outbreak of new Ebola strain

[Belligerent Savant]

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http://io9.com/how-nigeria-stopped-ebol ... ceydonohue

Earlier today, the World Health Organization announced that no new case of Ebola has emerged in Nigeria in 42 days. That's the standard length of time required for declaring the end to an outbreak, since it's twice the maximum 21-day incubation period for the virus. It's an incredible achievement — one that should assuage fears and show that Ebola can be contained. Moreover, it's proof that developing nations, with sufficient support from the international community, are fully capable of dealing with the epidemic.

Thwarting an "Apocalyptic Urban Outbreak"

Things looked bleak back in July when the virus was detected in Lagos, Africa's largest city. Nigeria, with its 166 million inhabitants, is Africa's most populous country and its newest economic powerhouse. Lagos boasts a population of 21 million, making it nearly as large as the populations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone combined. With its airport and large population living in often crowded and unsanitary conditions, news of Ebola was met with a palpable sense of dread.

"The last thing anyone in the world wants to hear is the two words, 'Ebola' and 'Lagos' in the same sentence," noted Jeffrey Hawkins, the U.S. Consul General in Nigeria, at the time. The juxtaposition of the two conjured images of an "apocalyptic urban outbreak."

In the end, Nigeria confirmed a total of 19 Ebola cases, of whom seven died and 12 survived. It's a far cry from the situation in other parts of West Africa — but that's not an accident. Here's how Nigeria did it and the "best practices" that should now be employed elsewhere:

Effective Leadership and Public-Health Institutions

The WHO credits Nigeria for its strong leadership and effective coordination of the response:

The most critical factor is leadership and engagement from the head of state and the Minister of Health. Generous allocation of government funds and their quick disbursement helped as well. Partnership with the private sector was yet another asset that brought in substantial resources to help scale up control measures that would eventually stop the Ebola virus dead in its tracks.
The response was greatly aided by the rapid utilization of a national public institution (NCDC) and the prompt establishment of an Emergency Operations Centre, which was supported by the Disease Prevention and Control Cluster within the WHO country office. Nigeria also features a first-rate virology lab affiliated with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. It was staffed and equipped to quickly and reliably diagnose Ebola, ensuring that containment measures could be employed with the shortest possible delay.

Rapid Response to the Initial Case

Nigeria's first Ebola patient, Patrick Sawyer, was initially thought to have malaria. But once that was ruled out, doctors immediately began treating him as a possible Ebola patient. He was kept in isolation, officials were notified, and a blood sample was rushed to a testing lab. Just three days later, Nigeria's health ministry set up an Ebola Incident Management Center, which eventually turned into an Emergency Operations Center that co-ordinated the response and decision-making.

Sufficient Access to Resources

As noted, federal and state governments in Nigeria were able to provide ample financial and material resources, including well-trained and experienced national staff. Isolation wards were immediately constructed, as were designated Ebola treatment facilities (though more slowly). Other resources included vehicles and mobile phones equipped with specially adapted apps allowing healthcare workers to engage in real-time reporting as the investigations moved forward. Many of these efforts were supported by social mobilization experts from UNICEF, CDC and Médecins sans Frontières.

High Quality Contact-Tracing

Nigerian health officials, working with assistance from WHO, the US CDC and others, managed to reach 100% of known contacts in Lagos and 99.8% at the second outbreak site in Port Harcourt, Nigeria's oil hub. High-quality contact tracing was performed by experienced epidemiologists who expedited the early detection of cases and their rapid movement to isolation wards. And unlike the tragic situation in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, all identified contacts were physically monitored on a daily basis for 21 days. Some contacts tried to escape during the monitoring process, but they were all tracked by special investigation teams and returned to observation to complete the requisite monitoring period of 21 days.

Applying Lessons From Previous Outbreaks

Nigeria has been combating another blight, polio, for quite some time now and with great success. Among their many tactics, health officials use the very latest satellite-based GPS technologies to ensure that no child missed out on polio vaccinations. When Ebola first appeared in July, they immediately repurposed these technologies and infrastructure to conduct Ebola case-finding, contact-tracing, and daily mapping of links between identified chains of transmission. Nigerian health officials also adapted the learnings from their efforts to eradicate guinea-worm disease.

A Rigorous Public Education Campaign

Communication with the public was also key. Nigerian health and government officials rallied communities to support containment measures. This involved house-to-house information campaigns — spoken in local dialects — that explained the level of risk, effective personal measures, and the actions being taken for control. All the while, Nigeria's president, Goodluck Jonathan, reassured his population on nationally televised newscasts. Traditional and religious community leaders were engaged early on and asked to play a role in sensitizing the public. Finally, the full range of media opportunities were exploited, including social media and televised facts about the disease delivered by Nigerian celebrities.

Screening At Borders — And A Refusal To Stop Air Travel

Instead of panicking and banning air travel, Nigerian health officials screened all arriving and departing travellers by air and by sea in Lagos and Rivers State. The average number of travellers screened each day reached a peak of more than 16,000.

Moving Forward With Vigilance

Clearly, this story isn't over yet. Vigilance remains high and Nigeria's surveillance systems remains on a high level of alert. It's quite possible that, given the country's success, people from neighbouring countries may try to (illicitly) enter in.

As a final note, and as noted by WHO Director-General Margaret Chan: "If a country like Nigeria, hampered by serious security problems, can do this – that is, make significant progress towards interrupting polio transmission, eradicate guinea-worm disease and contain Ebola, all at the same time – any country in the world experiencing an imported case can hold onward transmission to just a handful of cases."

