I'd guess they just didn't know what they were stealing and thought it would be something with more value.
If I were a roadside bandit, and I saw something being transported with guards, I would assume it was something valuable, and not the goddamn plague.
What a bit of karmic justice though.
Reminds me of a story out of South America. Some thieves stole a van destined for a hospitals radiography wing. They assumed that the large metal casing in the back of the van would contain something valuable. While they were technically correct they didn't make it far with the highly radioactive isotope...
The experimental Ebola vaccine is showing some very promising results. There's also a rapid (15 minute) and portable Ebola testing kit getting field trials in Guinea alongside a proven lab setup. If it works it can be carried to clinics all over for fast testing instead of having people wait for samples to go to a lab hours away (and then possibly getting their blood stolen on the long road over, as some thieves apparently stole a bunch of samples).
The rate of new cases is still decreasing in Guinea and Liberia (though there's some fear of ping-ponging of cases in Liberia between rural and urban areas) but are still increasing in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is likely to have the most total cases from this epidemic shortly.
:bigfrown:
Yea, this is still bugging me. Like, I get people stealing valuable things. I even understand people sometimes steal things they thought were valuable but weren't. This though?
You steal stuff that is not only incredibly dangerous to anybody around it, including yourself, but has negative value to you and pretty much everybody else in the world.
This was a recurring problem? Geez.
Probably one of those African black magic things, which are incredibly fucked up.
Or just the same completely not stereotyped black market medical smuggling.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
I'd guess they just didn't know what they were stealing and thought it would be something with more value.
If I were a roadside bandit, and I saw something being transported with guards, I would assume it was something valuable, and not the goddamn plague.
This is how potential ebola cases are currently tested:
1) Draw blood
2) Put blood in vials.
3) Get blood to testing lab.
3a) If out in the middle of goddamn nowhere, i.e., anywhere that's not near the capital, stick a bunch of samples in a cooler.
3b) Add ice to keep it cool as long as possible in the tropical heat.
3c) Seal that cooler up as best you can, probably with a lot of tape.
3d) Find some vehicle that's going towards the testing lab direction. Any vehicle, so long as it can get there fast enough that the samples don't get warm and get ruined.
4) Test
So step 3d ends up being a taxicab more often than not, because they can't waste an ambulance on vials of blood, and there's not much in the way of working vehicles otherwise. Also taxis are held up and robbed all the time because the roads are rife with bandits. So they rob a taxi and there's a guy inside with this super-sealed up cooler that surely must have valuables, and the guy yelling that it's Ebola blood seriously we need to get this to the testing lab and no seriously you don't want this you could freaking die I'm not kidding just sounds like a new ploy to not get his stuff stolen.
Another benefit of the new super-fast tests, beyond the fact that the tests are suitcase sized and can just be taken to clinics, is that it doesn't need the blood to be kept cool.
I'd guess they just didn't know what they were stealing and thought it would be something with more value.
If I were a roadside bandit, and I saw something being transported with guards, I would assume it was something valuable, and not the goddamn plague.
What a bit of karmic justice though.
Reminds me of a story out of South America. Some thieves stole a van destined for a hospitals radiography wing. They assumed that the large metal casing in the back of the van would contain something valuable. While they were technically correct they didn't make it far with the highly radioactive isotope...
That story is actually really sad because like 250 people got radiation poisoning including a bunch of kids and 4 people died. Also it was an abandoned medical building.
Well, in a way it is. The media has conspired to not report on boring African problems, until it gets over here
Well that, and the new disease smell has worn off. It was a lot easier to get viewers/pages hit with Ebola stories when it was relatively unknown to the general public.
It's malaria. A lot of malaria's symptoms are very similar to those of ebola*, so it's understandable. It's also part of why it took so long to figure out there was ebola going around in the first place**.
*except for the occasional bleeding and the common hiccups.
**One of the things that tipped off the doctors in Guinea originally is that a lot of their patients had uncontrollable hiccups. About 50% of people with ebola develop terrible hiccups at some point, for some reason. My guess is that since the virus already had injury down, it figured it might as well rub in some insult as well.
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Lord Palingtonhe.him.hisHistory-loving pal!Registered Userregular
edited December 2014
[edit] not as funny as I thought it'd be
Just gonna say that I hope we can send more help to countries that desperately need it.
