Johanna Faust, a mixed race Jew, prefers to publish pseudonymously. She is committed: first, to preventing war, ecological disaster, and nuclear apocalypse; last to not only fighting for personal privacy & the freedom of information, but, by representing herself as a soldier in that fight, to exhorting others to do the same. She is a poet, always. All these efforts find representation here: "ah, Mephistophelis" is so named after the last line of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, whose heretical success flouted the censor for a time.

Brass Tacks Ebola News Round Up

What's that on the wall?
U.S. Navy Lt. James Regeimbal, decontaminates and inspects sample documentation
received at a Naval Medical Research Center mobile laboratory. Credit:
US Army.
From Mike Adams:


Natural News readers were told this two weeks ago, but now it's official: the federal government has ordered the mainstream media to stop reporting on suspected Ebola cases.

"At the urging of the Obama Administration, the Associated Press and other news outlets have agreed not to report on suspected cases of Ebola in the United States until a positive viral RNA test is completed," writes the Gateway Pundit. 

Apparently, all the negative Ebola news was causing potential voters to lose faith in government... and hence lose faith in the governing democrats as well.

So Fox News, CNN and all the other mainstream media outlets simply decided to stop reporting on Ebola news. "This story is officially over," said Sean Hannity of Fox News in applauding the work of the Fox Ebola Team.

Meanwhile, Ebola news has all but disappeared across the entire national media even as the pandemic is exploding at a 900% increased rate of infection in Sierra Leone.

"...the sudden departure of Ebola stories from the state-corporate media doesn’t pass the smell test" reports Downtrend.com.

NYC Ebola watch list explodes to 357 people

One piece of news that did slip out via a local NBC affiliate is quite telling. The CDC's "active monitoring" watch list of at-risk Ebola carriers exploded from 117 to 357 people in just the first two days of this week.

This is a clear indication that some new person with Ebola has potentially exposed hundreds of New Yorkers to the virus, yet there isn't a single news report about who this person is, how they got here, where they traveled, or who might be exposed... 

Read more 
Here is what a quick search of Ebola related news in the last day or so turned up:




The NYT ends their eerie but uninformative piece with the ominous: "As it happens, and as I learned at that moment, there is no mandatory Ebola training in the schools – yet. " (From “No Video. No Photos. No Names. Inside New York's Ebola Monitoring Operation," read more here).

This may be technically true -- training may not be mandatory but as Possible Ebola Cases in New York Triples in 2 Days, to 357 it seems, at schools like this one,  the CDC information packet is widely republished.  Here's  their 'up-to-date' in formation:

New York City is collaborating closely with its state and federal partners to protect New York children and families. The risk of infection in New York is extremely small, and we hope this information will ease any concerns that you might have: 

• All NYCDOE school nurses and medical providers in New York City have been prepared by the Health Department to look for signs of Ebola and take immediate steps to isolate those who may be infected and transfer them to a hospital for evaluation. 
• Since August, the DOE has been providing weekly Ebola updates to all principals. 
• All school principals were provided a guidance document that can be found at schools.nyc.gov 
• In partnership with the DOE, the DOH is providing training for central staff who can answer questions as they arise. 

The date is recent, but even as Ebola drills like this one (Emergency Ebola Drill Wednesday at NUMC , ) are being organized, the information in nycdoe_school_community_ebola_letter.pdf  may have passed its sell-by date: 

Concerned union members have serious questions about Ebola

NYC November 6th, 2014,the National Labor Relations Board, laborpress.org

The Centers for Disease Control, as well as the New York City Department of Health, maintain that transmission of the Ebola virus, first detected back in 1976, cannot be spread through the air, and instead requires person-to-person contact for infection to occur. 
But at a special NYCOSH [New York City Committee For Occupational Safety & Health] conference held this week at District Council 37, Professor Lisa Brousseau, an academic researcher and educator specializing in respiratory protection in the workplace, challenged that very premise. 

“Everyone always tells you that it’s only direct contact - well, I would tell you that probably is an important feature - but I would actually suggest that we don’t really know,” Professor Brousseau told LaborPress. 

The past chair of the American Conference of Industrial Hygienists [ACGIH], said that infected aerosols - like those produced through coughing - can be inhaled near a source. 

And in addition to coughing, lots of other things like vomiting and hemorrhaging, can also generate aerosols. Aerosols - droplets suspend in air - are even produced when flushing a toilet, and may arise as a result of medical procedures involving intubation, drug delivery and respiratory support, as well.

“I’m not worried about the general public,” Professor Brosseau added. “The biggest issue I’m most concerned about is healthcare settings and other workplace settings where you might have high exposure to aerosols near the source.”

Those concerns could have a major impact on the use of enhanced personal protection equipment and advanced respirators for both healthcare workers and airport clean up crews who come in contact with suspected Ebola carriers. 

[snip]

Cabin clearers and other airport workers, meanwhile, aren’t getting anything near the level of protection that healthcare workers are getting, no matter what that may be. And the possibility that the Ebola virus may be spread through aerosol transmission, is only increasing the potential danger. 

