Is there a touch of racism in the manufactured ebola scare

[MattBaggins]

The calls for bans and shutting down borders. The over reaction to a disease that isn't nearly as dangerous as some we have in our populations.

Ebola the disease from that scary dark continent? People get get pretty stupid when a new flu rises from Asia but this just plain fucking stupid.

Trying to explain to some one at work that the likelihood of Ebola becoming airborne is more sci-fi than sci but no they read on the internet that some schmuck with an MD after his name said it could.

People like having something to fear I suppose.

[Kalidurga]

1. Yes, but

West Nile. Oh the name doh.

[LostInAnomie]

2. No.

And, yes, travel from west African countries should be banned.

[MattBaggins]

10. We Americans travel daily carrying far worse pathogens

Should we be banned from travel?

[LostInAnomie]

14. Really? What pathogen is worse than a hemoragic fever...

... that kills +70% of its victims (regardless of age or health condition) within days of first symptoms?

[MattBaggins]

15. Any number of diseases are just as deadly

Tuberculosis

Our own home grown MDROs should be more than enough reason for poor countries in particular to refuse entry to Americans.

[LostInAnomie]

19. Yes, tuberculosis with its 4% mortality rate is the same as ebola.

If they want to refuse Americans entry, fine. It's every country's right to determine who can and cannot enter their borders.

[MattBaggins]

21. You eye roll

More people die from tuberculosis than die from ebola but it doesn't have the Pavlovian fear conditioning that ebola has.

[LostInAnomie]

23. That's because historically most people that get tuberculosis...

... don't die in a pool of shit and blood before they can pass it on to anyone else or get treatment. Hence, the +70% mortality rate vs 4%.

[MattBaggins]

27. But the overall death rate is higher

Ebola has smaller outbreaks that end fairly quickly in terms of disease outbreaks.

But the chicken little screeching is what matters.

[DeadEyeDyck]

37. the operative term is "rate"

[MattBaggins]

38. Your operative word is rate

for others not so much.

[LostInAnomie]

49. The death rate from falling in the tub and autoerotic asphyxiation is higher too.

But, there are real things I can do to prevent dying from falling in the tub and suffocating while whacking it. Just like if I want to keep from dying from tuberculosis, I go to a doctor and get the treatment that works 96 times out of 100.

Outbreaks of ebola end quickly because everyone dies before they can spread it. If they are lucky enough to make it to a doctor, more than 7 times out of 10, the best they can hope for is to die in a bed.

But the smugness that comes with ignorance is what matters.

[MattBaggins]

50. It's ok. You don't have to call yourself smug.

[LostInAnomie]

51. Right...

I think I'm done with you, since you have nothing cogent to say.

Feel free to keep talking out of your ass about shit you have no clue about though.

[MattBaggins]

52. OK

I am nurse with a degree in a biology, previous decade of experience in biologics production for a pharmaceutical company that took contamination "ie infection control and aseptic technique"; so seriously, that we even mopped the ceilings in our work areas.

No clue though.

[LostInAnomie]

53. Amber Vinson and the person that told her it was OK to fly were nurses too.

Apparently, "nurse" doesn't automatically equate to smart or informed in all cases.

[Yo_Mama]

54. HAD. That has all changed now.

People ask why we don't have a vaccine, etc. Well, it's because of what you have written.

But the equation is entirely changed now. We have a genuine epidemic occurring, and it has the potential to go pandemic. When fighting disease, it is not what the situation is now, it is what the situation can be in a two months or six months that determines priorities.

In WHO's situation update for Oct 1, they reported 3,338 deaths. In their situation update for Oct 15th, they reported 4,493 deaths. Data was missing for Oct 12th from Liberia. In their situation update for Sept 5th, they reported 1,841 deaths.
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/situation-reports/en/

They are sure that the case counts are underreported, which is why I am using the deaths. When the doubling rate starts closing up like this, the situation is swinging out of control.

Because we don't have a treatment or a vaccine for Ebola, the predominant method of control has been case identification, contact tracing and follow-up with isolation as necessary. This has proven to work, but it is so very labor-intensive that it can only work with a relatively small number of cases. So, as reported in the 15th October report, the unrelated outbreak in DRC with 68 cases and 49 deaths has now involved tracing 852 contacts who have been cleared and 269 who are still being followed.

The mathematics of this are intimidating, and get hopeless as soon as you have significant penetration in the cities. It worked in Nigeria with one index case, but the cost was nearly 1,000 contact traces. It is over for significant areas in the mostly highly infected countries. One index case killed at least 5 HCW.

