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Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

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Re: Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

#41

Post by Der_Einzige »

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #12

(Originally posted as a reply to a dead comment) While there was some controversy regarding how COVID spreads in the early days (droplets vs aerosol, how many virions you needed to be exposed to to become infected, whether asymptomatic transmission was possible, etc.), most of the details were fairly well understood within a year after the pandemic started. Plus, we were already aware that coronaviruses are capable o…

Despite the supposed "knowledge of how COVID spreads" the following did not happen during covid:

1. Mass movement of classrooms/education to the outdoors in climates where this was possible, despite the outdoors being an excellent way to reduce exposure to an airborne pathogen.

2. Mass campaigns to deploy air purification devices/filtration and modernize existing HVAC. Air quality is often garbage anyway indoors because of bad hygiene from people and natural pollutants. Slapping an air filter to a box fan is an extremely cheap and effective (if loud) solution!!!! We had no excuses for not having government money spent here. It'd also make these stupid wildfires much easier for most to deal with, and as a bonus reduce every respitory related negative externality there is.

3. Educating people that something as simple as cracking/opening your windows while driving is effective at circulating air such that you can massively reduce your chance of transmitting COVID.

But what did we get instead? Masking mandates - leading to a massive amount of physical pollution in landfills, political radicalization against left-wing movements, a whole lot of annoyed glasses wearers, etc. Lots of cloth masks which ultimately worked poorly and lead to economic boom-bust cycles in a core medical commodity in an already fucked supply chain. Lots of fake N-95s, leading to worse QC across the industry which still plagues it today.

We also got insane "6 feet" requirements that did nothing to rescue people from extremely poorly ventilated/purified environments which made mass spread of the virus in places like schools inevitable.

I will never forgive the public for how stupid they are when it comes to anything involving air quality. We have learned basically nothing except about mRNA (which is awesome) and about how much we hated democracy from the stupid boomer flu.

P.S: Bonus, the fact that Americans don't wash their assholes after using the bathroom (no bidet culture like in Asia) means that we unironically are spreading it all anyway by being around others indoors:

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/04/feces-covid-1...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7464151/

America should have had a mass campaign to put bidets on every toilet nation wide in the 50s. Let's do it now.

Re: Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

#42

Post by ForHackernews »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #36
Arodex wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I chide the people in Africa for not following up on best health practices as far as Ebola victims are concerned God, how can you say that with a straight face after the "ritualistic" response people in the West had during COVID? Fighting against wearing masks, having their mind break because they couldn't go drink in bars, going crazy for snake oil solutions and destroying public health care. We have had in almost…

I think that what happened with Covid was the big gap between the very strict measures enacted and the perceived risk. When people think "it's just the flu" it's easy to become defiant. On the other hand, Ebola has a known fatality rate of 50%+ and so refusing to follow best practices is plain suicidal.

Maybe they don't perceive the risk to be high, just like during covid the Westerners refusing to social distance or get vaccinated perceived the risk to be low. Let's not pretend that either group is carefully assessing the epidemiology.

Re: Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

#43

Post by [deleted] »

justin66 wrote: post #40
alex43578 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. There's a reason why customs is so strict about the sloppy importation of food: it's host to diseases and pests, capable of causing ridiculous damage because someone has to have that "taste of home".

It’s the fact or otherwise of someone having carried raw meat in their luggage that I’m questioning, not the fact of customs officials caring about food moving across international borders. I’ve had fruit confiscated at a border, but meat in luggage seems like… a different paradigm.

[deleted]

Re: Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

#44

Post by alex43578 »

justin66 wrote: post #40
alex43578 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. There's a reason why customs is so strict about the sloppy importation of food: it's host to diseases and pests, capable of causing ridiculous damage because someone has to have that "taste of home".

It’s the fact or otherwise of someone having carried raw meat in their luggage that I’m questioning, not the fact of customs officials caring about food moving across international borders. I’ve had fruit confiscated at a border, but meat in luggage seems like… a different paradigm.

Unrefrigerated and in a suitcase is somehow the least-bad part about bushmeat.

