All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

A second outbreak of an ebolavirus in the DRC

The Ministry of Health, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has confirmed 4 new cases of an ebolavirus infection in a new loaction of the country. Earlier there had been reports of 26 cases of fever, diarrhoea, vomiting, nasal bleeding and death since May. There have been at least 20 deaths attributed to the outbreak thus far.

Lab results now confirm this as the second geographically discrete outbreak in 2018 for the DRC.

Map of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from the World Food Program via ReliefWeb. North Kivu Provincde is klocated in eth northeeastern region of the DRC, on the eastern  border

Which member of the genus Ebolavirus?

No details are available on the specific species of ebolavirus so it remains unclear if the Ebola virus (the one specifically deiosgend to pretect ffomr disease due to members of the species Zaire ebolavirus) vaccine can be used. If it can, hopefully, it will be deployed more quickly than in the last outbreak.

The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo #DRC 🇨🇩 announced today that preliminary lab results indicate a cluster of #Ebola cases in North Kivu province, some 2500 km from Equateur province.

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) August 1, 2018


 

Where in the DRC?

 

Map of the DRC from Congo Initiative.

The suggestion so far is that the outbreak has occurred in the Province of North Kivu in a place called Mangina in the eastern Mabalako health zone, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) west of Beni, a city of more than 230,000 people and that it is a distinct outbreak from the one that occurred about 1,800km (from the city of Mbandaka to that of Butembo according to Google Maps) to the east earlier this year. That will become more clear once some detail becomes available. These would include contact tracing of the earliest cases to see if there is any history of travel from the Equateur province, and also genetic details from sequencing the newly identified ebolavirus strains to look for differences and similarities to those viruses characterised from the western outbreak.

 

Pinpointing Mangina in the DRC. Map snipped from GeoHack.

This region of the DRC is suffering from conflict (including thousands of cases of sexual violence), food insecurity and the displacement of many people. The Province borders and actively trades with Uganda and Rwanda, with waterways in abundance as this is part of the African Great Lakes region. Mangina seems to be removed from the waterways but we armchair observers await better maps to get an idea of the layout.

It is interesting to see in the map to the left, that the town of Bundibugyo in the self-name district of Uganda, is not too far off. An ebolavirus species, Bundibugyo ebolavirus (BEBOV), was named after a virus isolated from outbreak cases in this region in 2007.

This region will bring a raft of new challenges to the containment of ebolavirus outbreak.

Despite high levels of vigilance for Ebola virus cases on the other side of the country, this outbreak may have been percolating for 2 to 3 months. The harsh reality of how difficut it is to keep on top of emerging virus outbreaks when they occur in relatively remote, under-resourced regions suffering conflict is exemplified by this one.

The post A second outbreak of an ebolavirus in the DRC appeared first on Virology Down Under.

Georgia cancels registration of more than 591,500 voters

Georgia cancels registration of more than 591,500 voters:

piddlebucket:

pepperonithotpocket:

theactualcluegirl:

gryphye:

giandujakiss:

CHECK YOUR REGISTRATION STATUS.  You can usually do it at the website of your local secretary of state, or at Vote.org.

Anyone who follows me from Georgia?  If not, pass it on.

sigh..  Actually, let me just add, THIS BULLSHIT RIGHT HERE, THIS IS WHY YOUR VOTE MATTERS.  You think they’d be so hot to take away your rights if it didn’t?

If you can register to vote by mail DO SO!!! Not only does it give you more time to research your ballot options, it provides a paper trail, so you can PROVE how you voted, no matter how the Russian hackers massage the electronic numbers.

@always-is-valuelesss @niggawittablog

Hi everyone who is not American, our country is corrupt and does shit like this

Ahed Tamimi stardom of Heroism and the eclipse of everyone else

Before I start, my problem is not with the young woman\ teen Ahed. On the contrary, the girl always impressed me as a child, and I continued to like her way of resistance with her family and villagers in Nabi Saleh. Somehow, a different flavor in the way we introduce resistance. And above all the girl is strong and of course charming.