Reminds me of a story out of South America. Some thieves stole a van destined for a hospitals radiography wing. They assumed that the large metal casing in the back of the van would contain something valuable. While they were technically correct they didn't make it far with the highly radioactive isotope...
That happened in Mexico last year. The thieves removed the cobalt-60 from its casing, but I don't recall any bodies being found.
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Since I said the thread can be about other diseases too, a note about some news on the HIV/AIDS pandemic:
A lot of news articles have been talking about this study, comparing HIV virulence in Botswana and South Africa. In Botswana, where the HIV epidemic started 10 years earlier, it takes on average 12.5 years for someone to go from infection to full blown AIDS, whereas in South Africa it takes about 10 years (this is without medical treatment). There is selection pressure on viruses typically to become less virulent and less deadly on its hosts, because usually a dead host is no good for continuing to spread itself. A host that is alive longer gives more opportunities for a virus to spread. Also, mutations to HIV that allow it to evade the immune system longer (increasing its own survival) slow down its own replication rate. Interestingly, modeling studies suggest that antiretroviral therapies should accelerate the evolution of the virus to a less virulent state, but that hasn't been measured in real life yet.
Note: the study is not saying that HIV is harmless now. It just takes longer to die without treatment if you're in Botswana. Should trends continue and we don't figure out a vaccine or cure over the next few centuries, it *may* become mostly harmless after killing hundreds of millions in the meantime. Also, HIV has the highest mutation rate seen in anything, ever, so much that it moves beyond "mutates quickly" into "is really bad at accurately replicating itself", and it's infected tens of millions of people so it has a lot of hosts to mutate in, and that's why changes are being seen so quickly.
What will probably happen is HIV will mutate enough that it will be passively harmless after a quick infection period, but becoming infected with it will protect you against the worst strains of it as it activates immunity.
That coupled with good sex education and good antiviral treatments should help either hopefully eliminate the bad strains of HIV to the point where getting it is like getting chicken pox.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Since I said the thread can be about other diseases too, a note about some news on the HIV/AIDS pandemic:
A lot of news articles have been talking about this study, comparing HIV virulence in Botswana and South Africa. In Botswana, where the HIV epidemic started 10 years earlier, it takes on average 12.5 years for someone to go from infection to full blown AIDS, whereas in South Africa it takes about 10 years (this is without medical treatment). There is selection pressure on viruses typically to become less virulent and less deadly on its hosts, because usually a dead host is no good for continuing to spread itself. A host that is alive longer gives more opportunities for a virus to spread. Also, mutations to HIV that allow it to evade the immune system longer (increasing its own survival) slow down its own replication rate. Interestingly, modeling studies suggest that antiretroviral therapies should accelerate the evolution of the virus to a less virulent state, but that hasn't been measured in real life yet.
Note: the study is not saying that HIV is harmless now. It just takes longer to die without treatment if you're in Botswana. Should trends continue and we don't figure out a vaccine or cure over the next few centuries, it *may* become mostly harmless after killing hundreds of millions in the meantime. Also, HIV has the highest mutation rate seen in anything, ever, so much that it moves beyond "mutates quickly" into "is really bad at accurately replicating itself", and it's infected tens of millions of people so it has a lot of hosts to mutate in, and that's why changes are being seen so quickly.
Sad but true:
Probably nothing has accelerated our knowledge of viral infections more than the AIDS epidemic.
Since I said the thread can be about other diseases too, a note about some news on the HIV/AIDS pandemic:
A lot of news articles have been talking about this study, comparing HIV virulence in Botswana and South Africa. In Botswana, where the HIV epidemic started 10 years earlier, it takes on average 12.5 years for someone to go from infection to full blown AIDS, whereas in South Africa it takes about 10 years (this is without medical treatment). There is selection pressure on viruses typically to become less virulent and less deadly on its hosts, because usually a dead host is no good for continuing to spread itself. A host that is alive longer gives more opportunities for a virus to spread. Also, mutations to HIV that allow it to evade the immune system longer (increasing its own survival) slow down its own replication rate. Interestingly, modeling studies suggest that antiretroviral therapies should accelerate the evolution of the virus to a less virulent state, but that hasn't been measured in real life yet.
