The ebola Maginot Line
I’ve got an article up at PJ about—what else?—our response to ebola. I conceptualize our response as a series of barriers, each of which was breached one by one by one, in ways that were supposed to have been either impossible or highly unlikely.
One little quibble: my original title for the piece was as above, “The Ebola Maginot Line.” A subtitle, “Ebola in US was clearly preventable” was added before publication. But I would say instead that, although it probably was not totally preventable, its entry here might have been prevented with a few commonsense measures and almost certainly could have been delayed. In addition, our response should have been far better.
But none of that makes a good subtitle.
You can comment there or comment here. Better yet, both places!
in the other thread i point out the commonality of liberals who think rules are not for them…
from obama thinking to bypass traditional quarantine (cause that is the old culture, and hanging on to the old culture is racism a la trotsky)
to liberals who bicycle running red lights, speeding, going the wrong way, driving on the sidewalk
in fact, this list could get quite large in that rules are for other people, and liberals think its ok to skirt them while they call for more of them to fix things
they tend to ignore rules they dont like
and make up rules on the fly, like children do when playing, imagining that others will follow them and they get instant advantage (without others noticing)
” Indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. It leads the modern liberal to invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Very simply if nothing is to be recognized as better or worse than anything else then success is de facto unjust. There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and the greater the success the greater the injustice. Conversely and for the same reason, failure is de facto proof of victimization and the greater the failure, the greater the proof of the victim is, or the greater the victimization.” Evan Sayet
Intentions are much more important than results;
the docs intentions of going to africa and living in harlem to help others, was more important than following the rules to prevent similar sickness in a country that one vilifies
Feelings are more important than logic:
he felt he was ok, and safe, and as a doctor, did not need to follow the logic of the CDC rules.
Rules are for others to follow, not for libs to follow…
why?
because if you create rules and others follow them, and you dont, you gain advantage, and so advantage is for the libs, not for others who the rules are really intended for…
Artfldgr:
See this comment of mine.
It sure is going to be fun when cold and flu season starts. Some people will panic when they get the sniffles, thinking they have Ebola; while others will catch Ebola, think “oh, it’s just a cold”, and go about their normal routine.
rickl:
I don’t think anyone will catch ebola thinking it’s a cold, because runny nose, cough, etc. aren’t ebola symptoms.
Sore throat and fever are, however. So it’s more likely someone would confuse ebola symptoms with flu symptoms, not cold symptoms.
That’s a bit of a quibble, though. I get your point.
The best explanation for events is that ebola is actually being kicked up into the air — as a heavy aerosol — which is being breathed in/ entering via the eyes.
The medical talent is picking up ebola AFTER the end of their shift — when taking off their protection.
1) They’re tired.
2) They’re in a hurry.
3) They’re thirsty/ hungry.
4) They are — too often — unwrapping BEFORE their hazmat suits are totally decontaminated.
5) What decontamination that is performed is in error: it’s kicking ebola up into the air. I’ve seen more than a few media photos evidencing the use of power spray washers!!!!
Such gear HAS to mean that ebola is being kicked loose all over the decontamination zone.
6) One NEVER sees anyone using UV/ black lights to provide a general kill zone for ebola.
If there is one weakness of viruses its that they can’t repair UV damage. They’re too small and too simple. They depend on vast numbers.
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This latter point bears emphasis. Even a SINGLE ebola virion is deadly once it’s inside the body/ blood stream.
At the same time, ebola suffers fantastic attrition due to natural factors during transmission. Africa has high UV levels — naturally. So ebola is absolutely dead in the Sahara.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that, in the normal course of events, only one virion out of a billion has a chance of getting over to a new victim.
Yet ebola multiplies into the trillions.
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The other unspoken factor: Muslim burial rites.
They are the NUMBER ONE source of the African nightmare.
I’ll post it again: Muslims don’t practice Western burial practices at all. Mo’ specified that the dead are to be buried by KIN… not strangers/ professionals.
He then laid out just EXACTLY how the dead are to be washed and wrapped. FYI, only odd counts are acceptable. So one washes the dead one time, three times or five times… complete… never two times or four times.
The same odd count is required for the body wrap… which echoes that of Egyptian mummies. (Doubtless this is a heritage from the ancient past.) Hence, if you’re really poor… one wrap of white cloth. If you’re able… three wraps of white cloth… etc.
The washing and the wrapping assure that ebola is passed on.
This is compounded by African death rites that require the family to participate.
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All of this ties directly back to Natufian culture, 12,000 ybp, which DNA has established as being a Black (African) culture. [ Subject to revision — this is a hotbed of research.]
