Life as an Extreme Sport

Tag: ebola

An Ebolanoia Anniversary–Or, The Emperor’s [Lack of] Disclosures

Bioethics, BioScary

It’s the Ebolanioa anniversary! Over at Slate, Tara C. Smith takes us through a quick walk down memory lane, and the utterly outsized reactions and political theatre America went through a year ago: quarantines and threats and Daesh-licking doorknob villains, oh my. One thing still sticks in my craw: the utterly ludicrous suggestion from respected epidemiologist Michael T. Osterholm that we were all just afraid to talk about Ebola becoming airborne, but it was a real threat. Even though multiple, well-respected virologists and Ebola experts immediately corrected Osterholm’s panic piece, the panic piece is what took life, with other news outlets repeating him word-for-word–and few people questioning why such a respected epidemiologist would even propose such an outlandish thing, let alone in the pages of a New York Times op-ed rather than in a respected, peer reviewed publication. While it pains me to point this out, because Osterholm was quite

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Aid Organizations Working in Ebola Regions (v2.0)

...and everything else

This is an update of an earlier post. We’re heading in to mid-November, and while the very disturbing logistics/supply chain chart showing that some personal protective equipment stock in countries battling Ebola are at “zero”–and had been for a while–have improved, the Ebola outbreak is still racing through Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Sadly, the outbreak also appears to be gaining a small foothold in Mali. Because, contrary to popular opinion, humans don’t always suck, people want to help. However, the best thing to do right now is use established supply lines.For more information on why this is the case, read Harvard professor Calestous Juma’s excellent Al Jazeera op-ed on how the lack of infrastructure in the affected region and how this affects all public health. In support of both people’s inclination to give, and to have that giving filter through established supply lines, here is a list of trustworthy

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OutbreakChat: A Livetweet of a Movie That Gives People Nightmares,…

...and everything else, Bioethics, Pop Culture

…and probably not for the reason you think. Outbreak is one of those movies people seem to either love or hate (or possibly love to hate); almost everyone I know who has anything to do with public health, infectious diseases, or virology tends to swear up a blue storm when the movie comes up. So naturally, a group of us are going to watch it in real-time tonight, drinking and live-tweeting our thoughts on Twitter. This will include fact-checks, snark, and almost certainly questions and answers from the crowd-at-large. Who is doing this? Well, you might remember David Shiffman (@whysharksmatter) from my Virtually Speaking Science interview a few months ago; while he might seem like an odd choice to organize this, remember he has significant experience with pop culture/movie portrayals of sharks, mermaids, and other scientifically incorrect portrayals of the ocean. Tara Haelle (@tarahaelle) is a freelance journalist probably best

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Know Your Variants: Kikwit vs Gueckedou

...and everything else

This is an update of an earlier post, Know Your Species: SUDV vs EBOV. When last we discussed the Democratic Republic of Congo outbreak of Ebola, it was presumed that it was actually an outbreak of the genus Ebolavirus, species Sudan ebolavirus (SUDV), largely because that’s what initial reports indicated. It hasn’t yet been clarified why there were reports of a positive test for SUDV and a positive test for a SUDV/EBOV mix (although I’ve heard speculations about earlier outbreak exposure), but what we do know is that on 2 September, the World Health Organization released the results from their virological analysis, showing that while the Ebola outbreak in the DRC was actually EBOV (Zaire ebolavirus),See Maganga G, Kapetshi J, Berthet N, Ilunga B, et al. Ebola Virus Disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo. NEJM 2014;DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1411099. it also was not linked to the on-going epidemic in West Africa.I

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Help Stop Ebola with this One Simple Trick!*

...and everything else, Bioethics

I mean, other than donating to aid organizations that desperately need help, that is. See, yesterday, it was revealed there was yet another Western person being treated with ZMapp. Yep, that experimental drug that the world supposedly ran out of last week. Except, apparently, when there’s a Briton involved, in which case, someone checked behind the couch cushions, NIH thought to look in an unused cold storage closet, or who knows–because that’s the problem. The world now knows British man Will Pooley received at least one dose of ZMapp and will receive more, and no one has explained how the Royal Free Hospital happened to stumble across these doses that theoretically didn’t exist. In fact, all they’re saying is [T]he team treating the nurse had sourced the drug through its clinical networks with the help of international colleagues. Well, that’s not at all suspicious. Clinical contacts? International experts? Sure, that

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