Ebola Virus

DDHv wrote:

Northstar wrote:
Combine that sort of thing with the insidious way HIV lurks without symptoms for years while being contagious all along.... You get a tragedy. . . ..

Ebola now is spreading wherever contact conditions allow it to spread. It does not care how sacred one's funeral practices are, or anything else, except getting itself spread as widely as possible. Behaviors change or people die. Period. . . ..

Remember the artificial disease in the Empire of Man series that wiped out most life? One thing DW did for that series was to have it spread before symptoms. The other factor was that it killed everything. I wish we could trust the germ warfare people NOT to aim in that direction.

I'm glad our immune systems were designed to fight off many genetic variations It is a very complicated system, and it is worth studying what we know about it. Our biochemical knowledge is increasing by leaps and bounds, but as I remind kids when discussing learning, our civilization has learned to value knowledge and understanding, but is still lacking in using them wisely. We get too many barbarians, internal and external, with advanced weapons.

Some are indeed immune from HIV due to a gene they happen to have. Can't remember the name of it. Saw an interview with a now elderly gay guy who happens to have the gene. He said he never complains about being an old queen. Luck of the genetics lottery.

HIV/AIDS is one of a small number of diseases that are pretty much 100% fatal untreated. Rabies comes to mind as another. Gay or straight having unprotected nookie, outside a truly monogamous relationship, is playing Russian Roulette with the Archangel and most of the chambers are loaded. That's just sad reality anywhere on earth. What toll will it take over a century or longer? Unknown. Because its burn through world populations is slow, and now mostly not reported or commented upon, does not make it less relentless. Thankfully, it is not airborne and neither is Rabies.

In Ebola news today it is apparently creating havoc in Sierra Leone. Pretty much out of control. May that change quickly for the better.

In other news a vaccine seems to be safe and at least somewhat effective. eh.

On a creepier front I saw an interview with a vegan activist this morning. The usual killing animals is immoral blah blah blah. I agree that factory farms should be banned as unsustainable and too often cruel -- which is not just Bambi hugging. Stressed livestock fed cheapest possible food in confinement operations equals poor quality meat. Factory-style livestock operations are too big and have too much out products in too small a place. Big manure ponds and all that. Staff who are underpaid and overworked and do not have a good rancher's intrinsic care for the land and their livestock. It's all about the big bucks over all else with factory operations. Just is. Greedy irresponsible and stupidly shortsighted. bah. A lot more smaller better run operations would improve the pollution situation and the welfare of the livestock. My opinion. YMMV.

Have I personally raised, slaughtered and butchered livestock? Yes. We owe livestock good lives and good food while alive and a painless and fearless quick death at the end. Hunters owe their prey competence and a good clean shot. A skilled hunter in fact gives the most painless death any wild critter will get. Being gutted by wolves or other predators or dying of starvation or being hit by a car are not nice ways to go.

I am personally very pro family farms. And very pro grass-fed ranching with smaller, less grain dependent or even grain independent, heritage breeds. Galloway or Red Poll cattle come to mind as examples. This sort of ranching, rotational pasture based & mob-herding, actually reverses desertification when it is done right. Go look it up on utube.

Anyway, the creepy bit was where he let it slip he thinks humanity is a bane upon the planet. Uh-huh, well, he should help with that by removing himself from the planet.

This is the sort of idiot who just might intentionally unleash a 100% fatal plague in order to accomplish his goal of eliminating humans from the Earth. They scare me far more than even ISIL nuts. Terrorists do not want to depopulate the whole planet. These twits do.

Northstar wrote:

Northstar wrote:
Combine that sort of thing with the insidious way HIV lurks without symptoms for years while being contagious all along.... You get a tragedy. . . ..

Ebola now is spreading wherever contact conditions allow it to spread. It does not care how sacred one's funeral practices are, or anything else, except getting itself spread as widely as possible. Behaviors change or people die. Period. . . ..

DDHv wrote:
Remember the artificial disease in the Empire of Man series that wiped out most life? One thing DW did for that series was to have it spread before symptoms. The other factor was that it killed everything. I wish we could trust the germ warfare people NOT to aim in that direction.

