Help Stop Ebola

EDIT: The real way to help is to donate to doctors without borders: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

I understand all of us aren't made out of money, however this is for the good of the world. Ebola is a major risk, please do your bit to help stop it. British Airways are still running flights in an out of the infection risk zone in Africa, since they're too retarded to help, it's on us now.

A petiton to find a vaccine for Ebola: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/food-and-drug-adminstration-fast-track-drug-and-vaccine-research-for-ebola-hemorrhagic-fever?share_id=UTByArjWSC&utm_campaign=share_button_action_box&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition

Seriously? We've gone from "I signed a petition about something and this thing changed therefore I helped" to "I am aware of this thing and I'm retweeting it therefore I helped" to "the news are talking about this so I'm signing a petition about making something that is already ongoing faster therefore I'm helping"? How low can we get? :/

I love to see this pop up after the piracy topic where so many people justify their behavior without the slightest remorse, too.

Have a small but active part in something bad: oh it's not my fault I wouldn't have paid for it DRM is too restrictive corporations are evil it's all the government's fault

Have no influence in something good: YES I HELPED I AM THE MOST NICEST GUY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD

How about instead, we donate to research some of the money we all saved torrenting those Sex and the City episodes in glorious HD ? Uh... You go first. :)

But Ebola's a cool dude! Hyena's the one more likely to take over the world!

Or, you know, you could just NOT sign it and do nothing. I'm not acting like some hero, I'm trying to spread word of an issue. I did literally nothing more than spend 20 seconds, as the title of this thread shows clear as day.

Can you even see me from that high horse? I didn't expect this shit from you, Phml. I tend to agree with most of your posts.

How can anyone possibly misconstrue signing a petition to find a vaccine for Ebola to be a bad thing?! I'm on minimum wage ATM, but you're welcome to donate. I ain't gonna stop you.

High horse? Ha. I'm a scumbag, I'm the lowest of the low. No denial here. ;)

I wouldn't call you a scumbag. I get it, you're annoyed with the would-be heroes who think they're top shit because they signed some petition. I just don't know how I came across that way - I'm merely trying to do my bit, I don't think I'm some god among men or whatever some pricks might think about themselves.

Do you feel warm and fuzzy and righteous now that you've signed an anonymous online petition to stop a real world epidemy killing hundreds? And since you signed it more than 20 seconds ago, shouldn't Africa be clean of Ebola by now?

The vaccine candidate mentioned in the petition didn't pass phase I of clinical research. That's the one where they test if it's safe with humans. This article describes our "options" and this statement by the company itself explains why the progress has been put on hold.

It does however mention that the drug already is in fast track regimen. I guess that means months instead of years, but I don't think it's possible to skip crucial safety tests and cause potential severe harm in a large population of patients. You cannot just wave it off, because they're dying anyways. It would be the doctors killing the sick, which would be especially catastrophic in poor regions of Africa where trust in the white man's science is already hard to establish.

It's simply not as easy as sharing a compassionate tweet on the Internet and it's hypocritical to think that signing that petition means we've "done our part". If you want your conscience elevated, send money to Doctors Without Borders, who are battling Ebola right now. Now I have to wonder about the motivation of the guy who started the petition, an internist from North Carolina. It seems rather outside of his usual scope and I would've expected someone in the field to spearhead such an initiative.

EDIT: Damn, phml ninja'd me, because I took almost an hour chasing links. Welp, at least it removed some edge from my initial angry wording, heh.

Scientists already research viruses and try to find vaccine. This petition will do nothing.

dew said:

Do you feel warm and fuzzy and righteous now that you've signed an anonymous online petition to stop a real world epidemy killing hundreds?

No, I don't, stop throwing this same regurgitated garbage at me. It's not like I'm the one who introduced the god damn Ebola, the ball is NOT in my court - I'm sitting here with no fucking money trying to find a way to do something rather than doing nothing. I could be making a WAD right now instead.

dew said:

It does however mention that the drug already is in fast track regimen. I guess that means months instead of years, but I don't think it's possible to skip crucial safety tests and cause potential severe harm in a large population of patients. You cannot just wave it off, because they're dying anyways. It would be the doctors killing the sick, which would be especially catastrophic in poor regions of Africa where trust in white man's science is already hard to establish.

It's simply not as easy as sharing a compassionate tweet on the Internet and it's hypocritical to think that signing that petition means we've "done our part". If you want your conscience elevated, send money to Doctors Without Borders, who are battling Ebola right now.

