The Perfect Storm

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/world/africa/23ebola.html?partner=EXCITE&ei=5043

The New York Times


Fresh Graves Point to Undercount of Ebola Toll

By ADAM NOSSITER SEPT. 22, 2014

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — The gravedigger hacked at the cemetery’s dense undergrowth, clearing space for the day’s Ebola victims. A burial team, in protective suits torn with gaping holes, arrived with fresh bodies.

The backs of the battered secondhand vans carrying the dead were closed with twisted, rusting wire. Bodies were dumped in new graves, and a worker in a short-sleeve shirt carried away the stretcher, wearing only plastic bags over his hands as protection. The outlook for the day at King Tom Cemetery was busy.

“We will need much more space,” said James C. O. Hamilton, the chief gravedigger, as a colleague cleared the bush with his machete.

The Ebola epidemic is spreading rapidly in Sierra Leone’s densely packed capital — and it may already be far worse than the authorities acknowledge.

Since the beginning of the outbreak more than six months ago, the Sierra Leone Health Ministry reported only 10 confirmed Ebola deaths here in Freetown, the capital of more than one million people, and its suburbs as of Sunday — a hopeful sign that this city, unlike the capital of neighboring Liberia, had been relatively spared the ravages of the outbreak.

But the bodies pouring in to the graveyard tell a different story. In the last eight days alone, 110 Ebola victims have been buried at King Tom Cemetery, according to the supervisor, Abdul Rahman Parker, suggesting an outbreak that is much more deadly than either the government or international health officials have announced.

“I’m working with the burial team, and the first question I ask them is, ‘Are they Ebola-positive?’ ” said Mr. Parker, adding that the figures were based on medical certificates that he had seen himself. The deaths are carefully recorded by name and date in a notebook headed “Ebola Burials.”

A burial team supervisor who drove up with fresh bodies echoed Mr. Parker’s assertion. “Any body we collect is a positive case,” said Sorie Kessebeh. “All the bodies that we are bringing in are positive.”

Beyond the many worrisome trends in the Ebola epidemic seizing parts of West Africa — the overflowing hospitals, the presence of the disease in crowded cities, the deaths of scores of health workers trying to help — another basic problem has stymied attempts to contain the disease: No one seems to know how bad the outbreak really is.

The World Health Organization acknowledged weeks ago that despite its efforts to tally the thousands of cases in the region, the official statistics probably “vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak.”

Here in Sierra Leone, the government just finished an aggressive national lockdown to get a handle on the epidemic, ordering the entire country to stay indoors for three days as an army of volunteers went door to door, explaining the dangers of the virus and trying to root out hidden pockets of illness.

Still, the Health Ministry spokesman insisted that the epidemic was not as bad as the flow of bodies at the cemetery suggested.

“It is not possible that all of them are Ebola-related deaths,” said Sidie Yahya Tunis, the Health Ministry spokesman, saying the corpses included people who died of other causes.

But as the cemetery records show, the challenge facing the government might be of a different magnitude than previously thought.

The majority of the recent deaths recorded at the cemetery were young people — young adults, people in early middle age, or children — with very few elderly people on the list. Several of the deaths also occurred in a concentrated area, sometimes in the same house, suggesting that a virulent infection had struck.

At the house of Marion Seisay — the third name on the list — her son acknowledged she was a secretary at Wilberforce Hospital, had died of Ebola and was buried on Sept. 14. The house was now under quarantine, with some of its eight residents lingering on the cinder-block porch.

“The way my Mummy died was pathetic,” said the son, Michael Foday, clearly frustrated by the quarantine. “How do you expect us to get food?”

Other houses in Wilberforce Barracks, the village-like compound surrounding the hospital, were on the list of the dead and placed under quarantine, marked off from the surrounding jumble of shacks and cinder-block houses by a thin line of red or blue string.

In one of them, the house of Momoh Lomeh, the residents said that a total of five people who lived there had died of Ebola — yet four of them did not even appear on the cemetery list. At another, the house of Andrew Mansoray, a family member said that the disease had been ruthless and unrelenting.