I'm glad our immune systems were designed to fight off many genetic variations It is a very complicated system, and it is worth studying what we know about it. Our biochemical knowledge is increasing by leaps and bounds, but as I remind kids when discussing learning, our civilization has learned to value knowledge and understanding, but is still lacking in using them wisely. We get too many barbarians, internal and external, with advanced weapons.

Some are indeed immune from HIV due to a gene they happen to have. Can't remember the name of it. Saw an interview with a now elderly gay guy who happens to have the gene. He said he never complains about being an old queen. Luck of the genetics lottery.

HIV/AIDS is one of a small number of diseases that are pretty much 100% fatal untreated. Rabies comes to mind as another. Gay or straight having unprotected nookie, outside a truly monogamous relationship, is playing Russian Roulette with the Archangel and most of the chambers are loaded. That's just sad reality anywhere on earth. What toll will it take over a century or longer? Unknown. Because its burn through world populations is slow, and now mostly not reported or commented upon, does not make it less relentless. Thankfully, it is not airborne and neither is Rabies.

In Ebola news today it is apparently creating havoc in Sierra Leone. Pretty much out of control. May that change quickly for the better.

In other news a vaccine seems to be safe and at least somewhat effective. eh.

On a creepier front I saw an interview with a vegan activist this morning. The usual killing animals is immoral blah blah blah. I agree that factory farms should be banned as unsustainable and too often cruel -- which is not just Bambi hugging. Stressed livestock fed cheapest possible food in confinement operations equals poor quality meat. Factory-style livestock operations are too big and have too much out products in too small a place. Big manure ponds and all that. Staff who are underpaid and overworked and do not have a good rancher's intrinsic care for the land and their livestock. It's all about the big bucks over all else with factory operations. Just is. Greedy irresponsible and stupidly shortsighted. bah. A lot more smaller better run operations would improve the pollution situation and the welfare of the livestock. My opinion. YMMV.

Have I personally raised, slaughtered and butchered livestock? Yes. We owe livestock good lives and good food while alive and a painless and fearless quick death at the end. Hunters owe their prey competence and a good clean shot. A skilled hunter in fact gives the most painless death any wild critter will get. Being gutted by wolves or other predators or dying of starvation or being hit by a car are not nice ways to go.

I am personally very pro family farms. And very pro grass-fed ranching with smaller, less grain dependent or even grain independent, heritage breeds. Galloway or Red Poll cattle come to mind as examples. This sort of ranching, rotational pasture based & mob-herding, actually reverses desertification when it is done right. Go look it up on utube.

Anyway, the creepy bit was where he let it slip he thinks humanity is a bane upon the planet. Uh-huh, well, he should help with that by removing himself from the planet.

This is the sort of idiot who just might intentionally unleash a 100% fatal plague in order to accomplish his goal of eliminating humans from the Earth. They scare me far more than even ISIL nuts. Terrorists do not want to depopulate the whole planet. These twits do.

Slightly off topic. Tom Vlancy's book Rainbow Six dealt with a group of eco nuts who decided to weaponize Ebola in order to cut the population of the Earth by about 99.99%. Only they had an effective vaccine, which they would only issue to their people.

Northstar wrote:I am personally very pro family farms. And very pro grass-fed ranching with smaller, less grain dependent or even grain independent, heritage breeds. Galloway or Red Poll cattle come to mind as examples. This sort of ranching, rotational pasture based & mob-herding, actually reverses desertification when it is done right. Go look it up on utube.

Anyway, the creepy bit was where he let it slip he thinks humanity is a bane upon the planet. Uh-huh, well, he should help with that by removing himself from the planet.

This is the sort of idiot who just might intentionally unleash a 100% fatal plague in order to accomplish his goal of eliminating humans from the Earth. They scare me far more than even ISIL nuts. Terrorists do not want to depopulate the whole planet. These twits do.

