The coming confusion of flu symptoms with Ebola symptoms

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Ebola, Ebola and flu confusion, Ebola dose related to survival, Ebola symptom progression, Ebola symptoms, Flu symptoms

[Click here] for all of Probaway’s EBOLA Posts arranged by date. The recent posts will be at the top.

Now that our normal flu season is beginning there will be great concern about Ebola, because the first three days of Ebola symptoms are the same as those of the common cold or flu. First the victim feels tired and temperature challenged, the next day there’s an irritation somewhere like the nose or throat, then a temperature rise. Then, sourced from The Huffington Post, about the fourth day after the beginning of the mild onset an Ebola victim will begin vomiting and diarrhea, and as the bodily tissues lose fluids the blood pressure will drop. About 7-10 days after onset spontaneous bleeding from the nose or eyes may occur, with non-visible bleeding in the tissues and organs. Without any supportive care the death rate is 90-100 percent. With excellent care from the first onset of symptoms the death rate may be 20-0 percent. The supportive care begins with maintaining bodily fluids, and outside of a hospital that means drinking water with both 1 spoon salt and 8 spoons sugar added to 1 liter of water. Drink enough of this sugared salt water to maintain body weight.

How rapidly a victim develops Ebola is probably dose-related, and a person with a very slight exposure takes 21 days to get sick, and has the best chance of recovery. A person who gets a large dose from directly contacting the fluids of a very sick Ebola victim, probably has a sudden onset in a few days and has a poor prognosis. Being infected with a large dose doesn’t give the body enough time to develop antibodies for eliminating the Ebola virus.

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Ebola S1 [Subject 1] Emile Ouamouno of Meliandou, Guinea

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A beautiful life until -, Ebola, Ebola S1, Emile Ouamouno, Meliandou

[Click here] for all of Probaway’s EBOLA Posts arranged by date. The recent posts will be at the top.

Meliandou village, nestled in the hills, appears so picturesque and safe. GoogleEarth view

Just outside of Meliandou is a grave marked only by stones. It is the last resting place of a two-year-old boy named Emile Ouamouno.

The vegetation grows quickly since December 28, 2013 when Emile died.

Two years earlier here is baby Emile in his father’s arms; they all appear content with their new role in life.

Here is the Ouamouno family when Emile is about two, shortly before he caught Ebola.

The babies in Meliandou are like babies everywhere and they put things in their mouths. The probable source of Ebola is a fruit bat guano.

The main path into Meliandou village (at 8.6224 -10.0649) shows a wonderful place to live a basic lifestyle. Click picture and see 21 people living there, and two sheep.

The list of fatalities in the first few months of Ebola.

Etienne Ouamouno, Emile’s father, lives on without his two children, his wife and her mother, all taken by Ebola.

All of these photos were clipped from a movie provided by UNifeed and created by the UN’s Department of Public Information and UNICEF. They are free for news purposes when their source is quoted. I cleaned and adjusted them for better visibility.

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Projections of Ebola’s response to effective vaccines.

Tags

AIDS, An 18 month Ebola projection, Ebola, Ebola projections, Ebola vaccine, flu, Plague, World War 2

[Click here] for all of Probaway’s EBOLA Posts arranged by date. The recent posts will be at the top.

This logarithmic chart uses projections from the past Ebola cases and Ebola deaths with a speculative projection of the potential effects of large amounts of effective vaccines. The data in the solid lines from December 2013 through October 2014 is based on reports from the World Health Organization (WHO). The red disks and black Xs are derived from the reports on cases and deaths of the month ending where they are placed. The small dotted lines are straight-line projections into the future from from the previous six months.

There are already some possibly effective vaccine candidates based on inserting DNA strings into the Ebola DNA using the CRISPR technique to control their location. These vaccines must be tested for safety and effectiveness, but there is no time to do this with the approved methods, because the disease is doubling so fast. Desperate measures are going to be used to hurry the introduction of these vaccines, so some of them probably will fail to provide immunity, while others may cause disease themselves. Only with experience will it become known what will happen, and what will work, but if nothing is done the projection made on October 1, 2014 isn’t impossible, and that would be a tragedy equivalent to World War 2 by next October 2015. Ten thousand people will probably be dead of Ebola by December, 2014, but without an effective vaccine that could go to twenty million by next October. There isn’t any threat to humanity as a whole, because our population is currently expanding at seventy million per year.

