I'm starting to get a bit fed-up with what now seems to me to be ebola hysteria. Yesterday's news in Brisbane was full of the fact that an 18 year old woman who had arrived from West Africa had been hospitalised because she had a fever.

I have no problem with her being hospitalised, but I do have a problem with it being all over the news. The media of course played it up - another opportunity to increase their audience and make their advertising space more valuable.

But I don't think it works that way for the government. The girl has since been cleared, as seemed likely. The next time there is an announcement it will be less effective because the last one meant nothing.

Why wouldn't they wait until the results of the tests and they knew whether it was ebola or not?

At another level, the WHO says that by Christmas there could be 10,000 a month dying of ebola. As the total death toll to date is around 10,000, this seems highly unlikely. Previous outbreaks have been contained. One would assume this one will be too.

It was a slow day at the Newspaper Office. They needed something to liven things up a bit. The War in Syria I getting a bit stale. Shooting in America are a bit passé now. One every other week. There hasn't been a big natural catastrophy for a while now. Gotta sell papers somehow.

However I was speaking to someone (a little old lady) the other day & she hadn't heard of Ebola. Strange, some people just don't watch the news or if they do, It's a bit like ads on TV, it just goes over the head.

Graham,

"....but I do have a problem with it being all over the news. The media of course played it up - another opportunity to increase their audience and make their advertising space more valuable."

That's the way it works - doesn't it?

That's why we got blanket coverage of the 800 man strong "terror raids" which netted 2 nasties (one of whom was released shortly after on non-terror related good behaviour bond)

"At another level, the WHO says that by Christmas there could be 10,000 a month dying of ebola. As the total death toll to date is around 10,000, this seems highly unlikely. Previous outbreaks have been contained. One would assume this one will be too."

Why is it "unlikely' that a virus like this could get beyond what it has before? These countries are extremely poor, some recovering from war - and WHO had its budget cut, dragged its feet, etc

Good article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/10/04/how-ebola-sped-out-of-control/

"The virus easily outran the plodding response. The WHO, an arm of the United Nations, is responsible for coordinating international action in a crisis like this, but it has suffered budget cuts, has lost many of its brightest minds and was slow to sound a global alarm on Ebola. Not until Aug. 8, 4 1/2 months into the epidemic, did the organization declare a global emergency. Its Africa office, which oversees the region, initially did not welcome a robust role by the CDC in the response to the outbreak.

Previous Ebola outbreaks had been quickly throttled, but that experience proved misleading and officials did not grasp the potential scale of the disaster. Their imaginations were unequal to the virulence of the pathogen."

Having said that, there is a world of difference between catching Ebola in the backstreets of Monrovia with little or no real medical care - and being diagnosed in a Western country with state of the art medical facilities.

Do you really believe this outbreak is no great universal threat outside Africa?

Regarding the 10,000 by Christmas.

I caught part of a report showing the removal of an Ebola infected elderly woman from her run-down shack (can't remember which country) She'd been "quarantined" by her community and lay almost dead on a squalid mattress in a darkened room by herself. The community had had to wait days for medics to come suited up for her removal. They went in and removed her, putting her into quite a flash ambulance.

Her relatives were going to move back into that house - live in that room...because they had nowhere else to live or seek shelter.

They said they would "clean it" and then resume living there.

These people are the poorest of the poor - so cleaning would probably involve a slop or two of water, etc....then off they'll go languishing in goodness knows what left behind from the infected woman.

That's how it spreads - and that's where we're at in the affected countries in Africa.

poirot: That's why we got blanket coverage of the 800 man strong "terror raids" which netted 2 nasties (one of whom was released shortly after on non-terror related good behaviour bond)

nah! these two were the nastiest of the nasty. The other nasties were released for the same reason the raped children of Rochdale in England weren't reported. The Authorities didn't want to be seen as Racist.

The WHO, part of that illustrious organisation, the UN, has just provided us with another example of it's uselessness.

There has not been a single thing done by the UN in the last 50 years that was of any help to anyone.

It is definitely time to shut it down, & dispatch it's staff to more useful work. They are not worth feeding in their current activities. Road building by hand in the highlands of Nepal might be something they could not stuff up.

As for those grandstanding on the problem, calling for us to send people to help, I'm all for it. All for it, provided the only ones we send are those grandstanding.

We should immediately give them a one way ticket, with the assurance that they are on their own, & will definitely not be allowed back into Australia until it is sure that the thing has fully burnt out.

God I am sick of noisy peanuts.