As the peak of media coverage of the Ebola situation has dropped precipitously since mid-October, as Mediaite most aptly pointed out recently, there is still plenty being said about the situation here and abroad.
The 2nd person to contract Ebola Virus Diseases (EVD) in the United States, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas nurse Amber Vinson was released from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Oct. 28.
She spoke to CNN Thursday concerning how she contracted the potentially lethal virus. “I have no idea,” she told CNN. “I go through it almost daily in my mind: what happened, what went wrong. Because I was covered completely every time. I followed the CDC protocol. … I never strayed. It is a mystery to me.”
However, on NBC she told Matt Lauer that “we did not get much training” in how to handle Ebola. “The first time that I put on the protective equipment, I was heading in to take care of the patient. So, we didn’t have excessive training where we could don and doff, put on and take off the protective equipment, till we got a level of being comfortable with it.”
Ms. Vinson also had the opportunity to meet with former US President George W Bush at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas Friday where the 43th President called Amber Vinson a “sweet woman” and gave her a hug.
President Bush made the following statement at the hospital on the day Texas was declared Ebola-free:
“The last five weeks have been a trying time for the city and residents of Dallas and especially the people of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. I appreciate the way the hospital and its professionals are sharing lessons learned in a way that helps the broader United States health care community respond to this terrible virus. As someone who has gone to Presbyterian hospital for care myself, I know it is a dedicated, professional and caring place, and I’m confident it is doing what is necessary to reaffirm the community’s trust.”
In Maine, we learn that nurse Kaci Hickox and boyfriend Ted Wilbur will be moving after her 21 day quarantine is complete on Monday.
Wilbur dropped out of nursing school at the University of Maine at Fort Kent on Friday saying, We’re going to try to get our lives back on track.”
Not happy with the treatment he received at the school, Wilbur said, “I agreed to whatever,” he said. “They didn’t show any leadership or support to me and they had an opportunity, as a nursing school, to act like a medical community, and they didn’t.”
“They instead decided to pander to fear and hysteria,” Wilbur said.
The new World Health Organization chief of tackling the Ebola outbreak, Dr. Bruce Aylward, who recently visited the Ebola stricken areas of West Africa, told Canadian press, “The overall picture is still one of great concern and devastation, I have to say. Not just in terms of the disease itself, but the consequences of the disease,” Aylward told CBC News.
“You know, the fields are laying fallow in key areas, the markets are empty in key areas, hotels are empty, and children are orphaned. It really, really is a very, very tough situation for these countries, and a dangerous situation.”
“It’s a dangerous, devastating disease, but simple measures will protect you from it. In Liberia, we’ve seen the disease slowing down. Now we have to be very careful when we say that though — it means it’s going from an exponential rate of growth of what we call a linear, a sort of slower rate of growth,” he said.
“In key areas in Guinea and Sierra Leone, we’re also seeing the disease dropping very quickly, and this is mainly because populations are starting to understand the risks associated with Ebola and how to protect themselves and their families from the disease. So that’s very encouraging, it’s going to slow the disease down. but it’s not going to stop it.”
Who is to blame for the historical Ebola outbreak?
Listening to director-general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan, well, I’ll let you judge for yourself. In an address to the Regional Committee for Africa, Sixty-fourth Session, Cotonou, Republic of Benin on Monday, Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr Margaret Chan dedicated part of her speech to the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa:
“Ebola emerged nearly four decades ago. Why are clinicians still empty-handed, with no vaccines and no cure?”, she asked. She goes on to answer her own question–“Because Ebola has historically been confined to poor African nations.”
“A profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay,” Dr Chan said.
Lastly, there is Prof Francis Boyle, a noted scholar of biowarfare and international law at the University of Illinois. We’ve heard the things that Delaware St. University professor , Dr. Cyril Broderick said about the Ebola outbreak earlier.
Prof. Boyle says, “This isn’t normal Ebola at all. I believe it’s been genetically modified.” Boyle points to a US government in Kenema, Sierra Leone:
“Kenema is the absolute epicentre of the outbreak. Something happened there. It could have been an accident in the lab or they might have been testing an experimental vaccine [on the population] using live genetically modified Ebola and calling it something else.” The proof, for Boyle, that this is a modified form of Ebola is in both the speed of its spread and the number it is killing. “In the other outbreaks it’s a 50 per cent fatality rate and it was contained. Right here, we’re dealing with a 70 per cent and it’s not contained. All the evidence I’ve been able to locate leads me to believe it came out of the Kenema lab.” How high does the cover-up go? “I think the people at the top know. Probably Obama too.”
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