I see it as a test to see how people are going to react to martial law being declared over Ebola. How will the wretched masses react?
"Sierra Leone to have lockdown amid Ebola crisis" by Clarence Roy-Macaulay | Associated Press September 07, 2014
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Authorities are ordering people in Sierra Leone to stay inside their homes for three days later this month as part of an effort to stop the spread of Ebola, which has killed more than 2,000 people across West Africa, a government spokesman said Saturday.
Shelter in place. Sound familiar?
Abdulai Bayraytay said the government is telling people to stay in their homes Sept. 19, 20, and 21. The dates were chosen to give people enough time to stock up on food and other provisions before the ban on movement goes into effect, he said.
Already though some are questioning whether the measure will help. Doctors Without Borders says it ‘‘will be extremely difficult for health workers to accurately identify cases through door-to-door screening.’’
Even if suspected cases are identified during the lockdown, the group says Sierra Leone does not have enough beds for them.
‘‘Without a place to take suspected cases — to screen and treat them — the approach cannot work,’’ the group said Saturday.
‘‘It has been our experience that lockdowns and quarantines do not help control Ebola as they end up driving people underground and jeopardizing the trust between people and health providers,’’ it said. “This leads to the concealment of potential cases and ends up spreading the disease further.’’
Ebola has killed more than 2,000 people across West Africa, including more than 400 deaths in Sierra Leone.
A physician said Friday that health care in the capital city of Freetown has ‘‘crumbled’’ because many people were terrified to go to hospitals and some doctors are wary of treating those who do show up.
Speaking at the launch of a public education program in Freetown, Kwame O’Neil said patients suffering from all kinds of ailments are dying for lack of treatment because of these fears.
One girl died of appendicitis when, after showing up at a hospital, a doctor there denied he was a doctor and refused to treat her, O’Neil said.
--more--"
Despite being told this is only a fluids contagion, the hazmat suits would testify otherwise. The bloggers may well be right: this thing could now be airborne despite the ma$$ media cover-up. They still want you going to the mall and shopping this Christmas season. Might be your last thanks to Ebola.
"Sierra Leone to shut down for 3 days to slow Ebola" Associated Press September 19, 2014
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Shoppers in Sierra Leone rushed to stock up on food Thursday ahead of a three-day nationwide shutdown, during which the country’s 6 million people will be confined to their homes while volunteers search house-to-house for Ebola victims in hiding and hand out soap in a desperate bid to slow the accelerating outbreak.
The disease sweeping West Africa has also reached Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria, and Senegal and is believed to have sickened about 5,300 people, the World Health Organization reported. In a sign the crisis is accelerating, more than 700 of those cases were recorded in the last week for which data is available.
Ebola is estimated to have killed more than 2,600 people, with most of the deaths in Liberia. But WHO has said that the official toll is probably a gross underestimate and that most patients are at home, infecting others, when they should be in treatment centers.
And now it is loose in Dallas, Texas.
At the United Nations, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for a 20-fold increase in aid totaling almost $1 billion to tackle the crisis over the next six months. Speaking at an emergency meeting of the Security Council, he said the epidemic requires unprecedented action.
During the lockdown, set to begin at midnight Thursday and run through Sunday, volunteers will try to identify sick people reluctant or unable to seek treatment. They will also hand out 1.5 million bars of soap and deliver information on how to prevent Ebola.
More than six months into the world’s largest Ebola outbreak, there are still affected areas without access to soap and water, WHO said.
So this is largely a result of uncleanliness? C'mon!
Sierra Leone’s government said it has prepared screening and treatment centers to accept the expected influx of patients after the shutdown.
As shoppers rushed to buy last-minute items, some merchants worried about how they would feed their own families. Much of Sierra Leone’s population lives on $2 a day or less, and making ends meet is a day-to-day struggle.
‘‘If we do not sell here we cannot eat,’’ said Isatu Sesay, a vegetable seller in the capital. ‘‘We do not know how we will survive during the three-day shutdown.’’
Maybe you are not meant to.
--more--"
"Sierra Leone begins 3-day lockdown to fight Ebola" by Adam Nossiter | New York Times September 20, 2014
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — One of the most stringent anti-Ebola measures to date began here Friday as Sierra Leone imposed a three-day national lockdown, ordering people off the streets and into their homes in an effort to stamp out the deadly disease.
Police officers patrolled the streets of the densely populated capital, telling stragglers to go home and stay indoors. Volunteers in bright jerseys prepared to go house-to-house throughout the country to warn people about Ebola’s dangers and to root out those who might be infected but were staying in hiding.
How could you oppose government in all its benevolence. 'eh?
The normally busy streets of Freetown were empty Friday morning, stores were closed, and pedestrians were rare on the main thoroughfares.
The country’s president, justifying the extraordinary move in a radio address Thursday night, suggested Sierra Leone was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the disease.
From what I have been seeing and reading on blogs, they have lost. West Africa has been devastated.
“Some of the things we are asking you to do are difficult, but life is better than these difficulties,” President Ernest Bai Koroma said.
More than 200 new cases of Ebola have been reported in Sierra Leone in the past week, according to the World Health Organization, with transmission described as particularly high in the capital; nearly 40 percent of cases in the country were identified in the three weeks preceding Sept. 14; and more than 560 people have died in Sierra Leone, about one-fifth of the total from this outbreak.
