Tag: Ebola

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1344

White Castle

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) has had some good ideas in his time. We’re glad he finally got Congress to apologize for slavery, and it’s really troubling to think about how many lives might be lost every day in dangerously fast-moving convenience store lines if Cohen hadn’t fought for the popular state lottery. But Cohen raised a few eyebrows last week when he asked Acting Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy about recent White House security failures. “Would a, uh, a moat. Water. Six feet around, be kind of attractive and effective?” he asked.

“It may be,” Clancy answered, weighing the merits of medieval castle fortification. Cohen later told NBC News that he looked up the definition of “moat” and realized his vision for a protective water barrier was something else entirely. Then Cohen walked back his walkback in a tweet to NBC’s Andrew James. “Upon further research I was right,” Cohen wrote. “Moat need not be medieval 360. Look up zoo moat. Trench. Memphis Zoo moat is what I recalled.” The Congressman failed to mention something else they have at the Memphis Zoo that would definitely discourage would be fence-jumpers: Bears.

Verbatim

WMC-TV collected man-on-the-scene responses to news of yet another Elvis-related auction. Presley fan Lewis Clark, who may need to get out more, had this to say: “If you can have the ability to buy Elvis Presley’s driver’s license and have it in your house, it just doesn’t get any better than that.”

Illness As Metaphor

Here is a photo of WREG’s Stephanie Scurlock modeling the season’s hottest fashion trend — Ebola suits.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (November 6, 2014)

CREDIT: Arindam Banerjee | Dreamstime.com

Arindam Banerjee | Dreamstime.com

Nik Wallenda

I wish that man would stop walking on that high wire. That Nik Wallenda guy who just this past Sunday walked between two 50-story Chicago skyscrapers not once, but twice, the second time blindfolded. That stuff gives me horrible nightmares. And next, he told NBC, “I’m working on recreating my great-grandfather’s greatest walk, which was over Tallulah Gorge, Georgia — 600 feet high, 1,000 feet long. He did two headstands on the wire. I’ve never done a headstand on the wire in public, and I’m training for that. I want to recreate that walk.”

The guy does this with no net, so logic would have it that if he falls, he would fall 50 stories and splatter all over whatever surface is underneath him. I can’t even watch two seconds of the clip without coming very close to throwing up and my legs turning ice cold and cramping.

Why do people want to do things like this? And why must every television commercial for prescription medication feature someone standing on the tiny peak of a very tall mountain — like climbing up into the clouds on a mountain is going to cure erectile dysfunction or high blood pressure. I think it would do the exact opposite to me.

I just don’t get it. Just like I don’t get the new measure that was on Mississippi’s ballot during the election this week: the Mississippi Right to Hunt and Fish Amendment. I love the way that is worded, but I really don’t understand why they are having to vote on that. I can’t hunt or fish because a) I would never be able to shoot an animal, even for food and b) the last time I went fishing the only thing I caught was a little baby trout, and I still haven’t reconciled the guilt from having ruined the little fellow’s day by ripping his mouth up with a hook. There he was minding his own business and trying to be a good young trout and swimming the beautiful river with the sun shining on it and bam! Hook in the mouth. I definitely wouldn’t want someone to do that to me.

But the vote… This is what I read about it that piqued my interest: Specifically, the language of the ballot initiative declares “hunting, fishing, and the harvesting of wildlife, including by the use of traditional methods, is a constitutional right, subject only to such regulations and restrictions that promote wildlife conservation and management as the Legislature may prescribe by general law.”

This is so far up the chain of importance that it has to be a “constitutional right?” I think I must be missing something. Don’t you just go get a license and some guns and some minnows and fishing rods and go out and do it? So what happens if it is voted down? Not that it will be, but if it is, does that mean Mississippians will no longer have the constitutional right to hunt and fish? Will hunting and fishing in Mississippi be outlawed? Uh, Bass Pro Shop moving into the Pyramid, what say you about this? Even the national spokespersons for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the National Humane Society say this is unnecessary and that it’s just political jockeying and a waste of voters’ time.

The article did go on to offer information on more legitimate election concerns including that you have to have a proper photo I.D. to vote. But it didn’t mention whether a hunting or fishing license would suffice.

There are so many things in the world that baffle me. People walking on high wires 50 stories in the air, people having to vote on whether it’s a constitutional right to hunt and fish in Mississippi. My real concern here is whether it is legal to hunt in restaurants and bars as long as you’re not drinking. Wait, I think that’s a Tennessee law. Oh, well.