Not that the ISIL group makes good neighbors. Many of the Sunni muslims who welcomed them into the Mosul region want to get rid of them now, but don't have a means to do it.

Re hunting: The experiment has been made several times of removing all predators from an area. Some, although not all, herbivores have no natural reproduction rate control - I saw photos of the national park the deer ate themselves out of. Humans are dominant and supposedly intelligent , this means we should consider all we can of the ecology in making choices. I read about a green group that wanted all of a forest to be old growth, and didn't even know that many kinds don't do well in old growth. A good forestry program has percentages of various types of forest. Even with other things, having everything climax type doesn't work well.

For well done grass fed beef info, search on "Management Intensive Grazing." It was developed in the late 40s by a French dairyman who wanted to improve his pasture quality, and has been improved since. Not that the management is THAT intensive, one family trained their teenagers to do what is needed after they get home from school. Properly done, it is possible to have twice the livestock density on a pasture and at the same time build up the pasture quality. It doesn't need to be beef - the technique works with any grass fed livestock. If interested, subscribe to "The Stockman Grass Farmer." A side effect of MIG is that as the roots die back from the intensive part, they store carbon in the soil while improving the soil.

A farmer that specializes in quality, commented that he didn't understand families that would spend $30 on a fast food dinner, then complain they couldn't afford to buy his high quality food. I don't understand those who will buy all their food at the grocery, but not even raise a few window sill chives to get freshness.

Back to topic, Ebola:

http://cowboybyte.com/35086/despite-aid ... rra-leone/

DDHv wrote:

Northstar wrote:I am personally very pro family farms. And very pro grass-fed ranching with smaller, less grain dependent or even grain independent, heritage breeds. Galloway or Red Poll cattle come to mind as examples. This sort of ranching, rotational pasture based & mob-herding, actually reverses desertification when it is done right. Go look it up on utube.

Anyway, the creepy bit was where he let it slip he thinks humanity is a bane upon the planet. Uh-huh, well, he should help with that by removing himself from the planet.

This is the sort of idiot who just might intentionally unleash a 100% fatal plague in order to accomplish his goal of eliminating humans from the Earth. They scare me far more than even ISIL nuts. Terrorists do not want to depopulate the whole planet. These twits do.

Not that the ISIL group makes good neighbors. Many of the Sunni muslims who welcomed them into the Mosul region want to get rid of them now, but don't have a means to do it.

Re hunting: The experiment has been made several times of removing all predators from an area. Some, although not all, herbivores have no natural reproduction rate control - I saw photos of the national park the deer ate themselves out of. Humans are dominant and supposedly intelligent , this means we should consider all we can of the ecology in making choices. I read about a green group that wanted all of a forest to be old growth, and didn't even know that many kinds don't do well in old growth. A good forestry program has percentages of various types of forest. Even with other things, having everything climax type doesn't work well.

For well done grass fed beef info, search on "Management Intensive Grazing." It was developed in the late 40s by a French dairyman who wanted to improve his pasture quality, and has been improved since. Not that the management is THAT intensive, one family trained their teenagers to do what is needed after they get home from school. Properly done, it is possible to have twice the livestock density on a pasture and at the same time build up the pasture quality. It doesn't need to be beef - the technique works with any grass fed livestock. If interested, subscribe to "The Stockman Grass Farmer."

A farmer that specializes in quality, commented that he didn't understand families that would spend $30 on a fast food dinner, then complain they couldn't afford to buy his high quality food. I don't understand those who will buy all their food at the grocery, but not even raise a few window sill chives to get freshness.

All completely true, including that I would not want ISIL for neighbors.

See also the works and/or talks of Allan Savory on intensive grazing, mob grazing and the like. Including on utube so people don't have to buy the books. Another interesting utube vid can be found searching 'Trantham's Sustainable 12 Aprils Grazing Program. These practices aren't rocket science, just more sensible ways of managing land and livestock to the benefit of both. Essentially it is mostly somewhat mimicking the patterns of grazing created by wild herds being tracked by predators. And, yes, it works for all grazing species. There are many other sources of info on this and the whole back to the pasture and out of the confinement barn idea/ philosophy/ awakening of common sense...