The campaign that began here Friday reflected the desperation of West African governments — and in particular those of the three hardest-hit countries, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone — as they struggle with an epidemic that the health authorities have warned is showing no signs of slowing down.
No country has attempted anything on the scale of what is being tried in Sierra Leone, where more than 20,000 volunteers enlisted to help identify households where the authorities suspect people infected with the Ebola virus are hiding.
Yet there were plenty of indications Friday that the campaign promised more than it could initially deliver in this country of 6 million people, at least in the capital.
That is government wherever it is found.
Well into the morning, the house-to-house visits had yet to begin in Kroo Bay, a densely populated warren of iron-roof shanties where roughly 14,000 people live, despite officials saying they would start at dawn.
What, the residents not taking the tyranny to well?
The neighborhood, a perennial home of cholera outbreaks, sits in a sea of muddy lanes and open sewers in which pigs forage.
Wait a minute, what?
The police cruised into Kroo Bay on a pickup truck, yelling at lingering residents to go indoors and warning of imprisonment; people simply stared at the officers and continued lingering as the police drove off.
Zombies?
“The policeman is doing his thing, and I am doing my thing,” said Kerfala Koroma, 22, a building contractor who said that he was waiting for his breakfast. “We can’t even afford something to eat on a normal day. How can we get something now?” (Koroma is not related to Sierra Leone’s president.)
Residents insisted there had been no cases of Ebola in Kroo Bay, although there were loud complaints from some that the bodies of victims had been dumped in a nearby cemetery.
As the morning wore on, the house-to-house volunteers began to assemble in a bare-bones community center, with several noting pointedly that they were not being paid. Others stressed the daunting challenge of covering thousands of households with a team of only 50.
By 9 a.m., with two hours of daylight already gone, the volunteers were still being given their marching orders.
“We told them to come at 6:30, but naturally, in this part of the world, people are not too time-cautious,” Sima Conteh, the volunteers’ coordinator, said with a grin.
What kind of racial crack is that?! Joking at a time like this?
Elsewhere in town, groups of volunteers could be seen sitting on the sidewalk.
Yet some volunteers expressed hope that their efforts would not be wasted.
Maybe this is not as serious as advertised and we are being served a huge diversion as the wars crank up?
“You have the chance to get the people with the disease out,” said Emmanuel Cole, a 33-year-old taxi driver who said he had refused to take any passengers since the epidemic began, for fear of becoming infected.
“The country is not moving now. We have got to help the country now,” Cole said. “It is not a normal time.”
--more--"
Bear with them:
"Sierra Leone concludes nationwide Ebola lockdown" by Clarence Roy-Macaulay | Associated Press September 22, 2014
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Frustrated residents complained of food shortages in some neighborhoods of Sierra Leone’s capital on Sunday as the country reached the third and final day of a sweeping, unprecedented lockdown designed to combat Ebola, volunteers said.
While most residents welcomed teams of health care workers and volunteers bearing information about the disease, rumors persisted in pockets of the city that poisoned soap was being distributed, suggesting that public education campaigns had not been entirely successful.
What it tells you is that no one believes in lying, looting, murdering authority anymore. Had those generous souls -- according to the papers of the 1% -- really meant well this world would not be in such shit shape.
The streets of the capital, Freetown, were again mostly deserted on Sunday in compliance with a government order for the country’s 6 million residents to stay in their homes.
Spread by contact with bodily fluids, Ebola has killed more than 560 people in Sierra Leone and more than 2,600 across West Africa in the biggest outbreak recorded, according to the World Health Organization.
The disease, which has also touched Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Senegal, is believed to have sickened more than 5,500 people.
Sierra Leone’s government was hoping the lockdown — the most aggressive containment effort attempted — would turn the tide against the disease. There were rumors in Freetown on Sunday that officials would opt to extend the lockdown, but a Health Ministry statement issued Sunday night confirmed it had ended.
The statement said that 75 percent of the targeted 1.5 million households had been contacted by outreach teams and that outreach would continue in ‘‘hot spots’’ around the country.
Translation: the lockdowns have not gone over well and we will no longer mention them.
Health care workers had taken advantage of the lockdown to bury 71 bodies by Sunday morning, Health Ministry official Dr. Sarian Kamara said on a radio program. The bodies of Ebola victims are highly contagious, making safe burials essential to stopping the spread of the disease.
Sundays are usually quiet for residents in Sierra Leone, who go to church or stay at home. Many businesses and restaurants are closed.
They are just like us.
In the city center, despite police efforts to encourage people to stay inside their homes, most families sat on their verandas chatting as radios blared through the streets. People were urged to stay tuned to their radios and televisions for public information on the lockdown. The National Power Authority also provided uninterrupted electricity during the lockdown, so people didn’t have to rely on generators.
The World Food Program distributed two weeks’ worth of rations to 20,000 households in slum communities before the lockdown. Some residents said the provisions they received were insufficient, said Samuel Turay, a health volunteer.
I suppose that is a natural characteristic “in [that] part of the world,” grin.
Them people and their complaining, huh!?
--more--"
