Ebola Aid - Raising money so that Congress doesn't have to

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > Ebola Aid - Raising money so that Congress doesn't have to

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ohgodwhat: Aug 6, 2005

DONATE :siren:

Total so far: $3766 (updated as of this post)

:frogsiren:

GBS Ebola Thread D&D Ebola Thread :frogsiren:

The worst outbreak of Ebola in history has struck western Africa. It is uncontained - growing exponentially, and various predictions place the number of cases in the new year in the hundreds of thousands to millions. This wouldn't be so bad if it was the flu, but Ebola kills 50-90% of those it afflicts.

The best hope for the people of western Africa, and other regions where Ebola might spread, is for the world's governments to get together and begin a serious effort to break the curve of infections NOW. Every delay only makes it harder for the outbreak to be contained and deaths to be prevented. There is movement on this front, but by the time things really start going, it might already be inadequate.

However, many NGOs have been doing their best to stem the tide for some time, and forefront among them is Medecins Sans Frontieres, otherwise known as Doctors Without Borders. They desperately need volunteers to assist them in Africa, but if you're a typical goon, that's probably a stretch. Past that, we can help them with money.

So just donate, goons. Do your part for mankind:

:siren:

DONATE :siren:

Other organizations:
- UN Ebola Response Fund
- UNICEF Access to food in the most Ebola stricken regions is in jeopardy, and mass starvation is a possibility
- World Food Program See above

FAQ:
What is Ebola?
A viral hemorrhagic fever with a high morbidity rate. It has the ability to infect someone with 1-10 viruses, and is spread by bodily fluids, including fomites. It is not airborne. It has no proven vaccines or cures, although there are some, like ZMapp, that are in testing (trial by fire).

Why should we help Africa when Ebola is ON OUR DOORSTEP??
It is unlikely that there will be an Ebola outbreak in first world countries, but if that is your primary concern, halting Ebola in Africa is likely the most effective way to prevent it. See the Ebola thread for details.

Am I going to die of Ebola?
Yes, unless you donate.

Is Ebola airborne yet?
It will become airborne if you don't donate, and then we'll all die.

I'm a Goon with special skills and somehow missed they need people like me. Who do I talk to to volunteer?
http://www.msf.org/work-msf

ohgodwhat fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Nov 16, 2014

# ? Oct 13, 2014 04:56

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 25, 2024 18:38

ohgodwhat: Aug 6, 2005

Reserved for Ebola-Chan.

ohgodwhat fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Oct 13, 2014

# ? Oct 13, 2014 04:56

Phone: Jul 30, 2005; 親子丼をほしい。

Is there a way to donate with Bitcoins? (donated :10bux:

)

# ? Oct 13, 2014 04:57

a shiny rock: Nov 13, 2009

theres blood coming out my butt is that bad?

# ? Oct 13, 2014 04:57

Shithouse Dave: Aug 5, 2007; each post manufactured to the highest specifications

Ebola AND aids? :supaburn:

# ? Oct 13, 2014 04:57

somethingawful bf: Jun 17, 2005

what are the upsides for giving money to cure ebola in west africa, and what are the downsides

# ? Oct 13, 2014 04:58

TEAYCHES: Jun 23, 2002

just another reason to work for global communism. notice how cuba has the biggest medical and tech team to fight ebola

# ? Oct 13, 2014 04:59

appropriatemetaphor: Jan 26, 2006

if we save them from the ebes then they won't have the opportunity to ascend upon their deaths, seems like helping them is the work of the ori

# ? Oct 13, 2014 04:59

a shiny rock: Nov 13, 2009

isnt this what drones are for

# ? Oct 13, 2014 04:59

Hell Yeah: Dec 25, 2012

africa owns

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:00

Nanomashoes: Aug 18, 2012

reserved for future owns

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:01

Nanomashoes: Aug 18, 2012

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:01

DoctorStrangelove: Jun 7, 2012; IT WOULD NOT BE DIFFICULT MEIN FUHRER!

Before I donate, I want an assurance that MSF will not use my donation to fund the production of a nuclear equipped bipedal walking tank.