Here we go, the MEAT of the post rather than dung-slinging. I'm glad you've filled me in as I was not aware the full extent of what this was proposing - I was under the assumption that testing was only going to be done on willing patients, as suggested by the article which led me to this petition (I'll find it and link it.)

dew said:

Now I have to wonder about the motivation of the guy who started the petition, an internist from North Carolina. It seems rather outside of his usual scope and I would've expected someone in the field to spearhead such an initiative.

Again, thank you for filling me in. I'll do my research much more thouroughly next time something like this arises. I absolutely plan on donating to Doctors Without Borders when my next paycheck comes in, probably in less than a week.

I'm hoping you've all donated already. You have, right?

EDIT: There we go, updated the OP. Glad you edited the rage out of you post dew - Raging at me ain't gonna do a damn thing. At least you provided helpful information.

Archi said:

Scientists already research viruses and try to find vaccine. This petition will do nothing.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/no-market-scientists-struggle-make-ebola-vaccines-treatments-n167871

The market dominates research. Apparently, there's "no market" for this. Not sure I'm fully convinced that's true, however I'm willing to bet the postulation has caused a few people to reconsider their efforts.

Doomkid said:

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/no-market-scientists-struggle-make-ebola-vaccines-treatments-n167871

The market dominates research. Apparently, there's "no market" for this. Not sure I'm fully convinced that's true, however I'm willing to bet the postulation has caused a few people to reconsider their efforts.

Well, this is one of many research centres, I suppose. Still, petition will do nothing, until somebody will give money. If petition was supposed to get money from budget, then it must be formalized like petition to get money from budget. At this point I don't see any goals of petition, except attention.
Actually, I've seen petitions like this, and none of them worked, even the ones with 100k signs by real people.

Hopefully others out there will be willing to donate. Glad I started this thread as it's lead me to reading much deeper into the issue. If there's a cause out there worth spending a bit of spare cash on, I'd say this is it.

the would-be heroes who think they're top shit because they signed some petition.

Aww, emphasis and caps are for funsies. No blame on anyone who wants to do good. But it's good to be realistic about what we're doing, too.

Online petitions have a history of making people complacent and actually reducing donations (the whole feeling like we've done our part thing), on top of rarely accomplishing anything.

There's no shortage of worthy causes and I don't think you should feel pressured to donate money for any particular one, especially if you're on minimum wage. If you get bogged down in morality things can get muddy.

i.e. you've got about 20 000 kids dying per day of nutrition related issues. Isn't this worse than Ebola? Or do we not care as much because it's not a contagious virus and it's not going to affect us? Is it wrong to put the well-being of people close to us higher than random strangers? Should we care equally about hunger and Ebola and AIDS and child labor and pollution and...

Only so much one person can do. I think as long as you're not purposefully hurting anyone else and you're doing some good around you (something as simple as holding the door for your neighbor probably does more for the entire world than an online petition :p ) there's no reason to feel bad. But if you want to do more, that's great too.

Meh, fuck 'em.

I see much more clearly where you were coming from now, Phml. That's a great point about signing a worthless petition and then just not thinking about it beyond that, and I'm glad I've been swayed away from doing exactly that.

I really do try my hardest to do the right thing, and I don't want any praise for it. If it influences others to do good as well, that's all I really care about.

Obsidian said:

But Ebola's a cool dude! Hyena's the one more likely to take over the world!

Watching Dawn of the Planet of the Apes made me want to see Bears take over the world.

Doomkid said:

No, I don't, stop throwing this same regurgitated garbage at me. It's not like I'm the one who introduced the god damn Ebola, the ball is NOT in my court - I'm sitting here with no fucking money trying to find a way to do something rather than doing nothing. I could be making a WAD right now instead.

You could do volunteer work for Doctors without borders.

Yeah, we all could, right? I won't rule it out entirely, in fact this is the kind of thing I would love to do, but I do have bills to pay and a fiancee in school who is thus not able to work much. Even then, she still goes in one day a week (thus making her schedule well and truly full-time) to help ensure we have food to eat at the end of the day.

Spreading awareness isn't as two dimensional as either doing nothing, or changing your whole life radically to support a good cause. There's ground in between.

When I used to work as a dishwasher I would see literally garbage cans full of perfectly good food, completely wasted. I'm clearly not alone when it comes to thinking about western civilization's complete ignorance for the many poorer countries outside of the developed bubble. The problem is that many of these causes, petitions etc. often have motives of their own. I don't know much about the petition you posted, so I won't comment on it. However, it's things like "Kony 2012" amongst generic "save this child" commercials that really put people off from wanting to care. Too many "Donate to me so I can donate to charity" tax return write offs and various other scams that have taken advantage of the small minority of people who actually go beyond "hmm, sucks to be those african kids. Oh well."