[Belligerent Savant]

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http://flightclub.jalopnik.com/i-saw-fi ... ceydonohue

I Saw Firsthand How Nuts Airlines Are Getting With Ebola Fear

Yesterday I took a US Airways flight from Raleigh-Durham to Washington, DC to drive some Hellcats. So far so good, right? Across the aisle from me was a woman, from Boston, who was feeling a bit queasy. She asked the flight attendant for some club soda. They responded by trying to kick her off the plane. Any idea why?

If we're absolutely being honest, there were two very simple reasons why: the woman was black, and had an African accent. In the popular culture of panic, those two factors seem to be enough to turn an entire plane full of people around and return to the gate to attempt to kick a paying traveller off a plane.

Though the flight attendants that surrounded the woman and asked her to leave the plane (and threatened to call the airport police if she wouldn't get off the plane) never once used the word, it's clear that they were afraid the woman had ebola. It was pretty absurd listening to them dance around saying what they were thinking, instead talking about their "health concerns." Come on. If you're going to be a paranoid, own it.

Let's just be clear about some things about this woman: she was 34, felt she quite possibly could be pregnant, and lived in Boston. She'd been to Nigeria back at the beginning of the year, but came back in fine health. She felt a little nauseated; that's it. He eyes weren't bleeding, she wasn't spraying revolting fluids out of anything, she was simply a young woman trying to get home.

I was sitting next to a woman who worked at the UNC School of Public Health, who was traveling on the plane with a bunch of other colleagues who knew something about diseases and epidemics. And, interestingly, one of them, an older white man, mentioned he'd been to Liberia recently, and was technically much more of a potential ebola risk than the woman. Nobody asked him to leave the plane.

It was absolutely inane. This poor woman was reduced nearly to tears because she was nauseous and had the wrong accent. That's it. They had zero evidence of her medical history, and absolutely no rational reason to assume she was in any way a danger. And yet they had flight attendants going back and forth to her seat, and had the plane return to the gate in an effort to get her to leave. It wasn't until a bunch of us other passengers around her, including several of the public health workers, got together to tell the attendants that we were just fine with the woman staying, that they finally backed down.

It's incredible that a paying customer can be just kicked off a flight for the flimsiest of reasons. I understand the disease is scary and airline workers can hypothetically be at greater risk of exposure, but come on. This is a woman from Boston, in North Carolina, going back to Boston. There's been no ebola cases reported at any of those locations. People get nauseous on planes. People have African accents. We've got to get a grip.

[Twyla LaSarc]

He (Paul Craig Roberts) said it, not me...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-En ... 1-370.html

I think the paranoias rubbing off...

[tazmic]

I think the paranoias rubbing off...

don't be silly.

[elfismiles]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a91RTNA9Ejk

[elfismiles]

Doctor: Health Authorities Covering Up Ebola Cases in U.S.
Exclusive: Patients being "disappeared" to prevent panic
by Paul Joseph Watson | October 23, 2014

A doctor has exclusively revealed to Infowars that health authorities are covering up Ebola cases in the United States and disappearing patients in an effort to avoid hysteria.

James Lawrenzi, DO, who has two clinics in Garden City and Archie, Missouri, appeared on the Alex Jones Show today to warn that the true scale of the situation was being deliberately downplayed.

Lawrenzi said that shortly after the arrival of patient zero – Thomas Eric Duncan – in the United States, he was told by a doctor at Truman Lakewood Medical Center in Kansas City they had taken in a possible Ebola patient who had a high fever and was bleeding out of all his orifices having recently returned from West Africa.

The following day, Lawrenzi was told by the doctor that the patient had “disappeared” against medical advice, but that he wouldn’t have been able to leave on his own given his medical condition.

The day after the patient disappeared, a meeting was called for anyone who had contact with the patient. Doctors and other medical workers were told that the patient had malaria.

A second possible Ebola patient was then admitted to Research Medical Center in Kansas City the following day but also quickly “disappeared,” with hospital bosses claiming he had typhoid, according to Lawrenzi.

“These patients are disappearing, they’re doing something with the patients and God knows where they’re going,” said the doctor.

Asked why authorities were engaged in an apparent cover-up, Lawrenzi speculated that the CDC was attempting to prevent hysteria, noting that workers at his own clinics had been told not to use the word “Ebola,” just as 911 dispatchers in New York have been banned from using the term, or to reveal any information about a possible Ebola case.

Lawrenzi also revealed that Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), a private operator of health care facilities, had earlier this week removed protective gear and Hazmat suits from local hospitals without replacing it.

“They were told this was so they could have continuity of care for possible Ebola patients,” said Lawrenzi, adding that the real reason was that authorities didn’t want to cause a panic by having medical workers and doctors being seen in protective gear.

Urging people to “stay away from places where there’s large groups of people,” as well as hospitals, Lawrenzi said the situation was “much more serious than they’re letting on.”

“When flu season hits, people are going to be coming into the hospital for flu or Ebola, they’re not going to know what they have….it’s going to be a nightmare, every doctor I’ve spoken with is terrified of this fall,” said Lawrenzi.

“They’re preparing for something,” he added, speculating that the endgame could be medical martial law or the Obama administration’s complete takeover of the medical system.

Lawrenzi’s assertion that Ebola patients are being “disappeared” correlates with claims made by 27-year Border Patrol veteran Zach Taylor, who told Infowars that possible Ebola victims attempting to cross the border were also being secretly detained.

