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WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

nytimes.com

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Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#111

Post by wartywhoa23 »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #89
bekon wrote: post #87

[flagged]

Welcome to HackerNews, new hacker! Rather than posting things like this, please take a moment to review the posting guidelines [0] , so that you can be a positive member of the community. 0 – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> so that you can be a positive member of the community.

I'll bite and argue that the parent is a totally positive new member of the community, by the virtue of demonstrating the right attitude to this old beaten biohazard doomsday scarecrow.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#112

Post by bekon »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #111
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to HackerNews, new hacker! Rather than posting things like this, please take a moment to review the posting guidelines [0] , so that you can be a positive member of the community. 0 – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> so that you can be a positive member of the community. I'll bite and argue that the parent is a totally positive new member of the community, by the virtue of demonstrating the right attitude to this old beaten biohazard doomsday scarecrow.

[flagged]

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#113

Post by cogman10 »

AbstractH24 wrote: post #105
cogman10 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. HIV is a good example of this. Without treatment, it is deadly pretty much 100% of the time. However, it takes a long time after the shut down of the immune system before a systematic infection takes over and kills you. That allowed for a deadly disease that's somewhat hard to spread (mostly just through sex) to ultimately go on a rampage.

I never thought about this. So without concern for the humans with HIV* there an argument to be made that treating symptoms without curing made it spread more? *obviously, this is just hypothetical. It’s important to care about the life of those with HIV. No banish them all to something like a leper-colony. Although it explains the logic for those at the time they existed better than a religious one did.

HIV specifically targets the immune system. There's no way to just treat the symptoms.

The treatments we have now also decrease the risk of spread significantly.

It's a bit like the chickenpox. Once infected, you always have chickenpox ready to burst out in the future as shingles. But for the most part, it's dormant and you aren't infectious.

HIV treatment does the same. It doesn't clear your body of HIV, but it does decrease the HIV load to such low levels that it can be undetectable. That, in turn, decreases the likelihood you'll spread it.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#114

Post by wartywhoa23 »

bekon wrote: post #112
wartywhoa23 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so that you can be a positive member of the community. I'll bite and argue that the parent is a totally positive new member of the community, by the virtue of demonstrating the right attitude to this old beaten biohazard doomsday scarecrow.

[flagged]

Been there during the covid frenzy, my friend! For not loving that proverbial grandma.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#115

Post by AbstractH24 »

cogman10 wrote: post #113
AbstractH24 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never thought about this. So without concern for the humans with HIV* there an argument to be made that treating symptoms without curing made it spread more? *obviously, this is just hypothetical. It’s important to care about the life of those with HIV. No banish them all to something like a leper-colony. Although it explains the logic for those at the time they existed better than a religious one did.

HIV specifically targets the immune system. There's no way to just treat the symptoms. The treatments we have now also decrease the risk of spread significantly. It's a bit like the chickenpox. Once infected, you always have chickenpox ready to burst out in the future as shingles. But for the most part, it's dormant and you aren't infectious. HIV treatment does the same. It doesn't clear your body of HIV, but it does…

These are relatively recent advances. But for the longest time wasn’t that case.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#116

Post by mystraline »

lejalv wrote: post #108
mystraline wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, there are no charges against me . I will not answer to idiocy like "your bloodline X generations back". I am not feeling guilty simply because I am not guilty. And I do not feel guilty about historical happenings I did not have a hand in. They are things to read about to understand how we got here. But caring? No. More like dispassionate historical context. I fight against shit like "Collective Historical Guil…

Let's say you likely benefit from the side effects. It's not guilt, but just a lil reminder we are all in this together. Also, we could talk about current colonialism: arms trade, mining, mercenary armies. Sure enough, if you close your eyes hard enough you can pretend your wealth is well earned and unrelated the ills of the world. It's rarely the case.

Thats thats the root of this shit.

Im forced to engage in this system of capitalism. I am not a capitalist. My political power is 1 vote, aka basically nothing.

Because Im forced to engage, Im somehow responsible for the horrors others do. I absolutely reject this absurd line of thought.

Do I try to limit damage on voluntary things I do? Absolutely. Do I also try to help where help is wanted? Yes, I do. Thats also being a good human to fellow humans.

You mention: arms trade, mining, mercenary armies.

Ive never traded weapons. I dont even own any guns.

Mining? Im in the process of rewilding my property back to more forest. Im also getting rid of invasives previous owners planted (english ivy, etm).

And thanfulky, Im not a mercernary army. Ffs, really?

I have absolutely 0 sway on any of these topics. And I wont ever. Im not a politician, whose votes really do count.

> Sure enough, if you close your eyes hard enough you can pretend your wealth is well earned and unrelated the ills of the world.

I guess youre one of those types that because I might identify as "white" thats im a millionaire or otherwise abuse people at scale to make billions.

Protip: im not. Most of the jobs I worked was in food service or factory work. And all your accusatory platitudes are as deep as a porta-potty.

And yeah, there is no ethical consumption in capitalism. Its all exploitation, at every scale and measure. Dont have a whole lot of choices about it. Cry harder.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#117

Post by drstewart »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
rob_c wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> sure there's a parable about teaching someone to fish rather than feeding them This is less about feeding a neighbor than digging them a latrine so they stop crapping in your water supply.

Wow, why hasn't world leader China and progressive Europe stepped up to make up the difference? Don't they care about their own safety? They should be tripling funding to the WHO. This lies directly at their feet.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#118

Post by RetroTechie »

prism56 wrote: post #97
ViktorRay wrote: post #76

Many of the people worrying about this should stop worrying. The average commentator on this website, if he or she dies this year, will be more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident or due to the complications of cardiovascular disease, or due to cancer. If you’re going to spend time worrying, worry about all those things instead. When it comes to infectious diseases, the flu is more likely to kill the people her…

But I do worry a bit about dying in a car accident, it's why I wear my seatbelt, drive safe, try to drive defensively. Adding both those risks together still is a higher risk than before...

So just to be clear: wearing your seatbelt will increase your chances of death-by-falling-coconut. Or Ebola. Take your pick.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#119

Post by jandrewrogers »

ticulatedspline wrote: post #13
jmyeet wrote: post #8

First hantavirus now this. Look, there's valid reason to be concerned here but people who are fearing a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic are seemingly missing why Covid was a pandemic. Covid spread so much for four main reasons: 1. It could spread airborne; 2. It spread relatively easily. Not quite measles-level of contagiousness but still, pretty good; 3. Unlike something like the flu, there really wasn't any kind of…

forgot 5. Covid was exactly the right amount of deadly, 0.5-1% which made it easy to "roll the dice" on making containment harder.

The IFR for COVID was ~0.1%, about the same as measles.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#120

Post by blurbleblurble »

cyanydeez wrote: post #103
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46

This is the WHO announcement: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d... This is our CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/index.html And yes, this is a big deal. Public health emergencies of international concern are a short list consisting of, in their entirety: swine flu ('09 to '10), polio ('14 on), ebola ('13 to '16), Zika ('16), ebola ('19 to '20), Covid ('20 to '23), monkeypox (…

[flagged]

The cynic in me sees this kind of outbreak as exactly the intention of the current US administration in gutting CDC funding and leaving the WHO.

It's misanthropic behavior, fueled by their big bunch of various essentialist inferiority/superiority complexes.

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