I’m actually happy about the Mississippi Right to Hunt and Fish Amendment because I’d rather ponder that one than think about the actual people who are running for office — not just in Mississippi but everywhere.

I’ve turned my back on politics because it’s just too much to think about. Half the people running for office or who are in office already shouldn’t even be allowed to have a hunting or fishing license, much less run the government. Why is it that so many people running for office now are just plain nuts? I used to actually like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for his outspokenness and not taking any crap off anyone, but this latest stunt with him telling a protestor to “sit down and shut up” was just obnoxious and ruined his credibility for me.

And the new thing, from what I can gather, is that many of the candidates are using Ebola and ISIS in their platforms to try to scare people into voting for them. They are saying that if they are elected, they will stop both before we all die from one or the other. I say, just take away everyone’s hunting and fishing privileges and we’ll all be fine. Unless someone kills a moose with Ebola, or ISIS converts Americans into fishermen, what’s the big deal? It wouldn’t be as bad as watching that guy walk on that high wire.

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News The Fly-By

Health Department Says Ebola Isn’t a Threat in Shelby County

CREDIT: Louis Goggans

The severe, and often fatal, virus known as Ebola has claimed more than 4,500 lives in West Africa. After the disease was detected in Dallas, a sense of panic spread throughout the U.S.

But Dr. Helen Morrow, health medical officer for the Shelby County Health Department, said the likelihood of Ebola spreading to the county is miniscule.

“I think people should be concerned, aware, [but] I don’t think they need to panic,” Morrow said. “We have been reaching out to the community to try to educate them about this disease and the control of it.”

Since Ebola’s most recent outbreak in March, more than 9,000 people have been diagnosed with the virus. However, the World Health Organization estimates the number of people infected is possibly 2.5 times higher than the number reported.

The virus has become an epidemic in the West African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. But on September 30th, Thomas Eric Duncan became the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S.

A Liberian man visiting family in Dallas, Duncan, 42, died at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on October 8th, after receiving treatment for several days. In the weeks following Duncan’s death, two Texas Health nurses, 26-year-old Nina Pham and 29-year-old Amber Vinson, tested positive for Ebola.

Since then, the amount of Ebola cases in the U.S. has risen to eight. The increase in cases have caused many to fear the virus will spread and become an epidemic in the U.S. False alarms have been reported, some flights have been cancelled, and international airports are now screening people flying into the U.S. from the West African countries impacted by Ebola.

“The risk to the general public is very, very low,” said Health Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Hart. “You’re nearly 100 times more likely to get the flu than you are Ebola.”

The health department has held conference calls with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding guidelines for personal protective equipment and infection control. And helpful information on Ebola is being provided by the Health Department via social media and its newly-formed Ebola Speakers Bureau.

Louis Goggans

County Mayor Mark Luttrell with county health department officials at an Ebola press conference

This week, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell held a media briefing to discuss response methods that would be utilized if Ebola spread to Memphis.

“We know that we can control Ebola through identification and isolation of patients who have the disease. And [we would] identify and monitor contacts within 21 days,” said Yvonne Madlock, executive director of the Shelby County Health Department. “We can prevent the spread of Ebola through infection control, provision [and use] of the appropriate personal protective equipment, and by safely handling bodies of those who might have died from Ebola disease.”

Ebola is spread through direct contact with blood or bodily fluids, such as urine, saliva, semen, or vomit, from an infected person. Initial virus symptoms include fevers, headaches, muscle aches, vomiting, and diarrhea.

The average person begins to experience symptoms within two to 21 days after they’ve been exposed to the virus. If a person experiences any of the aforementioned symptoms, they’re encouraged to notify a local hospital and the Health Department.

The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the largest thus far. The virus was discovered in 1976. It was reportedly passed from fruit bats to primates and other wild animals. And humans seemingly transmitted the virus from hunting and eating Ebola-infected animals.

Dr. Michael Whitt, chair of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Biochemistry, recently co-edited the book, Biology and Pathogenesis of Rhabdo- and Filoviruses, which includes information on Ebola, how it evades the immune system, and vaccines in development to treat it. Currently, there is no vaccine for Ebola.

