In Each Recent Ebola Outbreak, Fear And Hostility From The Communities… Has Been A Vexing Issue. But In No Manner A Unique One.

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So too, in this 2026 version — but the burning of 12 treatment facilities… seems more extreme (so far), even when compared to the 2012-14 outbreak. That one killed over 11,300. [We are likely approaching 1,000 deaths this time, but perhaps there were 500 deaths before it was officially accepted in DRC that the current outbreak was underway.]

The NYT has an excellent long-form look into this phenomenon, this morning. Here’s that — proving that this is common — across various pandemics, centuries — and cultures:

…[T]his would be easy to chalk up to poor education and anachronistic rituals: “Fear and ignorance as ebola ‘out of control’ in parts of west Africa,” as one Guardian headline put it in 2014. But unrest during epidemics is not about Ebola, Africa or education. It is something societies have struggled with for centuries, and it is evident in rich countries as well as poor ones, in modern times and medieval ones.

During the Covid pandemic, Western doctors, nurses and health officials received not only applause and gratitude but also death threats. Patients denied that Covid existed as they died of the disease. Protesters carrying guns occupied sidewalks outside hospitals. Multitudes embraced treatments, such as ivermectin, that study after study showed to be ineffective. Vaccinators in Italy were assaulted. A German gas station attendant and a Michigan Family Dollar security guard were killed after asking customers to wear masks….

[Public health] outbreaks elicit a contradictory mix of responses. They often unfold in three acts, wrote Charles E. Rosenberg, a medical historian: First, people deny reality and put off behavioral changes that might slow the spread. Then they demand explanations, often blaming “individual and community sins” or, in some cases, doctors. Finally, they take action. Then they have to contend with the aftermath of both the infections and the finger-pointing — the life-and-death consequences for themselves and their neighbors….

It’s about history and culture and politics and even just about how people love and care for others in their family who are sick. And to reduce it to something like ‘resistance’ that needs stamping out in a really militaristic, heavy-handed response — that’s the exact wrong way to go.” Only when we understand these tendencies, she and other scholars say, can we navigate them….

Indeed. Now you know — and… also now, back in a Canadian wildfire smoke-tinted Chi-, this morning — the sky is decidedly yellow, and breathing the air without a mask… delivers a sore throat within ten minutes. Ugh. But onward, just the same.

नमस्ते

Tangent: Starship Engine Glitch; SpaceX Plunges To $125, This Morning. Hilarious.

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Well, I guess we won’t have to wait until September to see $130 on the NASDAQ. In fact, we’ll see you formerly irrational boosters (buying in at $225, a month ago)… at sub- $125 today.

Right now — it has touched $122 and change.

Here is the latest, from Yahoo — posting an article from the UK’s The Independent:

…SpaceX was forced to abort its latest Starship launch just seconds before lift off on Thursday after some of the engines on the world’s biggest rocket failed to start.

The scrubbed launch came just hours after SpaceX shares fell below their initial public offering (IPO) price of $135 for the first time, marking a 40 per cent drop in value over the last month….

This is all very droll — and given Musk‘s history of making wildly overstated claims — about publicly traded securities with which he is/was affiliated, this is/was all very much predictable.

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A New Era In Oral Cardiovascular Risk Management Dawns: In the US, Merck’s Lipfendra (PCSK9 Pill) Goes On Sale. Stock Jumps ~4%.

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This entire blog — now well over 10,000 posts (and spanning all the days since early 2008) was originally my editorial narrative arc of a clearly suspect LDL pill called Vytorin. Back then, CEO Fast Fred Hassan was touting it, while the esteemed Yale MD, Dr. Harlan Krumholz (later) came to call this drug “a very expensive placebo” — for cholesterol management.

The markets for managing high cholesterol, a primary risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, are vast — into the high teens of billions of dollars a year, in the US alone. Finally, now — with this morning’s FDA approval — a drug that actually works to improve outcomes (as a pill) is on market. And at ~$310 a month, most US patients are likely to receive the therapy. Sweet — Merck’s NYSE price is bound to rise today — but here is the latest, via Reuters:

…The pill Lipfendra is intended to treat patients with hypercholesterolemia, which can be identified by elevated levels of LDL, the so-called “bad” cholesterol ⁠in the blood, often leading to plaque buildup in the arteries.

With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval, Lipfendra, also called enlicitide, would become the first oral PCSK9 inhibitor to enter the market, offering an alternative to a class of cholesterol-lowering drugs long dominated by injectables.

Its list price will be $10.50 per day, based on a 30-day supply, Merck told Reuters. The company’s shares were up 1.1% in premarket trading….

Now you know. Full circle — and so, nearly 20 years later, the debacle that was the “very expensive placebo” called Vytorin — at now gone-Schering-Plough, is at an end.

Smile — rest of my crew arrives by jet this aft — then into the cool but wild-fire hazed mountains again.

नमस्ते

Two Observations, For John (Hinderaker).

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(1) “Illegal” as my law profs intoned — is only “a sick bird”. The phrase he is looking for (putatively, at least)… is “unlawful”. Not illegal. Sheesh.

(2) What one member burps up about — in Congress — is in no manner… “the law”.

His opinion is just one dumb guy’s pipe dream. The Supremes have recently expressly re-endorsed the idea of using a myriad of factors to decide what qualifies for entering classes, and an employment. And it is left to the sound discretion of those people to decide. John doesn’t get to make these announcements, nor does any single member of the far right wing Congress, who claims his MAGA stripes.

And John has forever misunderstood, intentionally, what it is that the civil rights acts were all about.

He is forever looking for — and vainly hoping to find… “elephants in Supreme Court mouse holes.” And so — he is to be… forever disappointed.