So what happens is that the family of the deceased is jointly involved cleaning and wrapping the body.
Which tallies with entire families being stricken with ebola at one go.
West African officials have already banned these practices — to the extent they can get the word out. But it’s a hard thing for the locals to go against the spirit world and traditions of millennia.
As you might imagine, nothing is more infectious than a deceased ebola victim. Virions have to be erupting from the body in astonishing amounts.
%%%
For some reason, it has still not occurred to our health officials that black lights/ UV have to be to hand to suppress ebola.
Ultra-violet light does not disturb the air. Ebola can’t survive it. UV should be used as the first step of every decontamination process. Even if it can’t kill them all, it can trim them down — on the cheap.
Virions are wired for reproduction not repair.
BTW, the use of fluorescent dyes in a hazmat suit would — by not glowing — make visible the need for additional passes of UV radiation. Once a hazmat suit is positively glowing — one can move to the next step.
Good article neo. Just saw I photo op of the messiah hugging the first Dallas nurse who has been declared ebola free. That is madness. She could still be shedding the virus. But then, president joe biden would be an improvement so perhaps hope and change might work out after all.
I’d like to add to your Ebola Maginot line that we stop with the “honor” system of self quarantine.
While it has been a small number (only 2 so far) it is 2 too many health care professionals who should have know better to not fly or take the subway or a cab or go out into public when they could very well be a danger to others.
These are people who should have known better!
While it could be true that they weren’t that much of a danger their actions have caused some panic – that alone should be enough for someone in charge to say the honor system isn’t working.
Charles:
Actually, they were following the guidelines, as I pointed out here.
Because they had worn protection, they didn’t actually have to quarantine, just monitor their temps and notify authorities if they ran a temp.
It’s the guidelines that I think are wrong. The health care professionals might have erred on the side of caution and gone further than the guidelines (as, interestingly enough, Duncan’s stepdaughter did—they told her she could go to work as a nurse’s aide and she decided she needed to stay home, as I mentioned in the article). I actually think they should have erred on the side of caution and stayed home.
And while I agree that the self-quarantine is a bad idea, and that the quarantines should be more formal—if the CDC didn’t know better, then the health care professionals can say why should they have known better?
parker:
Wow, that’s amazing that he hugged her. Another grand gesture—we’re supposed to be reassured by that.
I don’t think she’s contagious, but I’d wait a while before hugging her. And I’m not the president of the United States.
blert:
That burial rites are involved is common knowledge.
The countries with ebola are warning against them. In fact, since August Liberia has made it illegal to bury an ebola victim; they must be cremated, by law.
Those sort of burial rites, by the way, are not just Muslim rites, although some of the details are.
Neo,
You have my vote if you ever throw your apple into the ring. Judging by your blog, you would be a success as potus. I’ll gladly donate $2,000 to your campaign and knock on doors in all of Iowa’s 99 counties.
Here’s a pertinent article to some recent discussion
Ebola blood-therapy team set up
An international team of scientists has been set up to determine the effectiveness of using the blood of Ebola survivors as a treatment.
parker:
🙂
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/24/new-york-new-jersey-set-up-mandatory-quarantine-requirement-amid-ebola-threat/
At least Christie and Cuomo have woken up.
I’m also glad to know that New York has enough brains to only send specialist with proper training and kit to the foolish doctor.
( Visiting bowling alleys is the height of folly — considering his recent ebola risk — and just how recent it was.
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As I’ve posted before: the carriers that are the greatest risk are those immediately before and after their fever has kicked in.
The zany idea that an asymptomatic carrier can’t spread ebola is logically insane. Just at which point of their fever do they ‘flip over’ or just when do they even recognize they’ve even got a fever?
I’d expect the average carrier to, literally, wake up sick. The flip is most likely to occur while in bed. Any fatigue prior to bed is sure to be attributed to the hour.
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It’s notable that those calling for restraint — to warn against panic — are triggering policies that result in panics.
No amount of happy talk is going to calm down any mother when she reads that a carrier has been commuting on the IRT.
And the reason the carrier took the IRT is because he was told — “Not to worry.”
Quarantining prospective carriers/ candidates is a policy that eliminates panic, nothing else will do.
blert,
There is so much we don’t know about the current strain of ebola burning flesh in Africa. I agree that modes of transmission are open to speculation and like you, I am not willing to trust the ever changing assurances of team obama. However, the alarming rate of infection among health care workers is probably due to carelessness. Failure to strictly quarantine American caregivers returning from the infection zone is madness. Allowing anyone else from the infection zone to set foot on our soil is insanity.
