Pentagon Builds Units To Transport Ebola Patients 117
First time accepted submitter halfquibble52 writes As more U.S. troops head to West Africa, the Pentagon is developing portable isolation units that can carry up to 12 Ebola patients for transport on military planes. The Pentagon says it does not expect it will need the units for 3,000 U.S. troops heading to the region to combat the virus because military personnel will not be treating Ebola patients directly. Instead, the troops are focusing on building clinics, training personnel and testing patient blood samples for Ebola.
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Yeah, because all those US doctors who got ebola got sick because they were overseeing ebola patients in the mines they were overseeing. Your ignorance is showing, maybe your anti-US hatred is clouding your view of reality.
Just like the earthquake in Haiti and many similar situations prior to that, a disaster or a severe threat of some kind provided a justification for the US sending troops and establishing military bases (or otherwise an enduring military presence) in a nation that previously denied entry to the US military. A lot of awfully convenient series of events like this have happened in the last fifty years or so.
You mean that ... *GASP!!!!!* That earthquake machine I built for the government was used for *EVIL*, rather than for the peaceful, *GOOD* type of earthquakes?!?!
I am so glad you were here to enlighten me!!! I'm quitting my job at the government labs, right after I finish the solar flare machine I've been working on!!!!!
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And you think altruism is purely the cause?
More likely, Cuba is using health care politically [www.dw.de]:
"Cuba is doing this first and foremost to polish its political image, secondly for economic reasons, and thirdly, so that countries that have received their help will vote in Cuba's favor in international forums like the United Nations," Guedes [a Cuban dissident and exile] told DW.
Of course, money's also a motive, especially considering the economic sanctions still in place against Cuba:
The government in Havana earns more than six billion euros a year ($7.6 billion) through these doctors, because only a fraction of what the doctors cost these foreign nations are paid out in their salaries.
Brazil pays Havana 3,100 euros per doctor per month. Only because of pressure from Brazil's government do these doctors now get at least 900 euros per month. According to WHO representative Di Fabio, the Cuban government receives a daily flat rate of 190 euros per helper.
Sure, I'd love to see Cuba join the world as a serious economic player, but not so much that I'll ignore the other reasons why Cuba has recently been exporting more medical care than cigars [foreignpolicy.com].
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But funding NGO's is how we do this kind of thing in the US. What would you have us do? Conscript doctors to send them over?
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Well, we could always ship military doctors - a rather large number of medical professionals work directly for the military, and their contracts generally explicitly allow them to be shipped into harm's way without discussion or even warning if that suites the purposes of those in power.
I think we might have a methodology for that (Score:1)
Given the current political environment in our conflict with ISIS, I think resources should probably be put into preparing to counter a potential terrorist-weaponized version of Ebola. There seems to be a reasonable chance that with ISIS' newfound financial resources, the attempt could be made to create a weaponized genetically-modified version of the Ebola virus, perhaps even rendering it airborne-transmissible. If we encounter such a thing in the population, preparation for a military response to the pe
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While I'm not in a position to comment on your specifics, I did find it rather strange that from the government down through the media both the terms "ISIS" and "ISIL" were being used interchangeably to refer to the organization, right from the start. It almost seemed like a kind of "red versus blue" A/B testing following which usage (naturally linked in a number of conceptual ways to the broader stances and positions of the people using each term, and the countries referenced by the respective acronyms) w
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I, too, find it strange how often the United States starts hearing cries supporting one of several groups. At first, it's about individuals, who are quick to point out their differences, vying for control of the media spotlight. After a round of polling, the contestants pair off into new demographically-appealing sets, each promising their own brand of radical extremism. Eventually the major players on each side of the major ideological schism form alliances, and the battle for the public eye returns to the
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Whichever it "officially" is, isn't really what I'm commenting on. The distinction held by any member of either rendering isn't worth bothering with thinking about, nor any member of either organization, they'll just be annihilated en masse anyway--either by evolution or by the actual God their doctrines attempt to pervert, take your pick.
It was just a commentary on propagation of an acronym within a sociopolitical media context, really. Nothing to get so upset about. Unless you know more about yourself
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Because it's a translation, I've got no idea why we are not just calling them Daash.
