Hey, what happened to Ebola? Where did it go?

[Yavin4]

Oh, that's right. The mid-term elections are over.

[JEFF9K]

1. Good point!

It seemed to be a negative for the Democrats.

[fredamae]

2. Yep-Ebola/ISIS

and BENGHAZI definitely had a visible expiration date Before the election...but manufactured Panic - GOP Style - clouded the vision and common sense of far too many, imo.

[BlueCaliDem]

5. With oodles of help of U.S. propaganda outlets posing as our 4th Estate. eom

[Moostache]

24. Nope...it just scared the blue hairs who DID show up to vote fear or facts.

If the 60% of eligible voters had gotten off their ass and actually voted, the fear factor would have been swamped at the polls. Unfortunately, EVERYONE knows that Democratic leaning voters over-overwhelmingly avoid mid-term elections and the results are a GOP House gerrymandered into permanent status and a GOP Senate filled with reactionaries and kooks.

[fredamae]

34. The 60%

are disgusted, demoralized, over-worked, disenfranchised, suppressed and more.
That said, Not Voting is Not the solution.


Where am I wrong in my belief that it is "we" the electorate who gives the Money in Politics it's value by offering a ROI to those who dump massive fortunes (by average standards) in elections to scare us away from the polls, prohibit access to casting our votes and of course scaring the mentally uninformed To the polls.
Ultimately don't we have the power to "shut that whole thing down" by wising up and tuning out of all that?

Also, a grand Elephant in the room is what percent of the 60%, exactly-wanted to vote but were not allowed to under New voter suppression laws-Students, minorities and elderly? How many areas/districts...States actually had more Dems voting but the GOP still won due to Gerrymandering.
It is time to stop ignoring that impact.

I think we ought to offer a bit of understanding to those who fit the above.
Many aren't "not voting" out of defiance--but rather they've lost Hope. How do we fix that?

Yes, I'm a "blue hair".
Yes, I Voted and I voted Blue.

[HereSince1628]

3. and the cases resolved without furture crisis. It'll be back should

more cases show up unexpectedly from the general population.

And at that point the irrationality will be "SEE? We TOLD you to put travel bans in place!"

[spanone]

4. a ginned-up media storm to try and demonstrate how inept democrats are

seems it worked for the most part

[packman]

6. Shh-the Repukes are in charge now

and we won't hear about any of that nasty stuff now that the elections are over.

[polichick]

7. Fear brings Republicons to the polls - worked like a charm.

[Boom Sound 416]

8. NYC is tracking 300 at risk

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/nyregion/with-phone-calls-and-persistence-tracking-travelers-at-risk-for-ebola.html?referrer=&_r=0

[FLPanhandle]

9. I'm still in shock how many people here on DU fell for it.

Of course they never admitted the media caused them to panic, they just used words like "concerned", "it COULD evolve", and were quick to support violation of civil rights and wanted travel bans.

I sort of expected that from the general public, but the fact the media suckered in people here showed the medias power to influence the panic level of the public.

[JoePhilly]

10. And Obama was BAD for not shooting down planes from Africa.

And that's why I'm not at all shocked at how many here on DU fell for it.

For the most part, it was the same folks who scream about how awful Obama is every other day.

Now that they were wrong, again, they'll just move on to a new outrage.

[deurbano]

17. Disagree.

<<For the most part, it was the same folks who scream about how awful Obama is every other day. >>

I don't accept that characterization of those who are more critical of the administration than perhaps you are... but, forgetting that, I didn't find what you are saying to be true. In my own case (as someone more critical of the administration than you are), I considered the president's response to this situation one of his best as president. Great leadership. (Unlike Cuomo, etc.) I didn't see the DU Ebola reaction dividing along the traditional lines. (Nothing like reactions to NSA stories, for example...)

[ReRe]

32. +1

[riderinthestorm]

20. + 1 That was pretty eye opening, in a bad way nt

[Cha]

54. Please.. do not ever be in shock about what gins up some around here to run around like their

hair is on fire.

For instance when President Obama chose Ron Klain to manage the crisis.. !!!!!111111 HE'S NOT A DOCTOR@@@!!!!!!!11111

So bloodly what?! The President knew what he was doing.. those raging about it.. not so much.

[oldandhappy]

11. LOL

[George II]

12. I was saying that to some friends a week ago...

....no more hearings, no more panicking, no more hysteria.

All that for less than 10 cases overall during the "pandemic".

Where's Darryl Isis now?

[Jamastiene]

13. I think the anthrax chased it off.

Or maybe it was the scorpions. I know it wasn't the kittens, because they are vaccinated.

