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EBOLA
"Operating on Virus Time"
At an Ebola symposium yesterday, infectious disease expert Michael T. Olsterholm was brutally honest: “Let’s acknowledge we’re making this up as we go, and we have to become more comfortable with uncertainty.”
The virus driving the swiftly moving epidemic has a distinct advantage. “The virus is operating on virus time, and the rest of us are operating on bureaucracy and program time, and the virus is winning hands down,” Osterholm told an audience of 350 at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and more than 6,400 unique viewers who tuned in to the live webcast.
In addition to Osterholm’s keynote, five presentations and a multidisciplinary panel of discussants capped off a half-day forum that addressed everything from a lack of coordination and leadership at the global level to an overview of experimental medical counter measures for Ebola, to gut-wrenching ethical decisions that need grappling with in real-time.
Among the 15 expert speakers were Peter Jahrling, chief scientist, NIAID Integrated Research Facility; Lenny Bernstein, health correspondent, Washington Post; Trish Perl, senior epidemiologist, Johns Hopkins Health System; David Peters, MD, Chair, International Health, JHSPH; and Joshua Sharfstein, Maryland’s Secretary of Health & Mental Hygiene.
** Jackie Powder and Maryalice Yakutchik, JHSPH (http://jhsph.us3.list-
** Watch the entire conference (http://jhsph.us3.list-manage.
(because of a technical issue, audio starts at 3:18)
Ebola Round-Up
* New Ebola cases could reach 10,000 a week within 2 months, the WHO warns, as the death toll rose to 4,447—and the true death rate is closer to 70% than 50%, because so many deaths are unreported. ** The Guardian (http://jhsph.us3.list-manage.
* Another health care worker in Texas who treated an Ebola patient has tested positive for Ebola; the CDC says it is actively trying to minimize the risk to health care workers and the patient. ** Reuters (http://jhsph.us3.list-manage.
* Nurses in Dallas, Texas report haphazard conditions, flimsy protective gear, and constantly changing protocols while caring for an Ebola patient with explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting. ** Associated Press (http://jhsph.us3.list-manage.
* Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his pediatrician wife Priscilla Chan donated $25 million to the CDC Foundation to aid in combating the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, especially to help frontline health workers. ** Washington Post (http://jhsph.us3.list-
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