As for them doing serious accelerated microbiological research to weaponize Ebola, we're pretty damn lucky that this is reality and not a Tom Clancy novel with infinite instant experts aren't we? Where are they going to find an Ebola expert who isn't already very busy?
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You would think it would not be difficult to settle on a consistent translation, from the start, though.
Unfortunately, I'd say, oh maybe half of that $425 million recently (apparently) stolen by ISIS from the Iraqi central bank (letting alone the black-market oil revenue) would be enough to find a suitable biology-educated taker.
Probably more than one. Particularly if they held extremist sentiments, which seem to be in abundance lately.
Money seems to come with a lot of unintended consequences, doesn't it?
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Just to note, though, although this scenario does seem to be a serious concern, I mainly raised it to make sure that Slashdot's anti-religious cadre enthusiastically fights to make sure we avoid "pseudoscience" and leave ourselves permanently vulnerable to a potential terrorist pandemic, by continuing to reject that determining biological design is even possible.
My guess is that their position on it will suddenly change when it's an issue of saving their own ass, rather than suppressing "religious" ID conc
Saddam couldn't buy a nuke either (Score:2)
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Why even weaponize? That's just an invitation for it to come back and bite you in the ass, especially if it's airborne. Just spread a few dozen freshly infected "true believers" throughout the target country to start the plague - if you're doing it intentionally I'd bet you could spread the disease long before you started showing symptoms, and to far more people. By the time anyone noticed what you were doing the disease would have spread far beyond any hope of effective quarantine.
Moral of the story: pla
Units To Transport Ebola Patients (Score:1)
Hermetically sealed coffins
I'm surprised... (Score:1)
Why didn't they have something like this already, after all these years of talking about bioterrorism? You'd think that something like that would've been a good idea a while ago.
Anyhow, at least it seems like a decent idea, so it's better than a lot of things they spend money on.
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it really depends how the US talks about its bio spending. Most of that went into the science of getting around the international treaty outlawing biological warfare.
So a huge effort to ensure tests could be done to make products, test them and then try and find a cure without the international community asking too many questions.
That has nothing to do with basic US science or spending or what is f
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It's a long, and sortid process.. The reason why Haiti is so poor is that France forced them to pay billions of dollars (in todays terms) in damages for the loss of their 'property' (i.e. freeing themselves from slavery). They ended up deforesting the country to pay for their freedom, and they haven;t real
Re:capitalism - FDA (Score:1)
Sweden has had units like these (Score:1)
phew (Score:1)
So these quarantine containers won't be needed by our troops being sent there, because they won't be working with people directly, just handling their bodily fluids. That's a relief!
They didn't have them already? (Score:2)
Really?
I would have thought that they would have had at least a couple since the Reston introduction in 1989 if not prior to that based on intelligence related to Soviet biowarfare research. Or during some of the concern about smallpox over the last 15 years.
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It was called ATI and was formed in the 1970s. The program was terminated by the Obama administration in 2010 because it was used that often.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U [wikipedia.org]... [wikipedia.org]
Interesting times for NBC (Score:2)
Thats the kind of work best left to experts or teams in place that have to learned to get to right over time.
Any break in needed skill set will allow for a NBC ready team to face some real issues.
Mix back in with people at home after 21 days? What about that small percentage that show an incubation longer than 21 days?
Thats a nice number to have to work out over time while been tested and re tested.
Perfec
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"U.S. soldiers are being flown to Liberia with just FOUR HOURS of hazmat training as Ebola death toll hits 4,546" (18 October 2014)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... [dailymail.co.uk]
Money to be made from Ebola .. (Score:2)
What (Score:1)
Haha, what? That line cracks me up.
"Open fire on the infected. Our magic guns that heal all wounds will solve this!"
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"The Pentagon says it does not expect ..."
Haha, what? That line cracks me up.
No one expects . . . the Ebola Inquisition!