Note: the study is not saying that HIV is harmless now. It just takes longer to die without treatment if you're in Botswana. Should trends continue and we don't figure out a vaccine or cure over the next few centuries, it *may* become mostly harmless after killing hundreds of millions in the meantime. Also, HIV has the highest mutation rate seen in anything, ever, so much that it moves beyond "mutates quickly" into "is really bad at accurately replicating itself", and it's infected tens of millions of people so it has a lot of hosts to mutate in, and that's why changes are being seen so quickly.
Sad but true:
Probably nothing has accelerated our knowledge of viral infections more than the AIDS epidemic.
It's a tech thing I reckon, HIV epidemic in the US happening just after we're starting to get proper molecular biology tools - and viruses being small and easier to sequence than massive ones belonging to cellular organisms.
Detection and sequencing tools popping up in the mid to late 70s is at least a big a thing as AIDS popping up. Plus a lot would have been done with bacteriophages (dating all the way back to the 20s and 30s as an alternative to antibiotics).
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Mali has been declared ebola-free. After that one cluster the transmission chain was shut down and it's been over 42 days since there was a case. Case loads are even dropping rapidly in Sierra Leone though they still have by far the most cases.
Good news for current cases certainly, but hinders the possible treatment of future outbreaks.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
I should mention this update since it is very good news: Liberia released its last Ebola patient. There have been no other known infections in the country in over a week. Another month and they will be declared Ebola-free.
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Good news: Ebola is not actually mutating more quickly than normal - so it's been mutating a hundred times slower than the flu like usual, rather than fifty times slower than the flu as people who were hyperventilating about airborne Ebola feared.
Bad news: After more than two weeks without a case in Liberia a woman has been infected with Ebola. She may have picked it up from her boyfriend, who was an Ebola survivor - the virus can still be detected in semen three months after the main infection has been fought off.
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
The mortality rate of pregnant women who get Ebola has been over 90% in every previous outbreak and the current epidemic, even as general survival rates vary. Indirectly, the maternal death rates, women dying from childbirth or pregnancy complications, have returned to civil war levels of bad in many areas, over 1000 women dying per 100,000 birds. Partly, women getting scared of going to the doctor from fear of Ebola, partly medical facilities being used for Ebola treatment instead of all the things they used to treat, and partly because of all the healthcare workers, ones dealing with pregnancy and childbirth were hit the hardest and lost the most people proportionately.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Liberia has been declared Ebola-free by the WHO after 42 days of no cases.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
I've been keeping up with the news but haven't been posting updates because not much has been happening. Liberia is still Ebola-free, and the number of cases in Sierra Leone and Guinea have been slowly declining but never going away. What's worse is that they still can't contact-trace many of the remaining cases so we're not sure exactly where the transmissions are coming from. There has also been ongoing resistance to healthcare workers in Guinea including a warehouse that contained supplies for safe burials being burned down.
Though what's worrying right now is that there are a cluster of cases in northern Guinea, very close to the border with Guinea-Bissau which has avoided cases so far mainly through sheer luck, and just like with Guinea/Sierra Leone/Liberia the border is open and very porous.
Also would anyone be opposed to talking about MERS in here as well, if anyone is interested?
Posts
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/06/us-mexico-nuclear-idUSBRE9B511J20131206
This one right?
Or just the same completely not stereotyped black market medical smuggling.
This is how potential ebola cases are currently tested:
1) Draw blood
2) Put blood in vials.
3) Get blood to testing lab.
3a) If out in the middle of goddamn nowhere, i.e., anywhere that's not near the capital, stick a bunch of samples in a cooler.
3b) Add ice to keep it cool as long as possible in the tropical heat.
3c) Seal that cooler up as best you can, probably with a lot of tape.
3d) Find some vehicle that's going towards the testing lab direction. Any vehicle, so long as it can get there fast enough that the samples don't get warm and get ruined.
4) Test
So step 3d ends up being a taxicab more often than not, because they can't waste an ambulance on vials of blood, and there's not much in the way of working vehicles otherwise. Also taxis are held up and robbed all the time because the roads are rife with bandits. So they rob a taxi and there's a guy inside with this super-sealed up cooler that surely must have valuables, and the guy yelling that it's Ebola blood seriously we need to get this to the testing lab and no seriously you don't want this you could freaking die I'm not kidding just sounds like a new ploy to not get his stuff stolen.