The worst effect is that it is highly contagious to medical staff, so the attrition rate there blows up disease control. You can see the effects now in Dallas, where a large number of medical personnel have now (announced today) been pulled from active patient care and are now in effective isolation, with an additional branch to a few at Cleveland Clinic who have been pulled off duty. One index case has now knocked out over 50 HCW.

As an epidemic, 2014 WA Ebola has turned into a systemic HIV of the societies significantly affected, with the disease's killing effect being largely the first the conversion of society's disease control mechanism to a disease dissemination mechanism, and second the destruction of the disease control mechanism. This is why it's so serious.

Further - and this is the really dire note - there was a concentrated effort by outside groups to go in with highly trained, highly equipped teams of doctors to "restart" the health system in the areas in which it had broken down in West Africa, but this effort has been disappointing. That's why the news that MSF or Doctors without Borders having 16 infections and 9 deaths is so disturbing. See this announcement today about the forced closure of an MSF non-Ebola hospital in Sierra Leone:
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/sierra-leone-msf-suspends-emergency-pediatric-and-maternal-services-gondama

The total of 427 infections and cases and 236 deaths among HCW shows how quickly the infrastructure to control all diseases is being destroyed.

Imagine a US in which the actual number of Ebola cases was still relatively small, but the risk of new Ebola infection was knocking out TB control programs and hospital emergency services. That's the real threat.

[customerserviceguy]

16. Agreed

The virus doesn't give a damn what the race of the person is that it infects.

[greatlaurel]

3. More than a touch of racism.

[yeoman6987]

32. Are you trying to say that Ebola only is picked

Up by People of African decent? If you are. Please read up on this tragic problem. I know there is a lot of misinformation out there. But please read a credible source. because unfortunately you were given some poor information.

[uppityperson]

36. People here did not care when it was "only" W Africans. That is the racism.

[greatlaurel]

39. Thanks, uppity, that is exactly what I meant.

I have been horrified by the complete lack of concern about this dread disease while the outbreak was spreading in West Africa. As soon as one person travels to the States infected, then it is a total freakout by GOP operatives blaming Obama!

[greatlaurel]

47. I do not understand your post.

The tragedy of the Ebola outbreak was largely ignored by the media here in the US and by the right wing politicians until Mr. Duncan became ill. The white missionaries who contracted Ebola were treated here without much fanfare, but as soon as a black man became ill, the scare tactics started and are accelerating. The media is full of Republicans blaming Obama fore bringing Ebola here to take down America.

The racism is in the slashing of public health funding because it might help minorities. The racism is in failing to fund the research on Ebola that was being conducted by the CDC and NIH, because Ebola was a disease the was only found in Africa, and therefore not a threat to the white republican congressmen and their rich white owners. The racism is in using a dread disease to bash a black president in order to gain political points when it is the GOP that is at fault here by slashing funding for the CDC (Dr. Fauci has already stated that we would already have an Ebola vaccine if the CDC budget had not been slashed.)

Ebola is an equal opportunity disease, it cares not a whit about the color of a person's skin.

[alarimer]

59. Yes. It only started being a news item here when westerners started getting infected

While it was ravaging the continent, it was a non-news item.

Now we are engaged in hysterical over-reaction because one person in the US had it.

And, why was Duncan not flown to Emory? Why was he treated differently than the others? Was he too ill by the time they figured out he had ebola? Or was it something more sinister? Poor, black, immigrant, maybe lacking insurance??

Yes, the talk of banning travel is racist. I find it hard to believe if an outbreak of something hit Europe, we would be talking of banning travel. If you ban travel, you strand people who are there. Never mind that there are no direct flights from the US to Africa.

[Downwinder]

4. Horror movies do well.

[LawDeeDah]

5. Undoubtedly.

[moriah]

6. It's not at all racist to screen patients at the ER for their travel histories, no.

Shutting down borders and bans have been called more by the ultra-paranoids. I also think checking passengers on arrival in the US is okay, too -- honestly I'd rather then check fever before they left the countries like Liberia than at destination, but I think it's reasonable to do both.

Not everyone who goes to the African countries on the list are black. There are white tourists and medical workers of all colors.

[Nye Bevan]

7. Nope. And it's impressive that you have already decided how dangerous Ebola is (nt)

[scarystuffyo]

8. I don't think so

I think it's just the media fueling it.

Some of the hard right wacko's talking heads have been racist maybe in some of their comments.
Jones , Coulter and the rest but they have always said things like that so it's nothing new for them.

But the general public at large is just concerned about it and the media is fanning the flames

[Earth_First]

9. See Kofi Annan's statement on the Ebola response...

...there's your racism.

[AverageJoe90]

11. Definitely at least some.....when it comes to the Teabagger Right Wing, that is.

With the general public at large? Not so much.

[JI7]

12. just a touch ?

