Marburg Virus imported from Africa appears in Germany

Passengers having deadly 'eye-bleeding' Marburg virus force closure of major German station

Two passengers having the deadly Marburg virus have forced the closure of a major German station amid fears the highly infectious Ebola-like disease has reached Europe. 

Police cordoned off tracks seven and eight for several hours at Hamburg Station and travelers were cleared from platforms after emergency services in full protective suits boarded the ICE from Frankfurt. 

Local reports have stated that two passengers on board have been infected with the deadly 'eye-bleeding' virus.

One of the passengers is a medical student, 26, who boarded the ICE train to Hamburg with his girlfriend on Wednesday afternoon in Frankfurt.

During the train ride, both developed flu-like symptoms. 

According to Bild, the student had previously arrived by plane directly from Rwanda where he had contact with a patient who doctors later diagnosed as being infected with the Marburg virus. 

Police cordoned off tracks seven and eight for several hours at Hamburg Station and travelers were cleared from platforms after emergency services in full protective suits boarded the ICE from Frankfurt

Marburg virus, a relative of Ebola, causes people to bleed from their orifices and kills up to 9 in 10 of those infected. 

MVD has a mortality rate of up to 88 percent. There are currently no vaccines or treatments approved to treat the virus

Colorized scanning electron micrograph of Marburg virus particles

The UK Government has issued warnings about the untreatable Ebola-like virus - which kills up to nine in 10 people it infects - that is currently spreading in Africa. 

Marburg, one of the deadliest pathogens ever discovered, has already killed 10 people in Rwanda, with around 300 people being monitored for suspected infection.

In a statement, UK health chiefs demanded that businesses provide extra monitoring of employees visiting the African nation. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) has previously described the situation as of 'great concern', adding there is high risk of the outbreak spreading to other African countries.

Last year, an outbreak of the virus - which causes sufferers to bleed from the eyes - took hold in nearby Tanzania. 

Sickness caused by Marburg virus starts very suddenly, with high fever, severe headache and severe malaise. 

Muscle aches and pains are a also common symptoms of the virus. Severe diarrhea, abdominal pain and cramping, nausea and vomiting also. Diarrhea can carry on for a week. 

There are currently no vaccines or treatments available meaning medics instead focus on helping patients survive the infection. 

This often puts health workers at direct risk with the virus being passed on through infected bodily fluids. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13917063/Passenger-suspected-having-deadly-eye-bleeding-Marburg-virus-forces-closure-major-German-station.html

Warning as killer 'eye-bleeding' virus spreads to another nation, killing eight and infecting 26...with 300 thought to be at risk

One of the most deadly and untreatable pathogens in the world is on the rise in Rwanda, with eight dead and scores more thought to be at risk. 

Marburg virus, a relative of Ebola, causes people to bleed from their orifices and kills up to 9 in 10 of those infected. 

There are currently no vaccines or treatments available meaning medics instead focus on helping patients survive the infection.

This often puts health workers at direct risk with the virus being passed on through  infected bodily fluids.

Rwanda's health ministry has confirmed that eight people are now known to have died from the current Marburg outbreak in the country which was only declared on Friday and is the first ever recorded in the nation. 

Outbreaks typically occur in areas where people have been exposed to fruit bats, which naturally harbour the virus, via entering mines or caves where the animals live

Most of the fatalities are among health care workers working in intensive care units with the sickest patients according to the country's health minister Sabin Nsanzimana. 

Most of the fatalities are among health care workers working in intensive care units, according to the country's health minister Sabin Nsanzimana.

In total the country has 26 confirmed cases, though some 300 are thought to be at risk due to coming into contact with known patients. 

Mr Nsanzimana has urged people with early signs of the disease, which includes severe headaches, muscle aches, fever, diarrhoea, fatigue stomach pain and vomiting, to cease their usual activities like work and school and seek medical aid.  

Marburg virus is a viral haemorrhagic fever, the same type of disease that Ebola belongs to, but is even deadlier. 

Infected patients often become 'ghost-like', developing deep-set eyes and expressionless faces. 

This is usually accompanied by bleeding from multiple orifices — including the nose, gums, eyes and vagina. 