“It wouldn’t stop,” Abdul R. Kallon said of the diarrhea that Mr. Mansoray, his brother-in-law, had endured before dying. “They took him to the hospital, and they wouldn’t let him out.”

At another six households on the cemetery supervisor’s list of the dead, residents gave similar accounts. One family said the victim had definitely died of Ebola, while five others described Ebola-like symptoms — vomiting, diarrhea, fever — though none had been given an official cause of death.

International health experts here had no explanation for the striking discrepancy between the government’s tally of the dead in the capital and the cemetery crew’s statistics. Several of them noted the general confusion surrounding official statistics here from the beginning, with one leading international health official saying: “We don’t know exactly what is going on.”

But nobody disputed that things appear to be getting worse. The W.H.O. has shown a sharp increase in new cases in Freetown in recent weeks, rising from almost none early in the summer to more than 50 during the week of Sept. 14.

Various models of the growth of the epidemic here “all show an exponential increase,” said Peter H. Kilmarx, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team in Sierra Leone. “The conditions are amenable to Ebola spread.”

The goal of the government’s national lockdown was to reach every household in the country, and officials claimed success in doing so on Monday, saying that progress had been made in the fight against the disease.

But the exhaustion of the Ebola gravediggers at King Tom Cemetery, who dig as many as 16 graves a day, indicated that the disease was far from being contained.

“It’s a herculean task,” said Mr. Hamilton, the chief gravedigger. “It’s only out of patriotism that we are doing it.”

The Ebola victims were buried in an expanding stretch of fresh muddy graves under a giant cotton tree, and the makeshift arrangements are seen as a looming threat by the residents of the slum next to it. No barrier stops the pigs rooting in the adjoining trash field from digging in the fresh Ebola graves, which residents say they often do.

“We have creatures in the community, and they dig in the graves,” said Henry S. Momoh, who lives in the adjoining slum, which residents call Kolleh Town. “They are burying the Ebola patients in there, but not in the proper manner.”

Five yards from where the new graves begin, a well-used path connects the slum to the main road. Residents all use it, passing close to the freshly dug graves, and are frightened by the intensifying activity in the cemetery.

“Since last month, it’s every day, any minute and hour, and often, they are coming” to bury the Ebola dead, said Desmond Kamara, a police officer.

A cloudy stream drains from the area of the new graves into the slum, further frightening the residents.

“We are at risk, big risk,” said Ousman Kamara, a resident. “We have made many complaints.”

But the bodies, he said, keep coming.

“Even at night,” he said. “You stand here, and you see them coming.”










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177971/quotes

IMDb


The Perfect Storm (2000)

Quotes


Todd Gross, TV Meteorologist: Look, look at this. We got Hurricane Grace moving north off the Atlantic seaboard. Huge... getting massive. Two, this low south of Sable Island, ready to explode. Look at this. Three, a fresh cold front swooping down from Canada. But it's caught a ride on the jet stream... and is motoring hell-bent towards the Atlantic. What if Hurricane Grace runs smack into it? Add to the scenario this baby off Sable Island, scrounging for energy. She'll start feeding off both the Canadian cold front... and Hurricane Grace. You could be a meteorologist all your life... and never see something like this. It would be a disaster of epic proportions. It would be... the perfect storm.










http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=90309

The American Presidency Project

Barack Obama

XLIV President of the United States: 2009 - present

273 - Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Fundraiser in San Francisco, California

April 20, 2011

Thank you. Everybody, sit down. Have a seat.

I know all of you wish that Stevie would just keep on playing. [Laughter] I understand that, and I can relate to it. I was mentioning to Marc—and I hate to do this to you, Stevie, because I'm dating you a little bit—but the first album that I ever bought with my own little spending money was "Talking Book." I was 10 years old. I was 10 years old, and I would sit in my room and I had this old phonograph and the earphones were, like, really big. You didn't have the little iPod buds. They covered your whole ear. And I would sit in my room and pretend I was Stevie Wonder. [Laughter] And unfortunately, my grandparents, who were—I was living with at the time—they had to suffer hearing me sing. I couldn't hear myself sing. I was just hearing Stevie, and I figured I sounded just like him. [Laughter] But I'm sure that was not the case.