For many reasons, Ahed resembles a new image for resistance, and she is lucky her pledge has been heard and got attention. But Ahed is not a star, nor is she inside a contest or a live TV competition. She is living under occupation where her pledge is the pledge of millions of Palestinians. When resistance becomes one person, then the problem starts. When prisoners issue becomes the attention because of Ahed, then there is a severe issue of hypocrisy in the society at all its levels.

Where are those voices for all the prisoners who are perishing in jail for resistance?

Where are those voices of support for prisoners who leave, prisoners who are tortured, prisoners who are deformed like in the case of Ja’abees?

The rush of all to go and be part of Ahed’s stardom and take a picture next to her. Her visit with her father to the tomb of Arafat. The reception Abu Mazen held for her in the Muqata’a. Not to forget of course that her mother was arrested with her and was released as well.

So what is it about Ahed that makes her a good pick for media and politicians and parasitic beneficiaries?

The girl is daring and enigmatic, but she is not anything more than her young age and innocent looks of overwhelmingness.

Some months ago, a year maybe, there was a younger female prisoner who was released after a few months of detention. The eyes of horror in the teen’s eyes tell all the stories of what it means to be locked inside a jail. To be a child stripped away of your childhood.

Ahmad Manasra who lost his childhood to jail.

Tens of stories of breaking hearts of children in the Israeli jails…

While the feast is over, and Ahed will become a teenager dreaming for a university alone, after securing a good result in the final exams, for the privilege of Jail, and many offers to study for free.

Can Ahed become a Malala?

In an ordinary place she can carry on the fight for freedom Malala represented….. seeing the crowds behind her …can only put her in one of the few options in the easy access to power in this place. Used by those who will benefit from her, until she becomes another icon that reflects the reality of the Palestinian abused resistance.

Dengue fever outbreak halted by release of special mosquitoes

And when mosquitoes or the viruses adapt? Then what?

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Insects unable to transmit viruses halted disease in Australian city – now scientists hope same technique could help tackle Zika and malaria

The first large-scale deployment of mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria, which makes them unable to transmit viruses, has stopped all outbreaks of dengue fever in a city in northern Australia for the last four years.

The success of the project in Townsville, Queensland, will encourage hopes that Wolbachia can provide a knockout blow against the Zika virus in Brazil as well, where the mosquitoes have been introduced into the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Until now, the technology has looked promising but has only been tried in small pilot projects around the world of 1 to 1.5 square km.

Continue reading…

U.S. judge halts 3-D printed gun blueprints hours before planned release

Nightmare in the works but even if these plans are not allowed for open public download – how long – if it is not already available – before hundreds of guns geeks draw up plans and start e-mailing to “friends” and “fiends.” There are no more secrets about good or evil – just choosing to choose good and encouraging good. And outlawing evil acts and the promotion of evil, to the best of our ability… A U.S. judge on Tuesday blocked the planned release of blueprints for 3-D printed guns hours before they were set to hit the internet, siding with several states that sued to halt publication of designs to make weapons that security screening may not detect.

topNews?d=yIl2AUoC8zA topNews?i=4bMKjeiiSnQ:1SQppDuZI3A:V_sGLi topNews?i=4bMKjeiiSnQ:1SQppDuZI3A:-BTjWO

Yes, Corbynism poses a threat — but not to Britain’s Jews

The real threat Corbyn and Corbynism pose is not to Jews, but rather to a system built on inequality. A victory for socialism in an important country like the UK might inspire similar victories across Europe, North America, and beyond. Such a red wave may threaten these countries’ neoliberal growth model, which is based on a grossly unfair distribution of national income, as well as their automatic support for Israel and other states that prop up an international order based on a similarly grossly unfair distribution.

Smearing Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite has become a popular hobby among members of the British establishment — perhaps because what he stands for is a direct threat to their ideological and economic interests.