“This is not something that, in the U.S., is going to spread across the country like, for instance, the West Nile virus,” Whitt said. “Ebola, you can only catch from another person who has symptoms. If there are indications, it can be contained, and it’s not going to spread. We don’t have a pandemic on our hands.”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (October 23, 2014)

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

I knew it. I knew it as well as I knew there was something fishy about Joan Rivers’ death. I knew that President Obama was responsible for the Ebola “epidemic” in the United States. Don’t believe me? Think I’m stupid (don’t answer that)? Well, maybe you would have more trust in The New York Times, which printed this the other day:

“The virus has also threatened to raise questions about the Obama administration’s competence, fueled in recent days by reports that two health care workers were infected while caring for an Ebola-afflicted patient at a Dallas hospital, and one subsequently flew on an airplane with a fever.”

Now do you get it? Two — make it three — people in the United States have contracted the disease, and now it is a nationwide epidemic, and Obama has not done his part to contain it. I knew this was some kind of Democratic, liberal plot from a man who might or might not have even been born in the United States.

I feel sincerely badly for the people in West Africa, who are really being ravaged by this disease, and I wish the U.S. was supplying them the same kind of resources as we are here at home, but come on. Maybe I am crass, but an Ebola czar already?

Justin Fox Burks

Gus’s Fried Chicken

And the media. The media are without scruples in the U.S. when it comes to this kind of thing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to turn on Fox News (well, it would actually surprise the hell out of me if I turned on Fox News — the national channel, not our local peeps, who are awesome) — and saw all of the anchors at their desks in hazmat suits reporting the news through tubes coming out of the head gear. It reminds me of the Egyptian spring uprising, when even Anderson Cooper hunkered down in a fake cave pretending to be seconds from an untimely death. No shame.

And speaking of the media and no shame, I read a piece in last week’s Fly on the Wall in this paper. And then reread it, and reread it, and reread it, trying to figure out what it meant. In case you missed it, Chris Davis reported this:

“Four food writers for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette came to town for a conference and were freaked out by scenic South Front: ‘Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken in downtown Memphis isn’t much to look at … on a street flush with boarded-up windows, it’s the kind of place ‘fraidy-cat tourists would steer clear of for fear of getting mugged. I’ll admit my first thought was, ‘This is it? The place so many people are talking about?'”

That is just wrong. What exactly were they expecting from a fried-chicken restaurant, and where did they get the idea that Front Street is “flush with boarded up windows?” There’s something like $16 trillion of new development there with a lot more on the way. I can tell you this without even looking up who the writers were: They have never set foot in an interesting place in their lives, they have never had an original thought, and they probably live in the suburbs and think they know a lot about wine.

So to prove myself right, I went to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website and this was the lead headline: “South Hills Village Mall races to get ready for holiday season.” See? I bet the same writer who thought “‘fraidy-cat tourists would steer clear” of our Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken for “fear of getting mugged” wrote this riveting piece on their mall getting ready for the holidays.

Okay, okay, so I read the entire article (the one about Memphis food, not the one about their mall and the holidays because I would rather have an image of a naked Dick Cheney tattooed on my face than visit a mall during the holidays), and it wasn’t all bad. In fact, one dude wrote about visiting the Stax Museum (where I work by day) so they at least got some culture. They also visited the National Civil Rights Museum and the same guy wrote this:

“I was so impressed and moved by our group tour of the newly renovated National Civil Rights Museum, which is located at the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, that I went through a second time with my family. Afterwards, I felt like I could use a drink.”

Atta boy! So you did visit interesting places, and you do have original thoughts, and you might not live in the suburbs and think you know a lot about wine. You have my humblest apologies. Anyone who needs a drink after visiting a place as emotionally gripping as the National Civil Rights Museum is A-okay in my book.

So now I am not mad at those writers anymore. I’m going to be a much nicer person from now on. I might even forgive Obama for singlehandedly causing every American in the land to potentially come down with Ebola.

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News News Blog

Mayor Luttrell, Health Officials Talk Ebola Response Methods

photo_1-1.JPG

Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, along with several public health officials, held a media briefing Tuesday to discuss response methods that would be utilized if Ebola spread to Memphis.

During the briefing, which was held at the Vasco Smith Administration Building, Yvonne Madlock, director of the Shelby County Health Department, assured the public that the department is prepared to control and prevent the spread of Ebola.

Madlock said this would be done through identification and isolation of patients who have Ebola, tracing of individuals who have come in direct contact with a sick Ebola patient, and the use of personal protective equipment.

“We’ve been conducting tabletop exercises and drills,” Madlock said. “We’ve been training our agency and staff, and training partner [agencies]. We’ve been in direct communication with the Tennessee Department of Health, [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], and other national leaders and health departments across the nation that are experts in this kind of event. We’ve been working with our hospitals and our EMS providers, [and] communicating with physicians and hospitals and urgent care centers.”

