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Your daily 'thing to be afraid of'

Incurable, potentially pandemic-like, diseases always kind of creeped me out:

The Ebola virus could eventually infect 20,000 people and the actual number of current cases may already be two to four times higher than reported, the World Health Organization says.

The United Nations health agency released a road map on Thursday with its $490-million US plan to try to contain the outbreak in nine months.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ebola-outbreak-cases-could-exceed-20-000-who-says-1.2749071
 
daftandbarmy said:
Incurable, potentially pandemic-like, diseases always kind of creeped me out:

The Ebola virus could eventually infect 20,000 people and the actual number of current cases may already be two to four times higher than reported, the World Health Organization says.

The United Nations health agency released a road map on Thursday with its $490-million US plan to try to contain the outbreak in nine months.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ebola-outbreak-cases-could-exceed-20-000-who-says-1.2749071

Ok, yeah, this is pretty damn creepy. I'd take that bed of wasps over a pandemic.

In our day and age, I wonder if it's even possible to contain something like this and how accurate the estimate could/will be. Who knows how many people have already "slipped under the radar" and moved from the main "infected area"...

It's apparently getting worse: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ebola-spreads-to-senegal-after-student-evades-health-monitors-1.2750314
 
If you really want to be afraid, read this.

Scary for me, I live only 20 miles from the lab in question.
 
The Co-Discoverer Of Ebola Never Imagined An Outbreak Like This

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/08/29/344257046/the-co-discoverer-of-ebola-never-imagined-an-outbreak-like-this

As a young scientist in Belgium, Peter Piot was part of a team that discovered the Ebola virus in 1976.

He took his first trip to Africa to investigate this mysterious disease. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, he met people who had contracted it. "I'll never forget the glazed eyes, the staring and the pain ... this type of expression in the eyes ... telling me I'm going to die," says Piot. "That I'll never forget."

Piot went on to study AIDS in the 1980s and became founding executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS. He is now director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

In an interview with NPR's Melissa Block, Piot tells the story of Ebola's discovery: He and his colleagues were looking at samples from a Belgian nun who had died of a disease in Congo. The question he thought he was trying to answer: Was it yellow fever?

Instead it was a new disease. "I was excited," he recalls, "because one of the dreams of any microbiologists is to discover a new pathogen. That was very excited. But I certainly didn't think it would develop into such a human tragedy as we're seeing now in West Africa."

"This is absolutely unexpected and unprecedented," he says. "We have here a situation where Ebola finds an enormously fertile ground in very poor countries with very dysfunctional health systems," he says. "A country like Liberia in 2010 only 51 doctors for the whole country."

He hopes there will never be another outbreak like this one. "I hope that this is the last epidemic where all we have [as treatment] is isolation of patients and quarantines and some supportive care, and we don't have stockpiles of vaccines and therapies."

There is potential for Ebola to spread to neighboring African countries, he says, but he is not worried about "high-income countries."

"Our basic hospital hygiene is such that it is highly unlikely it would give rise to epidemics," he says.

But he does warn that we are moving into a future where health risks will increase: "We'll have to be prepared that in a globalized world, these viruses will spread much faster than ever before."
 
cupper said:
If you really want to be afraid, read this.

Scary for me, I live only 20 miles from the lab in question.

Excellent book.  I lent it to someone and never got it back.  :(
 
Remember these guys?

Crantor said:
Fear this:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1025_021025_GiantHornets.html

Giant.  Flesh melting.  Killer Wasps.

Google the image for Japanese wasp as well and feel the horror.

It seems that the Japanese Honey Bee has developed defenses against them. Murder Squishing.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2014/09/19/349645420/-murdersquishing-them-to-death-how-little-bees-take-on-enormous-hornets?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140919

Here is a video of the process in action. WOW!

http://youtu.be/TkIvM0dKhS8
 
Anyone within site of a water cooling tower? Anyone?

The Chernobyl disaster (Ukrainian: Чорнобильська катастрофа, Chornobylska Katastrofa – Chornobyl Catastrophe; also referred as Chernobyl or the Chornobyl accident) was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then officially the Ukrainian SSR), which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities of the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe.

The Chernobyl disaster is the worst nuclear power plant accident in history in terms of cost and casualties,[1] and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event (the maximum classification) on the International Nuclear Event Scale (the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011).[2] The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles (18 billion $USD) .[3][4] During the accident itself 31 people died, and long-term effects such as cancers and deformities are still being accounted for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

 
Death from above.... wayyyyyyyyyy above:


Nicaragua meteorite strike raises concerns over undetected space objects

A meteorite believed to have originated from the "Pitbull" asteroid just misses landing on Managua airport

A meteorite that landed "like a bomb", narrowly missing Nicaragua's main airport, has raised concerns over scientists' ability to track space objects on potential collision courses with Earth.

Officials said they "thanked God" there were no injuries as the rock landed in Managua, a sprawling city of 1.2 million people, where it left a crater 40ft wide and 16ft deep.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/nicaragua/11082751/Nicaragua-meteorite-strike-raises-concerns-over-undetected-space-objects.html
 
Cancer victim 'came back to life' in her grave

Visitors to a cemetery in Greece claim they heard a woman shouting from inside her coffin and dug her up, only for her to die for a second time

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/11124954/Cancer-victim-came-back-to-life-in-her-grave.html
 
daftandbarmy said:
Meanwhile, in Australia... :o

Yep, drove over one there (not sure if it was already dead beforehand) that went from one side of the road to the other.....  :o
 
PMedMoe said:
Yep, drove over one there (not sure if it was already dead beforehand) that went from one side of the road to the other.....  :o

What... is.... it?
 
Loachman said:
A road? It's a long, flat, grey thing that cars drive on.

And ironically, the same definition can be given to the snake when it gets run over in the middle of the road. ;D
 
Loachman said:
A road? It's a long, flat, grey thing that cars drive on. But that's not important right now, and please, stop calling me Shirley!"

There, FTFY.  :nod:
 
Loachman said:
A road? It's a long, flat, grey thing that cars drive on pilots follow when the GPS is broken or the Navigator is too hung over.

Fixed that for you.  Isn't that what IFR stands for?
 
I've never had a navigator, in any sense of the word "had".
 
Jack Knox: Exotic plagues rarely the scariest thing we face

She found me stuffing shells into the shotgun. This caused her to cock an eyebrow. “Spider in the kitchen?” I shook my head. “Ebola in Texas. I’m shooting the neighbours, just to be safe.” She paused. “Make sure to aim for their brains.” My turn to pause. “No, you’re thinking of zombies.”

My turn to pause. “No, you’re thinking of zombies.” Well, we had a healthy chuckle about that. (And BTW: new season of The Walking Dead begins next weekend. So excited!) The moment of levity was a welcome respite from the grim reality that the Ebolapocalypse is upon us, with one (1) case of the disease diagnosed in North America. Better stockpile the backyard bunker, dear, the plague will surely be getting off the plane at YYJ by Thursday. On the other hand, I have in the past been accused — with lamentable justification — of overreacting to the exotic health scare du jour. It was in 2001 that I chased the dog out of the house, just in case he tracked in that year’s hoof-and-mouth disease outbreak. In 2002, it was the mid-Island discovery of Cryptococcus neoformans, an airborne fungus, that had me rolling up the windows and holding my breath every time I drove past Parksville.

- See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/jack-knox-exotic-plagues-rarely-the-scariest-thing-we-face-1.1414658#sthash.C5RJy264.dpuf
 
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