Another benefit of the new super-fast tests, beyond the fact that the tests are suitcase sized and can just be taken to clinics, is that it doesn't need the blood to be kept cool.
Boston hospital treating suspected ebola patient
That story is actually really sad because like 250 people got radiation poisoning including a bunch of kids and 4 people died. Also it was an abandoned medical building.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
"Ebola disappears and you can't figure out they were trying to hide stuff from you???"
I almost bought her a plane ticket to West Africa.
presumably that since ebola is "suddenly gone" (wut) it must have been a conspiracy..? or... fucking i dont know?
'Obama's comin' to gitcher Ebola!'
It's malaria. A lot of malaria's symptoms are very similar to those of ebola*, so it's understandable. It's also part of why it took so long to figure out there was ebola going around in the first place**.
*except for the occasional bleeding and the common hiccups.
**One of the things that tipped off the doctors in Guinea originally is that a lot of their patients had uncontrollable hiccups. About 50% of people with ebola develop terrible hiccups at some point, for some reason. My guess is that since the virus already had injury down, it figured it might as well rub in some insult as well.
Just gonna say that I hope we can send more help to countries that desperately need it.
A lot of news articles have been talking about this study, comparing HIV virulence in Botswana and South Africa. In Botswana, where the HIV epidemic started 10 years earlier, it takes on average 12.5 years for someone to go from infection to full blown AIDS, whereas in South Africa it takes about 10 years (this is without medical treatment). There is selection pressure on viruses typically to become less virulent and less deadly on its hosts, because usually a dead host is no good for continuing to spread itself. A host that is alive longer gives more opportunities for a virus to spread. Also, mutations to HIV that allow it to evade the immune system longer (increasing its own survival) slow down its own replication rate. Interestingly, modeling studies suggest that antiretroviral therapies should accelerate the evolution of the virus to a less virulent state, but that hasn't been measured in real life yet.
Note: the study is not saying that HIV is harmless now. It just takes longer to die without treatment if you're in Botswana. Should trends continue and we don't figure out a vaccine or cure over the next few centuries, it *may* become mostly harmless after killing hundreds of millions in the meantime. Also, HIV has the highest mutation rate seen in anything, ever, so much that it moves beyond "mutates quickly" into "is really bad at accurately replicating itself", and it's infected tens of millions of people so it has a lot of hosts to mutate in, and that's why changes are being seen so quickly.
That coupled with good sex education and good antiviral treatments should help either hopefully eliminate the bad strains of HIV to the point where getting it is like getting chicken pox.
Sad but true:
Probably nothing has accelerated our knowledge of viral infections more than the AIDS epidemic.
It's a tech thing I reckon, HIV epidemic in the US happening just after we're starting to get proper molecular biology tools - and viruses being small and easier to sequence than massive ones belonging to cellular organisms.
Detection and sequencing tools popping up in the mid to late 70s is at least a big a thing as AIDS popping up. Plus a lot would have been done with bacteriophages (dating all the way back to the 20s and 30s as an alternative to antibiotics).
Edit: Turned out to not be Ebola.
http://news.yahoo.com/just-five-ebola-cases-left-liberia-govt-103515357.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/ebola-drug-trials/
Good news for current cases certainly, but hinders the possible treatment of future outbreaks.
What're the odds we can put together some foreign aid for noisemakers, hats, and a big-ass cake?
Patently false, hipster soccer fans in the US have a non-trivial number.
Who cares - it should be a crime against humanity to possess one.
Bad news: After more than two weeks without a case in Liberia a woman has been infected with Ebola. She may have picked it up from her boyfriend, who was an Ebola survivor - the virus can still be detected in semen three months after the main infection has been fought off.
And now I'm having horrid thoughts of Ebola on pregnant women.
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
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Though what's worrying right now is that there are a cluster of cases in northern Guinea, very close to the border with Guinea-Bissau which has avoided cases so far mainly through sheer luck, and just like with Guinea/Sierra Leone/Liberia the border is open and very porous.
Also would anyone be opposed to talking about MERS in here as well, if anyone is interested?