Should you be concerned about Ebola or is this simply overblown fear-mongering masquerading as news? What is the reality of the Ebola outbreak once you decode the propaganda? Sources: http://www.fdrurl.com/ebola
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| Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio. | |
| I hope you're doing well. | |
| As you've probably heard, there has been an Ebola breakout in Africa. | |
| New cases of Ebola were first identified in Guinea beginning in February 2014 and have since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. | |
| As of August the 4th, 2014, 887 people have died from the virus, making this Ebola epidemic the largest and deadliest in history. | |
| With a mortality rate of more than 60%, the deadly virus has become the center of growing fears throughout the world. | |
| Now, so far, two American doctors have contracted the virus in Africa and were brought back to the US for treatment. | |
| And this is, of course, making people feel even more terrified that the virus is now inside the US border. | |
| So how afraid Well, let's try and put Ebola in perspective. | |
| So the World Health Organization estimates the global influenza or flu deaths to be between 250,000 and 500,000 a year. | |
| From 1977 to 2007, the annual number of influenza-related deaths in the US ranged between 3,000 and 49,000. | |
| The extremely contagious measles virus annually kills about 120,000 worldwide. | |
| For comparison, again, as of August 4th, Ebola has claimed the lives of about 2,500 people since its first outbreak in 1976. | |
| So, putting that in perspective... | |
| The annual number of flu deaths in the US goes from 3,000 to 49,000 per year. | |
| And since 1976, Ebola has claimed the lives of about 2,500 people in total. | |
| So that's, I guess, relatively important in terms of keeping things in perspective. | |
| And there are, of course, existing vaccines for influenza and measles, which is not the case for Ebola. | |
| Yet the Ebola virus still claims far fewer victims than Now you may have heard some fear mongers and panic mongers. | |
| Storm Clouds Gathering has a video where he claims that the virus has gone airborne and this does not seem to be the case at all and we'll get into that in a moment. | |
| Ebola is significantly less contagious than either influenza or measles. | |
| Epidemiologists use this quantitative measure called the basic reproduction number, or BRN, and this statistically determines the contagiousness of diseases. | |
| The BRN corresponds to the secondary number of infections caused by a single primary case, and it doesn't take into account immunity and disease control measures. | |
| Ebola's basic reproduction number is estimated to be between 1.34 and 1.83, while one of the lowest estimates for the BRN of measles is 7.17. | |
| So, alternative media outlets have claimed that the contagiousness of Ebola is being severely underestimated or underreported by leading experts and the mainstream media, They have cited animal studies as evidence that Ebola is an airborne virus. | |
| Now, an airborne virus does not require water droplets to sustain itself or to carry itself. | |
| And this does not seem to be the case with Ebola at all. | |
| So, one study put pigs carrying the virus in close proximity but without direct contact to macaques. | |
| And after about eight days, some of the monkeys began to show signs of being infected with Ebola. | |
| So Dr. | |
| Gary Kobinger, one of the scientists involved in the experiment, said, what we suspect is happening is large exhaled droplets. | |
| They can stay in the air, but not long. | |
| They don't go far. | |
| But they can be absorbed in the airway. | |
| And this is how the infection starts. | |
| And this is what we think, because we saw a lot of evidence in the lungs of the non-human primates that the virus got in that way. | |
| Dr. | |
| Kobinger further explains the difference between human Ebola cases and respiratory disease outbreaks. | |
| Quote, The reality is that Ebola cases are contained and they remain local. | |
| If it was really an airborne virus like influenza is, it would spread all over the place, and that's not happening. | |
| So they put these pigs and these monkeys for over a week in a pretty tightly enclosed environment. | |
| So the statistical chances of being exposed to the virus become significantly higher. | |
| And this hasn't been proven for human beings, but even if the studies findings do translate to human cases, the people who are most likely to contract airborne, or air carried is a better way of putting it, Ebola, are medical professionals treating sick patients. | |
| Now, a 2004 study of the aerosol or air particle threats posed by phyloviruses such as Ebola concluded, It is clear in the animal model study that phyloviruses can infect by the aerosol or aeroparticle root, and that extraordinarily low doses are lethal for both guinea pigs and non-human primates. | |
| The epidemiological data from natural outbreaks would suggest, however, that the aerosol infectious dose for humans is considerably higher than That the survivability of phyloviruses as a respirable particle is very short outside of controlled laboratory conditions. | |
| Or that infected patients do not expire or breathe out infectious virus particles. | |
| Better developed animal models and studies need to be conducted to better understand these apparent differences, which are critical to evaluating the threat posed by phyloviruses. | |
| So, basically what they're saying is that the infectious dose for humans would be higher than, of course, guinea pigs and non-human primates. | |
| That philoviruses like Ebola really can't survive at all for any period of time outside of controlled laboratory conditions. | |
| And infected patients do not breathe out infected virus particles. | |
| So it's really not gone to the air, so to speak. | |
| A 1999 study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases Sounds scary, | |
| yes. | |
| They go on to say, This is far from saying that Ebola viruses are transmitted in the clinical setting by small particle aerosols generated from an index patient. | |
| Indeed, patients without any direct exposure to a known EHF case were carefully sought but uncommonly found. | |
| The conclusion is that if this mode of spread occurred, it was very minor. | |
| Now, a member of the Center for Disease Control's Viral Special Pathogens branch, Craig Manning, who was deployed to Uganda during a 2007 Ebola outbreak, commented, quote, If you ask me if I'd rather be in a room with influenza patients or I'd rather be in a room with Ebola patients, I would tell you I'd rather be in a room with Ebola patients because I know what to do to protect myself. | |