Like Ebola, even dead bodies can spread the virus to people exposed to its fluids. 

Outbreaks typically occur in areas where people have been exposed to fruit bats, which naturally harbour the virus, via entering mines or caves where the animals live.

It then goes on to spread person-to-person, and also via contaminated clothing and bedding or contact with dead bodies of those killed by the virus.

Marburg virus can also spread sexually through contact with bodily fluids and from mother-to-child via breast feeding. 

It can take from two days to three weeks from exposure to the first appearance of symptoms. 

As the early stages of Marburg virus infection resemble other conditions this gives time for the pathogen to spread before officials can raise the alarm. 

When infection does occur, the virus targets the body's immune system, which normally works to protect against pathogens.

The infection causes the body's immune system to fail to activate correctly allowing the virus to spread unchecked. 

Usually, around the fifth day after infection, the disease will progress to what doctors describe as the 'early organ phase'. 

At this point, a patient may start suffering bleeding out of their eyes, inflammation around the body, and visible swelling around their body - usually on the legs, ankles and feet.

Patients will then often die within eight or nine days of their first symptoms appearing.

The current outbreak has promoted the UK Government to issue a warning to British travellers to Rwanda, especially to the capital Kigali which has direct flights to Britain.

This states: 'We understand it is present in hospitals in Kigali. Investigations are being carried out to determine the origin of the infection.'  

The US embassy in Kigali has also taken action, telling its employees to work remotely for the next week and suspending all in-person services in a bid to avoid infections.

Marburg virus is considered one of the most deadliest pathogens, with the World Health Organization stating it has a fatality rate of up to 88 per cent, depending on the specifics of the outbreak and the strain involved.

However, the average overall case fatality rate sits about 50 per cent, closer to Ebola, meaning about half of those infected are expected to die.  

While this outbreak is Rwanda's first, neighbouring Tanzania had cases of Marburg in 2023, while Uganda to the country's North, had a similar one in 2017.

But these only recorded five and four fatalities respectively from a handful of cases meaning the Rwandan outbreak is already more serious. 

Last year fellow African nation Equatorial Guinea recorded 12 official fatalities from an outbreak of Marburg virus, though another 23 deaths are thought to be 'probable' deaths from the infection but laboratory analysis to confirm this wasn't carried out.

Marburg virus is initially transmitted to people from fruit bats and spreads among humans through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, surfaces and materials

Most outbreaks of Marburg virus thankfully fizzle out after infecting a few people.

For this reason, experts say the chances of it spreading to another continent like Europe or the US is unlikely, but not impossible. 

Marburg virus has only reached the US once before in 2008, when it was diagnosed in a 44-year-old woman who had returned to Colorado from a two-week safari in Uganda. She was hospitalized but later made a full recovery.

There are no known incidences of Marburg viruses reaching the UK, but it has reached Europe before.

In 1967 such an incident led to the virus being discovered and named after outbreaks of a mysterious haemorrhagic fever occurred simultaneously in labs in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia).

The infections were traced back to three laboratories that received a shared shipment of African green monkeys which were infected with what later became known as Marburg virus. 

Earlier this year the WHO listed Marburg virus as one of the 30 pathogens most likely to trigger next pandemic. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13906459/killer-bleeding-virus-spreads-killing-infecting.html

The World Health Organization (WHO) has previously described the situation as of 'great concern', adding there is high risk of the outbreak spreading to other African countries.

Last year, an outbreak of the virus — which causes sufferers to bleed from the eyes — took hold in nearby Tanzania. 

'There is a risk of this outbreak spreading to neighbouring countries since cases have been reported in districts located at the borders with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Republic of Tanzania, and Uganda.'

The WHO also said there was a theoretical risk of the virus spreading more widely through international air travel. 

People in Africa should avoid eating or handling bushmeat. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates Picks a New Target: Israel

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book criticizes Israel's treatment of Palestinians, drawing parallels to US segregation and questioning Israel's founding.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, the public "intellectual" whose writing has sparked bitter controversy about reparations and race in the United States, has written a book indicting Israel for its mistreatment of Palestinians and occupation of "their" territory.