According to Infowars medical correspondent Dr. Edward Group, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is responding to only half the calls it is receiving from doctors reporting Ebola-like symptoms in patients. Dr. Group also talked with other health professionals and border patrol sources who confirmed that potential Ebola victims were being “disappeared” in an attempt to prevent panic.

http://www.infowars.com/medical-profess ... es-in-u-s/

[norton ash]

^^^^^ Will take with a grain of salt. Chased with a shot of chlorine.

[elfismiles]

^^^^^ Will take with a grain of salt. Chased with a shot of chlorine.

I hear ya Norton ... disclaimers as usual with that source.

I know I'm going to be drinking heavily when I get home.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Time to quarantine the hipsters. Events over the next 24-48 hrs will dictate the amount of panic that will ensue.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/nyreg ... .html?_r=0

Doctor in New York City Tests Positive for Ebola

A doctor in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea tested positive for the Ebola virus Thursday, becoming the city’s first diagnosed case.

The doctor, Craig Spencer, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center on Thursday and placed in isolation while health care workers spread out across the city to trace anyone he might have come into contact with in recent days. A further test will be conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to confirm the initial test.

While officials have said they expected isolated cases of the disease to arrive in New York eventually, and had been preparing for this moment for months, the first case highlighted the challenges surrounding containment of the virus, especially in a crowded metropolis.

Even as the authorities worked to confirm that Mr. Spencer was infected with Ebola, it emerged that he traveled from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the subway on Wednesday night, when he went to a bowling alley, and then took a taxi home.

The next morning, he reported having a temperature of 103 degrees, raising questions about his health while he was out in public.

People infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they begin to display symptoms, and it cannot be spread through the air. As people become sicker, the viral load in the body builds, and they become more and more contagious.

Dr. Spencer’s travel history and the timing of the onset of his symptoms led health officials to dispatch disease detectives, who “immediately began to actively trace all of the patient’s contacts to identify anyone who may be at potential risk,” according to a statement released by the department.

It was unclear if the city was trying to find people who might have come into contact with Dr. Spencer on the subway. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority directed all questions to the health department, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the issue.

At Dr. Spencer’s apartment in Harlem, his home was sealed off and workers distributed informational fliers about the disease. It was not clear if anyone was being quarantined.

Health authorities declined to say how many people in total might have come into contact with Dr. Spencer while he was symptomatic.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, speaking at a news conference Thursday evening before the diagnosis, said Dr. Spencer has given health workers a detailed accounting of his activities over the last few days.

“Our understanding is that very few people were in direct contact with him,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Dr. Spencer had been working with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea, treating Ebola patients, before returning to New York City on Oct. 14, according to a city official.

He told the authorities that he did not believe the protective gear he wore while working with Ebola patients had been breached but had been monitoring his own health.

Doctors Without Borders, in a statement, said it provides guidelines for its staff members on their return from Ebola assignments, but did not elaborate on those protocols.

“The individual engaged in regular health monitoring and reported this development immediately,” the group said in a statement.

Dr. Spencer began to feel sluggish on Tuesday but did not develop a fever until Thursday morning, he told the authorities. At 11 a.m., the doctor found that he had a 103-degree temperature and alerted the staff of Doctors Without Borders, according to the official.

The staff of Doctors Without Borders called the city’s health department, which in turn called the Fire Department.

Emergency medical workers, wearing full personal protective gear, rushed to Dr. Spencer’s apartment, on West 147th Street. He was transported to Bellevue and arrived shortly after 1 p.m.

He was placed in a special isolation unit and is being seen by the pre-designated medical critical care team. They are in personal protective equipment with undergarment air ventilation systems.

Bellevue doctors have prepared for an Ebola patient with numerous drills and tests using “test patients” as well as actual treatment of suspected cases that turned out to be false alarms.

A health care worker at the hospital said that Dr. Spencer seemed very sick, and it was unclear to the medical staff why he had not gone to the hospital earlier, since his fever was high.

Dr. Spencer is a fellow of international emergency medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, and an instructor in clinical medicine at Columbia University.

“He is a committed and responsible physician who always puts his patients first,” the hospital said in a statement. “He has not been to work at our hospital and has not seen any patients at our hospital since his return from overseas.”

Even before the diagnosis, the Centers for Disease Control dispatched a team of experts to assist in the case, before the test results were even known.

More than 30 people have gone to city hospitals and raised suspicions of Ebola, but in all those cases, health workers were able to rule it out without a blood test.

While the city stepped up its laboratory capacity so it can get test results within four to six hours, because of the precautions that need to be taken when drawing blood and treating a person possibly sick with Ebola, it took until late in the evening to confirm the diagnosis.

But doctors said that even before the results came in, it seemed likely that he was infected. Symptoms usually occur within eight to 10 days of infection and Dr. Spencer was home nine days when he reported feeling ill.

Ebola is transmitted through bodily fluids and secretions, including blood, mucus, feces and vomit.

Because of its high mortality rate — Ebola kills more than half of the people it infects — the disease spreads fear along with infection.

The authorities have been on high alert ever since Thomas Eric Duncan traveled to the United States in September from Liberia, and was later given a diagnosis of Ebola.

Mr. Duncan died at a Dallas hospital this month.

Several days after his death, a nurse who helped care for Mr. Duncan learned she had Ebola. Two nurses who treated Mr. Duncan fell ill but have since recovered.

