The Ebola virus has now found its way into Murica and O’Barmy wants answers, so you can imagine the gazzilions of dollars that will be thrown at the problem, like when some ‘celebrity’ pillow-biter in San Francisco first got Aids. Now, in the UK, the gobmunt has announced screening at Thiefrow, Gatwick and the Eurostar terminus to check for ebola symptoms.
Ezcuse me? The gobmunt doesn’t even know who is in the UK, legally or otherwise, so why just those hubs? It is easy to transfer, for example, from T4 or T3 at Thiefrow to any domestic connecting flight without checks as I have done hundreds of times merely by waving my UK passport at something dusky and wearing a scarf, so how about throwing an exclusive military security cordon around the south of England centred on Dover and stop every car, train and lorry coming from abroad?
I’m on ironing detail today as the weather is dark and threatening and the FrizzEase is running low. So there!
OZ
Boadicea's Chariot 
Strange decision. I know Stansted welcomes all shades of visitors!
Well the weather in France is very wet and thundery too, OZ, if that’s any comfort. Stopping all flights from Africa would be my answer to the Ebola thing. So long as Africans persist in relying on witchdoctors and killing paramedics trying to help them, so long can they be left to get on with it.
sheona, not in my part of France it isn’t 26C and blue today 🙂
Correction……Not in my part of France it isn’t. 26C and blue sky today.
It would have been the easiest thing in the world to stop all flights from those countries and used charters and military jets to get medical aid workers in and out of there.. A far more economical way of dealing with it.
It is almost as if the West wanted it to spread. I am not a great conspiracy theorist but one really must wonder sometimes. I think it is only fair that countries that will not control their birth rate are decimated by disgusting diseases. Rule of thumb, the more that die elsewhere the less available to live in the UK. Got to be good!!!
While we are at it, the same applies in the middle East too only they use wars, fine!
Now if anyone had any sense at all they would grind up some ebola corpses into a juice and spray it on Raqqa from planes. That would sort ISIS out with a vengeance.
Of much more importance, the weather! We are just entering the rainy season, desperately trying to weed the garden, 5 acres is much too much these days have twisted spousal unit’s arm to move into town next year, fed up with this work load. Hark!, I hear the central heating kicking in for the first time this year.
What is ironing? Against my religion! As is getting dressed before 11am. and failing to have libations at 6pm. Vegetable gods are very strict in ritual observations!!
CO, moving into town! Major life event, eh? Keep us advised blow by blow pls! 🙂
It’s on its way Gazoopi. There’s a big FO low in the Atlantic heading east.
Sheona – I’m sick of those begging adverts on the TV featuring the late(st) fly-blown African kid. I am not going to send money to some charity with a big office and staff in London or Brussels or where ever to support some CEO’s salary and pension fund with the remainder being spent somewhere that cannot sustain the population. When I see a beg for contraceptives instead of food I may respond.
Christina – Current spousal unit had better keep his head down if you move into town and have nothing better to do apart from sweeping the yard.
OZ
OZ: The POTUS can shout all he likes, there is nobody in charge. The CDC have said that they do not make policy and it’s up to the States to take care of it. The Surgeon General (he’s the one in the funny uniform) has not been seen or quoted. The Guv’ner of Texas is on record saying there is NO DANGER, repeat NO Danger but that was before the nurse was infected (now she is being blamed for “A breach of protocol”). The finger pointing is going full blast in order to blame the innocent and protect the guilty. If there is another outbreak it will not be anybody’s fault. A friend who flies for a major airline tells me the plane that carried the Dallas victim has been “withdrawn from service” but only after it flew five more round trips from the US to Brussels, connecting with Sabena flights from those infected countries. Nothing to see here, move along please.
It’s gesture politics, again. What are they going to do if one of the so-called checks turns up a potential positive… ?
LW and Bravo. It seems to me that there are many people sucking on the public teat fulfilling some job description or other until something happens that actually fits the description remit. Only then are their inadequacies exposed.
OZ
LW and I must have been posting at the same time – and you’re right, OZ, see the security theatre next time you’re travelling…
OK, the spin is that 90% of visitors to UK from the ebola hotspots arrive via Paris and Brussels.
Let’s quarantine them as well, then 😀
If they find and quarantine a suspected infected person, are they going to quarantine the aircraft that they arrived on, all the others passengers, and all the flight crew as well?
