Ebola's Airborne Potential, US Army Studies, CIDRAP Advisories, and .... Snopes Gets Breitbart Wrong

Infowars reports that a U.S. ARMY 1995 study concludes " Demonstration of fatal aerosol transmission of this virus in monkeys reinforces the importance of taking appropriate precautions to prevent its potential aerosol transmission to humans."    The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Frederick, Maryland, proved in 1995 that the Ebola goes airborne when the temperature drops below that normal for West Africa. That is a FACT. The study is titled: "Lethal experimental infections of rhesus monkeys by aerosolized Ebola virus."  Here's the US gov direct link to the study, originally published in the International Journal of Experimental Pathology http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1997182/   

Here's the direct link to the Info Wars article quoting extensively from the original study: http://www.infowars.com/u-s-army-ebola-goes-airborne-once-temperature-drops/ 

Of course, it's probably a matter of time before people start asking what "Snopes" says, but it is true regardless. If you search "Ebola is Airborne" on Snopes, you will get labels of "False" about other articles - but even those, as of this writing,  are factual, truthful articles that  I think should not be labeled false. 

I don't know why, but Snopes is still mislabeling as "False" the absolutely correct Breitbart Oct 14, 2014 statement "The highly respected Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota just advised the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) that “there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles,” including exhaled breath. "   when in fact, that is a direct quote from the the CIDRAP article Breitbart references, which is titled on CIDRAPs own site : "COMMENTARY: Health workers need optimal respiratory protection for Ebola",  The full specific quote on CIDRAP says: "We believe there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles both near and at a distance from infected patients, which means that healthcare workers should be wearing respirators, not facemasks.1 ""

So how could that possibly be "False"?????? 

Snopes cites a CIDRAP disclaimer to claim falsehood, but CIDRAP and Snopes both use the same recursive semantic tricks to obscure the issue: chasing a red herring about timeliness of the article, and answering questions that were never asked.  Snopes tries to give the impression that reporting a medical fact is somehow outdated within a month:  " Breitbart's use of the term "just advised" gave the impression that the CIDRAP commentary was recent to mid-October 2014, when in fact it was published prior to the first diagnosis of Ebola in the U.S. in late September 2014." 

The article was published less than a month earlier on Sept 17th 2014 - extremely current as medical research and advisories go, despite the Snopes and CIDRAP pretense that less than 30 days is outdated. (If anything, this is even more damning evidence that the CDC had evidence and good advice that it did not put to use to protect the people of America from this disease. )

Further, CIDRAP ends its own "disclaimer" by saying : "This commentary in question specifically addressed transmission risk within a healthcare setting and does not address community transmission." In other words, the article in question is accurate and an appropriate advisory, just as Breitbart reported.  

The Breitbart articles are clear and factual:  
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/10/14/CIDRAP-Confirms-Ebola-Transmittable-by-Air

and here: 
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/10/15/CIDRAP-Director-Airborne-Ebola-Single-Greatest-Concern-of-My-Career

The original CIDRAP article is here:

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/09/commentary-health-workers-need-optimal-respiratory-protection-ebola

Here's the  link to this Snopes article: http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cidrap.asp  

And the link to CIDRAP's "Response": 
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/response-statements-falsely-attributed-cidrap-regarding-ebola-transmission

Read them all,and decide for yourself. 

It's a shame that Snopes seem to have let politics get in the way of the facts. They had built a solid reputation. I hope they don't squander that, because we need trustworthy sites that can show genuine myths for the falsehoods they are.  Unfortunately, much like Wikipedia, where any article with any political value is tainted with progressive leanings and talking points instead of a pure neutral POV, so it seems that we now have to be skeptical even when reading the anti-rumor sites to be sure they aren't starting one of their own.... 

Introducing... Pecan Corner on You Tube! Canning, Cooking, Southern Food and Budget Abundance

As Paul has gotten better, he is now feeling like doing more even though he is still mostly house-bound. He has watched a lot of You Tube during this past year, and we've been discovering the amazing channels ordinary people have.   Now we are one of those!  :-)

Pecan Corner on You Tube won't have any political content (that is for the blog! :-) ), just my natural life-long "how to" preparedness. I have always kept a well-stocked larder, and we practice a concept I call "budget abundance" that allows us to still enjoy a high quality standard of living without debt and within a tiny budget. This is especially important during difficult economic times,

Videos so far include how to make prickly pear cactus jelly, canning apple pie filling, seasoning your own breakfast sausage, and inexpensive old fashioned home-cooked meals that can feed a family healthful food for very little. There are also recipes of products I make for my little Cottage Food home business - things to sell at farmer's markets and roadside stands. As we go along, I'm sure my other hobbies will find their way into it as well: letterpress printing, gardening, foraging wild foods, and our new-found fun: Living History and historical reenacting!