That single case led to hundreds of people being quarantined or being asked to remain isolated from the general public..

The missteps by both local and federal authorities in handling the nation’s first Ebola case raised questions about the ability of health care workers to safely treat those with the disease.

In the New York City region, hospitals and emergency workers have been preparing for the appearance of the virus for months.

Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and a special adviser to Mayor de Blasio, said that the risk to the general public was minimal, but depended on a city moving swiftly.

“New York has mobilized not only a world-class health department, but has full engagement of many other agencies that need to be on the response team,” he said.

The patient is in one of four isolation rooms in the infectious disease ward on an upper floor of this building. The rooms have been designated for high-probability or confirmed Ebola cases. The ward also has a lab to handle Ebola blood samples.

[elfismiles]

Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine: People Without Symptoms Or Fever May Still Spread Ebola
Posted on October 28, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog

Is “Conventional Wisdom” All Wrong?

A study in the prestigious journal Lancet published in 2000 found that some people can carry Ebola without showing any symptoms.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/ ... ptoms.html

The largest study on the current Ebola outbreak – sponsored by the World Health Organization – found that 13% of those infected with Ebola never had a fever.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/ ... fever.html

Today, NJ.com reports:
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/20 ... cart_river

Dr. Beutler, an American medical doctor and researcher, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2011 for his work researching the cellular subsystem of the body’s overall immune system – the part of it that defends bodies from infection by other organisms, like Ebola.

He is currently the Director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas ….

“It may not be absolutely true that those without symptoms can’t transmit the disease, because we don’t have the numbers to back that up,” said Beutler, “It could be people develop significant viremia [where viruses enter the bloodstream and gain access to the rest of the body], and become able to transmit the disease before they have a fever, even. People may have said that without symptoms you can’t transmit Ebola. I’m not sure about that being 100 percent true. There’s a lot of variation with viruses.”

In fact, in a study published online in late September by the New England Journal of Medicine and backed by the World Health Organization, 3,343 confirmed and 667 probable cases of Ebola were analyzed, and nearly 13 percent of the time, those infected with Ebola exhibited no fever at all.

Why does he think the CDC would so emphasize Ebola is not communicable in patients without symptoms?

“There’s some imperative to prevent panic among the public,” says Dr. Beutner, “But to be honest, people have not examined that with transmissibility in mind. I don’t completely trust people who’d say that as dogma.”

But how can authorities raise these issues without creating a panic?

Studies show that telling the truth is the best way to prevent panic.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/ ... truth.html

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/ ... ebola.html

[lucky]

http://www.oldthinkernews.com/2014/10/1 ... the-1980s/

Operating out of South Africa during the Apartheid era in the early 1980’s, Dr. Wouter Basson launched a secret bioweapons project called Project Coast. The goal of the project was to develop biological and chemical agents that would either kill or sterilize the black population and assassinate political enemies. Among the agents developed were Marburg and Ebola viruses.

Basson is surrounded by cloak and dagger intrigue, as he told Pretoria High court in South Africa that “The local CIA agent in Pretoria threatened me with death on the sidewalk of the American Embassy in Schoeman Street.” According to a 2001 article in The New Yorker magazine, the American Embassy in Pretoria was “terribly concerned” that Basson would reveal deep connections between Project Coast and the United States.

In 2013, Basson was found guilty of “unprofessional conduct” by the South African health council.

Bioweapons expert Jeanne Guillemin writes in her book Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-Sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism, “The project‘s growth years were from 1982 to 1987, when it developed a range of biological agents (such as those for anthrax, cholera, and the Marburg and Ebola viruses and for botulinum toxin)…“

Came across , this not sure of its veracity but makes for interesting reading.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Ebola Spreading Intensely In Sierra Leone As Death Toll Rises: WHO

Reuters
Posted: 11/19/2014

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The toll in the Ebola epidemic has risen to 5,420 deaths out of 15,145 cases in eight countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, with transmission of the deadly virus still "intense and widespread" in Sierra Leone.

The figures, through Nov. 16, represent a jump of 243 deaths and 732 cases since those issued last Friday, and cases continue to be under-reported, the WHO said in its latest update.

Sierra Leone, a former British colony, confirmed 533 new cases in the week to Nov. 16, it said, accounting for much of the increase. It also reported 63 deaths since last Friday.

"Much of this was driven by intense transmission in the country's west and north," the WHO said.

The capital Freetown, which accounted for 168 new confirmed cases, and nearby Port Loko were particularly hard-hit.

A Cuban doctor infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone will be flown to Switzerland in the next 48 hours for hospitalization in Geneva, Swiss health authorities said on Wednesday. He is the first Cuban known to have contracted the disease.

The outbreaks in Guinea and Liberia currently appear to be driven by intense transmission in several key districts, the WHO said, citing N'Zerekore and Macenta in Guinea and Montserrado in Liberia, which includes the capital Monrovia.

In the three most affected countries - Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - 1,159 beds are now operational in 18 Ebola treatment centers, or one-quarter percent of beds planned, according to the U.N. agency. But only 13 percent of Ebola patients in Sierra Leone are in isolation, its figures show.

"As this number increases, so does the capacity to isolate patients and prevent further transmission of the disease."

Authorities in Mali have reported 6 Ebola cases including five deaths, the WHO said. All contacts of its first case, a two-year-old girl who died in October, have survived the 21-day incubation period.