[Marrah_G]

13. There certainly is in many online responses I have seen to news articles

Not here on DU, but in the comment sections on news sites and news FB pages. As for that airborne thing... I had to argue the point with a friend who is a surgical tech and had read that canadian study. Not sure if I ever got him to understand though.

[cwydro]

17. Um.

I think Nigeria closed its borders to its neighboring countries.

Racism? No.

Fear. Yes.

[Jenoch]

18. There is a lot of fear

with a disease such as this. I don't think the fear always has a racist component.

[MattBaggins]

22. The fear is heightened by the race factor

Ebola is scary and comes from those scary people from Africa

[Jenoch]

24. I'm not getting that.

I'm gettimg a fear of the disease and the high mortality, but the race thing has not shown to be a paet of it, at least to me. In order for race to be a part of it, Africans from countries other than west Africa where ebola has emerged would be targeted. I have not seen those reports.

[MattBaggins]

28. I yet to see calls for banning Asians from traveling like I see

those for people coming from Africa. People are trying the the whole "it's not about them being black" but inside it is. People do not display the same level of fear of Asians during flu outbreaks as they do to African travelers now.

[Jenoch]

29. The mortality rate from those 'Asian' flu viruses

is nothing compared to ebola.

I just do not see a racial bias in the ebola situation, at least not yet.

[MattBaggins]

30. Wrong

More people still die from Flu every year than from Ebola.

[Jenoch]

31. Of course more people die from 'Flu'

than from ebola. The death rate is the key number.

[MattBaggins]

33. Not even

A disease that runs itself out quickly liming it's own spread versus a disease that spreads slowly killing larger numbers of people.

Death rate is one piece of the puzzle when considering disease control.

Unless of course you are spreading the insidious disease of fear.

[Travis_0004]

20. Jamaica is closing its borders to people who have recently been to west Africa

Bunch of racist in the 93℅ black country.

[LostInAnomie]

25. Hahaha...

+1

[amandabeech]

26. Most African countries have closed their borders to citizens of the three severely affected nations.

That's why the virus hasn't spread more widely over that continent.

There's nothing that prevents us from refusing visitors from those nations and from others who have visited those nations recently, but still sending all kinds of supplies and volunteers to help. Of course, volunteers would be subjected to mandatory quarantine upon their return, just to be on the safe side.

[Aerows]

43. Meanwhile

we have white doctors getting it, an Asian nurse and now a black nurse. I don't think Ebola cares what host it infects.

[JI7]

48. more people want to try to get in to the US so it wouldn't be as effective

[Travis_0004]

56. Even of its not 100% effective that doesnt mean its a bad idea

Europe is a lot easier to get to, so theh would probably have bigger problems than us.

[JI7]

57. it could be more dangerous to put a ban in place

Because some may get around it and still be able to get here but we would no longer be able to track them.

[procon]

34. When I see Republicans demanding that Obama quarantine Texas

and ban all travel to that state to control the spread of Ebola, then I'll believe racism isn't a factor.

[ucrdem]

44. ^ Bingo.

[gollygee]

35. I think it's a mixture of things, including racism

There's honest fear of a disease with a high death rate in there too. The question is whether people would want to shut down travel from France, or Italy, or some other country made up primarily of white people, if ebola were prevalent there. I think the fact that it's Africa is part, but not all, of it.

Also, I've seen ugly things on Facebook, about Obama supposedly intentionally bringing ebola to the US, and it was accompanied by the usual racist "Obama is from Kenya" stuff. The person was not a geograpy ace or he'd know how big Africa is and how far away Kenya is from the region affected by ebola. When I see that racist stuff come up and become part of some people's ebola conversation, I know racism has something to do with it.

[840high]

40. No.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

41. "People like having something to fear I suppose."

Americans do.

It's like if you are on an international flight and there are people from all over the world. The landing is a hard one,...you know,...like knock down some oxygen masks hard. Guaranteed the Americans on that flight will likely start freaking out and then go into hysterical crying much to the amazement of the assembled Brits, French, Germans, Italians, Greeks, Japanese...etc.

"Home Of The Brave" should be this:

[Aerows]

42. It appears that everyone from an Asian nurse

to white doctors, to African-American nurses are susceptible to it.

How much diversity do you want from a disease with 71% mortality rate?

[ucrdem]

45. 2 weeks from a midterm election, they're going to use whatever they can get their hands on.

And racism is usually the first thing they reach for. And wouldn't you know it would be a hospital in Dallas that catapulted the Ebola-ganda, so to speak. By accident naturally.

[bigwillq]

46. No (nt)

[mwrguy]

55. Yes. More than a touch.

[pecwae]

58. No. nt

[B Calm]

60. Thank FOX News and their sensationalized news coverage and blaming Obama.