So be it. He is right about this much though, by 2028, most of these Tsngerine 2.0 immigration favoritism measures designed to put the thumb on the scale for whyte South Africans (people who lack high tech skill sets), over all other nations with people who possess high-tech skill sets… will disappear.

This Seems Excessive — But Okay. Whatever.

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Recall that both DRC and Uganda have outbound travel measures, already in place — for Ebola and Marburg — respectively.

I am not sure this is really needed — but I suppose excess caution makes some sense, with thousands dead, and more dying in DRC. [And yet, we know Ebola only speads via very close contact, despite Tangerine 2.0’s legendary misunderstandings of viral vectors / transmission — Bundibugyo / Ebola is not air-borne.]

Here is the latest, from Reuters:

. . .The Trump administration on Monday said it is blocking American citizens in the Democratic Republic of Congo from traveling to the U.S. on commercial flights, according to a White House official.

The ‌order, which is being taken under a transportation authority known as Title 49, will place U.S. citizens in Congo or those who have recently left on a “do-not-board” list until they have spent at least 21 days in a third country, the person said. . . .

Now onward, as E. Jean Carroll receives her first ~$5 million from Tangerine, from his libelous lies. About $84 million, more — next.Smile.

नमस्ते

[U: 56 Page USDC Opinion, Linked. The IRS Cannot Be… Bought. Not by Trump & Blanche, Anyway.

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[Updated: here is the full USDC opinion.]

Mid-flight, I see that Tangerine 2.0 & Todd Blanche are now reaping the whirlwind, for their corrupt and thus unenforceable IRS “settlement” self-dealing. Flawless.

And Blanche may lose his NY bar card, behind it all — sweet:

…A federal judge on Monday ruled that President Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service was an improper exercise in self-dealing and barred him from claiming that the extraordinary tax protections he received were part of a legitimate settlement agreement.

In the order, the judge, Kathleen M. Williams, also referred the lawyer who brought Mr. Trump’s case against the I.R.S. to the Florida bar for potential disciplinary proceedings. Judge Williams added that she would forward her decision to the New York bar, which is already investigating the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche….

Excellent! Touching down in 30 minutes or so… to a saner world.

नमस्ते

Wait Up A Tick!? Paul Wants People To PAY For THIS?! His Fee-Fees?! Hilarious.

~ condor ~ 2 Comments

I realize these self important blowhards generally lack emotional intelligence. I do.

But Mirengoff thinks people will pay — to read his belchings, about a picture when he wasn’t the photographer, nor was he present… on the Metro car… and unless he was one of the masked men (possible, but not likely)… he has no business contradicting what the woman in question, and her brother — now have had to say.

But this is ever the MAGA way: telling us that their “feelings and intuitions” are more valid than on the ground facts.

That whyte boys in masks… must always be in the right. Facts don’t care whether people like Paul believe them. They remain… facts.

Me? I will trust these men and women. They were there.

Damn. What an utterly feckless putz this old codger Paul (and Stewart Rhodes at right) is. In Rhodes’ case, he once was a Yale Law student — but now, he’s a felon, originally sentenced to 17 years — but then pardoned by Trump — now disbarred for violent attempts to overthrow the federal government. Damn.

Out.

First Patients Dosed, In DRC Clinical Trial For A Bundibugyo Therapeutic… Fingers Crossed.

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This is good news — and here is to hoping it turns out to be both effective, and safe.

Here’s the latest — per the UK Guardian:

…[This] is a record pace to set up and start this kind of research, scientists said, with patients enrolled just six weeks after the outbreak being declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 17 May.

Nevertheless, in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, where the virus is raging, people are impatient.

“I hope these drug trials proceed quickly,” said Neema Haba, a mother of three and banana seller. “Financially, we are being driven to the brink by this outbreak and nothing is going right. We are struggling to provide for our children.”

As of 9 July, there had been 1,792 confirmed cases and 625 deaths caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there is no vaccine and no approved treatment. It is still “in the expansion phase”, according to the WHO….

Hopes of turning the tide now rest with scientists searching for effective medicines.

The Partners treatment trial has opened with two drugs on its books — remdesivir, and MBP134. Patients will be randomly allocated to receive either drug, a combination of the two, or simply standard, supportive care.

Remdesivir is an antiviral made by pharma company Gilead Sciences, while MBP134 is a monoclonal antibody developed by Mapp Biopharmaceutical, containing two specially engineered immune proteins that recognise and neutralise the virus.

Both are given intravenously — MBP134 as a one-off infusion, and remdesivir as 10 days of intravenous therapy.

“These two drugs actually have been proven to work against the Bundibugyo virus in animal models,” said Prof Laurens Liesenborghs of the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, who is working on the trial in Ituri….

Now you know — jetting out of Midway, by 11 am tomorrow. Smile….

नमस्ते

2026 Lassa Fever Outbreak In Nigeria — Still Spreading Ferociously… And At Higher Mortality Rates, Too: Killing About 1-In-4.

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This is very hard news. But to be expected, in a time of disappearing American leadership, on public health prevention, globally.

The erstwhile folks at OutbreakNewsToday (once again), have the latest — from Nigeria:

…According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC), since the beginning of the year through the end of June, 2026, 922 confirmed Lassa fever cases have been reported in the country, up from 790 cases reported during the same period in 2025….

The death toll from confirmed cases has also increased compared to last year. Cumulatively, 221 deaths (compared to 148 deaths in 2025) have been reported with a case fatality rate (CFR) of 24.0% which is higher than the CFR for the same period in 2025 (18.7%).

In total for 2026, 23 States have recorded at least one confirmed case across 111 Local Government Areas (LGA)….

Now you know — with bbgrrl’s 10th birthday party in a couple hours — then on a jet, in the morning — to the high Rockies for a week — blogging will be sparse. Smile.

नमस्ते