Ebola logarithmic chart projecting the response to an effective vaccine.

TIME magazine post-dated to October 27, 2014 p. 22 writes, “Health officials in Serra Leone, for example, have given up on finding bed space for Ebola patients; instead, they are issuing instructions on caring for the contagious patients at home.” Ebola patients are now being treated by totally untrained, poorly educated people, without any safety equipment. They are issued a bar of soap. This fact makes our politicians telling us that we shouldn’t be worried, “Ebola is under control,” sound like fools.

From The World Health Organization WHO – official source, “People remain infectious as long as their blood and body fluids, including semen and breast milk, contain the virus. Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness.” This implies that symptom free people can still spread the disease, and some men have multiple partners.

For the next several months – the only effective control of Ebola is the physical separation of the virus from people. When effective vaccines become available Ebola may drop back to zero, or it may reside permanently in some people without killing them, and they become super-spreaders.

TIME will tell, but it won’t tell for a year or more.

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES]

Ebola updated logarithmic chart compared to war and disease

Tags

AIDS, An 18 month Ebola projection, Ebola, Ebola projections, Ebola vaccine, flu, Plague, World War 2

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES] Since the Ebola outbreak I have been charting the cases and deaths on a logarithmic graph. To compare Ebola to Flu, Plague, AIDS and major wars the data was inserted and then the historic death tolls were compared proportionally to our current population. The chart was changed as more data was added and it became confusing to interpret. The present chart covers all the orders of magnitude from one person to ten billion, so it will be adequate for several more decades. The new chart’s dates go from the first case of Ebola through January 2016. There are vaccines already being rushed through research and pre-production and perhaps by July there will be enough to vaccinate everyone at risk. Until that time the only effective prevention of spreading the disease is physical separation of the disease from people. Once a person has the Ebola symptoms the mortality rate is about eighty percent without medical care, and about half that with care. Considering the lag time for effective treatment, and the current projections for the future ten months without a vaccine, the future of West Africa is grim.

Ebola logarithmic chart from 1st victim to vaccine control. With Plague, AIDS, World War 2, with a 1 year projection.

A log 10 by 26 month graphic shows Ebola growth from the index patient to the time of possibly effective vaccine control. The data points are from standard sources based on the World Health Organization (WHO)and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They point out that the data is not exact because many people refuse to report that they have relatives who are sick. Because of the nature of logarithmic charts even a failure of half of the victims being reported wouldn’t change the trend of the graph.

Probably the best that can be done for the people living in West Africa is to inform them of the ways to avoid catching Ebola. Basically that is to avoid sick people and their effluvia, and to wash themselves often. Also, I would promote not touching one’s eyes, nose, and mouth as much as possible.

The only effective control of Ebola is the physical separation of the virus from people.

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES]

Ebola – links to good source information and objective news

Tags

Ebola, Ebola meliandou, Ebola vaccine, Nature magazine, NEJM New England Journal of Dedicine, WHO World Health Organization

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES] On December 28, 2013 a two-year-old child died in the village of Meliandou of what in retrospect turned out to be the first case of the current outbreak of Ebola. Local doctors visited the village when several more related people died, but physical symptoms were not enough to separate the disease from cholera, malaria and others. There are many diseases in tropical Africa killing many people, but this one became obvious because of its contagion. From NEJM – “On March 23, 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) was notified of an outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Guinea. On August 8, the WHO declared the epidemic to be a “public health emergency of international concern.””