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:01

ohgodwhat: Aug 6, 2005

Phone posted:

Is there a way to donate with Bitcoins? (donated )

Our fiat overlords also created Ebola, no way they'd let disruptive economic paradigms like Bitcoin have any impact.

sether01 posted:

what are the upsides for giving money to cure ebola in west africa, and what are the downsides

Upsides: Less dead people
Downsides: Less dead people

It really depends on how you look at it. Are you a glass half full kind of guy?

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:01

Dead Precedents: May 5, 2005; Precedents come and go, but death goes on forever.

appropriatemetaphor posted:

if we save them from the ebes then they won't have the opportunity to ascend upon their deaths, seems like helping them is the work of the ori

Scrooge Da Player posted:

"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, ... it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:02

TEAYCHES: Jun 23, 2002

quote:

Cuba leads fight against Ebola in Africa as west frets about border security

The island nation has sent hundreds of health workers to help control the deadly infection while richer countries worry about their security � instead of heeding UN warnings that vastly increased resources are urgently needed.

As the official number of Ebola deaths in west Africa�s crisis topped 4,000 last week � experts say the actual figure is at least twice as high � the UN issued a stark call to arms. Even to simply slow down the rate of infection, the international humanitarian effort would have to increase massively, warned secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.

�We need a 20-fold resource mobilisation,� he said. �We need at least a 20-fold surge in assistance � mobile laboratories, vehicles, helicopters, protective equipment, trained medical personnel, and medevac capacities.�

But big hitters such as China or Brazil, or former colonial powers such France and the UK, have not been stepping up to the plate. Instead, the single biggest medical force on the Ebola frontline has been a small island: Cuba.

That a nation of 11 million people, with a GDP of $6,051 per capita, is leading the effort says much of the international response. A brigade of 165 Cuban health workers arrived in Sierra Leone last week, the first batch of a total of 461. In sharp contrast, western governments have appeared more focused on stopping the epidemic at their borders than actually stemming it in west Africa. The international effort now struggling to keep ahead of the burgeoning cases might have nipped the outbreak in the bud had it come earlier.

Andr� Carrilho, an illustrator whose work has appeared in the New York Times and Vanity Fair, noted the moment when the background hum of Ebola coverage suddenly turned into a shrill panic. Only in August, after two US missionaries caught the disease while working in Liberia and were flown to Atlanta, did the mushrooming crisis come into clear focus for many in the west.

�Suddenly we could put a face and a name to these patients, something that I had not felt before. To top it all, an experimental drug was found and administered in record time,� explained the Lisbon-based artist. �I started thinking on how I could depict what I perceived to be a deep imbalance between the reporting on the deaths of hundreds of African patients and the personal tragedy of just two westerners.�

The result was a striking illustration: a sea of beds filled with black African patients writhing in agony, while the media notice only the single white patient.

�It�s natural that people care more about what�s happening closer to their lives and realities,� Carrilho said. �But I also think we all have a responsibility to not view what is not our immediate problem as a lesser problem. The fact that thousands of deaths in Africa are treated as a statistic, and that one or two patients inside our borders are reported in all their individual pain, should be cause for reflection.�

With the early alarm bells ignored, the handful of international health agencies which did act were quickly overwhelmed, allowing Ebola to slip across the border of Guinea and gather pace in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The sentiment behind Carrilho�s illustration neatly encapsulates a renewed media frenzy now that as two cases have been imported into the US, and a Spanish nurse infected over the past month.

�What I�d like to see is a little less hysteria in the US and the UK,� said Andrew Gleadle, programme director for the International Medical Corps (IMC), which recruits health personnel for global humanitarian disasters, as he snatched a breather between shifts in Sierra Leone. �We may get a few isolated cases [in the west] but we�re not going to get an epidemic. We need more focus on west Africa where the real problem is.�

The WHO estimates Sierra Leone alone needs around 10,000 health workers. M�decins sans Fronti�res, the international medical aid charity which has led efforts from the beginning, has about 250 staff on the ground in the affected countries. The second-largest government brigade is from the African Union, which is dispatching about 100 health workers.

