CDC – praag.org

‘This ebola is a very different bug’

Peter Jahrling of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease is on the front lines fighting this disease in Liberia. He is one of the top authorities in the world on Ebola.

Jahrling believes the current Ebola outbreak may be caused by an infection that spreads more easily than it did before.

Dr Jahrling explained that his team, who are working in the epicentre of the crisis in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, are seeing that the viral loads in Ebola patients are much higher than they are used to seeing.

He told Vox.com: ‘We are using tests now that weren’t using in the past, but there seems to be a belief that the virus load is higher in these patients [today] than what we have seen before. If true, that’s a very different bug.

‘I have a field team in Monrovia. They are running [tests]. They are telling me that viral loads are coming up very quickly and really high, higher than they are used to seeing.

‘It may be that the virus burns hotter and quicker.’

The head of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota – Dr. Michael Osterholm – is a prominent public health scientist and a nationally recognized biosecurity expert.

Dr. Osterholm just gave a talk shown on C-Span explaining that a top Ebola virologist – the Head of Special Pathogens at Canada’s health agency, Gary Kobinger – has found that the current strain of Ebola appears to be much worse than any strain seen before … and that the current virus may be more likely to spread through aerosols than strains which scientists have previously encountered.

The Los Angeles Times reports that dr. C.J. Peters, who battled a 1989 outbreak of the virus among research monkeys housed in Virginia and who later led the CDC’s most far-reaching study of Ebola’s transmissibility in humans, said he would not rule out the possibility that it spreads through the air in tight quarters.

“We just don’t have the data to exclude it,” said Peters, who continues to research viral diseases at the University of Texas in Galveston.

Dr. Philip K. Russell, a virologist who oversaw Ebola research while heading the U.S. Army’s Medical Research and Development Command, and who later led the government’s massive stockpiling of smallpox vaccine after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, also said much was still to be learned. “Being dogmatic is, I think, ill-advised, because there are too many unknowns here.“

A study was conducted back in 2012 that demonstrated that the Ebola virus can be transferred from one animal to another animal without any physical contact whatsoever:

When news broke that the Ebola virus had resurfaced in Uganda, investigators in Canada were making headlines of their own with research indicating the deadly virus may spread between species, through the air.

The team, comprised of researchers from the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, the University of Manitoba, and the Public Health Agency of Canada, observed transmission of Ebola from pigs to monkeys. They first inoculated a number of piglets with the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus. Ebola-Zaire is the deadliest strain, with mortality rates up to 90 percent. The piglets were then placed in a room with four cynomolgus macaques, a species of monkey commonly used in laboratories. The animals were separated by wire cages to prevent direct contact between the species.

Within a few days, the inoculated piglets showed clinical signs of infection indicative of Ebola infection. In pigs, Ebola generally causes respiratory illness and increased temperature. Nine days after infection, all piglets appeared to have recovered from the disease.

Within eight days of exposure, two of the four monkeys showed signs of Ebola infection. Four days later, the remaining two monkeys were sick too. It is possible that the first two monkeys infected the other two, but transmission between non-human primates has never before been observed in a lab setting.

Why did Black Death kill Scandinavians?

Most assume that Black Death quickly ravaged the fourteenth century western world was a bacterial bubonic plague epidemic caused by flea bites and spread by rats. But the Black Death killed a high proportion of Scandinavians — and where they lived was too cold for fleas to survive. A modern work gives us a clue into this mystery. The “Biology of Plagues” published by Cambridge University Press analyzed 2,500 years of plagues and concluded that the Black Death was caused by a viral hemorrhagic fever pandemic similar to Ebola. If this view is correct, the future medical and economic impacts from Ebola have been vastly underestimated.

Authors Dr. Susan Scott, a demographer, and Dr. Christopher J. Duncan, a zoologist at the University of Liverpool point out that the Bible used the term “plague” to describe a catchall of afflictions resulting from divine displeasure. The researchers analyzed the “Four Ages of Plague”, including “Plague of Athens” from 430 to 427 BC that killed about a third of the city; “Plague of Justinian” from 542 to 592 AD and killed 10,000 a day in Constantinople; Black Plague from 1337 to 1340 AD that killed a third of Eurasia; and a series of plague outbreaks in Europe from 1350 to 1670 that killed about half a number of city populations.

Historical records of the Athenian plague paint a very similar picture to the Black Death and the accelerating Ebola pandemic. Like Ebola, the plague is believed to have originated in Africa and then travelled northward.

