last few years it is kind of amazing that anyone caught anything in Dallas.

But the Cowpokes have won three straight and are tied with Philly at 3-1 right now on top of the NFC East, so they must be doing something right.

Plus, none of their players have been alleged with domestic or child abuse.

Don't get me wrong though. My intense dislike of the Cowboys is only eclipsed by the deep burning hatred I harbor for the Raiders.

LOL ebola = Bad NFL jokes.
About sums it up.
Oh and welcome to Africa land of bad hygiene regimes and bushmeat. (The reason for all these 'diseases in the first place)

ISIS could use Ebola by infecting themselves and then coming over and spreading the virus. Very scary stuff.

THE END IS NEAR.

..again, ebola wont spread that easily in enviroment where population has even modest take on personal hygiene and aceptics. Take a look to the newsreels showing african clinics, checkpoints and aidposts. Some of the places are lacking some of the very basic equipments (my favourite: Personel with jackets, but with _vinyl_ glowes and wihout facial mask), and mostly due to financing issues.

And denying african flights would stop people from traveling to meet their relatives, friends, etc? No. They would just pick linkflight via either europe or south-america, exposing even more people via that trip in worst case scenario. Most of us wont go surfing into Liberia anyway (neither will half of the liberians travel to europe or US for weekend trip), so traffic is rather limited allready.

Also, when you sneeze and there is blood in your slime/snot/saliva, its not getting airborne, its droplet infection, and as far as I know, ebola is allready treated as a droplet infective disease under WHO:s guidelines though mainly its contagious by touch.
If it would get airborne and keep its virulency level, it would spread like a wildfire in powder and oil covered dry savannah, and against that, there would be very limitedly anything to do – other than vaccine.

"AND, of course, no one is venturing to guess how all those nurses and doctors who know how to avoid getting Ebola came down with it, so…….."

By operating in 3rd world country with people mostly trained in 3rd world countires in 3rd world hygiene? Breaking news, most of the cleaners, even in western countries, dont have higher education.
Im quite sure that doctors or nurses didnt dip their head into bowl filled with hazmat materials, more likely aceptics chains weakest link cracked.

Oh, btw – you did notice that infected arrived a week ago?

Written in rather poor english, allmost in ed off state of mind, by FDF CD-specialised medic and EMT/registered nurse student. And whats most important, from the other side of the globe :D

Maybe that Westboro mob could go and picket the hospital and cast out the demons by laying on of hands…

I don't think it is very dangerous for western countries. As MaahisKuningas90 says, precautions slows down the virus. In the event of an outbreak people could stay home for a while.

2nd infection from victim's family just reported.

I'm so glad most of you people who don't live in the U.S. are so cavalier about this. I mean, it's not the worst disease out there. Oh wait, it is. :(

Four Americans caught the virus. I'm sure they knew what they were doing. Yes precautions slow the virus down. That's not the same thing as stopping it.

…and as I said, most likely the reason why they caught it was due to local working population which do the upkeeping of those hospitals. Badly cleaned secretion stains, lack of desinfection, even contaminated water.

Also, btw, its not the worst disease out there. We still do have stuff like "smallpox" which was rooted out from the world due to vaccine-programs (now being discontinued), but oh, yeah, two countries decided to still cold-storage it for vaccination purposes. Add quotation marks if desired.
Also, we still have plagues out there, recently in china there was some sort of (apparently) MDR-feature yersinia(IIRC, pestilence anyway) outbreak as antibiotics didnt work out as planned and town-scale cohorting/quarantine was required to halt it.

Ebola has been out there, on the record, since 1970s. Propably one or two decades longer than that, off the record. Definetly bad thing, but not the worst. Its the most topical one, but far from being the worst. Example follows:
If it would go airborne and first symptoms would appear only after 2-3 weeks after infection (so carrier/infected would transmit the virus during whole time, but without major bleeding), and even in western care it would archieve mortality rate of 50-70%. Then it would be quite likely the worst.
Now, even in africa, that rate is roughly 50% (WHO, 31.9 – includes those who were practicaly left without any actual treatment due to personel shortages). In Nigeria, which apparently still has rescourses, from 21 cases only 7 dead, so 30%.
For comparision, smallpox, with best care available, had a mortality rate of over 30%, and was far more contagious than Ebola.

But good thing about this, the ambulance crew which apparently did spent time in close contact with the patient didnt catch it and tested for negative.
Also, I didnt find any news about that second victim, might be just slow international media. Was he/she US based, or was he also traveling from Africa?

And by the way: Its indeed the precautions that will eventualy stop this virus, in form of vaccine or in form of cohorting & quarantine.

Correction to previous, 33% of mortality rate in case of those treated in Nigeria. Mathematic brainfart.

Also to add, second possible US-diagnosed Ebola was just reported into international level too.