Source articles about the Ebola epidemic. New England Journal of Medicine – Ebola articles

1. Center for Disease Control (CDC) – Ebola
2. Nature com news. A premier scientific source of information.
3. The Africa Paper: EBOLA: Hell in the Hot Zone. An excellent close-in account of the first few months of the Ebola outbreak and the responses.
4. UNICEF Connect – Ebola and its devastating impact on children Photo in Meliandou
5. WHO: EBOLA RESPONSE ROADMAP UPDATE = Google Search terms
6. WHO: EBOLA RESPONSE ROADMAP UPDATE = 8 September 2014
7. WHO: EBOLA RESPONSE ROADMAP UPDATE = 1 October 2014
8. WHO: EBOLA RESPONSE ROADMAP UPDATE = 10 October 2014
9. WHO: EBOLA RESPONSE ROADMAP UPDATE = 17 October 2014
10. WHO: EBOLA RESPONSE ROADMAP UPDATE = 25 October 2014
11. Wikipedia – WHO: Series of Ebola response maps as thumbnail maps
12. Ebola vaccine development and testing
13. PLOS Medicine – Ebola DNA analysis
14. Journal of General Virology – The 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak
15. Science AAAS – Ebola vaccine trials raise ethical issues.
16. Ebola Deeply – Analysis of the current Ebola outbreak

The only effective control of Ebola is the physical separation of the virus from people.

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES]

Stop Ebola with physical separation methods list.

Tags

Coping with Ebola, Ebola, List of Ebola strategies., Stop Ebola with physical separation

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES] Today there is no cure for Ebola, there are no effective treatments for Ebola, there is no vaccination for Ebola. The only known way of coping with Ebola is physical separation from the virus. Here is a starter list of ways to separate humans from Ebola. This isn’t intended as an operational guide, but as a stimulus to alternative thoughts.

In tropical Africa

1. Avoid possible Ebola carriers such as bats and primates.
2. Avoid fresh bush-meat in markets.
3. Prepare food by cooking, and wash hands immediately after touching bush-meat.
4. Wash everything that has been touched by bush-meat.
5. Learn not to touch your eyes, nose, mouth by using “hot” capsaicin on your fingers.
6. Put up mosquito netting on windows and around beds.

Living near Ebola victims

1. Avoid touching public items such as doorknobs with hands. Use foot or elbow.
2. In public places, avoid all sick people.
3. Wash refrigerated items before using. Ebola virus survives on cold surfaces.
4. When you are sick avoid all other people, and warn them you are sick.
5. When a family member is sick provide a separate bed, away from others.
6. Don’t touch sick people or their effluvia. Wash it and yourself immediately.
7. Never touch a dying person or a dead one, but leave home and call for help.

Living in an Ebola area

1. Avoid crowds, buses, and markets as much as possible.
2. Purchase a month’s supply of storable food like rice and beans.
3. Stay in contact with friends using cell phones.

Treating sick friends

1. Treat feverish people sick with flu or malaria as if they have Ebola.
2. Provide water, food and necessities and toilets by placing them near the sick person and then stepping back.
3. Be as emotionally supportive as possible, but from across the room.
4. Never touch your eyes, nose or mouth when near a sick person.
5. Frequently wash thoroughly when around any sick person, and apply capsaicin to fingers.

Medical personnel

1. Follow your self-protective procedures carefully.
2. Practice not touching your eyes, nose, mouth by using capsaicin.
3. Monitor your medical companions following procedures.
4. Avoid intimate contact with Ebola medical personnel, when off duty.

Hospitals and sick shelters

1. Sick people should be in individual rooms; undiagnosed flu, Ebola, malaria should be kept separated.
2. Outdoor one-person tents separated would impede transmission.
3. One-person tents designed to wrap a corpse makes transporting them safer.
4. The dead must be instantly wrapped, and with clear plastic over face for photo ID.

Transportation

1. Limit international, intercity and intracity movement to necessities.
2. Stop tourism, even business travel, to infected areas.
3. Test temperature of all travelers and reject all sick people; don’t believe a person’s statements that they haven’t been exposed.

The intent of these suggestions is to create as much physical separation between people as possible for the duration of the Ebola epidemic.