The remaining cases have been in Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and the United States.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said on Wednesday that her government has the upper hand in the fight against Ebola, but warned against complacency or any reduction in international support

WHO said that in Liberia, 80 probable cases were reported in the week to 15 November. "Nationally, on average, between 10 and 20 laboratory-confirmed cases are being reported each day."

[chump]

http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/2014/11 ... -tomorrow/

Ebola Vaccines and Drugs Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)...

https://birdflu666.files.wordpress.com/ ... -drugs.pdf

Below are some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Ebola vaccines and drugs that cover whether they are clinically proven to be safe and effective, whether you can be compelled to take them, whether you will be entitled to damages if you suffer adverse events reactions, when the vaccines and drugs will be available, which pharmaceutical companies and military organizations are developing them, where Ebola comes from and how severe the Ebola outbreak is.

The Ebola vaccines and drugs

Q. Are there any safe and effective Ebola vaccines available?

A. No. “At present, there are no safe or effective vaccines, nor readily available efficacious drugs that can treat the disease,” according to a Norwegian Institute of Public Health Discussion Note on Ebola dated October 21, 2014. (

http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/defaul ... ct2014.pdf

Experimental treatments such as Zmapp and Brincidofovir have been given to a few Ebola patients with mixed results. Other experimental approaches, such as Serum from recovered Ebola patients, have been tried out successfully following efforts dating back to a 1995 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Q. Have clinical trials ever been performed on Ebola vaccines?

A. Yes. Prior to 2014 all Ebola vaccine trials were discontinued. The three most recent Ebola vaccine trials were suspended, terminated or withdrawn in phase 1 of clinical trails.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/defaul ... ct2014.pdf

Q. What is phase 1 of clinical trials?

A. Phase 1 is the earliest phase of clinical trials where basic safety is tested. Traditional clinical trials involve three phases.

Q. Is it something I should worry about if every one of the most recent Ebola vaccine trials using the traditional clinical trials approach was terminated in phase 1?

A. Yes. The most recent Ebola vaccine developed by the US Department of Defense and Tekmira Pharmaceuticals – TKM-100802 for Injection; Drug: Placebo– was suspended over safety concerns

http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT02041715

Q: What kind of Ebola vaccines will there be?

A: There are two leading Ebola vaccines candidates. The first one is an Ebola “ChAd3” vaccine. This is developed by scientists from Okairos, a Swiss-Italian biotechnology company owned by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. It uses a cold virus that infects chimpanzees and a Zaire Ebola virus.

The second one is called an Ebola “rVSV” vaccine. It uses a vesicular stomatitis virus, which causes a mouth disease in cattle and Ebola . It was developed by the Canadian government and licensed to NewLink Genetics in Ames, Iowa.

There are also Rabies and Ebola vaccines and an Ebola and Marburg nasal vaccine in the pipeline along with several other vaccine candidates which may be ready in 2015

http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/defaul ... ct2014.pdf

Q. How much time will the new Ebola vaccines and drugs be in development?

A. GSK’s Ebola “ChAd3” vaccine could wrap up a five-week clinical trial in humans in November 2014, enter field trials shortly after and be ready for wide distribution early in 2015.

http://www.dddmag.com/articles/2014/09/ ... toric-race

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/sta ... accine/en/

http://www.who.int/immunization/disease ... tation.pdf

Q. Is five weeks of clinical trials on humans enough for an Ebola vaccine?

A. No. Five weeks is not enough to determine whether a vaccine is safe and works. A vaccine undergoes three clinical trials under the traditional approach and takes on average 10.71 years to develop. (N) Also, a vaccine only has a 6% chance of entering the market. Drugs can take 10 to 15 years to develop with 95% failure risk at point of discovery. (4) Ebola is one of the most rapidly fast-tracked vaccines in history.

Q. Isn’t Ebola a deadly virus?

A. Yes. Ebola is a very severe viral infection with a high death rate. It is also contagious, transmitted by bodily fluids.

Q. Are experimental Ebola drugs and vaccines necessary to stop the Ebola outbreak?

A. No. The New York Times asked 10 leaders of the fights against smallpox, polio, SARS, rinderpest, Guinea worm and other diseases for their views on how best to fight the Ebola outbreak. All were sure the Ebola outbreak could be stopped without experimental drugs or vaccines. Applying proper protocols on screening, quarantines, protective clothing and travel bans have been effective ways of stopping outbreaks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/scien ... ngine&_r=1

Q. Are there plans to give these experimental vaccines to many people?

A. Yes. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases , told The Canadian Press that it’s “quite conceivable, if not likely” that fast-tracked Ebola vaccines may have to given to entire countries.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-nation ... ak/5407196

Q. Could I get Ebola from the vaccine?

A. It cannot be ruled out that you will get Ebola from the vaccine. An HIV vaccine, which used the same cold virus as the GSK Ebola vaccine, was halted because it was found to give people HIV. Men who had previously caught colds caused by the same chimpanzee “cold” virus used to make the HIV vaccine were two to four times as likely to become infected with HIV if they got the HIV vaccine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/healt ... firms.html

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/alerts ... study.html

The Ebola “ChAd3” vaccine is made from a cold virus, a chimpanzee “cold” virus, specifically a chimp adenovirus type 3 (ChAd3). The cold virus is used as a carrier, or vector, to deliver material from the Zaire Ebola and Sudan Ebola virus.