If there is a solution, I personally don't know what it would look like. Everyone is drawn cards in life and (just like that disabled person you see with cerebral palsy) sometimes a perfect fix is beyond our capabilities.

Am I more horrible than the average DW member for hoping the Ebola scare inspires some good horror movies?

Doctors Without Borders are a bunch of steel-balled badasses. They go places that suck, do work that's hard, and risk their lives for sometimes awful odds of saving lives. Badass. If you can't donate or work with them it's great to get the word out to people who can.

Petitions are gaining a reputation for being like the secular version of praying for people. It would be wonderful if more people did their homework before creating or signing petitions to the government or other groups. There are occasions when they're useful.

EDIT: Started writing my post before I saw Aliotroph?'s, but yeah, it's an undeniably badass cause, and no, you're not evil for hoping some cool horror films come of it. Most digestable movies have some distant basis in reality, after all!

I agree with your point, RUSH. Those "save the children" ads where they show frowning, skinny children are just getting so common that the intended shock value falls completely flat. In combination with the "60 cents of your dollar might feed a starving child" bull, thinking people are really starting to see through it.

From what I've been reading over the last couple of hours, DWOB is actually a worthwhile organization to donate to, though, and they don't seem to be heavy on the "by the way, half that money you sent? Yeah, that's going into the pockets of rich fatcats" horsecrap. It's hard to know for sure, they're only really going to tell you what they want you to know, further adding to the "why bother" aspect, but they seem to be one of the few who will put what's sent in to good use. A lot of them are actually dying over in Africa right now, I see that as incredibly humbling thing and I feel it's certainly worth sharing, if nothing else.

Doctors Without Borders use all public donations on charity work, because their internal costs are covered by other means of funding. The French government pays a chunk of their bills, for example. I think this model isn't considered entirely transparent in comparison to some other charities, but the guys and gals are always seen working tirelessly in the first line, often at suicidal risk, so all the power to them. There's hardly a better definition of "the good guys". Also since they're active around the globe, it's possible to either donate to a cause, or just give them money to decide where it is needed the most, solving for you the overstretched conscience dilemma phml mentioned.

Am I the only one who finds it rather fucked up but also believable that nobody very few people in the states gave two shits about Africa's Ebola epidemic until some american missionaries caught it?

Meh, nature cooks up all kinds of epidemics and diseases to get rid of overpopulation, it has always been that way

Who said nobody gives a shit about Ebola in the US?

If you listen to cable news TV they will certainly drop the word, or at least use it to scare you. Even some Tea Party candidates have accused illegal immigrants from south of the border of carrying Ebola (completely asinine of course).

The thing is, Ebola is not small pox or bubonic plague. People are dying of disease all around the world, it's a terrible mess. People choose to throw money at whatever cause seems to affect or sway them most.

The other thing is, we are actually winning on some fronts. Researchers are getting the confidence to say that we have substantially contained the HIV epidemic, and that took us 30+ years to really get a handle on it. Ebola is probably going to take some time also. Hopefully it does not spread nearly as far or wide.

How the fuck did Ebola cross Africa into North American borders? CDC, this is your bloody job, do it!

Glaice said:

How the fuck did Ebola cross Africa into North American borders? CDC, this is your bloody job, do it!

It's called cultural enrichment you racist.

Here is the Onion's take on Ebola

The Onion never fails to be hilarious.. This is the mentality linkrulezall was talking about. It's definitely shameful, but it's also really natural for people to care about saving their own skin and just playing ignorant until it gets to be a risk to them.

The Onion's almost spot on. It was much the same story with HIV/AIDS, with little being done before the "Gay Plague" started infecting heterosexuals.

dew said:

Doctors Without Borders use all public donations on charity work, because their internal costs are covered by other means of funding. The French government pays a chunk of their bills, for example.

Depends on where you're located, in Australia I don't think there's any government support beyond the usual tax exemptions for registered charities.

Stuff petitions, I donated.

I have mixed feelings about this. While the Ebola virus is awful and what happens right now in Africa is certainly a tragedy, I just can't stop thinking in a whole load of problems that are going on right now, killing a lot more people (and more frequently, without "sporadical outbreaks"). For example, cancer.

I think we, as "The West", tend to put a lot of attention on African problems because, honestly, people there have really suffered a lot and every little problem they have tends to make the life there a fucking nightmare, while we complain about "nonsense" like taxes and public transportation.

Now, if someone, anybody, wants to donate to the charity of their choice, please go ahead. Really, those people, whether they are dying from Ebola or from a stupid war, help them if you can. Just make sure your money is put to good use.