Ebola spread by traditional burial practices .. (Score:1)
Ghusl Al Mayyah [soundvision.com] (Washing the Body)
The Difficulty of Burying Ebola's Victims [smithsonianmag.com] - Smithsonian
Ebola cremation ruling prompts secret burials in Liberia [theguardian.com]
Makes me wonder what the local governments in the region are doing
Re:Ebola spread by traditional burial practices .. (Score:4, Informative)
This is why I'm not panicking about an Ebola plague - despite the media's and some politician's attempts to make it seem like Ebola Doomsday is just over the horizon. Ebola isn't an easy disease to catch. It doesn't spread by air (even though the conspiracy theorists would say otherwise). You need direct bodily fluid contact. This is why in the Duncan case his family and friends weren't infected but a couple of health care workers (who were close to him when he was the sickest and thus had the biggest viral load) were.
Worst case scenario is that we will isolate the infected and anyone they came in contact with. The disease would quickly lose its infection vector and die out. However, with only about 9 cases in the US so far, I think we're a long way from needing to take these steps.
Nigeria imposed quarantines early and quickly and they have been declared Ebola free.
Airstreams. (Score:2)
for Apollo astronauts, when paralytic fear of Mutant Space Alien Disesases!! ruled, the returning astronauts were hustled into Airstream campers aboard the recovery ships for several days.
never did hear how they selected the third guy to sleep on the convertible table...
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"never let a good opportunity go to waste" - Pentagon. Not surprised that there are forces at work to use this epidemic as a chance to bring US one step closer to a military state. Good to know they have support on /. too.
"Crisis go to waste" quote (Rahm Emanuel) (Score:2)
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
- Rahm Emanuel
http://www.brainyquote.com/quo... [brainyquote.com]
Re:So people figure out yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
The more restrictive the quarantine rule is, the less likely someone will report symptoms. New cases don't announce themselves with a face-up card and a cube on a map. They arrive with aches and nausea, just like a thousand other ailments. If someone's at risk and starts feeling symptoms, are they going to voluntarily lock down their life for a week until a more accurate (and benign) diagnosis arrives? Of course not. They'll lie, say they're feeling great, then go out in public anyway.
Early and accurate detection is the key, not panicking every time someone gets a cough. If someone's at risk, encourage every report, but don't cause panic. After basic screening ("No, sir, erectile dysfunction is not a symptom of Ebola"), tell patients to be cautious and avoid contact with others. Make the patients feel like their conduct is the most important factor in protecting their neighbors. They're not just one of this week's overreactions. They're the center of attention, until their case is ruled out, like almost all such things are.
Ultimately, outbreaks like this only stop when there's either an effective vaccine/treatment, our when people can not or choose not to spread the disease to others. In the absence of the former, we must rely on others' good judgement to enact the latter. Panic is not conducive to that end.
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The more restrictive the quarantine rule is, the less likely someone will report symptoms.
So you're saying that people are so egotistical and self-centered that they don't care about anyone but themselves. Strange how not even 50 years ago we had mandatory quarantines and they worked. Sounds like to me we have a more serious problem then just "people not wanting to report symptoms" they're just hell bent on damning everyone else.
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So you're saying that people are so egotistical and self-centered that they don't care about anyone but themselves.
Is this supposed to be some sort of surprise? This is basically the capitalist ideal. Always look out for number one. It's the example they get from the most successful members of our society, so why wouldn't they emulate it? The world's richest man is a convicted career criminal.
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So don't rely on people to accurately report symptoms. Take a sample of their blood, regardless of how well they claim to have been feeling. You can tell from passport records whether they've travelled to or from one of the highly affected countries, so you don't even need them to honestly report where they've been recently, and if they've been there in the past three weeks, require a mandatory blood test. I've heard that a fairly recently developed test for this can be performed in under 15 minutes, requiring only a couple of drops of blood that can be obtained simply by pricking the person's finger.
Blood tests don't detect Ebola reliably before symptoms manifest.
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That isn't how you deal with plagues.
Nigeria is the model currently for dealing with this disease. They quarantine people. Not only do they do that, but they quarantine everyone they came in contact with... period.
Your method of dealing with a virulent disease has worked... never.
Just fyi.
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His method worked great to stop the SARS outbreak in Toronto.
And SARS was much more difficult to contain than Ebola since you were infectious before showing symptoms.
Re:So people figure out yet... (Score:4, Informative)
Your method of dealing with a virulent disease has worked... never.