Athenians suffered a sudden onset of severe headache, inflamed eyes, and bleeding in their mouths and throats. The next symptoms were coughing, sneezing, and chest pains; followed by stomach cramps, intensive vomiting and diarrhea, and unquenchable thirst. With flushed skin burning from fever and open sores, 50 to 90 percent died in the second week of symptoms. Desperate to cool off, contagious victims may have transmitted the disease to other humans by jumping into public cisterns and watering troughs.

The bubonic plague was first recorded in China about 37 AD and still is a worldwide public health problem, with thousands of cases each year. The most recent outbreak occured in the Chinese city of Yumen on July 22, 2014, where a man died after handling a dead marmot. The Chinese military responded by quarantining 30,000 local residents.
The first symptom of bubonic plague is a mild and non-alarming fever. But bubonic swellings follow within a few days. Sufferers either go into a deep coma or become violently delirious, paranoid and suicidal. Most victims die within a few days. Recovery is almost certain for those whose “buboes”, sores lymph glands, fill with pus. But before antibiotics, the appearance of black blisters was considered a sign of imminent death.

Bubonic plague is very seldom spread from person to person. The disease needs a rodent population, usually rats, to carry fleas to spread the infection to humans. Once the local rats die out from the infection, human infections tend to tail off.

For the 2011 book, “The Black Death in London”, author Barney Sloane, an archaeologist who worked on medieval sites for the Museum of London and is now attached to English Heritage, documents the 1348-49 epidemic that killed two thirds of the city could not have been bubonic plague, because “The evidence just isn’t there to support it.”
“We ought to be finding great heaps of dead rats in all the waterfront sites but they just aren’t there. And all the evidence I’ve looked at suggests the plague spread too fast for the traditional explanation of transmission by rats and fleas. It has to be person to person – there just isn’t time for the rats to be spreading it.”

The World Bank just estimated the cost of Ebola in West Africa is $32 billion over the next two years as it spreads from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone to its larger neighbors. This estimate assumes that the Ebola hemorrhagic fever can only be transmitted by direct human to human contact with bodily fluids.

But The United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) in June 30, 1995 published guidelines (44(25);475-479) for managing patients with suspected viral hemorrhagic fever, including “Lassa, Marburg, Ebola, and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever” to prevent hospital acquired “nosocomial transmission”. According to the CDC:
“Epidemiologic studies of VHF in humans indicate that infection is not readily transmitted from person to person by the airborne route.” Although airborne transmission “is considered a possibility only in rare instances from persons with advanced stages of disease (e.g., one patient with Lassa fever who had extensive pulmonary involvement may have transmitted infection by the airborne route). In contrast, investigation of VHF in nonhuman primates (i.e., monkeys) has suggested possible airborne spread among these species.”

On October 2, 2014, the CDC published Ebola Virus Disease: Transmission, stating: “Ebola is not spread through the air or by water”. The CDC states “Only mammals have shown the ability to become infected with and spread Ebola virus.” They suggest “humans, bats, monkeys, and apes” as transmitters. But this mammal to mammal theory should concern Americans, since 18.6 billion rats are the most populous mammal and six cities with the largest rat populations on earth are in the U.S; including: 1) New York; 2) Boston; 3) Baltimore; 4) Chicago; 5) New Orleans; and 6) Atlanta.

Senator and opthamologist Rand Paul warns that US officials are underestimating the danger posed by Ebola, because, “This could get beyond our control.” The World Health Organization agrees “There is no evidence that the EVD [Ebola] epidemic in West Africa is being brought under control.” The WHO’s current “Ebola count” is 8,033 cases and 3,865 deaths from Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo, Spain and United States. Australia, Germany and Turkey just reported new cases and some authoritarian nations may be suppressing disclosure of Ebola cases.

A pandemic is “an epidemic (a sudden outbreak) that becomes very widespread and affects a whole region, a continent, or the world due to a susceptible population.” True pandemics cause a high degree of mortality”, like the Black Death and Ebola outbreak.

The probable logic behind President Obama not closing U.S. airports to travelers from Ebola-ravaged countries is that with the death of first U.S. Ebola patient and numerous cities reporting potential cases, the U.S. risks becoming an “Ebola-ravaged” nation.

Source: Breitbart

‘I have ebola, I’ve been to Africa’

Amid cries of racism from black leaders including Jesse Jackson, cases of Ebola have topped 8,000 now, according to official data from the World Health Organization, though many cases could actually be unreported.

