[PHOTO] Last Rose of Sharon, Hibiscus syriacus, and sunflower

[PHOTO] St. Dunstan's Basilica, Charlottetown

I photographed Charlottetown's St. Dunstan's Basilica on last year's visit. Doing it again is a perfectly good idea.

[URBAN NOTE] "No subway service between Keele, Ossington after 10 p.m. for repairs"

Transit Toronto reported on last night's repairs at Dundas West and tonight's.

The TTC is closing the 2 Bloor - Danforth subway line between Keele and Ossington Stations this evening, Wednesday, October 1, starting at 10 p.m.

While the line is closed, TTC crews will start permanently repairing the subway tunnel that was damaged yesterday Tuesday, September 30, near Dundas West Station.

The TTC will operate more than 50 shuttle buses between Ossington and Keele Stations to replace subway service. It’s assigning customer-service staff to stations across the line to help passengers get to their destinations.

Normal subway service resumes at 6 a.m. tomorrow.

This evening, crews will get the tunnel ready for a final, permanent repair, tomorrow evening Thursday, October 2 during normal maintenance hours after regular service has ended — the TTC doesn’t expect it will have to close the subway early tomorrow. They’ll remove the pile that has punctured the tunnel next week.

It was a lovely night for walking, and will be lovely again.

[LINK] Six links on Ebola in the United States and Canada, and on why people should not panic

The CBC reported on the first discovery of a case of Ebola in the United States, in this case of someone of Liberian background in Texas who contracted the virus on a recent trip to his homeland.

Top health officials have confirmed the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States, saying a patient who recently travelled to Liberia has the disease and is being treated in isolation at a Texas hospital.

[. . .]

Edward Goodman, an epidemiologist at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, said Tuesday the patient is ill and being seen by "highly trained, competent specialists" under intensive care.

[. . .]

According to Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the patient left Liberia on Sept. 19 and arrived in the U.S. the next day.

Ebola symptoms can include fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding, and can appear as long as 21 days after exposure to the virus. The disease is not contagious until symptoms begin, and it takes close contact with bodily fluids to spread.

The patient had "no symptoms" when leaving Liberia or entering the U.S., but began to develop symptoms around Sept. 24. Two days later the patient sought care, Frieden said, and was admitted to hospital on Sunday.

National Geographic went into more detail, mentioning that the patient was initially released from hospital when he first appeared.

The patient had recently arrived in the U.S. from Liberia and was confirmed to be infected on Tuesday. He reportedly told officials at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of his recent travels when he went to an emergency department for care last week. He was sent home but was readmitted on Sunday, much sicker.

[. . .]

It's hard to identify Ebola in its early stages because the initial symptoms of the disease—fever, diarrhea, vomiting, and aches—are the same as for many other illnesses, including malaria, which is also common in West Africa.

That's why the Dallas patient was able to leave Liberia on September 19 without any indication that he would soon be ravaged by Ebola. The West African nations where the virus is raging are supposed to test outgoing passengers for fever, to make sure that no one with Ebola symptoms gets on a plane and spreads the disease.

[. . .]

The people who came into close contact with the Dallas patient while he was sick, from September 24 until he was isolated in a hospital room on September 28, are at risk for the virus.

Public health officials are tracking 12 to 18 people in Dallas who had contact with the patient, including 5 children who have been asked to stay home from school. Medical personnel plan to check their temperature twice a day and to look out for other symptoms.

Wired suggested panic about a general spread in the United States was unwarranted.

There is little risk of the disease spreading widely in the U.S., Frieden said. Unlike highly contagious airborne pathogens like influenza, the Ebola virus requires contact with bodily fluids such as urine, saliva, feces, vomit, or semen to be transmitted. The risk is highest for people in direct contact with patients—typically healthcare workers and family members. In Africa, the lack of treatment centers and supplies has hampered efforts to contain the virus. But in the U.S., hospitals are better stocked and have better isolation facilities. In addition, public health officials have well-tested strategies to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. “This kind of contact tracing is core public health, it’s what we do day in and day out,” Frieden said.