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/QA/Pages/EbolaVaxQA.aspx

Q. Surely, someone will stop the Ebola vaccine trial if people end up getting infected with Ebola from it?

A. The trial might not be stopped. The HIV vaccine was stopped because it was found to infect people when it underwent traditional clinical trials. But the Ebola vaccine will not undergo the same traditional clinical trials.

Q. When was the HIV trial halted?

A. The Step trial of the NIAID and Merck HIV vaccine was halted in phase IIb in 2007 when results showed that people were being infected by the vaccine.

Q. Why won”t the Ebola vaccine be halted in phase IIb if results show people are getting infected?

A. Phase IIb and 3 of the Ebola vaccine trials will be performed in west Africa in areas with poor local research infrastructure and low numbers of well trained medical staff. This will make it difficult to keep track of participants in the study and find out if they have been infected with Ebola from the vaccine or suffered other adverse events from the Ebola vaccines and drugs. According to a study, collecting data on vaccines during an epidemic may be impossible. Also, “any data obtained to assess benefit or toxicity could have innumerable biases and misappropriations, making their application under current research standards impossible.”

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1915876

Q. Could it really happen that something as important as people getting a lethal Ebola disease from the vaccine is not recorded?

A. Everything depends on accurate records. But there are significant problems with records of patients in Ebola affected countries. Just one example: there is no record of one woman known to have been delivered to an Ebola Treatment Centre in Liberia. There is no record of what happened to her or even whether she is alive or dead. ()

Q. Does this lack of proper data collection mean that the Ebola vaccine could pass its trials even if it infects people with Ebola?

A. Yes. If data on people who may have been infected with Ebola by the vaccine is not collected, then the infections will not be recorded in the clinical trial results, and the Ebola vaccine may well be judged safe enough to enter market.

Q. Does that mean an Ebola vaccine that infected people in field trials could be given to the wider population?

A. Yes. If the Ebola vaccine passes its rushed field trials, The World Health Organization (WHO) could decide to give the vaccine to wider populations, also in the USA, UK and Europe.

Q. Are there any other problems with the Ebola vaccine trials?

A. The GSK Ebola “ChAd3” vaccine is based on data obtained from trials in monkeys, which did not show lasting protection. Six of the eight macaques monkeys who were given one Ebola “ChAd3” shot died at ten months.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/ ... NQ20140907

Also, the monkey trial involved a mild lab form of Ebola and not the harsh west Africa type so it is hard to extrapolate the data.

Q. Have there been problems with these types of rushed vaccine trials before?

A: Yes. Eleven children died during Pfizer’s meningococcal meningitis trial, in which 200 Nigerian children were administered ceftriaxone or an unregistered medication, trovafloxacin, without informed consent.

In addition, there were large numbers of adverse events reactions reported for the swine flu vaccine which was also fast tracked and did not undergo traditional clinical trials. Large numbers of children have suffered narcolepsy as a result of the swine flu vaccine. There were also many miscarriages. It is hard to know how many miscarriages were caused by the swine flu vaccine. More than 3,500 post-vaccination miscarriages in the USA may have simply been ignored by the Centre of the Disease Control.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/defaul ... ct2014.pdf

Q. What is informed consent?

A. WHO has said that participants in the Ebola early stage trials must give their informed consent. That means the participants have to be informed of the risks of the experimental Ebola vaccines.

Following experiments on concentration camp prisoners by the Nazis, the Nuremberg Codei was drafted to provides ethical guidelines for medical researchers to protect human test subjects in scientific experiments from injury, disability or death. A key principle of the Nuremberg Code—that doctors must obtain voluntary informed consent from the person about to be experimented on, especially when it comes to clinical trials of experimental vaccines.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... -pigs.aspx

Q. Are people really going to be informed of the risks of the Ebola vaccine?

A. It is very hard for people in an epidemic setting to give meaningful informed consent to experimental treatments, especially if there are high levels of illiteracy as is the case in Ebola-affected countries, according to a study. The study notes that a “physicians’ ability to meaningfully inform vulnerable populations is overestimated. The belief that informed consent is understood by patients naive to advanced health care, especially in an epidemic, is cavalier.”

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1915876

Q. Has it happened before that people who should have given their informed consent did not?

A. Yes. An example is the 200 children in Nigeria during Pfizer’s meningococcal meningitis trial. Eleven children died.

Q. How can Ebola vaccines and drugs be given to people with so few tests?

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Ebola an emergency of international concern. That means Ebola vaccines and drugs do not have to be demonstrated to be safe and effective before they are given under emergency use provisions.

Ebola vaccines and drugs can be developed, tested, licensed and used on people all at the same time.

http://www.who.int/immunization/disease ... 9_2014.pdf

An emergency declaration allows for the criteria for passing Phase 11b and 3 trials could be lowered to a minimum.

Q. If I damaged by an experimental Ebola vaccine or drug, will I get compensation?

A. It’s not clear. Pharmaceutical companies are asking for global indemnity so that the patients bars the risk. They received indemnity in 2009 for the swine flu vaccine.

http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/11/new- ... -risk.html

Q. What about other kinds of tests Ebola vaccines and drugs will be given?

A. Apart from the fast track clinical trials, there are plans to test multiple drugs at once in an umbrella study.

The umbrella study is a new and controversial type of trial design in which a person on a drug is paired with someone from a comparison group.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/11/0 ... latestnews

Also, a step wedge randomised trial is planned involving 8000 people.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/6/54

Q. Are there problems with these studies?

Yes, In the case of umbrella studies, subjects have to be perfectly paired for a pattern to be detectible. In the case of stepped wedge studies, there are problems with accurate results. Safety and efficacy results can be easily manipulated to appear higher or lower (N).