The death toll continues to climb near 4,000, and officials have stressed the outbreak is unprecedented and may continue to get worse.

Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price made similar arguments this week that Thomas Duncan, the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, died because his race and lack of “privilege” kept him from receiving the care he needed.

“It is historical what has happened in this community,” said Mr. Price, who is black. “If a person who looks like me shows up without any insurance, they don’t get the same treatment.”

An American passenger was booted off a US Airways flight and screened after reportedly joking that he had Ebola and telling the rest of the flyers they were “screwed.”

During a flight from Philadelphia to the Dominican Republic, the 54-year-old American – who remains unidentified – reportedly yelled, “I have Ebola, you are all screwed,” according to the Dominican news outlet Diario Libre.

He also yelled out, “I’ve been to Africa!” an airport official told Fox News Latino.

He didn’t yell “bomb,” but he might as well have. After the supposed joke was aired, there was noticeable panic and concern on the airplane, which was carrying 290 passengers. The plane was isolated as soon as it landed in Punta Cana, where a medical team outfitted with hazmat suits boarded the aircraft and removed the passenger.

After conducting a medical check, the passenger was found not to be infected with the virus. Though he was coughing on the flight, he had no fever when he was inspected. He had never been to Africa, either.

In a video captured by a passenger, an African-American can be seen being taken out of the plane by medical officials.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans supported the flight ban, according to a poll conducted in a collaboration between NBC News and SurveyMonkey.

Only twenty percent of respondents did not support a travel ban from the likes of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

As of earlier this week, neither the World Health Organization nor the White House endorsed an all-out travel ban to the US from affected nations.

Airplane cabin cleaning crews at New York’s LaGuardia International Airport began a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, citing, in part, possible exposure to the Ebola virus. Meanwhile, a poll found most Americans want flights banned from Africa.

“The whole country is shivering, worried about the problems of Ebola,” said Hector Figueroa, President of 32BJ Service Employees International Union, according to CBS New York.

Cabin cleaners per plane at LaGuardia have been reduced by up to half, and the time to clean planes has been cut down to as little as five minutes, workers said, as reported by CBS New York.

Largest Liberian newspaper accuses US of creating ebola

The Liberian Daily Observer, which is the largest newspaper in Liberia, just published an article on their front page with the headline, “Ebola, AIDS Manufactured By Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD?” The article accuses the US of manufacturing the Ebola outbreak in a scheme to use Africa as a testing ground for bioweapons.

SITES AROUND AFRICA, AND IN WEST AFRICA, HAVE OVER THE YEARS BEEN SET UP FOR TESTING EMERGING DISEASES, ESPECIALLY EBOLA

The World Health Organization (WHO) and several other UN Agencies have been implicated in selecting and enticing African countries to participate in the testing events, promoting vaccinations, but pursuing various testing regiments. The August 2, 2014 article, West Africa: What are US Biological Warfare Researchers Doing in the Ebola Zone? by Jon Rappoport of Global Research pinpoints the problem that is facing African governments.

Obvious in this and other reports are, among others:

(a) The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), a well-known centre for bio-war research, located at Fort Detrick, Maryland;

(b) Tulane University, in New Orleans, USA, winner of research grants, including a grant of more than $7 million the National Institute of Health (NIH) to fund research with the Lassa viral hemorrhagic fever;

(c) the US Center for Disease Control (CDC);

(d) Doctors Without Borders (also known by its French name, Medicins Sans Frontiers);

(e) Tekmira, a Canadian pharmaceutical company;

(f) The UK’s GlaxoSmithKline; and

(g) the Kenema Government Hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone.

Reports narrate stories of the US Department of Defense (DoD) funding Ebola trials on humans, trials which started just weeks before the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone. The reports continue and state that the DoD gave a contract worth $140 million dollars to Tekmira, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, to conduct Ebola research. This research work involved injecting and infusing healthy humans with the deadly Ebola virus. Hence, the DoD is listed as a collaborator in a “First in Human” Ebola clinical trial (NCT02041715, which started in January 2014 shortly before an Ebola epidemic was declared in West Africa in March. Disturbingly, many reports also conclude that the US government has a viral fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Kenema, a town at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The only relevant positive and ethical olive-branch seen in all of my reading is that Theguardian.com reported, “The US government funding of Ebola trials on healthy humans comes amid warnings by top scientists in Harvard and Yale that such virus experiments risk triggering a worldwide pandemic.” That threat still persists.