[BeanMusical]

14. It's still in Western Africa, killing people.

[etherealtruth]

15. Exactly!

[Mojorabbit]

51. Yes it is. Schools are closed and a boatload of people have died

and children orphaned. People are still coming down with it.
from promed
Mali reported the death of a girl suspected of having Ebola, as the
nation races to contain the virus that has ravaged 3 of its West
African neighbors. Results from tests to confirm whether the girl had
the virus will be known today, Alassane Souleymane, a spokesman for
Mali's communication ministry, said by email today [14 Nov 2014].

5 people have been confirmed as having Ebola and a 6th case is
suspected, Hubert Balique, a French public health expert consulting
with the French embassy in Mali, told reporters yesterday [13 Nov
2014]. It's unclear whether the girl whose death was reported today
was one of those cases. Officials have identified more than 200 people
who had contact with those individuals, and new cases will probably be
confirmed in coming days, he said.... -- more

and
A total of 14 413 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases of Ebola
virus disease (EVD) have been reported in six affected countries
(Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Spain, and the United States of
America) and two previously affected countries (Nigeria, Senegal) up
to the end of 11 November 2014. There have been 5177 reported deaths.
and

A total of 570 health care workers (HCWs) are known to have been
infected with EVD: 93 in Guinea; 332 in Liberia; 2 in Mali; 11 in
Nigeria; 128 in Sierra Leone; 1 in Spain; and 3 in the United States
of America (2 were infected in the USA and 1 in Guinea). A total of
324 HCWs have died.

[7962]

16. No more cases in the US, so its off the front page now. nt

[seveneyes]

19. Sierra Leone surgeon stricken with Ebola headed to Nebraska for treatment

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/15/health/nebraska-ebola-patient/

(CNN) -- A surgeon diagnosed with Ebola in his native Sierra Leone left the West African nation Saturday, and is headed to Nebraska for treatment, U.S. officials said.

[7962]

23. Oops! NOW it'll be in the news again! Thanks for the update.

[Rozlee]

27. It'll hardly make a blip.

I'll bet anything. With Republicans completely controlling the purse strings over healthcare initiatives Democrats have been urging for a long time, they won't want to rock the boat. Extra money spent on protecting the rabble from disease will interfere with tax cuts for the rich.

[7962]

46. Actually, not 30 mins after seeing your post I saw it on TV at an auto shop!

I had to laugh. Only thing that wouldve been funnier is if I was reading your post at that exact time.

[Rozlee]

49. It'll make the news, but I doubt Ebola will be a constant 24 hour news horror show

like it was before. The screams in the night have faded away. The doc with Ebola competed with the Ferguson story for top mention on Fox online, but they didn't speak much else about it. None of the commentators even mentioned Ebola on their rants. CNN had it as their 6th story online. MSNBC online as their second. It's no longer the convenient bogeyman of the day that terrorized us for weeks before the elections.

[heaven05]

18. exactly

pretty obvious really how the RW works the minds of the IDIOTS that vote for them.

[MoonchildCA]

21. Actually, there is a new case of it.

A doctor being treated in Nebraska.

It's just not being blasted 24-hours on the news because the need to fear monger has past.

[Ms. Toad]

26. No. That person was never out in the public

potentially exposing people. There is a difference between being transported in to a hospital that has demonstrated it knows how to contain the risk v. transmission within the US, followed by two individuals out wandering about the public in a phase of the disease the CDC now acknowledges carries some risk. (exposed + fatigue, within the incubation period).

[MoonchildCA]

28. Yes, you have a point.

However, were this before the elections, there would likely be much more news coverage.
It was 24-7, Ebola, Ebola, Ebola.

[Blue Idaho]

22. Thanks to America's collective 15 minute attention span

The next time the TeaPublicans pull this out of their play book most folks will have completely forgotten the irrational hysteria and its effect on the 2014 election cycle.

[Ms. Toad]

25. How about no active cases in the US

And no hundreds of people on the watch list during the incubation period.

Not everything is a conspiracy...

[Rozlee]

38. Ever listen to Faux News before any elections?

It's all conspiracy TV, all day. And far too many conservatives listen to Rush Limbaugh or read right-wing rags like World Nut Daily, brietbart, Drudge or NewsMax. European comics poked fun at Americans' absolute panic over Ebola but the right wing has its followers indoctrinated to conspiracies about illegals voting in huge numbers at the polls, our massive gun death toll being irrelevant, their rights being taken away by women, gays, minorities, Islam, atheists, the poor, undocumented workers, scientists, public school teachers, vegans, unions, trial lawyers, baby-killers, Prius drivers, socialized medicine, Hollywood, latte drinkers, French ass-kissing, Saul Alinsky-loving...Benghazzziiii!!!