I hope you will subscribe, there will only be one a day so it won't overwhelm your inbox. They say You Tube now rates channels by subscribers as well as views, and I have monetized the channel so perhaps one day it will contribute a bit to the household. If nothing else, it is something fun we can do together, to make new friends and enjoy trading knowledge with others.

Here is a sample! Thanks for checking it out! :-)

UPDATED Best Article About Texas Ebola Outbreak as of 10/1/14: 5 Dallas Students Possibly Exposed to Ebola - kcentv.com - KCEN HD

As we had surmised, this gentleman is not an American, but is a Liberian national, who was in the US for 8 full days before the hospital decided to quarantine him:

"Mai Wureh says her brother, Thomas Eric Duncan, went to a Dallas emergency room on Friday and they sent him home with antibiotics. She says he said hospital officials asked for his Social Security number and he said that he didn't have one because he was visiting from Liberia."

As of end-of-day on Oct 1st, no one official has bothered to contact the manager or other tenants of the apartment complex where he has been staying, according to KCEN:

"The patient who was diagnosed with the Ebola virus was staying at a northeast Dallas apartment complex, according to a Dallas police spokesman.

Lt. Joel Lavender confirmed the patient was transported from the Ivy Apartments to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas on September 28.

Residents and the manager at the complex said no one from the CDC or health department have contacted them."

The Dallas Liberian community are very concerned, and say they do not trust the CDC, who have since only quarantined a single person out of all the people - including children who attended 5 different Dallas schools - that Mr Duncan has had contact with since his arrival in the States on Sept 20th:

"Stanley Gaye, president of the Liberian Community Association of Dallas-Fort Worth, said the 10,000-strong Liberian population in North Texas is skeptical of the CDC's assurances because Ebola has ravaged their country.
"We've been telling people to try to stay away from social gatherings," Gaye said at a community meeting Tuesday evening. Large get-togethers are a prominent part of Liberian culture."

By the way, KCENTV and WFAA are good local sources for information about this. The national news outlets are still heavily censoring information and details. Read the rest of the article here:

Miles: 5 Dallas Students Possibly Exposed to Ebola - kcentv.com - KCEN HD - Waco, Temple, and Killeen


UPDATED:  It gets worse, in the sense of our Federal government failing to do due diligence to protect Americans:  Mr Duncan was deliberately trying to escape Liberia. His  landlord's brother died of Ebola a week before Duncan quit his job as a taxi driver in Liberia and came to the US to "visit relatives" on Sept 20. He became ill on Sept 24th. He went to the ER on Sept 26th. He was then at his family's apartment for two more days before being taken by ambulance back to the hospital on Sept 28th. From an NBC News article:

"Four days before he flew to Dallas to visit family members, cargo driver Thomas Eric Duncan helped his landlords take their 19-year-old daughter, Marthalene Williams, to a clinic that was so crowded with Ebola patients that it turned her away, The New York Times reported. The family, which had tried and failed to get an ambulance, took the convulsing woman back home, where she died hours later. "He was holding her by the legs," a neighbor told the newspaper.

"Williams' brother, who was also in the taxi, started getting symptoms a week ago and quickly died, the family told the Times. Three other women from the same area also got sick at the same time. By then, Duncan was already gone from Liberia.

"After quitting his job on Sept. 4, Duncan left Monrovia on a Sept. 19 flight and arrived in the U.S. the next day. He started showing symptoms Sept. 24 and went to a Dallas hospital for treatment Sept. 26. He was sent home, only to be brought back by ambulance on Sept. 28 and diagnosed with the deadly virus."

So far, none of the people exposed to Ebola by Mr Duncan have been quarantined. The 5 schoolchildren were sent home from school but are not under quarantine.  The hospital has "dedicated a whole ward" to Mr Duncan's quarantine, but has not bothered to quarantine any of the people he exposed:

 "Dr. Zachary Thompson, director of the county health department, told NBC News late Wednesday that he wouldn't be "shocked" if a second case of Ebola were to emerge among those being monitored. But "there has not been any indication that any of the contacts that we have been tracking show any signs or symptoms," he said.

"Officials said five students at two elementary schools, a middle school and a high school had had contact with the patient over the weekend. They are being "monitored" at home but are not quarantined."

I guess they are waiting for those people to become ill and expose even more people.  I wonder if they have bothered notifying people at the apartment complex yet?