Meh. Virulence (severity of effects) is only one of two relevant factors when trying to figure out how to manage a disease. The other is communicability, and that, in fact, is the variable that matters most when you decide to what extent quarantine is necessary or appropriate. The more communicable the disease the more important it is to isolate those that have it, unless its virulence is so low that you just don't care.
Ebola, however, is one of the least communicable diseases possible. Literally. If it were much less infectious it would just die out on its own.
Infectious disease modelling uses several values to describe communicability, but the most important one is basic reproduction number, called R0. Diseases with an R0 of <1 will die out on their own because the number specifies the average number of new infections that will arise from an infected person in "normal" society. The exact value of R0 is society-dependent. Measles, for example, has an R0 of between 12 and 18, lower in societies with greater personal space and higher in societies with less personal space, because measles is transmitted via aerosols.
Recent studies put R0 for Ebola in the 1-2 range, in Africa. Given the way in which it's transmitted, the highest infection rates are in societies with poor sanitation infrastructure and/or practices, like Liberia, and even there Ebola is barely able to reproduce enough to grow. This is why it's been hanging around with only periodic, mostly small, outbreaks for 40+ years. The same recent studies say that all that's necessary to stop the outbreak completely is to reduce the new cases by 50%. That's all, and Ebola's poor communicability will mean that the outbreak will collapse.
I posit -- though we'll never have the numbers needed to evaluate it statistically -- that Ebola's R0 in developed countries with good sanitation infrastructure is <<1. Notice that so far the only infections that have occurred in the US were of health care workers treating the ill, and doing so with inadequate care. None of the family members or other people the infected individuals have come in contact with have contracted the disease, in spite of the fact that there have been hundreds. The sparse data so far argues for an R0 of ~0.01 in the US.
This means that quarantining people who may have come into brief contact with an Ebola patient is unnecessarily restrictive and -- as the GP explained quite clearly -- very likely to be counterproductive.
It doesn't make sense to use the same response for every disease any more than it makes sense to give the same medicine for every disease. Let the professionals who know what they're doing devise the protocols for limiting the spread. And what they -- very sensibly! -- recommend is simply to quarantine those actually diagnosed, and to have their caregivers take appropriate precautions against infection. Barring a mutation that dramatically increases the communicability of the disease, that will be perfectly adequate.
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And what have you said in the past? Oh that's right...no one knows because you're too much of a fucking coward to put even a fake name of your posts. And from that position you presume to judge me?
Find something high to jump off from.
Re:So people figure out yet... -- D of I (Score:1)
A technical aid that needs to be built. (Score:3)
Hardware:Take a small micro with BLE, add a temp sensor, put in a wristwatch style case with some batteries.
Software: once an hour it reads your temp and pushes it to your smartphone.
Emails your temps to public health every hour so they know it is working.
If the temp goes too high the email is flagged if it goes to low aka the watch is not on the person.
Give them two so they can recharge one at night when they sleep and one during the day.
No need for locking up health care workers that are not sick.
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The more restrictive the quarantine rule is, the less likely someone will report symptoms. New cases don't announce themselves with a face-up card and a cube on a map. They arrive with aches and nausea, just like a thousand other ailments.
Then quarantine anybody who is coming from West Africa, or from any country that doesn't also quarantine anybody coming from West Africa. Problem solved.
Or, forcibly quarantine anybody who self-identifies as being at risk and give them a check for $1M for their inconvenience at the same time. Now there isn't incentive to avoid detection. Obviously that amount can be adjusted to whatever amount is effective.
If Ebola gets loose the costs will be astronomical. It doesn't make sense to make saving money a p
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That mandatory quarantine and travel bans are a good idea yet?
No, nobody has figured that out yet.
The CDC says up to 1,050 people per week are coming into the USA from countries with active Ebola outbreaks.
Explain how you plan to run a rolling quarantine for 3,150 people?
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That mandatory quarantine and travel bans are a good idea yet?
No, nobody has figured that out yet.
The CDC says up to 1,050 people per week are coming into the USA from countries with active Ebola outbreaks.
Explain how you plan to run a rolling quarantine for 3,150 people?
Convert Larry Ellison's island back to it's historical use, when we had no effective treatments for Hansen's Disease (Leprosy)?