| Whereas with influenza, which is airborne, any protective measures in that confined space are probably not going to be effective. | |
| Ebola is not that easy to transmit person to person, but influenza very easily transmits from person to person. | |
| Now, of course, tragically, even if Ebola was far more contagious, it incapacitates and kills its victims so fast that it gives them little chance to spread the disease around. | |
| Furthermore, people who carry the virus aren't infectious until they become sick and likely bedridden, which further limits the likelihood of exposing others to the virus. | |
| So contracting Ebola requires direct or indirect exposure to the bodily fluids of a sick person or animal. | |
| The virus primarily enters the human body through tiny skin cuts and abrasions, or through mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. | |
| Fortunately, soap and hot water are enough to kill the virus. | |
| Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Peter Pyatt, stated, quote, I wouldn't be worried to sit next to someone with Ebola virus on the tube of the subway as long as they don't vomit on you or something. | |
| Experts claim that Ebola could easily be contained through better hygiene and education amongst Africans. | |
| Professor Chris Whitty of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine stated, quote, The situation is moving very quickly. | |
| The numbers are increasing in Sierra Leone, but they appear to have peaked in Guinea where the epidemic first started. | |
| What we hope is that with good management and good control, we should be able to start to see the peak of the epidemic and then it will start to decrease. | |
| Grant Brown and Jacob Olson from the University of Iowa's Department of Biostatistics analyzed available data and their mathematical models, quote, predicted a temporary continuation of epidemic activity followed by a decrease into the fall. | |
| So let's compare this Ebola to the swine flu. | |
| The most recent serious epidemic was the H1N1 influenza or swine flu outbreak in 2009. | |
| Laboratory tests confirmed 18,449 H1N1-related deaths, with the CDC estimating the actual death toll to be 284,000 worldwide. | |
| A vaccine was developed within a few months of the outbreak, but the number of available doses was lower than expected. | |
| Now, H1N1 was largely contained through the usual means, tracking down and quarantining everyone who has come in contact with an infected person, limiting travel and spreading information about how to deal with potential exposure to the virus. | |
| Similar methods have been employed in the 2014 Ebola outbreak, even though the virus is expected to contain itself tragically due to the high mortality rate. | |
| During the 2012 Ebola outbreak in Uganda, Health Minister Dr. | |
| Christine Ondor claimed, The Ebola virus is a self-limiting disease. | |
| It can wipe out a family or a village. | |
| When there are no more people to infect, it dies down. | |
| Isolation is the solution and will contain it. | |
| Now, there are several factors that contribute to the severity of the current outbreak. | |
| The affected countries have no history of Ebola epidemics and so the locals are largely unaware of how to deal with the virus. | |
| African people, of course, have been increasingly unwilling to cooperate with the professionals deployed to contain the epidemic, believing medical personnel will further spread the virus within their communities. | |
| Superstition and paranoia are also not helping matters. | |
| The magazine The Economist reports, some Sierra Leoneans say they fear that the government wants to sell the blood of Ebola patients or that it will remove patients' limbs for ritual purposes. | |
| Others think health workers will inject them with Ebola or that the ubiquitous chlorine disinfectant spray will give them the disease or simply that the virus is an invention to help the government bring in donations. | |
| This is why doctors and health workers are sometimes blocked from accessing affected areas. | |
| According to the World Health Organization, not all infected people seek medical care and thus further spread the virus amongst their families and local communities. | |
| Some Africans actually are hiding potential cases, fearing that their loved ones will die in isolation when quarantined. | |
| Now, tragically, African funeral traditions involve washing the body before it's buried, which means the people involved in the ceremonies get in contact with the victim's bodily fluids. | |
| The Chicago Tribune comments, quote, public health workers haven't been able to curtail this traditional practice. | |
| It's a challenge that puts religious and cultural beliefs in direct conflict with infection control. | |
| So, obviously, desperately tragic for everyone involved. | |
| Is it an airborne, world-spanning, civilization-destroying illness? | |
| It does not seem to be that way at all. | |
| And it really bothers me the degree to which people put out this, grab your passports and hide in your basement, doom porn out there. | |
| Really, if you're putting this kind of terrifying information out there, you really need to think twice. | |
| Most of the people who will swallow this information probably have significant mental health problems with regards to paranoia and hyper-suspicion and so on. | |
| So you really kind of are playing, or praying really, on some of the most vulnerable and scared members of society. | |
| And it really is important to follow this through to the end to get the full range of expert opinion. | |
| And to understand that we're not facing anything desperately dangerous for the world as a whole. | |
| People are afraid that these people have been flown to America and now the Ebola virus is in America. | |
| Well, it has been in America for years. | |
| They've got it in universities and in labs. | |
| They're studying it and so on. | |
| So people know how to take care of this kind of virus. | |
| They know how to contain it. | |
| This is not exactly... | |
| The national debt happens, right? | |
| The national debt just happens because there's political motives for it. | |
| There's no political motives, of course, for unleashing some sort of plague on humanity, so it's not going to be the case. | |
| The disease is going to be taken care of, I'm sure of that. | |
| So let's get back to worrying about far more important and dangerous issues. | |
| This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio. | |
| Thank you so much for listening and watching. |