By Matan Kaminer

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. (Chris McAndrew/CC BY 3.0)

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. (Chris McAndrew/CC BY 3.0)

Last week, Haaretz columnist Anshel Pfeffer accused UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn of being both anti-Semitic and stupid. He is wrong on both counts. Against enormous odds and powerful political enemies, Corbyn has made a case for socialism that has enthused millions of people, a case that may well bring him to Downing Street soon. He has done so by building a multi-colored coalition that welcomes Jews as well as members of Britain’s many other minority groups.

[tmwinpost]

Despite the boldness of his bottom line, Pfeffer admits that he has “never quite been able to work out whether Corbyn is an anti-Semite himself.” That Pfeffer’s evidence should be so weak is telling; as an expert on British politics — and no friend of Corbynism — he would certainly seize on any proof of this claim if such existed.

Pfeffer is not alone. Smearing Corbyn as an anti-Semite has become a popular hobby among the British establishment, including portions of the Labour Party as well as the Conservatives. And yet nothing has stuck. The most serious evidence used to substantiate the claim is Corbyn’s previous support for an artist whose mural was erased for containing anti-Semitic themes back in 2012. This support was apparently based on a superficial glance at a photo on Facebook; the mural was indeed anti-Semitic, and Corbyn, then a backbench member of Parliament, should have known better. He has acknowledged this and apologized.

The most recent edition of the smear campaign has blown up around the Labour Party’s adoption of the definition of anti-Semitism proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association. You read that right: the definition was adopted, not rejected. What Labour’s National Executive Council omitted from its Code of Conduct were some of the examples laid out in the IHRA document. As close Corbyn ally and British Jew Jon Lansman points out, three of the four types of anti-Semitic behavior covered by these examples – accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel than their own countries, holding Israel to higher standards than other countries, and comparing it to the Nazi regime – are all covered by the code. The only example left out is one in which the State of Israel is called racist.

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Given that Pfeffer lives in that very state, which just last week passed a law declaring it belongs exclusively to the Jewish people — to the obvious detriment of its non-Jewish citizens — this particular omission might have given him pause. Perhaps Pfeffer dreams of a different Israel, one in which such a law would be unthinkable? It is certainly possible to believe that such a dream is unlikely or even impossible without being an anti-Semite. And it is certainly relevant that numerous Jews have believed precisely this since the earliest days of the Zionist movement.

All this is not to say that Labour does not have “an anti-Semitism problem.” The entire Christian world has an anti-Semitism problem, which has laid dormant for decades and is now rearing its repugnant head. British society in general and Labour members in particular are not immune, though recent statistics show supporters of the left are actually slightly less prone than right-wingers to anti-Semitism, as well as other forms of racism.

But while leading figures of the British left are tackling anti-Semitism head on, right-wing British politicians, much like in Israel, are enabling the right-wing populism of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — who Pfeffer quite correctly diagnoses as an anti-Semite, and a cunning, dangerous one at that. Unbelievably, the right-wing leadership of the UK Jewish Board of Deputies, who jumped early on the anti-Corbyn bandwagon, have remained curiously silent on the danger that Orban’s campaign against Jewish Hungarian billionaire George Soros represents to Jews in Hungary and across the continent.

The real threat Corbyn and Corbynism pose is not to Jews, but rather to a system built on inequality. A victory for socialism in an important country like the UK might inspire similar victories across Europe, North America, and beyond. Such a red wave may threaten these countries’ neoliberal growth model, which is based on a grossly unfair distribution of national income, as well as their automatic support for Israel and other states that prop up an international order based on a similarly grossly unfair distribution.

And while it is surely too early to speak of the dawn of the brotherhood of nations of which Jews and non-Jews alike have dreamt of for ages. But surely, if anti-Semitism is the ersatz socialism of fools, it is neither anti-Semitic nor foolish to give the world a glimpse of what the real thing has to offer. Who knows, perhaps such a wave might even empower forces pushing for both socialism and peace in Israel itself.

Matan Kaminer is a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Michigan, a member of the executive board of Academia for Equality, and a political activist and educator on the Israeli left.