You have commented 358 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
Ebola wrap: bodies left in streets, sick turned away, incompetence and more
2014-08-04
Rooters reports from Liberia here.

Health workers turned up in Monrovia's Clara Town district on Sunday to remove two bodies of possible victims of the Ebola virus, four days after they dropped dead when nobody would take them to hospital.

At a swampy field elsewhere in the Liberian capital, the health ministry ordered 100 graves to be dug for victims of the deadly tropical virus, but only five shallow holes partly filled with water had been prepared by Saturday evening.

A few of the corpses were left floating in body bags in pools of water, which led to complaints from the residents.
that's healthy. I see the WHO are doing a fine job there, with their US$3.977 billion budget.

yes billion, not million. If anyone would like to see their budget it is here.

Brown added that the government had decided to enforce mandatory cremations to limit contact with the dead and to avoid contamination of water sources.

"The Johnsonville burial did not go that well," said Brown. "From now on, victims will be cremated."
Meanwhile,
South Korea bans 3 Nigerians from coming to a conference The Guardian reports here.
There have been no actual cases of ebola in Nigeria apart from one guy on the plane. Perhaps the ban could have more to do with the fear they won't go home again.

Up to 50 African delegates to the AIDS conference in Melbourne, Australia, refused to go home today.

They are claiming they are "asylum seekers" even though they come from happy countries like Tanzania, and have good jobs which paid for them to fly to Australia for a conference...

The Sydney Morning Herald gives them super sympathetic coverage here.

An Isolation Zone has also been declared in West Africa, the ABC reports here.
The Blame Game has begun and once again the ugly stick is hitting everyone except the guilty party.
The UK's top doctor Professor John Ashton says there is no cure because evil rich pharmaceutical companies don't care about poor blacks in Africa in the Daily Mail here.
Which appears to be a cheap shot as they are profit making enterprises, not charities or publicly funded bodies.
There is one publicly funded body though, WHOse job it is to deal with Ebola and which didn't do its job, despite having $3.977 billion of public money to play with. WHO could it be?

Meanwhile the Philippines has done something intelligent despite being possibly on the verge of a coup. It will monitor any arrivals from ebola zones for a month, the Malay Mail reports here.

Manila last month imposed a ban on travel to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone amid the world's worst ever outbreak of the tropical virus, while the health ministry announced extra measures today.
looks like it is safer in Manilla than in Australia, UK or US which did none of that...
Posted by:anon1

#7  NB - when the first round of the Black Death hit Europe, the authorities in Milan sealed in the occupants of homes when it appeared among the residents. Milan is reported to be among the few islands of population that avoided the vast kill off the rest of the continent experienced.

It'll be interesting to see the 'science is settled' ideological socialist crowd fight between 'women and children hurt worse faction' vs the 'greatest good for the greatest number' faction.

As late as the 60s the Public Health authorities had greater powers to remove people that posed a danger through communicable diseases from the public and place in isolation than Law Enforcement (72 hour hold) through isolation protocols. That was before HIV gained constitutional rights.
Posted by: Procopuis2k   2014-08-04 11:10  

#6  One par stands out for me:

"A few of the corpses were left floating in body bags in pools of water, which led to complaints from the residents."

this is Monrovia, capital of Liberia. And yet it is Guinea that Emirates has stopped flying to.
Posted by: anon1   2014-08-04 09:56  

#5  I wonder WHO will be responsible if it does break out? WHO could guess? Interesting on quarantine. Daniel Defoe writes that in 1666 the City of London put locks on people's front doors if even 1 person in the house had plague.

The healthy were locked up with the sick to stop them spreading it elsewhere.

They were shut in. A guard was posted outside. If the family wanted food they had to ask the guard to go get it.

Of course they worked out devious ways to escape!
Posted by: anon1   2014-08-04 09:55  

#4  I realize that doctors and health organizations are trying to quell panic and prevent people from doing dumb things. On the other hand, consider what an abortion Obamacare has been.

I can recall as a child when public health officials quarantined homes in the 1940s for such things as diphtheria, small pox, measles, chickpox, whooping cough. Many of these diseases have been all but eliminated because of vaccinations but quarantine did seem to prevent the spread of diseases at the time.
Posted by: JohnQC   2014-08-04 08:09  

#3  There are the TV doctors who seem to dismiss and underplay the ebola threat. It does not seem like that much is known about the virus at this stage.

The Brits reported a woman from Sierra Leone who arrived at Gatwick and died. The symptoms sound a lot like ebola despite some reports that have assured us that it was not ebola. Passenger at Gatwick dies. and
Reported suspected vectors of transmission across species in 2012.
Posted by: JohnQC   2014-08-04 08:02  

#2  haha I particularly like your use of the word Multicultural
Posted by: anon1   2014-08-04 06:20  

#1  "Manila last month imposed a ban on travel to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone amid the world's worst ever outbreak of the tropical virus, while the health ministry announced extra measures today."

A blatantly racist and apartheid approach. Common sense and prudent decision making have no place in a multicultural environment. Yet another argument for the elimination of international borders.

[sarc off]

Posted by: Besoeker   2014-08-04 04:54  

00:00