The mad hatter and his queen VJ are talking backwards and logic and proportion are soggy dead. Michael Moore and others of the loony left mourned that on 9/11/01 AQ struck progressive NYT instead of the knuckle draggers in Kansas. Now these fools get to ride on subway cars wondering if they are touching surfaces coated with the sweat of ebola carriers. Touché.
Good analogy.
You could add ISIS and terrorists in general and immigration and so on.
We “think” we are safe. We think we’ll scare them off.
The Germans went around it. The immobile fortifications were useless. The French did not war game the future. They war-gamed the past. The never knew how bad it was until they were totally defeated and they surrendered.
That is where we may find ourselves. The “impossible” could happen.
Once upon a tine in 410 A.D. it was “impossible” that Visigoths might actually break through the walls of Rome and pillage the city. They did it. Rome never recovered. An Empire fell in an historical blink of the eye. It all “made sense” after the fact. Before the fact it was “never going to happen”.
parker:
I suppose it could be carelessness, and I suppose some health care worker ebola cases are carelessness, but I have come to think it’s not just carelessness. Maybe even not primarily carelessness. There are too many well-known doctors and experts falling prey, including Americans, who say they were not careless.
I think they are following the rules for precautions, but the rules/precautions as stated are not always adequate. We need to find out what’s missing, and correct it.
The UK Daily Mail has a scoop:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/mqyg29e
This illustrates how slapdash and haphazard the Ruling Class is about “implementation” of the alleged protocols. Spot the mistakes, see the lack of training.
Also, why the hell was the doctor — all the folks who worked with ebola patients — in quarantine like the NBC crew?
The virus can be carried by, as far as we know, pigs, monkeys, dogs, bats, AND rats. They make a nice reservoir for the virus, especially that last. If the virus gets into the rodent population in NYC, we could all be living Albert Camus’s scenario in “The Plague.”
Oh, and putting contaminated materials into public, outdoor trash cans (see link above) is the PERFECT way to get the virus to the rats.
Mike, the actual Maginot strategy never came off for two reasons.
1) Change in government — triggered a change in the French defense budget. The new government decided to stop building half way through the original design. (!) This is still not popularly known — even among historians.
Military historians, in particular, gloss over national budget issues. They don’t even lift the covers. The politically oriented historians/ journalists ignore military triviata.
2) The Sitzkrieg of 1939/40 occurred during the coldest Winter in memory. Records were shattered. The ground was so hard that no-one could dig any earthworks.
This proved significant, because the French army had modified its grand strategy — because of the budget restrictions — down to digging extensive earthworks only upon the initiation of hostilities. It was reasoned that since Germany would have to transit either Luxembourg or Belgium, France would surely be able to dig enough fox holes and trenches to suffice.
In the event, the Germans attacked straight through the Ardennes and fell upon second and third class French formations — that were coming up to dig engineering works. This is now largely gloomed over, but most of the French formations (near the Meuse crossings) were colonial troops — ie Black African (engineering) troops that were expected to simply dig. They hadn’t even been drilled in combat procedures. (!) These guys were immediately pulled back once the bad news came in. [ The national command thought that German infantry (along this front) would show up two to three weeks later.]
Because of that, the French had to scramble up third echelon (White, elderly) troops with only a sprinkling of first rate formations. (ie tanks)
As you might imagine, both then and now, the newsreels were censored — and absolutely no footage of Black of senior troops was ever permitted. (Senior in the sense of being WWI veterans, and men with families — not in the sense of being cranky old men. They were also equipped with WWI rifles, too.)
So both Plan A and Plan B went south.
Being either second echelon troops or sappers — no-one had anything to hand that would stop a German tank. This was why even feeble, weak, Mark II panzers just ran riot.
Their feeble, brave, counter-attacks came off as a repetition of WWI, too. They didn’t have anything to deal with machine guns, either.
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One could make the argument that the USAF — and its Minuteman missiles ARE America’s version of the Maginot line — and they’ve worked. Design-wise, SAC missile bases are virtually clones of the Maginot line.
Massive bunkers
Laid in food and fuel
Independent power supplies
Conditioned air — bottled emergency air
Buried telephone links
Restricted from all civilian traffic even during peace time
Poor Maginot — his name is sullied.
Mike the Vandals sacking Rome has a lot of myth making in it… all designed to make Rome look good and the Vandals as nasty.
The bottom line: Rome stiffed the Vandals AFTER the Vandals had performed mercenary duties (for Rome, and with terms of payment) in North Africa.
Unlike the Romans, the Vandals did NOT despoil the city. They DID loot it of portable wealth. That’s a far cry from what the Romans did to those IT conquered.