“[Airport workers] have never seen this level of gear, [and] they never expect to see this level of gear,” said Mark Catlin, SEIU health and safety expert. 

SEIU [Service Employees International Union] recently surveyed more than 1,000 workers at 10 of the nation’s busiest airports, and found that less than half of them reported receiving any information regarding Ebola from their employer. Moreover, 70 percent said their employer provided absolutely no safety training. 

read more

Putting aside the very real concerns of the workers, it is important to note that the doubt cast upon the official CDC party line is no longer mere theoretical hypothesis: certain strains may live up to 50 days on the right surfaces, under the right conditions.  

 Perhaps the CDC ought to update their links.

More frighteningly, however, it can last up to three months:


And lest we forget, Washington's Blog reminds us (via Natural News) that a most important history lesson, recently (2005) publicized by the U.S. National Academies of Science:

In the United States, national and local government and public health authorities badly mishandled the [1918 "Spanish Flu"] epidemic [which killed up to 50 million people worldwide], offering a useful case study. The context is important. Every country engaged in World War I tried to control public perception. To avoid hurting morale, even in the nonlethal first wave the press in countries fighting in the war did not mention the outbreak. (But Spain was not at war and its press wrote about it, so the pandemic became known as the Spanish flu). The United States was no different. ...The U.S. government passed a law that made it punishable by 20 years in jail to "utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the government of the United States." One could go to jail for cursing or criticizing the government, even if what one said was true. 

Routinely, as influenza approached a city or town -- one could watch it march from place to place -- local officials initially told the public not to worry, that public health officials would prevent the disease from striking them. When influenza first appeared, officials routinely insisted at first it was only ordinary influenza, not the Spanish flu. As the epidemic exploded, officials almost daily assured the public that the worst was over. As the Ebola outbreak unfolds, you won't be told the truth by the government or the media.

The conclusion from all this? The government is now in active cover-up mode. The media is dutifully censoring itself, obediently following orders...

Read more 

There is a popular post reporting on one response to the Ebola scare by the Mayor of New York City himself, that, I think, says it best....

Worried about Ebola? Get a flu shot.
  • At a press conference today, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio urged every New Yorker to get a flu shot.
The symptoms of Ebola and the flu are quite similar, de Blasio noted, so getting a flu shot will help doctors and hospitals deal with the onslaught of people worried that their fever or fatigue could be Ebola. “Something that all New Yorkers should do,” the mayor said: “Get a flu shot.”


The piece goes on to promise that the flu shot will protect you from the 'far deadlier virus,' with a link to a LiveScience editor opining that rabies and influenza qualify.  (He also includes HIV, but there I happen to agree.)  This may be true in terms of numbers, but smacks of misleading journalism: whether or not these will have been proven to be 'deadlier,' there is certainly no protection to be had against them in a common flu shot.  So when I said this article said it best, may I add, if by it, you mean bull...

--------------

An Interesting Conversation On The Subject
Occasioned by the Writing of this Post

"I expect the government to lie when they talk about the seriousness or extent of an epidemic," said Corporanon.  "I also don't think that, usually, health care authorities are looking to kill people." (I mention the Spanish flu historical context, below; the latest news about possible mass sterilization of brown folk, by means of tuberculosis vaccine, in Kenya; the latest from Fukushima about the government's forced suppression.of birth defect and mortality statistics.) 

"I think there can be a split," he admits, "between the money and government side of things, and the health care side of things. You had Dr. C. Everett Koop, [Surgeon General of the United States under Reagan]who, even though he was a conservative Christian, was a Doctor first, and who was very strong in promoting condoms and so forth, and not just abstinence.  It gives me hope, because he came from the medical side of things, from the health care side of things.  But," he added with a new tone of stern resignation, "if you let idealogues run things, like under W., people die." [Bush the Elder, nicknamed 'Rubbers,'  the Population Control Ghoul, may have weaponized Ebola -- and that may be what's out of control now; his list of evil qualifications far outdoes Bush the Younger on this score.] 

"And as far as sterilization goes," he goes on, knowing I am enjoy taking these notes, "I do think there are some crypto-fascist eugenicists that one cannot trust at all, but that kind of thing usually finds its expression in other countries, especially third world countries, where the people that perpetrated it will not be prosecuted for what they did..." [I am reminded, most recently, of the Tufts Golden Rice debacle.]  "Although the shit that happened in the seventies -- sterilization of women without their consent -- shows you have to watch out.... for private money, or private people working with public money." 

"So: on reporting by the government:  D minus, because  they lie, but sometimes its not suppression. Just the delay in the news cycle, with the politicos being slower to tell the truth.  D minus to an F.  What the US does to other countries, well, 'we' do some evil shit, we probably get an F there, with a few scattered things that are good, maybe.  Public health and health practice in this country?  I'd give it a C, but if I were from a disfavored or marginal group, or if I were a person of color, I would say C minus: you've got to watch out. you never know when someone is going to sterilize a bunch of brown women, or just let the AIDS crisis go unchecked, because it 'only kills gay people,' that kind of thing...."


Be seeing you.