Re: Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

#45

Post by BoxOfRain »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #36
Arodex wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I chide the people in Africa for not following up on best health practices as far as Ebola victims are concerned God, how can you say that with a straight face after the "ritualistic" response people in the West had during COVID? Fighting against wearing masks, having their mind break because they couldn't go drink in bars, going crazy for snake oil solutions and destroying public health care. We have had in almost…

I think that what happened with Covid was the big gap between the very strict measures enacted and the perceived risk. When people think "it's just the flu" it's easy to become defiant. On the other hand, Ebola has a known fatality rate of 50%+ and so refusing to follow best practices is plain suicidal.

Also events like Partygate in the UK really didn't help, people were already pretty done with the pandemic lifestyle after nearly two years of it on and off including fairly heavy-handed enforcement; the British government then lost all its practical moral authority to impose restrictions when it became clear the very people imposing them had been having massive boozy parties throughout the worst parts of the pandemic. That more than anything was the final nail in the coffin for things like mandatory masking and the 'rule of six' from what I remember.

I wish that public leaders realised just how much their personal moral fibre determines what people in general will and won't tolerate. The public trust they cheerfully destroy in minutes takes decades to rebuild, and I'm genuinely worried that if there's a pandemic with this still in the majority of people's memory they will go 'so you're going to put us under house arrest and have massive parties again? Why should we listen to you?' and it'll be a very difficult question to answer.

Re: Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

#46

Post by quietsegfault »

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #12

(Originally posted as a reply to a dead comment) While there was some controversy regarding how COVID spreads in the early days (droplets vs aerosol, how many virions you needed to be exposed to to become infected, whether asymptomatic transmission was possible, etc.), most of the details were fairly well understood within a year after the pandemic started. Plus, we were already aware that coronaviruses are capable o…

One big risk with Ebola is how the dead are handled in some parts of Africa. I understand the dead are cared for at home by family members which increases the risk of exposure. In western countries, death care is far more formalized with exposure protections, so Ebola is much less likely to spread as it does in other countries without that formalized care.

Re: Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

#48

Post by mytailorisrich »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #45
mytailorisrich wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that what happened with Covid was the big gap between the very strict measures enacted and the perceived risk. When people think "it's just the flu" it's easy to become defiant. On the other hand, Ebola has a known fatality rate of 50%+ and so refusing to follow best practices is plain suicidal.

Also events like Partygate in the UK really didn't help, people were already pretty done with the pandemic lifestyle after nearly two years of it on and off including fairly heavy-handed enforcement; the British government then lost all its practical moral authority to impose restrictions when it became clear the very people imposing them had been having massive boozy parties throughout the worst parts of the pandemi…

Well for Covid it became clear that the risk was indeed quite low if you were not elderly or with an underlying condition while the restrictions were drastic and poorly targeted: Young people suffered a lot even when Covid was really no worse than the flu to them (and most people). Countries like Sweden that didn't go into lockdown also proved that strict restrictions were over the top.

Now, again Ebola is very seriously deadly so it does not make sense to compare people refusing to follow Covid restrictions then to people refusing to follow Ebola best practices now.

Re: Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

#49

Post by fakedang »

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #35
phyalow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The caveats to your comment are in my opinion as follows: Bundibugyo the current strain has not previously been responsible for material outbreaks, as such it has therefore received significantly less scientific attention. Additionally Ebola (Zaire) has previously been shown to be potentially spread via aerosols. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00811 , the CDC and associated institutions resolutely claim this is…

> Additionally Ebola (Zaire) has previously been shown to be potentially spread via aerosols. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00811 Ah, I was not aware of this, so thanks for pointing that out. That does indeed look quite concerning, so let's hope that that won't apply to humans (although I'm struggling to think of a plausible biological reason for why it wouldn't). > I am quite worried about the potential for th…

Doesn't Ebola kill faster than transmission can be maximized? I believe Nipah in Asia also faces the same "issue".

Re: Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

#50

Post by dumberquestions »

fliglr wrote: post #32
inference-god wrote: post #24

I get the feeling the reason this is out of control is the political climate, at one point in time, a good US president or EU council would've sent aid, doctors, equipment, etc to help tackle this, now everyone is so broke (allegedly) and angry that it's just political suicide to say you're sending money to help "foreigners" in Africa. The face of rich people and philanthropy has changed too. The billionaires (and ne…

How many decades have we been helping Africa for, and for what?

Why ever help people in need?
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