Obama Administration Seeks $58M To Put (Partly) Toward Fighting Ebola 105
The Associated Press reports (here, as carried by the Washington Times) that The White House is asking Congress for $58 million above current levels to speed the production of promising drugs to fight Ebola and additional flexibility for the Department of Homeland Security to cope with the thousands of unaccompanied Central American children still arriving at the southern border. ... [T]he $58 million request for the Centers for Disease Control would help the agency ramp up production and testing of the experimental drug called ZMapp, which has shown promise in fighting the Ebola epidemic in western Africa. It would also help keep the development and manufacturing of two Ebola vaccines on track. The White House request also seeks to use $10 million in unused balances at the Department of Health and Human Services to help with the Ebola outbreak in Africa. The scarcity of ZMapp, the most promising treatment known for Ebola, is such that the third U.S. doctor to have been returned after being infected by the disease will be treated without it.
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Despite what people think Ebola is not very contagious in the western world where personal hygiene is actually practised. Ebola requires prolonged exposure or direct contact with bodily fluids. It's not like a influenza which can easily spread around an office from a simple sneeze.
Personally I was more concerned about the SARS outbreak a few years ago than a few people coming and going from a "part of the world" which has an Ebola epidemic.
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Sure Ebola /could/ mutate to spread easier... but the common flu could more easily mutate again to become more deadly, and it's already here.
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Fast mutation does not equal fast evolution. RNA based viruses mutate a lot faster than DNA based organisms because single helix RNA has less error correction than DNA. Single celled organisns mutate more than multicelled organisms that can protect their reproductive cells inside their outher layers, cells with nuclei have lower mutation rates than un-nucleated cells, and there are several other changes in organisms that reduce the mutation rate further which I won't bother to go into. But that doesn't translate to the organisms evolving faster. Any organism that survives to reproduce is pretty close to being a perfect fit for its environment. That's why evolution isn't about big, sudden jumps, A big change positions an organism so that it is much farther from perfectly adapted, and only a small change has any chance of positioning the organism closer to perfectly adapted for its local conditions, without overshooting. Viruses are so simple that just about any change is a big change. If, just for the sake of argument, we say that only 1 in 100 mutations in an 'advanced' organism (i.e. flounder, oak trees or us) is an improvement, then only 1 in 100,000 or 1 in a Million or an even lower ratio of changes is similarly beneficial to a virus. ,where maybe 20% of each generation dies of that one mutation before final assembly, but no evolution happens at all.
Imagine a giraffe, that is within a couple of inches of being the perfect height to reach the highest branches it needs to eat from. Figure that if a single mutation made a difference of 12 feet to that giraffe's height, the mutants would all have tremendous problems with pumping blood up to their brains, and be very unsuccessful. but a girraffe may have 20 different genes that each affect height in a small way, so a mutation can occur that gets that giraffe's descendents those couple of inches that actually count as an improvement, without overshooting wildly. A virus, on the other hand, may have one short gene for making a simple repeating structure that tiles to make its whole outer shell, and any change makes a structure that won't tile at all. The virus can mutate a lot, but every single time it gets any possible mutation on that gene, it dies without reproducing at all. Huge amounts of mutation are possible
I do like the idea of people choosing to donate for various projects, if they can be confident the government won't transfer the donations to other areas. I think even a system where people have to pay a given amount of taxes, but get to decide how much they want to go to what government projects would be an improvement.
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which often live the same or only slight differently than in their original cultures/origin?
You come across as incredibly racists / ignorant. I live in a country with a massive immigrant population from places like India, Pakistan, Africa, and SE Asia. I have also visited many countries of their origin. While some of what they do may be considered by you to be unhygienic it's a far cry from what goes on in their own countries.
Travelling around the world I have seen people in major cities dedicate on the streets, wash food in the same water they just wash their cloths, wash themselves en-mass in a
Re:Nice (Score:4, Funny)
personal hygiene is actually practised
Quite right. Simple measures
Wash your hands, cover your mouth while coughing, seal the gloves of your suit with duct tape, stay home from work, use a glovebox, Get plenty of sleep and exercise, decontaminate yourself with a disinfectant shower, manage your stress, ensure that the air is filtered and sterilized,, drink plenty of fluids, decontaminate and sterilize your garbage, and eat healthy food.