Also, some Ebola drugs will be developed under the animal rule, such as Tekmira’s siRNA therapeutics.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ ... virus2.pdf

Q: What is the animal rule?

A: The Animal Rule provides that under certain circumstances, where it is unethical or not feasible to conduct human efficacy studies, the FDA may grant marketing approval based on adequate and well-controlled animal studies when the results of those studies establish that the drug is reasonably likely to produce clinical benefit in humans.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-liberian ... ca/5408459

Q. What forms will the vaccines come in?

A. Some vaccines like the Rabies and Ebola vaccine to be manufactured by IDT Biologika can be produced in liquid and freeze dried forms. There is also a nasal spray forms.

Q. Are any of the Ebola vaccines genetically modified?

A. Yes. The “chimp cold” virus in GSK’s ChAd3 Ebola vaccine is genetically engineered to contain both Ebola and Marburg viral DNA. The virus slips into healthy cells as normal cold viruses do, and co-opts their machinery, causing them to pump out the Ebola protein.

http://www.dddmag.com/articles/2014/09/ ... toric-race

Q. Are genetically modified viruses and bacteria an indication that these viruses may have come from bioweapons labs?

A. Yes. Genetrcally engineering viruses and bacteria to make them more lethal is the purpose of bioweapons research programmes.

Q. How much research does the US military do on Ebola?

A. Ebola is classified as a lethal virus — a Biosecurity level 4 or ‘Category A Priority Pathogen’ – and this has encouraged significant funding of Ebola research by the US government in the last 10 to 15 years. (N)

Cumulative research funding from 2008 to July 2014 for Ebola drugs and vaccines has been over $469.3million in the USA. This funding has supported a pipeline of at least 11 drug candidates. Two entered clinical phase I; three are currently in preclinical development but expected to enter clinical trials soon. At least six other drug candidates previously at different stage of development appear to have been either discontinued or halted in the absence of renewed funding. The funding has also supported eight vaccines. Two are in clinical phase I and six in preclinical development.. In addition, from 2000 to 2014, the US government spent almost US$956m to research that has been directly or potentially relevant to Ebola(N).

The US government and the military started making vaccines against Ebola and a related virus, Marburg, during the 1990s. The National Institutes of Health came up with a program called Partnerships in Biodefense.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspect ... ting-ebola

Q. Is it true that the US government owns a patent on Ebola?

A. A patent on Ebola was awarded to the United States government in 2010. That patent number is CA2741523A1. The patent claims U.S. government ownership over all variants of Ebola which share 70% or more of the protein sequences described in the patent: “[CLAIMS] …a nucleotide sequence of at least 70%-99% identity to the SEQ ID…” Also, the patent claims ownership over any and all Ebola viruses which are “weakened” or “killed,” meaning the United States government is claiming ownership over all Ebola vaccines.
http://www.naturalnews.com/046946_ebola ... z3J2icrAwU

The “ownership” over Ebola extends to Ebola circulating in the bodies of Ebola victims. When Dr. Kent Brantly was relocated from Africa to the CDC’s care in Atlanta, samples of his blood were acquired for research by the CDC and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Q. Did the Ebola outbreak have anything to do with a bioweapons labs?

A. Dr. Francis Boyle, a scholar of biowarfare and international law at the University of Illinois, who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the US implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, hassaid that Ebola originated in a US bioweapons lab.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e40012.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e40013.htm

http://www.waronwethepeople.com/another ... rce-found/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ebola-gene ... ca/5409003

“This isn’t normal Ebola at all,” he said. “I believe it’s been genetically modified.”

As evidence, Boyle points to the existence of US government laboratories in Africa that are creating bioweapons under the guise of working on cures. Boyle says Ebola came out of one of these bioweapons labs in Kenema, Sierra Leone. He said: “Kenema is the absolute epicentre of the outbreak. Something happened there. It could have been an accident in the lab or they might have been testing an experimental vaccine [on the population] using live genetically modified Ebola and calling it something else.” In addtion, Boyle says the speed of Ebola’s spread and the number it is killing is proof that Ebola is a modified form. “I

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/ebola-2.html

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/ ... e-lab.html

Q. Are there other scientists who think that Ebola is a bioweapon?

A. Yes. Dr. Cyril Broderick, Professor of Plant Pathology, in a front-page article published in the Liberian Observer, declared. He goes on to explain:
[Dr Leonard Horowitz] confirmed the existence of an American Military-Medical-Industry that conducts biological weapons tests under the guise of administering vaccinations to control diseases and improve the health of “black Africans overseas.”

Q. Can I be forced to take the Ebola vaccine or be placed forcibly under quarantine?

A. As soon as WHO declared Ebola an epidemic emergency, of international concern it triggered the International Health Regulations (2005) allowing for forced vaccination and quarantine. Most countries have national pandemic plans allowing for the vaccination of 100% of the population, also by force.