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES]

Ebola compared to historical epidemics and wars

Tags

Disease and War compared to Ebola, Ebola, Fever colds and ebola, flu

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES] As hideous as Ebola is and as horrible as the straight-line logarithmic projections look for the coming year, it isn’t as bad as some things that have fallen on humanity. If the efforts to stop this deadly disease are successful in the next few months it won’t impact humanity greatly, but if it isn’t contained by April next year it may go unchecked until it runs its natural course. That could happen, and if it does it will be the greatest disaster ever. The reason is that if everyone is exposed and catches it, and half die, that would be three billion people. That is not impossible, and the bubonic plague may have killed half of the world’s population by about 1350. The figures are very vague, but there were vast numbers of people killed. These days we have better means of coping with disease, and apparently the transmission is well known and thus easily avoided. The present Ebola strain requires direct contact with bodily fluids from a very sick person, so that is easily avoided, except for family members and medical staff. The recent Hajj to Mecca by many Africans and their mixing with two million people may be a turning point for humanity.

Ebola cases and deaths compared to major historical diseases and wars.

Logarithmic charts are good for showing biological growth, which is how Ebola behaves, and we humans are now its food. To bring Ebola infections back to zero requires every example of it residing in humans to be destroyed. This disease has a wild reservoir, possibly in bats or primates, and every few years there is a single transfer to humans. If that transfer is in a remote village, many of those people die, and the disease dies with them, but in this case the disease has spread to larger cities and people are infecting other people. Presently there are over seven billion people on Earth, so the disease has plenty of population to infect if it gets the chance. The sooner it is totally stopped the better, because it only takes a single case to get it going again. Presently there are about seven thousand known cases, and that is difficult, but if the straight-line logarithmic projections above are accurate, by April there could be seven million cases, and that would probably make it impossible to stop, and the disease would run its course.

The chart above gives some perspective on the disasters that have come to humanity. There are many more, but these are the worst ones. They are derived from List of Wars and Anthropogenic disasters by death toll, on Wikipedia and a List of epidemics. The oldest one listed on the chart is the Yellow Turban War ending in 205, which killed 3 million people, but there were only 250 million people in the world at that time, so for comparison with the present 7 billion people they are divided by 250 million and we get a multiplier of 28 times as many people now as then. So a dotted line is placed on the chart representing the relative deaths today compared to those of that ancient war, and that gives almost 100 million. The number used in the calculation was the lowest given in the List of Wars; if the highest had been used it would be 196 million. These are dreadful numbers, but by looking at the chart it is easy to see they have been greatly exceeded by the Plague in 1450 and by the voluntary actions of the Mongol invasions, and Tamerlane, and by involuntary diseases like the flu of 1920.

The authorities tell us not to panic, that this disease is being controlled, but the only time a disease like this one is under control is when it is totally stopped, and gone, and at present it is still on the logarithmic growth line. I posted last week some things that can be done to slow and eventually stop this disease. How to prevent Ebola, the common cold and infectious disease.

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES]

How to prevent Ebola, the common cold and infectious disease.

Tags

Ebola, Fever colds and ebola, flu

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES] Okay, that’s an outrageous claim for a title, and this post is little more than a rehash of an earlier post about the flu. – How to prevent flu, the common cold and other infectious disease. All of the suggestions are obvious and it seems some people in authority should simply address the Ebola problem directly. This post simply inserts the word Ebola wherever flu, or influenza appears in that previous post, and and tweaks it a bit. This procedure is legitimate because the suggestions apply to all infectious diseases.

Prevent the creation of new ebola strains

1. Stop the creation of new varieties of Ebola by preventing birds, pigs, monkeys and chimps, and humans from communicating the virus between each other. This can be done by:
2. Informing poultry and pig husbandry men, and bush-meat hunters, that they are the source of worldwide pandemics and therefore:
3. Poultry and pig husbandry men and hunters should not go to work when they are sick with any disease, because they catch a new diseases more easily. Especially avoid animals with Ebola and especially when their pigs or birds or bush-meat animals are sick. New disease comes into existence within a living body by recombining DNA of the different diseases. It is similar to sexual reproduction between viruses in its effects.
4. To help these workers endure this sick time they should be paid double their salary for seven days, by the government, for not going to work, and,
5. Their employer should be paid half his salary to help pay for his temporary replacement worker, because the replacement will not be as efficient as the experienced worker.