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Ebola requires prolonged exposure or direct contact with bodily fluids.
Ah, like AIDS, then? Well the US is safe then, because AIDS never made any progress there.
At least, not among White Middle-aged Guys. Not even their own wives would have promiscuous sex with them. Which is confusing, being that only White Middle-aged Guys are given the cure for Ebola.
Re:Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Reporter: "Thousands of people are dying from a massive outbreak of a terrible disease."
Reporter: "Libya's health infrastructure has been completely overwhelmed. A number of hospitals, including their largest, have been closed and quarantined."
Obama: "Yeah, we should do something about that."
Mr D from 63: "Oh ho! Look who's jumping on the bandwagon!"
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Are you seriously trying to imply that the only reason to address an ebola outbreak is to score popularity points?
I personally wouldn't think so, no. But the state of play as given easily supports the notion that, despite its independent merits, it's definitely a convenient political lever as well, a.k.a. "Rahm's Rule" [fee.org]:
TFA states somewhat in passing that this is part of a package of so-called "anomalies" to the upcoming Continuing Resolution, including, as the article coyly puts it, "additional flexibility" for border control, without providing any numbers or other details. Being the curious sort, I just spent about
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To put it in terms your xenophobic brain can understand, isn't it better to fight a disease over there so it doesn't come here, like, say, fighting starvation there so the people starving don't come here?
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I have a hypothesis that in a western hospital, the survival rate might be a bit more than 50%, too. We don't have a large sample size to judge by, yet.
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Even while the top five hospitals in the country each have a single case to deal with, the survival rate may be good - it wont be the situation when there are more cases than hospitals.
Either a heap of people follow Obama's lead or "we gonna be toast!"
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Disclaimer: I am not a citizen of the US, but I am in favor of any actions my government will take to help fight ebola.
Maybe you should think for twenty seconds before shooting your mouth off.
- It is still early enough that it is (relatively) cheap to contain the disease. If the disease is left to run amok, it is going to be astronomically more expensive to fight. When should action be taken? When the disease crosses into the Europe? Into North America? Into the US?
- This is a valuable opportunity to learn
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Uh, no. The reason it's scarce is because they've been sending it to Africa.
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Dude, I have a great idea. Let's use the people who signed up for the one-way trip to Mars to serve as doctors and nurses since they are totally expendable!!
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I was one who posted that I was willing to go to Mars one-way.
I wouldn't go to Africa to try to stop ebola.
Mars has a better chance of success.
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well obviously they wouldn't have to go if they don't want to. either way the hospital staff will be exposed. the point is to minimize exposure to the general population.
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Telephone Sanitisers won't suffice. This is too big a job for just them.
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Could we at least try with the lawyers?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that it can only be transferred through bodily fluid I don't think it's really that big of a risk to treat patients in the states. We have isolation wards for a reason.
My impression is that the whole reason it's even spreading in Africa is because of the culture there -- people don't trust the doctors and bad burial practices and lots of ignorance and superstition.
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Why are we bringing people infected with a virulent disease that has no real cure back to this country?
Because, in all seriousness, getting an Ebola patient for your hospital's biocontainment unit is like getting a panda for your zoo.
It's an exclusive club that marks your facility as being top tier, guarantees continued funding for your biocontainment unit (which has only been used once in the past decade), gets you *loads* of local, national, and even international coverage, etc.
All the other regional hospitals will be green with envy. Just make sure you are only accepting a patient that is past the inflect
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A red carpet rolled out, you say?
From Africa to the United States, you say?
And the Americans who have been flown back are illegal, you say?
I am only giving you credit for having an IQ higher than asphalt because you posted as AC.
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You want to shut down all travels from Africa when only 4 countries have a significant number of Ebola case? You have no idea of the size of Africa, do you?
Well, be fair. I believe the AC posting above is former half-term governor Sarah "Winky" Palin. You know, who referred to Africa as a country.
Or possibly the AC is Rep Tom Marino (R, naturally), who criticized the president about Libya, saying, "Where does it stop? Do we go into Africa next?"
Proud to a 'murican!
Partly (Score:1, Insightful)
"To Put (Partly) Toward Fighting Ebola...". The majority of it will go to buy votes.
