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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

#121

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#122

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

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.

Thank you for your argument. I'm not personally interested in rehashing complaints about covid response, but it is nonetheless a nontrivial, good-faith contribution.

My previous comment was a welcome and guidance on good posting here on HN, simply restating what the community posting guidelines[0] already say.

In general, comments like "I don't care about this post", with nothing else added, aren't particularly constructive, nor are posts complaining that people downvoted them[1][2] (which the HN community guidelines also politely and specifically ask posters to avoid). Such feelings are better served by flagging and/or moving on.

Anyhow, thanks for your contributions. Sincerely, a fellow hacker, and fellow human equal to you and equalled by you.

0 – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

1 – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48171125

2 – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48171139

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#123

Post by dpark »

mindslight wrote: post #102
dpark wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a reference to the early Covid 19 investigations/reporting. https://x.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?lang=en

People always bring this up as if there is some collective responsibility for they themselves having believed an obviously politically motivated narrative. Like personally I'd just take some responsibility, admit I was suckered, and try to do better in the future. But rather with the context of how it's brought up, it's clear they're just still at it buying into new nonsense political narratives. "Can't get fooled ag…

You could interpret this kind of statement as a hardline “never trust anything the government says” stance. You could also interpret it as espousing healthy skepticism.

You can’t tell which it is from a one line comment, so it’s not at all clear the person who said this is buying into any particular political narrative.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#124

Post by cogman10 »

AbstractH24 wrote: post #115
cogman10 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

HIV has only really been known for ~40 years. And for at least 10 to 15 of those years research into treatment was limited and stigmatized as it was considered a "gay disease".

The modern treatment regime was developed around 2010. That is, about 15 years.

I'd argue that with the timeline of the disease that's not recent. What's become more recent is the mass availability of treatment and the significantly reduced cost of treatment.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#125

Post by thrownthatway »

mentalgear wrote: post #32
thrownthatway wrote: post #9

The headline from the WHO reads: Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-07-2019-ebola-outbreak-in-t...

Your linked article is dated at > 17 July 2019 (people never seem to look for/check dates any more)

Ooops.

Yeah that was not intentional.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#126

Post by thrownthatway »

alt227 wrote: post #43
mentalgear wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your linked article is dated at > 17 July 2019 (people never seem to look for/check dates any more)

Its even in the pasted url!

In my defence, it was the top search result using one of the common search providers, and at least it goes to the WHO website rather than the New York Times.

Why would a search engine turn up a 7 year old reference as the top hit.

Seems like the sort of thing one could end up relying on and dead.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#127

Post by globular-toast »

roryirvine wrote: post #95
pixl97 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I recently caught flu from someone else that "could not miss their work". So these things don't really apply well to the US at all.

Was it actually flu, or just a bad cold? I've had flu twice, and both times I simply wouldn't have been able to leave the house no matter how much I wanted to - even just turning over in bed was a major effort! Would people not have spotted their shivering and sweating and sent them straight home again?

Influenza symptoms vary widely from person to person and strain to strain. All the way from symptomless to dead.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#128

Post by thrownthatway »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #62
KetoManx64 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Something like half the population in the US is "metabolically unhealthy". Hopefully the new weight loss drugs will fix some of this.

You know what would help fix this.

Tapeworms.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#129

Post by rolph »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #12
thinkcontext wrote: post #7

I read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains. I'm no epidemiologist but being less deadly could allow it to spread further, which is obviously concerning. Also, the article says surveillance picked up the spread late. I wonder if the US's pulling back from the WHO and other international functions had anything to do with this, it used to make up a big chunk of its resources and staff.

I was wondering about that with the hantavirus, whereby if it's got a higher fatality rate then it's less likely to be easily transmitted. Is that like a general rule, or pure bunk? (I'd probably assume the answer 'depends').

this is a case specific example of a dynamic that may exist dependent on the properties of the pathogen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxomatosis#Australia

there are ways to escape the dynamic, such as latency of deleterious symptoms

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#130

Post by cm2187 »

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 (…

No it's not a big deal. Ebola is deadly if you catch it but it is not very contagious at all. You need to be in contact with someone's fluids basically. It can't go very far.
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