The Vandals did not enslave Romans and march them off to captivity.
They took one look at Roman culture — and immediately decided to hit the road. (Probably sobered up.)
This non-payment of allied armed forces became a chronic habit for Roman politicians. If they’d ever paid off their tab, the ‘primitives’ would never have made the trip. In every case, it’s highly significant that no invading army ever cared to stay.
That’s an AMAZING track record. I know of no other ancient city — once conquered — so consistently rejected as a war prize. Roman art was uniformly considered vile, gross… their norms, deviant, perverted; a really, really bad place to raise the kids.
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What REALLY destroyed Rome (and Constantinople) was the utterly horrific mass famine that occurred between 535/6 AD and 539 AD. Contemporary accounts tell us of a cultural collapse — with 90-95% of the city’s population dead or in flight.
This super famine also hit the Orient. They also wrote of the same bleak horrors.
Krakatoa had blown up in 535/6 AD and screwed up EVERYTHING in the moderate latitudes. (It didn’t much affect Northern Europe… love that Gulf Stream.)
The Ka’aba is centered around a hunk of Krakatoa’s ejecta even to this day.
It’s easy to understand: Krakatoa was so loud that it could be heard from Cape Town to Tokyo to Jerusalem. The 535/6 explosions were many times greater than that of 1883. (!!!)
So it’s understandable that the desert natives would’ve revered glowing ‘meteorites’ falling from the heavens — at night — into the Arabian desert… and so easy to find, too.
Eventually Mo’ cut down the rock count so that Muslims worship only the biggest lava fragment.
Naturally, the last thing any imam will tolerate is a scientific analysis of his god-rock. Nuclear activation analysis would make its Krakatoa origin obvious to all.
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The soot KILLED OFF ALL RAINFALL — for as long as FOUR YEARS — if you were in the wrong latitudes.
This was why the Petrans upped stakes and fled to the only mountain water source they knew: the Hajiz. (Mecca and Medina) This terrible journey also explains why Petra simply ‘stopped’ — and why the earliest Arabic alphabet corresponds to that of Petra and points north. (Modern Arabic has dropped a couple of letters. This weird ‘northern cultural angle’ can’t be explained any other way.) But we certainly know what terrific stone carvers the Petrans were. They immediately set to work and got back into their original line of business: water provisions and good luck offerings to caravan operators.
The legacy of this horrific population loss explains — hugely — why Islam was able to race across North Africa — even into Iberia. In every case, the populations had either moved out, died out, or were hanging on by a thread.
The long drought also killed off the Roman granary in Algeria and Tunisia. Four years of no rain killed off even the trees. Then the topsoil blew away.
BTW, the Eastern Emperor was on the boat out of Constantinople before his lover talked him back to the pier. (536AD) The food riots from the starving were THAT BAD.
She reasoned that everywhere was as bad as Constantinople — and the starving were sure to flee the city without further ado.
Because no foreign armies were involved, historians largely skipped past this epic horror. Contemporary scribes describe such traumas that modern readers simply refused to believe that such end-of-time suffering could have ever occurred.
So all of this — is not in common history texts. It is, however, largely acknowledged by geologists and experts of the period and experts of dendrochronology. It also animates many doomers of the AGW bent.
It’s the black swan event I’m worried about. People who treat Ebola patients have noted that they go into denial. That is a natural human reaction when you realize you might die. Unless something is done, one of these days an Ebola victim in the USA or Europe will become severely ill and expose multiple victims. So far we have been lucky, but that luck will not hold much longer if we continue to act like fools.
This very thing just happened in Mali where a two year old child from Guinea traveled for 1000 miles by bus and developed a nose bleed on the trip. She has died but not before many more have been exposed.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29755443
I will stick with the carelessness scenario until more information is available. Its so very easy to make the tiniest mistake, especially under stressful conditions. If viruses were hot radioisotopes it would be so easy to find the errors and pinpoint where the proceures broke down. Otherwise, modes of transmission are not clearly understood which is a very scary thought.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/24/quarantined-traveler-who-returned-to-n-j-from-west-africa-develops-fever/
Just another brick in the wall of the pandemic. Northern Minnesota looks warmer day by day.
blert Says:
October 24th, 2014 at 9:17 pm
Fascinating comment, blert. I was aware of the tree ring data around 535 AD, and have always heard that the Ka’aba is a meteorite.
Some have theorized about an impact in 535, but there is no obvious crater at that age. A massive volcano eruption might fit the bill.
Neo, I agree that the guidelines need to be stronger. Self quarantining isn’t working.