From 8/26/1976 ( the first known human case of Ebola ) To 4/20/2011 is 12655 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 6/26/2000 ( premiere US film "The Perfect Storm" ) is 12655 days



From 10/19/1945 ( John Lithgow ) To 4/20/2011 is 23924 days

23924 = 11962 + 11962

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 8/3/1998 ( Tom Clancy "Rainbow Six" ) is 11962 days



From 11/20/1983 ( premiere US TV movie "The Day After" ) To 4/20/2011 is 10013 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 4/2/1993 ( Bill Clinton - Remarks on Opening the Forest Conference in Portland, Oregon ) is 10013 days





http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=90309

The American Presidency Project

Barack Obama

XLIV President of the United States: 2009 - present

273 - Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Fundraiser in San Francisco, California

April 20, 2011

Thank you. Everybody, sit down. Have a seat.

I know all of you wish that Stevie would just keep on playing. [Laughter] I understand that, and I can relate to it. I was mentioning to Marc—and I hate to do this to you, Stevie, because I'm dating you a little bit—but the first album that I ever bought with my own little spending money was "Talking Book." I was 10 years old. I was 10 years old, and I would sit in my room and I had this old phonograph and the earphones were, like, really big. You didn't have the little iPod buds. They covered your whole ear. And I would sit in my room and pretend I was Stevie Wonder. [Laughter] And unfortunately, my grandparents, who were—I was living with at the time—they had to suffer hearing me sing. I couldn't hear myself sing. I was just hearing Stevie, and I figured I sounded just like him. [Laughter] But I'm sure that was not the case.

Anyway, Stevie and Will.i.am have both been huge supporters, huge friends from very early on in this campaign process. And so it's wonderful to have them here. But I want to most of all thank Marc and Lynne and Leia for sharing their homes. This is an incredible setting, but what makes it special is the fact that I've got a lot of friends in this room.

As Marc indicated, people who are leaders, not just in this community, but nationally and internationally, but so many of you helped get this project started. Some of you are involved in startups. Well, I was a startup just—not so long ago. And when I think about that campaign in 2008, the fact is, so many of you took a chance on me. It was not at all likely that I was going to win. A lot of people couldn't pronounce my name, much less expect that I would end up being in the Oval Office.

But a lot of you put faith in that campaign, primarily because the campaign wasn't about me. What the campaign was about was a particular vision of America, an idea about who we are as a people. It was a notion that for all our differences, for all the shifts that have taken place in this country, for all our sometimes troubled history, despite—no, because of our diversity of race and faith and region, that there was something special when we come together and that we can somehow combine a fierce individualism and a sense of entrepreneurship and risk-taking and self-reliance and responsibility with also a sense of community, a sense of mutual obligation, a sense that our lives are better if we're looking out for one another.

And that spirit was captured in the campaign, and I was sort of a repository for a lot of hopes and expectations that we could get past so many of the divisions and start working together, because we were facing some fundamental challenges in this country that we hadn't seen in a very long time.

Now, as Marc mentioned, I think none of us realized how profound some of the crises that we were going to confront would be. When I started running, and even up until maybe a couple months before the campaign, we didn't realize we faced the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. We didn't realize that we had already lost 4 million jobs by the time I was sworn in and would lose another 4 million probably in the first 3, 4, 6 months of my Presidency.

We didn't understand the degree to which the financial system might melt down and its global consequences. And yet despite the enormous economic challenges we faced, despite the changes that we're seeing internationally, we have made extraordinary progress, not just pulling the economy back from the brink, but also pushing through that vision that we had, making an America that was more competitive, that was more inclusive, an America that was tapping into that entrepreneurial spirit and once again regaining our edge in this 21st-century global economy, and ended up delivering on promises and commitments that we had made to each other that we knew were going to be very hard, but we knew were going to be important for our future.

So not only did we make the biggest investment in education that the Federal Government has ever made, not only did we make the biggest investment in clean energy in our history, not only did we make the biggest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System, not only did we put the most money in basic research in our history, but we passed a health care bill that finally began to deliver on the promise of universal health care, something we'd been trying to do for a hundred years.