James, and all of the people he/she passed between the aircraft and the arrival gate… and all the other people in the crowd between the barriers, and, supposing the person was not the firat to pass through arrival, all the people he/she might have contacted on the other side of the gate, and…
….inc the border security staff, customs staff, the drivers at arrivals with their ‘Mr Toure’ notices, the flag-waving families inside the barriers……?
As I said, the bloody government seem to want it to spread! Anyone with a brain the size of a frozen pea would have closed the borders of W Africa and established an air corridor by now.
God knows even in the 17th century and before it was customary to make ships stand off in the roads for quarantine periods, why are we continually going backwards?
Quite right, Christina. Quarantine is the only answer to plague. I was in HK through SARS, Bird Flu and SARS again. I recall a Singpore’s one and only SARS outbreak. The Singapore government quarantined the whole apartment complex where the Index case lived, and anyone who could possibly have had contact with him. Outbreak stopped, 238 people infected and 33 deaths.
I would draw cherished colleagues to this gobbit of Wiki in relation to the Derbyshire village of Eyam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyam
(which I have visited) and other hamlets around the country which chose to quarantine themselves rather than risk infecting others, This is all 17th century stuff when, perhaps, people knew better and were less selfish.
OZ
For Interesting Stuff about quarantine, see Wiki. Originally from OZland, 40 days ships had to stay offshore if disease was suspected on board.
I think m’learned friend might be referring to the SS Talune, the so.called ‘plague ship’ which spread influenza throughout the South Pacific islands shortly after WW1 to populations which had no natural immunity. It is estimated that more people died during this epidemic than were killed in the Great War.
OZ
Why we need to institute quarantine…
Doubling Time and the Future
Posted on 13 October 2014 by E.M.Smith
This is a simple posting about what the doubling time of a virus means for our future expectations.
We can expect a 3 week or so doubling of cases of Ebola until such time as we gain control of the spread or develop an effective cure. That may take a while. So what happens until that point? How much worry and how much time?
So lets just list a set of “doubles” and realize that it is about 3 weeks between each set. We had our first (not flown in by a medical air ambulance) patient in Dallas. Now a couple of weeks later, our first home grown transmission (to his nurse, despite medical protective gear). So that is our first “double”, from 1 to 2.
2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1K (that ‘1k’ is about 1000)
In weeks, that’s roughly 3 x 9 or 27. Call it about 1/2 a year. Just a while ago, Africa hit the 1000 patient mark, so we ought to expect that this all started about 1/2 a year ago. (Someone can test that if they like by looking up the index case and seeing how good the fit might be.) Now what happened after that 1000? Doubling continued. That same row can be repeated as 1000’s if desired.
2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1000×1000 (or One Million).
Now last news I heard had Africa at 4000 dead (and about 8000 infected). That puts them at about 3 x 12 weeks, or about 9 months into it. That is where we ought to be about next July… But where will THEY be by then? A whole l… Read more, compliments of The Chiefio.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/doubling-time-and-the-future/
Just read the Eyam wiki. Interesting to note that the precautions were the resulting actions of the vicar and the head puritan! Can you imagine a politician succumbing to such altruism? I think not!
Can any of you actually put a finger on why they are still allowing European commercial flights and free movement of people out of W. Africa? I don’t actually buy the answers as given, ie trade etc. From what I can see the only exports of fiscal significance are cocoa beans and immigrants! Surely supplies could pass in without people coming out. Surely it is not beyond the wits of the world bank to make funds available for them without recovery as gifts? It is going to cost the west a damned sight more to screen and treat people in the west rather than make ex gratia payments to keep them there?! None of it holds together. Who is making what out of this I wonder?
Someone somewhere is getting something out of this even if it is not financial.
I was due to meet a friend today in London. He lives in a village somewhere near Guildford, Surrey. Yesterday I received this text message: “Please accept my apology: with the current Ebola outbreak I remain wary of contagion through confined communal spaces: therefore use of public transport restricted to essential travel, and commute to London prohibited.Be vigilant, be safe. I shall update as appropriate.”
I have to accept his comment is genuine and not a lame excuse. He is a very perceptive and cautious fellow. I can see him being holed up for years! He is the ultimate survivor!
CO: shea butter usually comes from Ghana.