Ebola, a severe, and often fatal, illness has claimed more than 4,000 lives since it’s outbreak in West Africa. The three countries hit the hardest in the continent are Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

To date, there have been no confirmed cases in Memphis or Tennessee. And the only Ebola cases diagnosed in the U.S. have been in Dallas. On September 30th, Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man visiting family in Dallas, was diagnosed with Ebola at the city’s Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

Duncan succumbed to the virus on October 8th. Two nurses who treated him, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, were later diagnosed with the virus.

Since Ebola’s most recent outbreak in March, nearly 9,000 people have been confirmed to have the virus. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the amount of people infected is possibly 2.5 times higher than the number reported.

The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals like fruit bats and primates, which are hunted in Africa for food. The virus is then spread through the human population via direct contact with blood or bodily fluids, such as urine, saliva, semen, or vomit, from an infected person. Virus symptoms include fevers, headaches, muscle aches, vomiting, and diarrhea.

According to WHO, the current fatality rate for the disease is 50 percent. However, since the illness first emerged in 1976, case fatality rates have varied from 25 to 90 percent in past outbreaks.

Presently, there is no cure for Ebola. However, experimental drugs ZMapp, Favipiravir, Brincidofovir, and TKM-Ebola have been used to treat individuals who have been diagnosed with the virus.

“Ebola disease is not as easily spread as other viruses,” Madlock said. “Very few people in the United States are actually at risk. And we can contain Ebola disease, just as it’s been contained in other parts of the world, through rapid identification and isolation of cases, [and] identifying and monitoring our contacts. But it does take cooperation, coordination, training and preparedness, and that’s the kind of work that we’ve been involved in.”

Residents can reach out to the Health Department via Twitter and Facebook for more information on Ebola. And check out this week’s issue of The Flyer for an additional article on the virus.

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News The Fly-By

Memphis Company Sends Robots to Help Fight Ebola in Africa

It might sound like the plot of an action movie, but a Memphis-based company is sending two germ-killing robots to West Africa to fight the war against Ebola.

The TRU-D SmartUVC is a robot designed to disinfect hospital environments using ultraviolet (UV) light, and two of those robots have been shipped to Liberia.

UV light has been used to disinfect water since the 19th century and has since been used to disinfect food, air, and surfaces. What makes the SmartUVC different is its use of “Sensor360” technology, which gives the device the ability to change its dose of ultraviolet light depending on different factors in the room, like objects or surfaces.

“Any organism is susceptible to UV, but you have to deliver the proper dose,” said Chuck Dunn, the president and CEO of the Memphis-based TRU-D SmartUVC, LLC. “We place the unit near the center of the room, and we measure not the UV light that comes away from the device and reaches the wall but the amount of UV that is reflected back from the wall to the center part of the room.

TRU-D president Chuck Dunn and inventor Jeffrey Deal with a germ-killing robot.

“When we measure in that manner, we ensure that proper dose is delivered to the backside of objects or shadow areas. It won’t be very useful to just disinfect some of the room. What all the research and the third-party data shows, when we deliver this measured dose — which takes a variable amount of time based on the room configuration — we have thoroughly disinfected the room and it’s safe for the next patient.”

Liberia and surrounding countries like Sierra Leone and Nigeria have been fighting an Ebola outbreak since March.

“They’re treating a lot of people who are infected with Ebola. Patients who don’t know whether they [are infected] or need to be treated for something other than Ebola are afraid to go to the hospital,” Dunn said. “The Liberian task force on Ebola reached out to us and asked if we could help. We sent two devices over there and a tropical disease specialist to train people on how to use it.”

Dr. Jeffery Deal, the inventor of the SmartUVC device and a tropical disease specialist, left for Liberia on August 18th. He will help deploy the devices and monitor the progress of the training for Liberian hospitals. Dunn said the Ebola virus is “quite susceptible” to UV light. The device itself has two settings: one that is anti-bacterial and another that kills spores, which are harder to disinfect. By using the lowest bacteria setting, according to Dunn, the device can eliminate Ebola on surfaces.

“We know it’s going to effectively eliminate the organism,” he said. “One of the main things they want to demonstrate to the population there is that the hospital is a safe place for them to go. Many of them are dying in the hospital, so they think that’s the worst place they could possibly go. To encourage that it is a clean, safe, disinfected environment that can make them better: That’s a big part of the goal.”