It�s not the first time Cuba has played an outsized role in a major disaster. Its government may be beset by allegations of human rights abuse, but its contribution to relief brigades is unrivalled: currently, some 50,000 Cuban-trained health workers are spread over 66 countries. Cuba provided the largest medical contingent after the Haiti earthquake disaster in 2010, providing care to almost 40% of the victims. And while some 400 US doctors volunteered in the aftermath of that quake, fewer than 10 had registered for the IMC�s Ebola effort, the organisation said.

Sierra Leone president Ernest Bai Koroma personally welcomed the Cuban delegation in the capital Freetown. �This is a friendship that we have experienced since the 1970s and today you have demonstrated that you are a great friend of the country,� he said as they gathered in a room draped with the Cuban flag.

In August 1960, Che Guevara, a former doctor, dreamed of a world in which every medic would �[utilise] the technical knowledge of his profession in the service of the revolution and the people�. Thus began a history of service in some the world�s poorest and most forgotten states.

The island nation began forging links with the continent during the 1960s, when Cuban soldiers fought alongside southern Africa�s liberation fighters. Guevara personally pitched into the brutal battlefields of the newly independent Democratic Republic of Congo, but after becoming suspicious about rebel leaders� motives, suggested they replaced fighters with medical aid.

Ties deepened in the 1970s as Africa�s newly independent nations flirted with socialism, and aligned themselves with the communist state who opposed their former colonial rulers. Teachers, doctors and soldiers from Cuba poured into 17 African countries.

Today, fading signposts with Spanish street names, peeling posters with improbable slogans (�Viva la revoluci�n siempre!� � long live the revolution, always � says one in Freetown) and a love of salsa music remain across much of west Africa.

But help will soon be coming from places other than Cuba. The US will pour in $400m, plans to build at least a dozen 100-bed field hospitals using some 4,000 troops, and has deployed 65 health officials to Liberia. Japan, the world�s fourth-richest nation, has pledged $40m and India $13m. China has chipped in around $5m, as well as a Chinese-built and staffed mobile clinic in Sierra Leone.

But even if efforts to roughly double the current bed capacity of about 1,000 in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone succeed, these facilities will still lack the health personnel needed to staff them.

In part, slow staff recruitment is down to the high number of medics who have already been infected, hovering around 300 so far.

�Even if you know what you�re doing, people make mistakes. It�s very, very difficult to wear those suits in hot weather,� said Chikwe Ihekweazu, an epidemiologist who worked with the WHO during the 2004 outbreak in Sudan, where temperatures can soar up to 42C.

�A lot of health workers died in the beginning and that obviously had an impact on recruitment. But the rates have fallen, and what that shows is that health workers can learn, with the correct training in infection control.�

Others are also hopeful that staff numbers will increase. Gleadle, of the IMC, said the slow pace at which centres were being scaled up might actually draw in more volunteers in the long run.

He said: �Even if we have a 100-bed centre, you wouldn�t fill them up in one day. You start slowly, then take a deep breath and escalate over time. I think as we build more treatment centres and hopefully none of our workers fall ill because we�re going slowly, that will encourage others.�

And he pointed out that there would be a silver lining, of sorts, as the disease marched on. �One way to see a positive side is that it means there are more survivors with immunity. They can then be very, very valuable in going back to their communities to educate others and help, without that risk of falling sick again.�

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:02

TEAYCHES: Jun 23, 2002

cuba has four times as many ppl on the ground as doctors without borders now

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:03

ohgodwhat: Aug 6, 2005

THS posted:

cuba has four times as many ppl on the ground as doctors without borders now

I don't think we can give money to Cuba though... I think that gets you on a watchlist.

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:04

a shiny rock: Nov 13, 2009

i love you ebola chan

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:06

Al Borland: Oct 29, 2006; by XyloJW

Don't know if you counted up the GBS donations already made.

I did :10bux:

yesterday to Doctors Without Borders / MSF

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:06

ohgodwhat: Aug 6, 2005

Al Borland posted:

Don't know if you counted up the GBS donations already made.