Prevent the virus from developing in humans

1. Children in contact with birds, pigs, monkeys or adults frequently working with these animals should be monitored at home and at school by their teachers for signs of any disease, especially Ebola.
2. Children of this group should be isolated instantly when they show the first symptoms of flu or Ebola, and given an antiviral such as Tamiflu or the experimental drug ZMaap, when it becomes available, for several days.
3. Stockpile a quantity of Tamiflu and ZMaap with the school nurse or principal when it becomes available, in all communities with pig and poultry farms and now African bush-meat areas.

Prevent the virus from spreading locally

1. Inform local doctors and people in poultry and pig and bush-meat areas to be vigilant about flu and Ebola symptoms.
2. When a person has flu or Ebola symptoms quarantine them and give antivirals and ZMaap to everyone who came in contact with them.
3. Give masks to everyone at every public place, and enforce the wearing of them.
4. Practice telling people to sneeze into their left elbow, and rub itches with right forearm.
5. Put antibiotic gloves on all public doorknobs and other things that public people touch.
6. Stop all people, birds and pigs and bush-meat from leaving a local community.
7. Keep this community well supplied with food so they will be rewarded for being vigilant and cooperative and not fleeing because of hunger.

Prevent the virus from spreading globally

1. Shut down international travel as much as possible, especially air travel.
2. Place antibiotic gloves on all public doorknobs, etc.
3. Require everyone entering any air terminal worldwide to don a mask.
4. Require all persons on airplanes to wear a mask.
5. Have microbial filters on airplane ventilation systems.

Prepare vaccine, antiviral, mask, antiseptic stockpiles in all cities

1. National governments should have local stockpiles of antibacterial masks and gloves.
2. UN should have a special backup stockpile to send to epidemic areas.
3. Good quality information for coping should be pre-printed as posters and displayed.
4. Do evidence-based research on what really works best, and what doesn’t work.

Personal home treatments

1. Stay home and rest if sick from any cause.
2. When sick with any disease totally avoid people, primates, pigs and birds.
3. During an outbreak avoid all people as much as possible.
4. Drink plenty of water, and avoid behavior that puts you at risk.
5. When diarrhea is present, drink water with 1 teaspoon salt, 8 teaspoons sugar dissolved in 1 liter of water.
6. Treat aches with medications acetaminophen, ibuprofen, naproxen but not aspirin.
7. If fever hits 103° F take aspirin to lower to 101°F.
8. My personal experience is that creating a fever of 102°F for 5 minutes with a bath of 106° F water, twice a day for three days at the very beginning of a flu. That alerts the immune system to become active, but getting the body hotter than 102°F begins overwhelming the immune system and causes fatigue, and is probably counterproductive for combating any disease. Never allow your body to go over 103°F without taking medical action.

Below is a list of earlier standalone posts about flu that may be applicable to Ebola from www.probaway.wordpress.com:

1. The original 1994 – Probaway – Flu
2. Cure the common cold with 102° voluntary fevers.
3. Cure for the common cold is six 102 degree fevers.
4. My flu germs are doing better than I am.
5. My flu germs are doing much better than I am.
6. My treatment of today’s flu worked okay.
7. A cure for the common cold using 105° F baths.
8. Reducing the flu threat for everyone.
9. Berkeley Avian Influenza Conference.
10. A cure for the bird-flu ! ?
11. Flu recommendations from the medicine men.
12. I have cured the H1N1 flu – hurrah – maybe
13. Temperature triggers biological responses.
14. Prevent the common cold with capsaicin.
15. Seasonal flu – infectivity, susceptibility, humidity, transmission, infections.

The above are standalone posts so they may repeat the basic ideas, but each has a new observation. Fortunately I have no personal experience with Ebola, but one of the early symptoms is a fever, and my personal experience with curing my personal flus for twenty years is to voluntarily raise my body temperature to 102° F. I do this voluntary fever treatment as soon as I have any flu symptoms, and when I have done this I have never had more than a half teaspoon of snot. The quantity of snot is a good measure of the severity of a flu.