Also, President Barack Obama signed an executive order #13674, on July 31, 2014, which allows the U.S. federal government to arrest and quarantine any person who shows symptoms of infectious disease.
This executive order allows federal agents to forcibly arrest and quarantine anyone showing symptoms of:
…Severe acute respiratory syndromes, which are diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illness, are capable of being transmitted from person to person, and that either are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic, or, upon infection, are highly likely to cause mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.
http://www.naturalnews.com/046946_ebola ... z3J2jIIKFG

Q. Have any military measures already been applied during the Ebola epidemic?

A. Yes. Liberia, for example, declared a state of emergency was declared in early August, with a 9 p.m. curfew and soldiers and police officers patrolling the streets. Communities were quarantined including a part of the Liberian capital called West Point, home to about 75,000 people. Barbed wire was used to lock in the residents without food and water. The military fired on residents, killing a 15-year-old boy and severely wounding a 22-year-old man.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/world ... .html?_r=0

Sierra Leone is now under a state of medical martial law, where Ebola victims were hunted down in door-to-door manhunts.

http://www.naturalnews.com/046946_ebola ... z3J2jIIKFG

Q. Are the Ebola diagnostic kits accurate?

A. There are several. The FDA prohibits claims that its Ebola diagnostic kit is safe or effective. The diagnostic kit has never been tested on any Ebola negative specimens.

Q. When did WHO declare Ebola an epidemic of international emergency allowing experimental Ebola vaccines and drugs to be given to people?

A. On August 8th, 2014.

Q. But Ebola is an out of control epidemic, isn’t it?

A. No. According to WHO’s Ebola expert Pierre Formenty, Ebola was under control. Responding to a question on whether the situation had ‘got out of hand’ Dr. Formenty replied that the situation was not out of hand at a press conference on June 27th, shortly before Ebola made the emergency declaration.

http://reliefweb.int/report/sierra-leon ... break-west

Liberia has lifted the state of emergency in November because Ebola cases have declined dramatically and more than two thirds of the 696 beds in Liberia’s Ebola treatment centers are empty,. New admissions and the number of dead bodies being picked up by burial teams are both falling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/world ... .html?_r=0

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/0 ... 21680.html

Q. Why did WHO declare Ebola an emergency if Ebola was not an out of control epidemic?

A. Vaccine makers like GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) may have influenced WHO’s declaration. GSK acquired a Swiss biotech company which had a preclinical Ebola vaccine in 2013. GSK offered these preclinical vaccines to WHO in March 2014 when the Ebola outbreak started. As soon as WHO declared Ebola an emergency in August, WHO gave GSK a contract to produce Ebola vaccines. These GSK Ebola vaccines could not be given to anyone without an emergency declaration by WHO.

Q. Is WHO’s emergency declaration a repeat of the swine flu scandal in 2009 when GSK and other pharmaceutical companies were accused of inflating the threat of the swine flu in order to trigger lucrative swine flu vaccine contracts?

A. Yes. In 2009, WHO concealed from the public that many of its advisers were on the payroll of pharmaceutical companies, who stood to profit from a pandemic emergency.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10235558

WHO has also concealed from the public the fact that at least one pharmaceutical company, GSK had a financial stake in WHO declaring Ebola an international emergency. GSK bought a Swiss biotech company with a preclinical Ebola vaccine in 2013 and offered WHO the vaccine in March 2014. However, in an email dated April 3rd, WHO denied there were any vaccines available or potential conflicts of interests involved in its declaration of a n Ebola emergency.

Q. Does GSK have a good record?

A. No.

On 2 September 2014, 45 litres of concentrated live polio virus solution were released into a river by the pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), in Rixensart, Belgium.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/pharmaceut ... nt/5405801

The Argentinean Federation of Health Professionals accused GlaxoSmithKline of misleading participants and pressuring impoverished, disadvantaged families into enrolling their children in clinical trials of the experimental Synflorix pediatric pneumonia vaccine. Fourteen of the children participating in the experimental vaccine trial died.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... -pigs.aspx

in 2012, GSK was fined $3billion after admitting to the ‘biggest healthcare fraud in history’. GSK paid U.S. medics to prescribe potentially dangerous medicines to adults and children.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... fraud.html

In 2014, China fined UK pharmaceuticals firm GlaxoSmithKline $490m (£297m) after a court found it guilty of paying out bribes to doctors and hospitals in order to have their products promoted.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29274822

Q. Are there safer cures for Ebola?

A. There are promising cures. These include serum from Ebola survivor’s blood which are being tested.

A Japanese anti-viral drug called Favipiravir is being studied in Guinea. It has been given to several Ebola patients and all patients survived.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/research ... -december-

A doctor in rural Liberia inundated with Ebola patients says he’s had good results with a treatment he tried out of HIV drug.Dr. Gorbee Logan has given the drug, lamivudine, to 15 Ebola patients, and all but two survived. That’s about a 87% survival rate.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/27/healt ... -hiv-drug/

Studies on the clinical impact of vitamin C look promising.

http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v10n14.shtml

http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v10n13.shtml

Good supportive care can help Ebola patients.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspect ... xperts-say

U.S. Air Force study called Interaction of silver nanoparticles with Tacaribe virus underlines the effectiveness of treatment with colloidal silver .

http://www.jnanobiotechnology.com/content/8/1/19

[Twyla LaSarc]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... bola-virus

"Robbers riding on a motorbike waylaid a taxi and made off with cellphones, jewelry and cash near the town of Kissidougou.

"The authorities in Guinea warn that the bandits also carried off a cooler bag containing vials of blood, believed to be Ebola-positive.

"The package was being transported by a Red Cross courier, one of nine passengers sharing a taxi, because of a shortage of vehicles in the area.

[lucky]

isis or what ever they are called are no doubt dosing 100's of their bretheren with the virus before letting them loose in major cities around the world - we're doomed I tells ya doomed