I did yesterday to Doctors Without Borders / MSF

I'll add them in.

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:08

Whirlwind Jones: Apr 13, 2013; by Lowtax

I just donnated a billion dollar syour welcome op

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:08

Wooten: Oct 4, 2004

But what if my money saves the life of the next Hitler?

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:10

ohgodwhat: Aug 6, 2005

It'll probably save more people than the next Hitler would kill, so it all balances out in the end

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:11

Propaganda Hour: Aug 25, 2008; after editing wikipedia as a joke for 16 years, i ve convinced myself that homer simpson's japanese name translates to the "The beer goblin"

Wooten posted:

But what if my money saves the life of the next Hitler?

mods can we put this thread on hold while we figure out this future hitler paradox

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:12

No. 6: Jun 30, 2002

I LOVE YOU EBOLA-CHAN!

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:13

Robo Reagan: Feb 12, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

I LOVE YOU EBOLA-CHAN!

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:15

SniperWoreConverse: Mar 20, 2010; Gun Saliva

Nanomashoes posted:

[timg]crap[/timg]

I can respect poverty ghost, but this, this revulses. The conscience is shocked. You desgust me, i despise you and everything you've touched. Dwindle, decrease into dust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdaM5Mv-TTo

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:17

Steezy Skunk Tamer: Oct 2, 2012

Just donated $50 to MSF/Doctors Without Borders.

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:25

Al Borland: Oct 29, 2006; by XyloJW

Goons gave a scumbag who must not be named 15k. I'd like to think we can beat that.

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:26

Nanomashoes: Aug 18, 2012

SniperWoreConverse posted:

I can respect poverty ghost, but this, this revulses. The conscience is shocked. You desgust me, i despise you and everything you've touched. Dwindle, decrease into dust.

I feel sorry for your family when they find out you died of ebola.

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:27

somethingawful bf: Jun 17, 2005

Al Borland posted:

Goons gave a scumbag who must not be named 15k. I'd like to think we can beat that.

yeah man but there is a steam sale coming up soon

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:28

Phone: Jul 30, 2005; 親子丼をほしい。

sether01 posted:

yeah man but there is a steam sale coming up soon

doesn't matter, vac does hwid bans now

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:31

Saalkin: Jun 29, 2008

Steezy Skunk Tamer posted:

Just donated $50 to MSF/Doctors Without Borders.

I did this last year and now they won't stop sending me mail.

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:33

Steezy Skunk Tamer: Oct 2, 2012

Saalkin posted:

I did this last year and now they won't stop sending me mail.

Nature Conservatory always sends me a dope wall calendar after donating. Will I get a dope 2015 Ebola calendar?

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:36

Saalkin: Jun 29, 2008

Steezy Skunk Tamer posted:

Nature Conservatory always sends me a dope wall calendar after donating. Will I get a dope 2015 Ebola calendar?

Just some photos of sad looking African children. You could make a calendar but that'd be alot of effort on your part.

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:40

Shithouse Dave: Aug 5, 2007; each post manufactured to the highest specifications

Steezy Skunk Tamer posted:

Nature Conservatory always sends me a dope wall calendar after donating. Will I get a dope 2015 Ebola calendar?

12 hi-res full colour pictures of the places you can haemhorrage from with ebloa, with US and Canada holidays

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:43

new phone who dis: May 24, 2007; by VideoGames; Morbid Hound

No. 6 posted:

I LOVE YOU EBOLA-CHAN!

# ? Oct 13, 2014 05:57

SniperWoreConverse: Mar 20, 2010; Gun Saliva

Nanomashoes posted:

I feel sorry for your family when they find out you died of ebola.

I'd be stunned to find out this "sorry" that you feel is the normal human emotion and not some malformed mental process you happen to assign to the word

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdaM5Mv-TTo

# ? Oct 13, 2014 06:00

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 25, 2024 18:38

Clipperton: Dec 20, 2011; Grimey Drawer

Donated $25 in filthy Canadian money, so like $22 US I guess?

# ? Oct 13, 2014 06:10

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > Ebola Aid - Raising money so that Congress doesn't have to

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