While some of this is due to public panic and the cure for that is education; there is still the issue of a restaurant, coffee shop, and bowling alley in NYC that all had to close for one day (losing business) because they are places the Ebola victim visited before “getting sick.”
Again, it may be overkill panic on the part of the public. But, if those places didn’t close for a day (losing money in the process) to have the city health inspectors come in to give them a “clean bill of health” can we be certain that they wouldn’t have gone out of business because of the public perception that they are not safe to visit?
Who would be to blame if they did go out of business? the public? the Ebola patient? or the government for not having stronger guidelines? It is actually all three – but, which two are easier to change?
As for this doctor self-quarantining – yes, he stayed away from work; but, it also sounds like he treated this as more of a vacation that a self-imposed quarantine. Going out in public, riding the subway, taking a car service, eating out in restaurants.
Sorry, but, I don’t consider any of that behavior as “self quarantine.” And, I do fault the doctor for that. He knew that he had just come back from a “hot zone.” Not just for Ebola, but for other illnesses as well. He should have exercised more caution.
Selfish of me perhaps; but, I do NOT want to be riding the subway when another rider starts throwing up all over the place with a deadly contagious illness. I suspect that I am not selfish in that regards either.
Blert, I second, rickl’s gratitude for your comment. A lot of interesting stuff there to mull over. And I agree with your earlier comment that the accepted “history” of the Vandals and Visigoths sacking Rome has been cartoonishly mythologized, and their mistreatment by the Romans (especially failure to live up to promises made in return for support in previous battles) was the motivation for the Vandals and others sacking Rome.
blert –
Thirded!
Teotihuacan
Here’s another victim of Krakatoa.
Civil unrest destroyed the civilisation 536-539AD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan
“The city may have lasted until sometime between the 7th and 8th centuries AD, but its major monuments were sacked and systematically burned around 550 AD. At its zenith, perhaps in the first half of the 1st millennium AD, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, with a population estimated at 125,000 or more…”
Historians have yet to put it all together: EVERY civilization in those latitudes was flattened — politically and socially by the total collapse of conventional farming.
This was amplified for any significant city that was distant from a fishery.
The symbolism of Christ hanging with fishermen… was already in the collective unconscious two millennia ago. The ocean is — and will remain — our last larder during climate extremities.
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Today’s climate is warped — massively — by Red China’s utterly fantastic coal soot emissions.
1) They are killing the Chinese — slowly.
2) They are causing staggering snowfalls in Alaska and the Yukon beyond any in history.
3) They are restoring the Arctic ice cap each Winter. (Cloud seeding)
4) They are melting the Arctic ice cap each Summer. (The ice is darkened.)
5) Snow that is supposed to fall in the Cascades and Sierras is dumped too far north…. if not in the Bering sea. Even it’s getting crazy with ice.
Some of that snow pack is commented upon during the Alaskan reality TV shows. Most such comments hit the cutting room floor.
The result is that suffering is everywhere — and the AGW crowd remains utterly clueless. They don’t read Alaskan broad sheets.
Naturally, no-one is even raising the issue with Beijing.
I live in a time of idiocy.
The feds are pushing the idea that a temporary travel ban is unproductive because it discourages health workers from going to Western Africa. The idea is that they will be the ones who solve this crisis.
I haven’t seen anyone challenge this idea. The disease is spreading exponentially. What are the volunteers doing that will stop this spreading? It sounds like they are treating patients, that is all. If they are not actually organizing a government response to train the populations, institute quarantines and add hospital beds, then they are not solving the crisis. They are doing little more than working around the edges.
Steve
They are applying STRICTLY palliative care.
They have NO MEDICINE — no tricks — to bring to the party.
BTW, the number of such volunteers has utterly collapsed.
It’s notable that our hero of the hour stayed, IIRC, less than a month. (Gave up?)
MSF normally insists on a three to six-month commitment.
Popping in and out costs plenty — but results in very little health care. By the time a doctor is up and running — effectively — weeks have passed by. No doctor is effective until he knows his way around — and the people he’s working with.
Because of the turmoil — and fatalities — west Africa is ALREADY medical chaos.
The local economy has already totally broken down.
Ebola is a micro-version of the 535/6-9 horror. It figures to take out all of the most connected souls — especially to include politicians, MDs, and the media.
The horrific transmission / infection tempo of all MDs is telling us we don’t know what we think we know.
Along the same lines, the plan to send the military to deal with the outbreak also should be challenged. If they had arrived months ago, then they could have set up hospitals with enough beds to treat everyone who got sick. Now there are thousands of people who are sick. The number is increasing exponentially, so there is no chance of treating everyone and stopping the disease’s spread.