Historically, Ellis and Angel Islands managed quarantine just fine for massive numbers of immigrants. It's a solvable problem to run a rolling quarantine.
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It seems like a few decades ago people knew how to get things done. Here's how Medicare rolled out [washingtonpost.com]. Now consider Obamacare and all the web-site follies in the various states. It's a bit early in the game, but so far the world of typewriters, carbon-paper and rotary phones is making us look stupid.
Also, people were quarantined all the time back then. It was effective and non-controversial.
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Ellis Island processed a maximum of 11,747 [wikipedia.org] immigrants per day. One terminal [wikipedia.org] of JFK International airport can handle over three times that many.
This is not a solution that scales easily. Quarantining 3,150 people isn't a big deal in itself, but they're scattered among millions of passengers traveling from everywhere else in the world, coming into a few hundred terminals across the country. Back when all immigration came in by ships to New York or California, there were convenient locations to put such facili
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But how many of those passengers are coming from nations fighting an Ebola outbreak?
Redirect all international flights from risky nations to a small number of quarantine zones (after all, if there's one Ebola patient on the plane they may all be infected). Then, once passengers are screened, they may proceed to their destination. If we have a sufficiently fast, cheap, and reliable Ebola screening test we need not even land the plane - just require all "at risk" incoming planes to carry a screening official
Re:So people figure out yet... (Score:4, Informative)
Redirect all international flights from risky nations to a small number of quarantine zones
When I flew to and from Ghana, I went through London. Is Great Britain considered a "risky" nation? Should my flight of 100+ people be diverted because one person came from a place where a rare disease is somewhat less rare? If so, then you must also divert thousands of other flights. Soon the logistics of scale creep in, and you're processing a ridiculous number of passengers through this "small number" of quarantine sites.
Let's not discuss the cost of diverting so much travel and disrupting so many plans.
If we have a sufficiently fast, cheap, and reliable Ebola screening test...
...but we don't. We don't have anything remotely like that. Reliable testing takes a few days to get results. Faster screening is asking "do you have these symptoms", but since symptoms don't appear for a week after infection, it's often inaccurate.
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One Ebola patient on the plane will infect precisely nobody unless he or she is symptomatic. Even if he or she is, any infection will be limited to the next seat or two. How many people did the Dallas guy infect, considering he was sent home after he had symptoms? Two health care workers who had had inadequate protection. That means he infected precisely nobody he encountered under normal conditions.
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Granted it seems the odds of a minimally symptomatic person infecting people in passing is low - but it's not zero. And if your only effective tool in fighting a contagion is quarantine, you need to weigh the risks carefully. For now drastic measures are unlikely to be necessary, but as more people become infected it becomes increasingly important to lower the odds that the disease will spread. An average infection rate of one additional person per patient is acceptable so long as there's only a handful
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That mandatory quarantine and travel bans are a good idea yet?
No, nobody has figured that out yet. The CDC says up to 1,050 people per week are coming into the USA from countries with active Ebola outbreaks.
Explain how you plan to run a rolling quarantine for 3,150 people?
I guess you missed the "travel ban" part.
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That mandatory quarantine and travel bans are a good idea yet?
No, nobody has figured that out yet.
The CDC says up to 1,050 people per week are coming into the USA from countries with active Ebola outbreaks.
Explain how you plan to run a rolling quarantine for 3,150 people?
I guess you missed the "travel ban" part.
How well is our travel ban on mexicans working?
obligatory quote (Score:1)
"When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" - R. Heinlein
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Heinlein may have used it, but he didn't coin it.
"When in wonder or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. Hoist the flag and fire a gun; Send the signal out, Well Done."- Herman Wouk
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Re: So people figure out yet... (Score:2, Informative)
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>How come they weren't the ones inventing modern techniligies abd colonizing Europe?
Well, first off - they did. At least twice. And Asia too - everyone on the planet is descended from the Africans who colonized the planet millenia ago.
More recently... My guess would be differences in the significance of warfare.
Medieval Europe was repeatedly conquered and reconquered by Christians and Muslims expanding from the Middle East, the so called cradle of civilization. Harsh, desert cultures forged in a world