Ebola Vaccine Trial: 100% Effective

Via Science Magazine:

A highly unusual clinical trial in Guinea has shown for the first time that an Ebola vaccine protects people from the deadly virus. The study, published online today by The Lancet, shows that the injection offered contacts of Ebola cases 100% protection starting 10 days after they received a single shot of the vaccine, which is produced by Merck. Scientists say the vaccine could help to finally bring an end to the epidemic in West Africa, now more than 18 months old. "This will go down in history as one of those hallmark public health efforts," says Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Twin Cities, Minnesota, who wasn't involved in the study. "We will teach about this in public health schools."

The vaccine was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

TIME's Person Of The Year

Via TIME Magazine:

Ebola is a war, and a warning. The global health system is nowhere close to strong enough to keep us safe from infectious disease, and “us” means everyone, not just those in faraway places where this is one threat among many that claim lives every day. The rest of the world can sleep at night because a group of men and women are willing to stand and fight. For tireless acts of courage and mercy, for buying the world time to boost its defenses, for risking, for persisting, for sacrificing and saving, the Ebola fighters are TIME’s 2014 Person of the Year.

Runner-up was Vladimir Putin:

Russia now seeks to position itself as an alternative to the Western model of liberal democracy—and it’s had some success. Right-wing politicians in France and the U.K., not to mention Central and Eastern Europe, are not shy about declaring their admiration for Putin. The ultraconservative government of Hungary, a member of NATO and the European Union, has announced its intention to develop as an “illiberal state” modeled on Russia, cracking down harshly on civil society. It is a model that may seem old-fashioned—the Russian President claims not to use a cell phone and has called the Internet a “CIA project”—but his appeal is broad and growing for the many around the world who feel left out of the 21st century. “Putin doesn’t want to play within the system anymore,” says Michael McFaul, whose term as U.S. ambassador to Russia ended in February. “He wants to challenge it now. He wants to prod. He wants to build relationships with others against that system, with the Chinese, Turks, maybe India. That is a longer-term challenge.

Band Aid 30 - Do They Know It's Christmas

The third remake of the 1984 charity single Do They Know It's Christmas debuted on British television last night. Via the Guardian:

The more cynical might suggest that in the age of twitchforkings and twitterstorms, when it sometimes seems that no pop cultural event can pass without someone somewhere forensically examining it in the hope of find something they can take offence at, might account for the fact that the song’s lyrics have been rewritten, not merely to accommodate the Ebola epidemic but also to remove the kind of lyrics that people might describe as problematic: “tonight thank God it’s them instead of you” is gone. The generalisation that nothing ever grows in Africa has likewise vanished. Meanwhile, anyone keen to sound the clanging chimes of doom for pop music – or at the very least, looking for evidence of its waning grip on teenagers’ imaginations – might note that three of the vocalists aren’t actually musicians. They are “internet personalities” Zoe “Zoella” Sugg, her brother Joe “Thatcherjoe” Sugg and Alfie Deyes, the last justly famous as joint holder of the world record for the most number of bangles put on by two people in 30 seconds.

The original version is one of the top twenty greatest selling singles in history. The 1989 version (produced by disco kingpins Stock, Aitken & Waterman) and the 2004 version both reached #1 on the British pop chart.

Media Coverage: AIDS Vs Ebola

New York Times writer David Dunlap compares the US media's reaction to ebola to what followed after his own paper's Lawrence Altman made the first notable mention of AIDS in 1983:

I can easily imagine the metro desk of 2015 jumping in to follow up on Altman’s account: “Find out who’s died. Call Larry [Kramer]. Reach out to the families. Speak to neighbors. Try to talk to the patients. What hospitals are they in? Who are their doctors? Learn everything you can. When did they get sick? Where do they live? How old are they? And we’ve got to be clear about possible risks.”

The metro desk of 1981, to which I also belonged, did nothing.

The next article in The Times appeared in August. It was by The Associated Press. By then, more than 100 cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia had been reported, overwhelmingly among gay men, almost half of whom had died. Readers waited four months for the next report, on page D24, by United Press International, as five or six new cases were appearing each week.

The Times was “setting the tone for noncoverage nationally,” Randy Shilts wrote in “And the Band Played On” (1987). “There was only one reason for the lack of media interest, and everybody in the [Centers for Disease Control] task force knew it: The victims were homosexuals.”

To date only one person has died of ebola in the United States and President Obama has made numerous nationally televised speeches on the issue. We all know how Ronald Reagan handled AIDS.

Harlem Hate Pastor: You Will Get Ebola If You Visit Starbucks Because Sodomites

(Tipped by JMG reader John)

CDC Issues New Ebola Quarantine Rules

Today's New York Post

"Beep" is tabloid shorthand for "borough president."

Obama Addresses Nation On Ebola

Via the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama says the U.S. must be guided by science - not fear - as it responds to Ebola. In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama says he was proud to give Texas nurse Nina Pham a hug in the Oval Office after she was cured of Ebola. He says the other nurse who contracted Ebola is also improving. Obama is praising New York's quick reaction to its first Ebola case. He says he's promised local officials any federal help they need. Obama is reminding Americans they can't contract Ebola unless they come into direct contact with a patient's bodily fluids. The president says the U.S. can beat the disease if it remains vigilant. He says the best way to stop it is at its source in West Africa.