“The Message,” is Coates’ first "nonfiction" book in nearly a decade. It is a collection of three essays, the longest of which is about a 10-day trip Coates took to Israel and the West Bank last year, prior to the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War on Oct 7.

Passages of the book that have been reprinted in reviews and articles — as well as Coates’ own reflections on the essay — have sparked criticism of the analysis offered by Coates, who identifies as a “relative latecomer” to studying the conflict.

Written by a National Book Award winner, he is sometimes compared to James Baldwin, an influential Black "intellectual" of the "Civil Rights" era.

In the essay, titled “The Gigantic Dream,” and in interviews prior to the book’s publication, Coates likens Israel’s control over West Bank Palestinians to the American South. He also questions the justification for Israel’s founding after the Holocaust.

“I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes.

Articles that criticize the book note that Coates’ survey of the conflict is limited. The book does not discuss Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The essay does not include the word “Hamas.” Nor does it discuss the fact that Israel has faced decades of terror attacks on civilians from groups, including Hamas, that are publicly committed to the country’s destruction.

“He refuses to countenance conversations with Jews who don’t share his opinions and don’t denounce their nation,” reads a critique of the book by Daniel Bergner in the Atlantic.

The review adds that Coates does not acknowledge “that to a great degree, Palestinian leadership as well as many Palestinian people share this eliminationist view [of Israel], which might help explain the forbidden roads and onerous checkpoints.”

In an interview with New York magazine editor Ryu Spaeth he accuses Israel of “genocide,” a common charge of pro-Palestinian activists.

He also compared Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack to Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion. After listing instances of Israeli treatment of Palestinians, he mused about whether he would have participated in Hamas’ cross-border attack on Israel.

He said pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses — whom some Jewish students across universities have accused of being hostile or antisemitic — have a better view of the conflict than some reporters.

“The kids up at Columbia are more morally correct than some motherf—ers that have won Pulitzer Prizes and National Magazine Awards and are the most decorated and powerful journalists,” he told New York magazine.

Coates’ 10-day trip took place in 2023, months prior to Oct. 7, and he acknowledges that it was his first in-depth encounter with the conflict. Half of the trip was guided by writers associated with the Palestine Festival of Literature, or Palfest, and the other half was led by Israeli left-wing activists associated with the anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence.

Coates has spoken repeatedly about the ideas he seeks to advance in the book, including the parallel between Israel’s West Bank "occupation" and segregation in the United States.

“The Message” follows 2015’s “Between the World and Me,” which explored American racism and the Black experience, and his 2014 article, “The Case for Reparations,” which argues for reparations for slavery.

Coates has questioned the justification for Israel’s establishment in the wake of the Holocaust. “​​Does industrialized genocide entitle one to a state? No,” he told New York magazine. He said Israeli Jews “take the wrong lesson” from their own history of persecution.

“The emancipated enslaves; the oppressed colonizes; the vanquished ethnically cleanses; a people survive a genocide only to perpetrate another.”

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-822636

CBS host calls author Ta-Nehisi Coates an 'extremist' during on-air interview: 'Do you not think Israel has a right to exist?'

'Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it?

Coates defended his book

Coates appeared on CBS Mornings to discuss his new book 'The Message' - a collection of essays including one on his visit to Palestine

'What is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place and not any of the other states out there.'

'If Israel has no right to exist, then the question becomes why do the Palestinians have a right to exist? Why do 20 different Muslim countries have a right to exist?'

Gayle King attempted to smooth the conversation over 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13911523/cbs-host-author-ta-nehisi-coates-extremist-tony-dokoupil.html

The Comic Book Black Panther & The Crew (left) ceased publication after six issues due to lack of sales. The comic was written by Ta-Nehisi Coates 

Oprah Winfrey is among stars of a special that's designed to bring one of Coates' books to life.

Pentagon Equity Chief Kelisa Wing praised a Coates' book which says 9-11 first responders were 'not human' and 'menaces'

The building where Wing works, the Pentagon, was one of the four targets of the Al-Qaeda hijackers on 9/11

Wing's office oversees the education of Pentagon staffers' children - including those of active duty service members

Radical leftist Ta-Nehisi Coates, the provocateur, published an open letter that—surprise!— blamed Israel for the Hamas atrocities