[. . .]

The patient came to the U.S. to visit family members who are citizens and was not known to be participating in any aid efforts for Ebola patients in Liberia before coming here, Frieden said. The patient left Liberia on a plane the 19th, arrived in the U.S. on the 20th, and became symptomatic on the 24th or 25th, Frieden said. The patient sought medical care on the 26th, but was not admitted to the hospital until the 28th. Asked about that discrepancy, Frieden noted that the symptoms of Ebola, which include fever, severe headache, and muscle pain overlap with symptoms of many other infections. He added that the CDC is urging physicians to ask patients with these symptoms about their travel history.

“It is certainly possible that someone who had contact with this individual, a family member or other individual, could develop Ebola in coming weeks, but there is no doubt in my mind we will stop it there,” Frieden said.

National Geographic also noted that hospitals had been preparing to handle Ebola cases for some time.

American hospitals have been preparing since midsummer for the possibility of having to care for an Ebola patient, but Tuesday's news took the development out of the theoretical realm. Since then, there have been 12 false alarms—patients suspected of having Ebola who did not have the disease, the CDC said.

"It was virtual before," said Belinda Ostrowsky, an infectious disease expert at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. "Now it's happened, so it just makes us that much more vigilant."

The CDC has been advising hospitals for several months to prepare for patients with Ebola, though each hospital is preparing slightly differently.

At Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, staff ran a drill last week to prepare for possible patients, according to the hospital's epidemiologist, Edward Goodman.

At Montefiore, signs in the emergency department ask patients to let caregivers know if they've recently traveled to the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, or Guinea.

MacLean's noted that Canada is also preparing.

Canada is considering placing doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine in hospitals around the country that have been designated to treat Ebola cases if any arrive in the country, the new chief public health officer said Wednesday.

Dr. Gregory Taylor said having vaccine at the ready means it could be used if health-care workers treating Ebola patients had risky exposures.

“We’re considering prepositioning some of that at receiving hospitals across the country who may be looking after Ebola patients. This is for the health-care workers,” Taylor said during a news conference held in Banff, Alta., where the federal, provincial and territorial health ministers met Wednesday.

Taylor said that includes the Ontario hospital that has been designated to care for Canadian responders if any become infected in the Ebola zone and are transferred back to Canada for care. He did not mention the hospital by name, but it is Toronto Western.

To date, that need has not arisen.

Scientific American, meanwhile, noted that because of the nature of the virus and the way it spreads, it is very unlikely that Ebola will become airborne.

Here is what it would take for it to become a real airborne risk: First off, a substantial amount of Ebola virus would need to start replicating in cells that reside in the throat, the bronchial tubes and possibly in the lungs. Second, the airborne method would have to be so much more efficient than the current extremely efficient means of transmission that it would overcome any genetic costs to the virus stemming from the mutation itself. Substantial natural hurdles make it unlikely that either event will occur.

Currently, Ebola typically gains entry into the body through breaks in the skin, the watery fluid around the eye or the moist tissues of the nose or mouth. Then it infects various cells of the immune system, which it tricks into making more copies of itself. The end result: a massive attack on the blood vessels, not the respiratory system.

Even viruses that are well adapted to attacking the respiratory system often have a hard time getting transmitted through the airways. Consider the experience so far with avian flu, which is easily transmitted through the air in birds but hasn’t yet mutated to become easily spreadable in that fashion among people.

What's the hold-up? “The difficulty is that those [flu] viruses don’t have the protein attachments that can actually attach to cells in the upper airway. They have to develop attachments to do that,” Schaffner says. So even if a virus were exhaled, it would need to lodge onto something in another person’s cells that are already prepared for it in the upper airway. “Since the virus doesn’t have attachment factors that can work in the upper airway, it’s very rare for it to go human to human, and then it almost always stops and doesn’t get to a third person,” Schaffner notes. Similarly for Ebola, the virus would have to develop attachments that would allow it to easily attach receptors in the upper respiratory pathway—something that neither it (nor any of its viral cousins) has been known to do in the wild.