I have experimented over the years with slight variations of this fever treatment of flus, and the bath at 106 F. raises my temperature to 102° F. in about a half an hour, by being submersed up to my nose. When I reach the temperature of102° F. I hold it there for five minutes by rising partially out of the bath, by sitting up. My experience is that this procedure works for a flu, and it might work for Ebola. With more than half the people catching Ebola dying, every treatment must be explored.

Ebola cases in red and deaths in orange from April 2014 to October Projection to October 2015 is based on the existing six month trend line.

It will be months, and perhaps a years before any ZMaap vaccine will be available beyond experimental quantities, and straight line Ebola Case projections will hit 70,000 cases by New Year’s Day 2015. Many of the proposals above could be implemented in days. Masks and gloves would slow the spread of disease, and shutting down air travel from infected areas would limit the disease to Equatorial Africa. Many of those people’s lives could be saved by sending in thermometers, masks and packaged food, so they could stay isolated from infected people more effectively. This disease like others is probably transferred to the mouth, eyes and nose, after touching some infected materials with the hands.

Millions of people could be trained in days not to touch their mouths, eyes, and noses by having capsaicin sprayed on their fingers.

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES]

Ebola case and death projections

Tags

Coping with Ebola, Ebola, Log chart for estimating ebloa transmission rates

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES]

Projecting into the future is a fool’s prerogative, and sensible people don’t voice their future thoughts for fear of being branded a fool. Projecting really bad things to come is limited to Old Testament prophets and other outcasts. I have been plagued with strange and unfortunate associations with super weapons all my life  and have come to accept that level of problem to be coped with as best as can be done. From that effort on to simply accept what happens in a Stoical way and make the best of what comes.

With that intro aside, it becomes imperative to consider the greatest emerging short-term threat to humanity, and that is a runaway epidemic of Ebola. Efforts are being made to contain this horrible disease, and let us all support those efforts to the maximum. There is a good survey article in Wikipedia – Ebola virus disease. That is where I got the graphic below, and inserted the lines so the data could be read more easily.

Ebola Cases April 1, 2014 and projected through October 1, 2014

When dealing with this type of data it makes more sense to chart it using a logarithmic scale, because a when using a linear horizontal linear compared to a vertical scale the line simply goes vertical and relationships are lost.

Ebola cases and deaths charted on a log8 cycle, linear 10 cycle, and projected for 1 year.

Straight-line projections are risky, and yet with a disease that is contained only by its rate of transmission this log-semi graph is what is to be expected. There are efforts to contain the spread, and it remains to be seen if they are going to be effective. If Ebola establishes itself in several places outside of equatorial Africa,  those dotted lines may become indicators of the greatest plague of all time.

Links to a history of Probaway’s [EBOLA UPDATES]

Spillover by David Quammen – Book review – AIDS Ebola SARS Nipah H5N1 Q

Tags

AIDS, Ebola, H1N1, H5N1, Nipha, Pandemic disease, Q, SARS, Spillover disease

[Current Probaway update search for – Ebola.]

This is a wonderfully techy book while being very easy to read. The horrid new diseases which have come to humanity this last century are traced to their sources by boots-on-the-ground scientists. David Quammen, a writer for National Geographic, is close behind these scientists in their quests to find the cause of these new threats to humanity. Sometimes he is with them, crawling through caves in Africa filled with thousands of bats, zillions of insects, scores of poisonous snakes and oh yes, ebola. Sometimes he’s in the swamps of Bangladesh, netting bats with Nipah, sometimes in the jungles of Cameroon catching chimpanzee piss and shit loaded with SIV, which turns out to be nearly identical to human AIDS and probably its source. This is risky business!

This isn’t a book of idle armchair speculation. This is a book by and about people who dedicate their lives to finding the real causes of the plagues of humanity. It is careful and dangerous work, where a slip of a needle or the thrashing of an animal can bring on an agonizing death to these people. This is the cutting edge of science where a tiny cut can be fatal.

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen is a series of detective stories, linked by the common theme of human pandemic. All of these new diseases are carefully tracked and documented, and the people involved are noted for their dedication and self-sacrifice.

This isn’t a book that will scare you, but it is one which will make you much more cautious about exposing yourself to disease.

Spillover is 500 pages of scientific detective work at its most fascinating.