We got "don't ask, don't tell" repealed so that anybody who loves this country can serve this country. We got two women on the Supreme Court, including the first Latino woman—the first Latina on the Supreme Court.

On issue after issue, we've made progress. Now, here's the challenge—and then I'm going to shut up because I want to—well, I won't shut up, I want to take some questions from folks. For all the good work that we've done, we're not finished. We've got more work to do.

And I think most of the people here understand that we still have some fundamental choices to make in this country if we're going to deliver the kind of America to our children and our grandchildren that we dreamed about and thought about in 2008.

The economy is still not as strong as it needs to be, and we've still got millions of people all around the country who are out of work, at risk of losing their home, can't pay their bills. And we've got to deliver for them.

There are still too many children out there who are in substandard schools, can't imagine working for one of the companies that are represented here today, don't even know these companies exist, can't imagine a career that was stable and steady and that would allow them to raise a family. So we're going to have to deliver on education reform here and all across the country and make sure that those kids can go to college and get career ready.

We're not finished when it comes to energy. Right now we've got four-dollar-a-gallon gas, and most of the people under this tent don't have to worry about that. But for the average person who has to drive 50 miles to work and can't afford to buy the Tesla—[laughter]—it's hammering them. It's hurting them. So there's a huge economic imperative. There's a national security imperative as well because we see what's happening in the Middle East and we understand that a finite resource that is primarily located in a very unstable part of the world is not good for our long-term future.

And then there's the environmental aspect of it. There are climate change deniers in Congress, and when the economy gets tough, sometimes environmental issues drop from people's radar screens. But I don't think there's any doubt that unless we are able to move forward in a serious way on clean energy that we're putting our children and our grandchildren at risk.

So that's not yet done. And then we've got this big budget debate that we're having, which really is probably the most fundamental example of the choice that we're going to be facing over the next 10, 15, 20 years. And I won't repeat some of the speeches that I've given recently because I suspect some of you have heard them. But let me just be very clear: The deficit is real. Our debt is real. We've got to do something about it. But how we do it is going to make a huge difference in terms of whether we can win the future.

And we've got a very stark choice. You've got a Republican vision right now in Congress that says we are going to slash clean energy funding by 70 percent, education funding by 25 percent, transportation funding by a third; we're going to cut taxes further for the well to do; and we're going to make up the entire deficit not only by cutting programs for things like Head Start, but we're also going to fundamentally change our social compact so that Medicare is no longer something that our seniors can count on.

The alternative vision, the one that I presented, says we can manage this debt and this deficit in a serious way by eliminating spending we don't need, saving $2 trillion making some tough choices, but also raising a trillion dollars' worth of revenue, primarily from folks like us who have benefited incredibly from this society and everything that it offers, that will save us a trillion dollars on interest; and that we can change our health care system so instead of just shifting those costs on to people who aren't in a position to bear those costs, actually making the health care system more efficient, making it work, using things like health IT and managing of chronic care and making sure that our providers are reimbursed in smarter ways to bend the cost curve on health care so that it's sustainable for the next generation.

That's a fundamental choice, a fundamental distinction in terms of how we view the future.

And so I'll just close these opening remarks by saying that I am a congenital optimist when it comes to this country, and I do not accept a vision that says America gets small, where suddenly, we can't build a world-class smart grid or we can't build the best ports and airports or we don't have the best scientific research or our kids can no longer access the best universities unless they're wealthy or we can't afford to look after people who are the most vulnerable in our society or we can't provide a guarantee to our seniors that they're going to be cared for after a lifetime of hard work.

That's the easy path in some ways. I mean, the easiest thing to do is for the rich and the powerful to say, we've got ours and we don't have to worry about the rest. Doesn't require a lot of imagination. The easiest way to cut health care is just stop giving health care to people.

But that's not the America I believe in. That's not the America you believe in. And that's what 2012 is going to be about. We started something in 2008; we haven't finished it yet. And I'm going to need you to help me finish it.