Predators are very necessary to ecological balance and the well-being of prey species, it just isn't fun to be killed by one. I include incompetent hunters in the not fun category, admittedly.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Slightly off topic. Tom Clancy's book Rainbow Six dealt with a group of eco nuts who decided to weaponize Ebola in order to cut the population of the Earth by about 99.99%. Only they had an effective vaccine, which they would only issue to their people.

Funny how they always want to remove everyone but themselves.

Alas, it is all too possible some bunch of these sort of idiots may just unleash something sometime. That Japanese nut cult that released Sarin gas in the Tokyo subway years ago was trying to get its hands on Smallpox. Wouldn't that be jolly?

Will we ever know the strain of Ebola or if indeed it is a new strain? The new strain possibility frightens me.

We keep getting conflicting reports from supposedly reliable sources???

I noticed that the CDC is not telling us how many Ebola cases or possible Ebola case that they are tracking!

Instapundit provides the occasional update. A while ago Glen posted a piece which suggested that over 1000 Americans were under some sort of surveillance/traceback because they and come into contact with an infected person or someone one step removed.

Glen also suggested the reason we haven't been seeing anything in the news is because Obama's "Ebola Czar" was doing his real job: creating a smokescreen and encouraging people in the lapdog media NOT to report on it anymore.

Not too surprising, considering how the media has (not) reported on things like the IRS targeting people and groups due to their political views, the "Fast and Furious" gunrunning scheme where BATF agents were told to allow weapons to be smuggled into Mexico to the gangs, the various crony capitalist schemes like Soylendra, where $500 million taxpayer dollars were given to a company (run by a Democrat Bundler) which promptly went bankrupt, the so called rape epidemic on US campuses (really; research where the "1 in 5" number actually comes from), the continuing 10% unemployment rate (once you add back all the people the BLS no longer counts despite their being jobless), the true nature and costs of Obamacare, the terror attack in Benghazi which left a US Ambassador dead etc. etc.

IF you no longer have access to information, you can no longer make plans or properly act and react to the changing situation. The Legacy media have a lot to answer for.

smr wrote:I noticed that the CDC is not telling us how many Ebola cases or possible Ebola case that they are tracking!

latest is sloppy handling at CDC Atlanta has caused at least one employee - not the person who was sloppy, another entirely innocent person - to be exposed to Ebola. Wonderful. So nice to know competent vigilant and careful people are staffing level 4 at the CDC, she says snarkily.

Thucydides wrote:
IF you no longer have access to information, you can no longer make plans or properly act and react to the changing situation. The Legacy media have a lot to answer for.

That also happens when you "know" something that isn't true. This seems to usually come from someone's idea that hasn't been tested, or has only been tested with poor tests. There is a reason for peer review, even though it is too often misused by defining "peer" as someone who has the paper qualifications, rather than as someone who has a good test. Even so, some new results are found, although searching is a need for those of us who are limited to library research.

Source not known:

It ain't what you don't know that hurts you, its what you know that ain't so!

Worth reading:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ebola-sto ... 00482.html

It looks like an antiviral designed against the flu may also be effective against ebola. I'd like to know whether this is based on tests or just someone's wishful thinking.

A later article, don't know if it is the same antiviral:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/ ... r=yahootix

Northstar wrote:A lot more smaller better run operations would improve the pollution situation and the welfare of the livestock. My opinion. YMMV.

It would also absorb many of the unemployed. When laid off in '03, the first thing we did was enlarge the backyard garden.

Management intensive grazing allows double or more carrying capacity while improving pasture quality and (during the intensive stage) puts carbon into the soil as roots die back. The management skills needed are not excessive; one family has trained their early teen kids to examine and adjust after they come home from school.

Complexity theory and experiments show that multiple small operations with links between them that cutout in stress situations are much more resilient than big centralized patterns. Look at the Bonanza farms of North Dakota in the early 1900s for a real life bad example. Or study the steadying effects of properly designed microgrids on grid stability.