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Now how the heck should that increase kickbacks?
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"subsided" has a meaning. Look it up sometime.
It is NOT, however, the verb form of "subsidy". That would be "subsidized".
Re:They didn't build that (Score:4, Insightful)
ZMapp is produced by a private firm
If you follow the money, it'll lead back to a grant funded by the Federal government (in this case, both the U.S. and Canadian governments).
Ebola therapeutics were (and probably still are) anticipated to be a profit-less product segment, as far as the civilian commercial market is concerned. The affected population can't afford any resulting product, plus previous outbreaks were sporadic with small numbers of fatalities. The only potential "customers" -- at the time research was initiated over a decade ago -- were governments who might be interested in stockpiling treatments for future bio-defense use.
Now, a few of the large pharmaceutical companies still maintain and fund tropical-diseases divisions, despite the lack of profitability (for instance, Glaxo's division is largely a legacy of British Colonial days, which they've carried ever since). But I highly doubt a small biotech like Mapp Biopharm would ever do so without being paid most of the cost up-front.
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kill the Export Import bank (Score:1)
I think the money for Ebola is a boondoggle, but heck, not as bad as most of those things.
But continued financing of the Export Import Bank is an outrage. Obama himself said it should be shut down when he was a candidate.
cost-benefit (Score:3, Interesting)
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republicans want everybody to get ebola and die.
Considering they proved that is what they want by blocking funding, you're a jerk for saying otherwise. They hate those of us that aren't old white men and want us to die. That is the way of their kind. As Rmoney said, go in the corner and die. That is what Republicans want for us.
Yet again Obama proves he is looking out for the common people by funding something that affects mainly the poor, and again the Republicans prove they hate blacks by blocking funding for something that mainly affect blacks. T
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Keep it up. More and more people will figure out what fever-swamp nuts you are. Keep damaging you brand and maybe we'll be rid of you soon.
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Instead Obama is adding his illegal immigration poison pill so that he doesn't get the funding for the child illegal border crossers and doesn't ge
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Oh wow (Score:5, Insightful)
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Slashdotters are not a particularly nice bunch. They're hopelessly cynical about EVERYTHING, and always look at stuff with the most negative of perspectives. Nothing is ever simple, everything must have an ulterior motive. Worst of all, they think that this totally cynical and frankly, miserable attitude to life makes them superior to other people because they somehow know how the world really works.
In the case of this story, it's in Obama's interest to address the Ebola outbreak, if for no other reason to
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Or they just need an excuse for raping virgins.
How much is for Ebola? (Score:1, Troll)
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Too bad this person is going untreated. (Score:1)
Too bad they used up a dose on the foolish doctor that gave no credit to the doctors and scientists that formulated the treatment, instead giving all credit to the invisible man in the sky who happily lets thousands die of this disease.
"Scarcity" of ZMapp (Score:3)
ZMapp is not a mass-produced medication. It is an experimental treatment. Calling it "scarce" gives entirely the wrong impression -- it is amazing that it is available for clinical use at all.
It's certainly worth it to produce ZMapp in significant quantities -- people would rather take an untested drug than try to survive Ebola -- but there is no "scarcity" here. Perhaps if many people wish to try it we'll have a better idea if it actually works.
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ZMapp is not a mass-produced medication. It is an experimental treatment. Calling it "scarce" gives entirely the wrong impression -- it is amazing that it is available for clinical use at all.
It's certainly worth it to produce ZMapp in significant quantities -- people would rather take an untested drug than try to survive Ebola -- but there is no "scarcity" here. Perhaps if many people wish to try it we'll have a better idea if it actually works.
Wrong.
Calling it scarce completely fits all dictionary and popular use definitions of the word 'scarce'.
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$58 million? You could almost buy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Would more money be USEFUL? (Score:2)
I mean, is there a good place to PUT IT so that something good can be made to happen? (Instead of pure waste?)
I've regularly seen situations where throwing more money than a certain amount at something simply doesn't help. You can only ramp up programs so fast, bring equipment into operation so fast, get people in, trained, and working productively so fast.
It's quite possible that President Obama asked the people doing the work, "how much money can you absorb right now to accelerate things?" and got told
The latest progress of the Ebola vaccines? (Score:1)
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