NOTE: The President spoke at 7:30 p.m. at the Benioff residence. In his remarks, he referred to entertainer William J. "Will.i.am" Adams, Jr.; Marc R. Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer, salesforce.com










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Tom Clancy

Rainbow Six


CHAPTER 27

TRANSFER AGENTS


Grady was pleased that the Russian had underestimated him. "Why delay? We have everything we need, now that the money is in place."

"As you say, Sean. Do you require anything else of me?"

"No."

"Then I will be off, with your permission."

This time they shook hands. "Daniel will drive you to Dublin?"

"Correct, the airport there."

"Tell him, and he will take you."

"Thank you, Sean-and good luck. Perhaps we will meet afterwards," Dmitriy added.

"I would like that."

Popov gave him a last look-sure that it would be the last, despite what he'd just said. Grady's eyes were animated now, thinking about a revolutionary demonstration that would be the capstone of his career. There was a cruelty there that Popov had not noted before. Like Furchtner and Dortmund, this was a predatory animal rather than a human being, and, as much experience as he'd had with such people, Popov found himself troubled by it. He was supposed to be skilled at reading minds, but in this one he saw only emptiness, only the absence of human feelings, replaced by ideology that led him-where? Did Grady know? Probably not. He thought himself on the path to some Radiant Future-the term most favored by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union-but the light that beckoned him was far more distant than he realized, and its bright glow hid the holes in the road immediately before him. And truly, Popov thought on, were he ever to achieve that which he wanted, then he'd be a disaster as a ruler of men, like those he resembled-Stalin, Mao, and the rest-so divorced from the common man's outlook as to be an alien, for whom life and death were mere tools to achieve his vision, not something of humanity at all. Of all the things Karl Marx had given the world, surely that outlook was the worst. Sean Grady had replaced his humanity and emotions with a geometrically precise model of what the world should be and he was too wedded to that vision to take note of the fact that it had failed wherever it had been tried. His pursuit was one after a chimera, a creature not real, never quite within reach, but drawing him onward to his own destruction-and as many others as he might kill first. And his eyes sparkled now in his enthusiasm for the chase. His ideological soundness denied him the ability to see the world as it really was-as even the Russians had come to see, finally, after seventy years of following the same chimera. Sparkling eyes serving a blind master, how strange, the Russian thought, turning to leave.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177971/releaseinfo

IMDb


The Perfect Storm (2000)

Release Info

USA 26 June 2000 (premiere)










http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=perfect-storm-the

Springfield! Springfield!


Perfect Storm, The (2000)


Calling the Andrea Gail.
Andrea Gail, do you read me?
Do you read me? Come in!
Come in, for God's sake, come in!
Billy, these storms have collided!
They are exploding!
Who is it?
I don't know.
Andrea Gail, come in!
Whiskey-Yankee-Charlie 6-6-8-1, over.
Talk to me, Billy, over.
I repeat,
Whiskey-Yankee-Charlie 6-6-8-1 ...
Look at your fax, damn it!
Look at your fax!
Whiskey-Yankee-Charlie 6-6-8-1, over!
-Where are you, Billy?
-Linda?
Give me the coordinates.
-44 north, 56.4 west.
-We're 44 north...
...56.4 west, headed west.
I repeat, 44 north,
Over.
Billy, get out of there.
Come about! Let it carry you out!
What the hell are you doing?
Hang on!
Billy! Billy, for chrissake!
You're steaming into a bomb!
Turn around, for chrissake!
It's the antenna.
Billy, can you hear me?
You're headed right
for the middle of the monster.



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177971/quotes

IMDb


The Perfect Storm (2000)

Quotes


Linda Greenlaw: [warning Billy over the radio] Billy? Get outta there! Come about! Let it- let it carry you out of there! What the hell are you doing? Billy! For Christ sake! You're steaming into a bomb! Turn around for Christ sake! Billy, can ya hear me? You're headed right for the middle of the monster!










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/quotes

IMDb


The Day After (1983 TV Movie)

Quotes


[last lines]

Joe Huxley: Hello. Is anybody there? Anybody at all?



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 7:26 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Tuesday 23 September 2014