Seriously, everything from Obama's birth certificate, his parentage, his religious loyalties, all the way to accusations of him bringing Ebola to the US to destroy white lives is one big conspiracy. My teabagger sister told me once that Obama's mother-in-law was practicing voodoo in the White House. My jaw dropped to the floor. An email goes out from some religious blog she reads every day and never fails to excoriate Obama and Democrats. 57% of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim and 20% believe he's the Anti-Christ. Those people are freaking nuts.

[Ms. Toad]

57. Why on earth would I bother listening to Fox News?

I'm not likely to learning anything reliable, and enough of the garbage they spout winds up in the public that I'm sure I don't miss much intel on what the idiots are thinking.

Ebola was in the news because there were active transmissions in the US, the CDC screwed up by having inadequate guidelines in place initially, the Dallas hospital didn't even follow the inadequate guidelines, two people got sick, didn't pay attention to early symptoms and potentially exposed hundreds of people before we finally got our act together.

Now that everyone - or nearly everyone - is off the watch list, there is no longer anything to talk about.

[Rozlee]

63. Good point.

[livingonearth]

39. Yes, not everything is a conspiracy...

try telling that to the right- wing pundits who were using Ebola to gin up fear every chance they could get. "Obama was letting Ebola into America!" was the message I kept hearing from the right.

[uppityperson]

50. And those thousands of cases in W Africa outbreak and the DRC outbreak?

Naw, nothing to look at, no worries here. But you are wrong in that there are hundreds of people on watch lists around the USA. Many states have people on their monitoring lists, just not publicized.

[Ms. Toad]

60. You know as well as I do that US news pays almost no attention

to anything beyond our borders. I'm not saying that is good, it is reality and has nothing to do with elections.

As to the watch lists - let me correct that then - there are not hundreds of people on the wait list because of individuals with known exposure who were walking around (and flying) during the period the CDC now considers contagious. (Not to mention that there aren't that many on the watch lists because they tend to be put on singly - not hundreds in one fell swoop as happened when Vinson and Spencer didn't heed the early symptoms.)

And not to mention it was the first through fourth infections diagnosed in the US. I'm sure the Republicans made that spectacular first happen just in time for the elections.

It was bad timing, and the Republicans hyped it for all they thought they could get out of it, but being in the news around election time had nothing to do with elections - and being out of the news has nothing to do with no longer being election time. The activity within our own borders just happened to coincide with elections.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

29. Check the drawer where the earth destroying Y2K bug was consigned to.

[Warpy]

30. Exactly, the next cases to be treated here will barely deserve a mention

on local news, although they did announce the doc from Sierra Leone who is being treated in Nebraska now.

I wonder what idiocy the corporate media will gin up in another 2 years, only to have it disappear completely the week after the election.

Assholes.

[RoccoR5955]

31. You could say the same thing for Benghazi. n/t

[SoCalDem]

33. Duuuuude... election's over

media/right wingers have moved on.. to:

investigations
impeachment

[livingonearth]

35. You have to think like a rightie in order to come up with the answer. And, here it is:

Obama's original plan was to bring Ebola to America so he could declare marshal law and put us all into FEMA camps(an actual scenario I was told by a Tea Bagger). But, now that the republicans won the election, his plan has been thwarted.

I am almost positive this is going on in the minds of many tea idiots at this very moment.

[magical thyme]

36. Now that young nurses are not being caged in parking lots, dressed in paper scrubs

and kept at 65 degrees, there is nothing to see here. Kaci Hickox has passed her 21 days and is moving on with her life.

More than 5100 patients have died to date.

Mali is tracking 250 people -- just as it was declaring itself Ebola-clear 21 days after the 2 year old from Guinea died, there was an outbreak in another Mali city where a nurse and the Imam he treated died of it, and several family members are suspected to have died of it or are now sick.
http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21632883-malis-second-outbreak-ebola-more-worrying-double-whammy

MSF is launching clinical trials for 4 experimental treatments.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/11/msf-launch-clinical-trials-ebola-virus-20141113104936690691.html


New cases appear to be slowing in Nigeria, but it is still widespread and persistant.
But it's taking off in Sierra Leone because people are hiding their sick at home and doing midnight burials.
http://www.newsweek.com/ebola-death-toll-exceeds-5000-amid-growing-disaster-sierra-leone-284179


And on a personal note, my lab gave us our "extra" PPE training in response to Ebola. It consisted of the exact same PPE slides that we review every year. Including the exact same mistakes that I point out to the lab manager every year. The "extra" training is that if we are seen violating PPE rules we'll get 1 warning. 2nd incidence will have disciplinary action.