I'm so glad most of you people who don't live in the U.S. are so cavalier about this. I mean, it's not the worst disease out there. Oh wait, it is. :(

Think positive. Buy in a stock of your favorite food and beverages, contact your gaming buddies to do likewise, and hunker down together in the best man bunker you can find to game until the crisis passes.

Couldn't of happened to a nicer state.

Given this disease has, over decades, killed fewer people than get shot dead every year in the US, a little perspective is needed.

What is however worrying is that having been told that the victim had been to Liberia, he was sent home.

Have hospitals been told to look out for Ebola? And indeed do all hospital staff know Liberia is a country in West Africa and not a township in Montana?

Secondly, one does wonder why someone diagnosed with a viral infection was given antibiotics….

Stu, in the course of this major outbreak, Ebola has killed fewer people than are shot with firearms in the UK in a year.

But for that matter, bubonic plague is endemic to the southern US, from California to Georgia. It's not an issue because we still have enough predators to keep the mouse and rat populations more or less under control.

"Stu, in the course of this major outbreak, Ebola has killed fewer people than are shot with firearms in the UK in a year."

That doesn't sound right. Total homicides in England and Wales (90% of UK population) in 2012 was only 550. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18900384 of those a fairly small proportion would be by shooting, just because guns are relatively rare here (I accept that the bad guys often have them but even so). So one or two hundred UK firearms killings v >3000 Ebola deaths in this outbreak.

"Couldn't of happened to a nicer state"

Nope, pretty sure this happened in Dallas, not LA.

"I mean, it's not the worst disease out there. Oh wait, it is. :("

Not even close. And if all you paranoid types want to REALLY get your panties in bunch, check out MRSA. Makes ebola look like a bad cold. And its all over the place…(maybe in YOUR town… No, its already there, too…).

Get a grip, folks…

Ebola is perhaps getting more attention than it deserves because of coverage in pop culture with films like 'Contagion' and books like 'The Hot Zone' and 'The Andromeda Strain.'

This outbreak has killed more than all others combined, and has killed just over 3000 to date.

So let's run with a ball park figure of 6000 ever.

In 2011, total numbers of gun deaths in the UK (from all causes) was 146. (latest figures I can find)

In the USA the figure is (from a quick Google) over 12,000 in 2013.

The most worrying part of this episode is the total failure of primary health care when the victim did exactly the right thing and reported to his hospital.

BREAKING NEWS:As many as 80 people had some contact with man diagnosed in Texas with Ebola virus, officials tell US media

Uh oh.

"This outbreak has killed more than all others combined, and has killed just over 3000 to date."

If we extrapolate the death rate of the last 3 months over a year, then we are looking at over 12000 deaths in just those three small African countries.

The CDC is saying the spread rate is accelerating so I imagine that we are probably looking at 20,000+ fatalities before it burns out.

What bothers me is that this is the guy we spotted. How many have we missed? We have just had an example of our crappy border control all summer.

My money is on the idea that we have 4-5 "leakers" in NYC/L.A./Miami right now.

What bothers me is that this is the guy we spotted.

You mean it doesn't bother you that the hospital he went to, upon learning of his symptoms and that he had recently returned from West Africa, SENT HIM HOME!

The hospital spokesman basically said: "Oops."

I have heard the CDC referred to as "The Center for Disinformation and Confusion." How much of that is truth and how much is people "being clever" is anybodies guess.

Oh I expected that. I think it will take 4 or 5 actual deaths in the US before anyone actually takes it seriously.

how is this a wargaming discussion? it seems like this board is just used as a current affairs board, and there are comments like "africa is a filthy land" as a result. it's very depressing to read things like that from people on a hobby site, which is why current affairs are so often frowned on in hobby forums….

The Great Ebola Catastrophe Should Be Treated The Same Way As The Threat Posed By Nuclear Weapons

"The Ebola virus spreading exponentially across Africa and killing thousands of people "will get worse", the Government has admitted, amid calls for the full involvement of the international military to contain the disease.

Justine Greening, the International Development Secretary, said that ministers had been shocked by a prediction from the US public health institute that 1.4 million people may be infected by the virus by January if it continues unchecked.

As ministers, diplomats and humanitarian organisations from 20 different countries pledged a further £79.00 GBP million to control the outbreak, which has already killed more than 3,000 people, a group of 35 European security officials issued a joint declaration suggesting that Ebola should be treated in the same way as the threat posed by nuclear weapons…"

Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

I'm guessing that if there were any 'leakers' then you'd know about it by now.

The disease could indeed get apocalyptic – in Africa.

In the USA with (allegedly) a competent first world health care system, not so much. With decent medical car,e most people seem to survive.

There are more doctors in my local hospital than in Liberia… it has the grand total of 50.