And yet Ebola already spreads very easily without such mutations. The delicate lock-and-key protein–virus fit required for the virus to successfully latch onto and replicate in the airway has not developed because there is no evolutionary pressure for it to do so; it simply would not be an efficient option. Epidemiologists can take some comfort in that.

[LINK] "Why no one wants to host the 2022 Olympics"

Yahoo Sports' Dan Wetzel writes about how the escalating costs and ephemeral benefits associated with hosting the Olympics, along with the high-handed nature of the International Olympic Committee, has left only two cities in the running. Norway's Oslo and Poland's Krakow are among the world cities that aborted their bids owing to popular opposition. What are the cities?

There's Beijing, China, which doesn't actually sit within 120 miles of a usable ski mountain, and there's Almaty, Kazakhstan, which in its bid touted itself as "the world's largest landlocked nation."

It's down to these two cities not because the IOC narrowed the field, but because every other city in the entire world said no.

Seriously, every other city said no.

That even includes cities that previously said yes and made it deep into the bidding process only to stare directly into the corrupt, humiliating voting system, not to mention eventual unnecessary construction costs, environmental effects, blown resources and white elephants built to opulent IOC code. They promptly high-tailed it the other way.

Russia said it spent $51 billion hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. What, no one else is interested in footing that bill?

Certainly not Oslo, Norway, not even at the bargain rate of an estimated $5.4 billion in a nation of just five million people. It once wanted desperately to host the 2022 Winter Olympics and its bid was so perfect that it was considered the favorite to win. Then the country held a vote earlier this year and 55.9 percent of Norwegians opposed.

Wednesday the Norwegian government effectively pulled the bid. Norwegians are known for the ability to cross country ski really fast and being so friendly they beg visitors to come experience their picturesque nation. Since this involved the IOC however, they decided against having visitors come experience their picturesque nation to watch them cross country ski really fast.

[LINK] "Orphaned by Ebola, West African children face rejection by extended family"

Terrible, but unsurprising. From Al Jazeera:

Thousands of children left orphaned by the Ebola in West Africa are at risk of being abandoned by surviving relatives fearful of catching the killer disease, UNICEF warned Tuesday.

The current outbreak of the disease has taken the lives of more than 3,000 people — devastating families and resulting in an estimated 3,700 children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone being without one or both parents, the United Nation’s Children’s Fund said. That figure is likely to double by mid-October, the agency warned.

Those orphaned face the additional trauma of rejection by surviving relatives, some of whom are frightened of contracting the infectious disease.

"Ebola is turning a basic human reaction like comforting a sick child into a potential death sentence," said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa. “These children urgently need special attention and support; yet many of them feel unwanted and even abandoned."

[LINK] "Argentine Businessmen Plot Government Overthrow, Fernandez Says"

Bloomberg's Charlie Devereux reports on what sounds like an unhelpful conspiracy theory coming from the Argentine president.

Argentine businessmen, farmers and bankers are plotting the government’s downfall by hoarding crops, stockpiling cars and speculating on the peso, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said.

The government will investigate brokerages and banks operating in the blue chip currency market that threatens to destabilize the economy, Fernandez said in a speech at the presidential palace yesterday. The exchange rate for the peso on the blue chip market, where traders swap peso securities for dollar equivalents to skirt currency controls, has weakened 32 percent since a blocked payment to restructured bondholders caused Argentina to default for a second time in 13 years on July 30.

“The problem isn’t the economy or society, it’s located precisely in some economic sectors that want -- and I hope I’m wrong -- to overthrow the government and do it with foreign help,” Fernandez said.

Argentina was declared in contempt of court by U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa on Sept. 29 after refusing to abide by a ruling to pay in full a group of hedge funds led by billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp that held out from restructuring of the nation’s debt following a default in 2001.

Fernandez, who called Judge Griesa “senile” and his declaration “foolish,” has accused the litigants of orchestrating speculative attacks on the peso to pressure her into paying them an estimated $1.6 billion.