Pastor Kenneth Copeland Slays Demon Virus Ebola By Speaking In Tongues

Speaking in tongues always cracks me up. Start at 13:00.

Today's New York City Tabloids

From Chief Of Staff For Sen. Ted Cruz

Chief of staff for Sen. Ted Cruz immediately deleted the above tweet after half of Twitter called him insane. Some the responses were posted tonight by the Boston Globe.

(Tipped by JMG reader Sam)

NEW YORK CITY: Doctor Isolated With Possible Ebola After West Africa Trip UPDATE: He Has Tested Positive

Via the New York Times:

A doctor in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea tested positive for the Ebola virus Thursday, becoming the city’s first diagnosed case. The doctor, Craig Spencer, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital on Thursday and placed in isolation while health care workers spread out across the city to trace anyone he might have come into contact with in recent days. A further test will be conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to confirm the initial test. While officials have said they expected isolated cases of the disease to arrive in New York eventually, and had been preparing for this moment for months, the first case highlighted the challenges surrounding containment of the virus, especially in a crowded metropolis. Even as the authorities worked to confirm that Mr. Spencer was infected with Ebola, it emerged that he traveled from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the subway on Wednesday night, when he went to a bowling alley and then took a taxi home.

LIBERIA: Gays Attacked And Harassed After Christian Leaders Call Ebola God's Punishment For Homosexuality

Via Reuters:

Leroy Ponpon doesn't know whether to lock himself in his flat in Monrovia because of the deadly Ebola virus, or because he is gay. Christian churches' recent linking of the two have made life hell for him and hundreds of other gays. Ponpon, an LGBT campaigner in the Liberian capital, says gays have been harassed, physically attacked and a few have had their cars smashed by people blaming them for the hemorrhagic fever, after religious leaders in Liberia said Ebola was a punishment from God for homosexuality. "Since church ministers declared Ebola was a plague sent by God to punish sodomy in Liberia, the violence toward gays has escalated. They're even asking for the death penalty. We're living in fear," Ponpon told the Thomson Reuters.

RELATED: LGBT rights are nonexistent in Liberia. The current maximum penalty for homosexual acts is one year in prison, which is relatively light compared to many African nations. In 2012 former Liberian First Lady Jewel Taylor, who is now a legislator, introduced a gay death penalty bill.  Two weeks later 2011 Nobel Peace Prize-winning Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf announced that she would not sign Taylor's bill even after its maximum penalty was "watered down" to a mere ten years in prison. However Sirleaf continues to refuse to consider decriminalizing homosexuality in Liberia. Shortly after Sen. Jewel Taylor's bill failed, local Christian leaders distributed flyers which declared, "We will get every gay person one by one. Let these individuals be aware that we are coming after them soon. We urge them to also begin saying the Lord’s Prayer." Liberia is 85% Christian.

ALSO RELATED: Sen. Jewel Taylor's ex-husband, former Liberian president Charles Taylor, is currently imprisoned at The Hague for crimes against humanity. In 2010 prosecutors in the case charged that Pat Robertson had lobbied the George H.W. Bush administration on Taylor's behalf in order to gain the rights to gold mines controlled by Taylor's war lords. During his trial Taylor testified that Robertson had indeed been his main political ally in the United States. According to pilots that worked for Robertson's Operation Blessings, planes that Robertson told 700 Club viewers were ferrying Christian relief supplies to genocide victims in Rwanda were in fact carrying mining equipment to Taylor's gold operation in Liberia. Sen. Jewel Taylor has been banned from all international travel by the United Nations.

Ebola/ISIS Fear-Inspired Tutorial

"I've been single for a really long time, but if I did have a boyfriend, he wouldn't be getting in that door."

(Tipped by JMG reader Homer)

Media Matters: Right Wing Ebola Hysteria

Obama Names Ebola Czar

DALLAS: Second Nurse Has Ebola

Details.

Pastor Ron Baity: God Will Destroy USA With Super-Ebola Over Gay Marriage

Jeremy Hooper writes at Good As You:

Pastor Ron Baity, the winner of the Family Research Council's 2012 "Watchmen Award" for pastors, is a longtime marriage activist in the state of North Carolina. He's led many major rallies at which all of the activists and lawmakers who have tried to keep the Tar Heel state discriminatory have shown up to lend their voice, and his organization earns credence from mainstream conservative activists. Now here is Mr. Baity warning his state of what's to come now that marriage equality is the order of the day.

Headline Of The Day

RedState founder and Fox News commentator Erick Erickson yesterday declared that since the NIH recently studied obesity in lesbians, that ate up all the money to find a cure for ebola. Seriously. The NIH has annual budget of over $30B. The lesbian study cost $1.5M, which is about 0.005% of the NIH's annual budget. 

Tile & Carpet & Ebola World

(Via Christian Nightmares)