Talk:Western African Ebola epidemic

Is this a contradiction?

"There is as yet no known confirmed medication, vaccine, or treatment." but "all people at risk will now receive the new vaccine" Art LaPella (talk) 01:27, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

yes it is--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:12, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

After this edit (and my comma edit) it says "There is as yet no known confirmed medication or treatment for Ebola virus disease" so I'm leaving it alone. Art LaPella (talk) 19:13, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

yes that improves it--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:04, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Countries with a single evacuee

@Gandydancer: About this - the current text "A single patient was evacuated to Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom" made me chuckle, as it sounded like one poor individual being carted off to all of those different countries. If I was that patient, I would ask them to just leave me alone after I got to the third country or so. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:31, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

So sorry! Here's what I thought happened: I did not note that Italy was kept and thought that you misunderstood that the patient in Italy was mentioned twice because he represented a case that resulted in the infection of another person. But yes, I agree that even if it would be to help science to better understand the epidemic that would be far too much to expect of one person, expecially while they were already quite sick! I reverted to your edit (with a red face :)) Gandydancer (talk) 13:28, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

No need to be embarrassed. :) My edit summary wasn't exactly the most descriptive one, so I can see now that it would be easy to miss the double meaning and mistake the purpose of my edit. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 14:51, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

2 cases

Should we mention somewhere, like the top of the infobox, that there are only 2 remaining known cases of Ebola? I think that's what readers want to know, not how many thousands of cases occurred last year as of this date and that date. Art LaPella (talk) 20:10, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Art, I'm not sure how to handle this. I agree that now as this winds down the total remaining cases in West Africa should be listed. Also, I wonder if the wording in the info box should be changed to read Nations that have experienced widespread transmission and include all three in that section? It currently reads: Nations with widespread transmission: Guinea • Sierra Leone and Nations with isolated cases: Liberia -- which no longer makes much sense. At least to me... Thoughts? Gandydancer (talk) 14:24, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Yes, "Nations with widespread transmission" is clearly wrong. "Nations that experienced widespread transmission" (without "have") will be better when we get to zero, so jumping the gun a few days would be OK (it's possible there is no more transmission now). And change "Formerly affected nations" to "Other affected nations" because the word "formerly" applies to everything but the last two cases. Art LaPella (talk) 15:07, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Come to think of it, as the epidemic becomes history (like next year), "Nations with widespread transmission" would sound OK if we were discussing the Black Death. Art LaPella (talk) 15:16, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Ref help please

Several times when I have tried to add info using a WHO special page such as a news release I do my source but it ends up with the weekly report instead. Today I put new info in the lead using this WHO source [1] but did not get the site I wanted. Could someone fix this for me? Thanks. Gandydancer (talk) 14:24, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

No ideas? There's always the Help Desk. Art LaPella (talk) 01:18, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Gandydancer, when I follow that link it goes to a page entitled "An emergency within an emergency: caring for Ebola survivors". Is that not what you wanted? Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 04:14, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

She presumably means the reference presently labeled [31] at the end of the article's introduction, which has exactly the same URL (replacing it with this one shows no change) but goes to a different page because it uses a cite template. Art LaPella (talk) 04:34, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion: This situation may be helped by preemptively archiving all hyperlinks with the Wayback Machine from Internet Archive. Some advice on how to do this at link and Help:Using the Wayback Machine. This way, you can try to assure yourself that, in the future, you'll be less likely to get {{dead link}} in the article. :) Hope that's helpful, — Cirt (talk) 23:02, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Homeopathy and quacks created actual harm during medical treatment of Ebola

There could be a brief mention of how witch doctors and homeopaths actually caused significant harm during the Ebola epidemic.

1. These are not examples of sources for the article, itself, rather just to show you on the talk page that this was a real serious problem, in the middle of an epidemic, to have people peddling various types of non-scientific fraud.
2. It could be added to the article to correct the historical record and serve as a warning that certain people crop up to take advantage of dangerous situations to peddle quackery.

Examples:

• Freeman, Colin (30 July 2014). "Ebola outbreak: fight against disease hampered by belief in witchcraft, warns British doctor". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 August 2015. Retrieved 12 October 2015.
• Rafaeli, JS (26 November 2014). "Some Idiots Flew to Liberia to 'Cure' Ebola Patients with Homeopathy". Vice. Archived from the original on 27 September 2015. Retrieved 12 October 2015.

Hope this suggestion is helpful,

— Cirt (talk) 22:56, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

This was certainly quite big at the time. One witch doctor ended up killing quite a lot of people, if I recall correctly. Guy (Help!) 08:04, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I remember that also, I'll try to research and find some sources on that. — Cirt (talk) 12:44, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Please use more respect when referring to people of different cultures than your own. The woman was a "tribal healer", not a "witch doctor". If I remember the circumstances correctly, she cared for patients very early in the epidemic before it was even known what we were dealing with. She contracted Ebola and died and a large funeral was held in which many of the woman who washed and cared for her body became infected. She did not "kill" anyone. Gandydancer (talk) 16:00, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

agree--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:41, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Uveitis photo

A photo showing Uveitis has been added and I'd like some feedback. I don't think that it adds to the article and should be removed. Thoughts?

just remove,(not an issue) --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:33, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Lack of Independent Questioning

Apart from Mail on-line, why is there relatively little questioning of this media-driven story? While it was said that this disease was likely to become a dangerous 'world-wide outbreak' - Ebola is now all but over. Given this, media outlets might admit that this story was over-blown. And, with the latest facts, is it not clear that this was a Scare Story all along?