PBS Frontline did a documentary about the 2014 Ebola outbreak and included a segment where a woman claimed health workers were taking patients and eating them in acts of cannibalism, causing mass panic. This isn’t new, we’ve lived through this ourselves with COVID. Shit can be scary, authorities don’t always get things right, but we’re all better off holding reasonable trust in the professionals who dedicated their careers to this craft.
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Prior to the 2011 assault in which bin Laden was killed, the CIA used a local doctor to fake a door-to-door vaccination campaign in Abbottabad, Pakistan to acquire DNA samples from family members. This ruse subsequently became public, igniting multiple disturbing reactions. The Pakistani government ordered Save the Children expatriate personnel to depart, even though they had no role in the CIA effort and were supporting over two hundred thousand Pakistani children. The resolve of the Pakistani government to complete the elimination of polio – never a certainty – wavered, as did public confidence. Access for polio vaccinations in the northwest FATA region ended abruptly in June 2012, leaving in isolation a quarter of a million children. Terrorists began murdering polio vaccine workers, mostly women volunteers, as the Taliban banned immunizations in the areas under its control. This raised the specter of armed Islamic militants worldwide seizing upon the global polio eradication campaign as a ripe “western” target.
Al_787 on
So I got stuck in Saigon visiting my family during COVID (also sorta a long sabbatical). Volunteered as civilian medical assistance which turned out to be mostly removing bodies of poor working-class people from dingy shoebox “apartments.” May or may not gave me some mild PTSD
The worst of it all is the grieving families unloading on us as some sort of representative for the government that imposed the harsh lockdown and then still failed to treat people. I’m not even a Vietnamese citizen, I look pretty obviously Wasian. Overall emotions are always high in these situation, it’s a pretty thankless job. Volunteers keep their heads down and the best any relevant authorities can do is to provide adequate protections and funding.
3 Comments
PBS Frontline did a documentary about the 2014 Ebola outbreak and included a segment where a woman claimed health workers were taking patients and eating them in acts of cannibalism, causing mass panic. This isn’t new, we’ve lived through this ourselves with COVID. Shit can be scary, authorities don’t always get things right, but we’re all better off holding reasonable trust in the professionals who dedicated their careers to this craft.
Unfortunately, it’s easy for locals to be suspicious when the [CIA has a proven track record in this department](https://www.csis.org/blogs/smart-global-health/fake-cia-vaccine-campaign-when-end-doesnt-justify-means).
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Prior to the 2011 assault in which bin Laden was killed, the CIA used a local doctor to fake a door-to-door vaccination campaign in Abbottabad, Pakistan to acquire DNA samples from family members. This ruse subsequently became public, igniting multiple disturbing reactions. The Pakistani government ordered Save the Children expatriate personnel to depart, even though they had no role in the CIA effort and were supporting over two hundred thousand Pakistani children. The resolve of the Pakistani government to complete the elimination of polio – never a certainty – wavered, as did public confidence. Access for polio vaccinations in the northwest FATA region ended abruptly in June 2012, leaving in isolation a quarter of a million children. Terrorists began murdering polio vaccine workers, mostly women volunteers, as the Taliban banned immunizations in the areas under its control. This raised the specter of armed Islamic militants worldwide seizing upon the global polio eradication campaign as a ripe “western” target.
So I got stuck in Saigon visiting my family during COVID (also sorta a long sabbatical). Volunteered as civilian medical assistance which turned out to be mostly removing bodies of poor working-class people from dingy shoebox “apartments.” May or may not gave me some mild PTSD
The worst of it all is the grieving families unloading on us as some sort of representative for the government that imposed the harsh lockdown and then still failed to treat people. I’m not even a Vietnamese citizen, I look pretty obviously Wasian. Overall emotions are always high in these situation, it’s a pretty thankless job. Volunteers keep their heads down and the best any relevant authorities can do is to provide adequate protections and funding.