[magical thyme]

37. I wonder how many doctors and nurses have returned from W. Africa?

I haven't seen any being caged in plastic tents in hospital parking lots lately.

[gwheezie]

40. Solynghazibola

is being replaced Mexicans again.

[Bluenorthwest]

41. I was surprised at the extreme skittishness of many on DU. Acted like they'd never seen a virus

before. Obviously it is still a problem in other places, so that's what's happening with it.

[customerserviceguy]

42. It will be back in the news soon

The President has called on Congress to appropriate billions of dollars to fight Ebola in West Africa, and I wouldn't be surprised to see GOP efforts to include quarantines of returning healthcare workers as part of the bill. We're going to have the same debate about which group of politicians 'care' most about the American people, and the pre-election hysteria is still pretty fresh in people's minds.

Will the President sign a bill that provides a place for returning Ebola workers to come to for three weeks of R&R, while containing possibly could be future cases of the illness? My bet is that he will.

[madville]

43. We ran out so we are importing some now

New case arrives in Omaha at 2pm today

[zappaman]

44. Y2K killed it. n/t

[Rex]

45. The elections are over, the great scare worked like a charm.

Fuck the M$M.

[malaise]

47. No need to create panic any more

Job done and dusted

[raven mad]

48. Into paranoid and uneducated folklore.

Hopefully.

[TorchTheWitch]

52. it's still ravaging West Africa

At least with the few Ebola patients the US had lately the public actually heard about the crisis in West Africa. Now, we're supposed to be going back to pretending there is no Ebola crisis in West Africa, but who cares about thousands of poor black people dying like flies, right?

According to DU Ebola only matters in the context of anyone talking about it because of mid-term elections. Never mind all those thousands of people dying horribly from it without adequate health care or health care workers. Never mind about a state health department that decided to use a black African guy as a guinea pig to test how well a hospital in the state could care for an Ebola patient. Who cares that their gross negligence in not sending him to a hospital that could care for him appropriately caused him to die and two nurses to get infected and dozens having to live in fear of being infected themselves crossing their fingers as they monitored every day for symptoms, had their kids thrown out of school, etc.

You're right. None of that matters a damn, and the media should have just kept the public from even knowing anything about Ebola at all because our mid-term elections are so much more important than black poor people in Africa dying by the thousands.

And now that the media has granted your request to shut the fuck up about it what's going to happen to the US government giving a shit and doing anything when the only reason they did in the first place was because the Ebola crisis in West Africa was in the news? But of course, you don't give a damn about that because you never wanted the media interrupting mid-term election news for even such a crisis as this ongoing one that's still killing black poor people in Africa by the thousands.

[Yavin4]

61. I see that you completely missed my point. So let me re-state it for you.

Before the mid-term elections, the media's coverage of the Ebola outbreak was hysterical and not informative. It had more of a political tinge to it than informational.

Never once in my post did I want the media "to shut the fuck up about it". In fact, my post was to point out the complete lack of coverage of the outbreak now that the mid terms are over.

I watched CNN for an hour yesterday and there wasn't even a mention of the doctor being transported to Nebraska. Why is that?

In sum, I do indeed want more coverage about the Ebola virus, and my post asked about that. My answer to my own question shows that our media has a cynical, political bias to their coverage not an informational one.

Now, I have just told you exactly what I was thinking.

[Cha]

53. And, where are all those who were ridiculing Ron Klain as the President's pick to sort out the

crisis?

And, how many are still buying what the US mediawhore$ are selling?

Mahalo Yavin

[Skittles]

55. it is still a huge tragedy in West Africa

[Yavin4]

62. I know. So where is the coverage of it?

We went from hysterical, around the clock coverage in the weeks before the mid terms to almost silence after it. Why?

[noiretextatique]

56. it used to be sharks

and other stuff. they always manage to find a distraction.

[B Calm]

58. BINGO the election is over!

[Octafish]

59. ''Like a Duck in a Noose'' seemed to stop a murderous rampage in 2004.

"You have indicated that you want us to do and say certain things. You've asked us to say, 'We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose.' We understand that hearing us say this is important to you," Moose said late Wednesday at a televised news briefing, called so authorities could release information on two people sought for questioning in the 13 sniper shootings.

SOURCE: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2002/10/24/duck-in-noose-reference-explained/