Fernandez, 61, said farmers are holding off from selling their soybean crops in the expectation that the government will have to devalue the peso. Carmakers are stockpiling cars even though there are people who want to buy them, she said.

[LINK] "First Nations girl's family rejects chemo, hospital goes to court to force treatment"

CBC's Connie Walker looks at a sad case in the Hamilton area involving an Iroquois girl. Iroquois ethnicity and claims made on its behalf appear to be incidental to the issue at hand, for whatever it's worth.

A First Nations mother is defending her decision to remove her child from chemotherapy treatment. Her daughter underwent chemo for 10 days at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton before the family decided to discontinue treatment because it conflicts with their beliefs.

In a letter to CBC News, the mother wrote, “I will not have my daughter treated with poison.… She has to become a healthy mother and a grandmother. I have chosen treatment that will not compromise her well-being and quality of life.”

Lawyers from the McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton have gone to court in an attempt to force the Brant Children's Aid Society to intervene and return her to chemotherapy treatment.

In a similar case earlier this year, the Children's Aid Society decided not to intervene when 11-year-old Makayla Sault left chemotherapy treatment at McMaster to pursue traditional indigenous medicine. Her case was never sent to court.

In this case, Judge Gethin Edward has imposed a publication ban on anything that would identify the girl or family involved in the case. The court proceedings resumed today and are are expected to continue tomorrow.

[LINK] "Why Liberia Is Prosecuting the Man Who Brought Ebola to the U.S."

The Atlantic's Adam Chandler makes the case that the promise of the Liberian government to prosecute Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian currently hospitalized in Texas with Ebola, for lying about coming into contact with someone who had Ebola, makes sense.

Responding to the controversy on Thursday, Binyah Kesselly, chairman of the board of directors of the Liberia Airport Authority, declared that Duncan "will be prosecuted" when he returns home.

As West African countries battle the largest Ebola outbreak on record, the notion of pursing criminal charges against a man who claims he wasn't exposed to the virus may come off as wasteful, if not extreme. Given that thousands of people continue to move between the borders of West African countries, Liberia's intention to prosecute Duncan for traveling to the United States with Ebola—unwittingly or not—also rings a little hypocritical.

But as Jens David Ohlin of Cornell University Law School contends, the prosecution of Duncan may have less to do with what he did (or did not) do and more with the precedent his case could set.

"Liberia is probably anxious about maintaining travel connections to the United States and other countries," Ohlin told me. "And countries have probably felt comfortable keeping air connections with Liberia so long as protocols for screening passengers are in place."

He added that were Liberia to ignore this potential breach of its screening process, it would ultimately convey that "these protocols are worthless."

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomy examines asteroid 2014 OL339, a quasi-moon on Earth.


• blogTO notes an ongoing satirical campaign targeting the mayoral campaign of Doug Ford.


• Centauri Dreams notes the mysterious orbit in Titan's Ligeia Mare.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes 3:1 and 2:1 orbital resonances of multi-planet systems discovered by Kepler.


• The Dragon's Tales notes the continuing Ukrainian war.


• Joe. My. God. notes that New York City is promoting PrEP on Grindr.


• Languages of the World's Asya Perelstvaig examines the word "cucumber" used in European languages.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that ocean acidification produced by greenhouse gas emissions will end oysters in their natural habitat.


• Marginal Revolution wonders if Catalonia's referendum on independence will take place.


• Registan doesn't like how Russian experts see the spectre of the Islamic State throughout central Asia and miss real issues there.


• Spacing Toronto notes the import of indigenous soundscapes.


• Window on Eurasia notes who Russian sympathizers are abroad, notes that Muscovites live on average six years longer than people elsewhere in Russia, and observes Russian interest in Russophone minorities in the Baltic States.


• The Yorkshire Ranter shares a variety of charts, including some showing the Eurozone's lagging recovery from the 2008-2009 recession and the concentration of English identity in rural areas and in the east.