Not the best news to read first thing in the morning:
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned the number of Ebola cases could rise to 20,000 as doctors in Liberia say the deadly virus is now spreading so rapidly they can no longer deal with the crisis.
The UN health agency said the outbreak is accelerating in west Africa, where the death toll has now reached 1,552, and it believes the numbers who have been hit by Ebola could be two to four times higher than the current 3,069 cases currently reported.
“[It] is a scale that I think has not ever been anticipated in terms of an Ebola outbreak,” said Bruce Aylward, assistant director general of WHO.
He said the increase came from cities including the Liberian capital Monrovia, where a slum was quarantined last week, leading to food shortages and civil unrest.
My guess is that the death toll is under reported. Those are confirmed deaths. How many have died in places unknown after fleeing their own city or village? If this breaks outside of West Africa to the more highly developed countries, I predict panic. Imagine if this were happening in the US right now, where we have as many guns as people?
Total quarantine, enforced by shoot to kill.
Sorry, this one is a big one. If it is out of control in Lagos, a city of 20+ million, we could see 13th century figures (33% mortality).
One hundred years ago, the Great Influenza killed millions in this country. It could happen here.
The only hope at this point is a vaccine. Speeded-up trials are commencing TODAY.
Monrovia, not Lagos. At least not yet.
There have been 6 deaths in Nigeria, 5 in Lagos, one in a nearby town of a physician. Not quite at the “outbreak” state, but there is the 21-day incubation period.
You do have an understanding of how the virus spreads, yes?
Where sanitation infrastructure is lacking it becomes epidemic.
The US, its allies, and its antagonists have spent the past thirty years destroying infrastructure, including sanitation infrastructure. Republicans since 2010 have been insisting on cuts in spending to agencies like the CDC and Democrats have been listless and silent.
If gunnuts can get hysterical about kids at the border, they can get hysterical about any nonsense that FoxNews, the ClearChannel wingnuts, and Gov. Rick Perry put out. They are already going for a three-fer. “ISIS operatives are carrying ebola across the Mexican-US border to infect Americans.”
We are in more danger from this misinformation campaign and the gun-nut hysteria it spawns than we are from the ebola virus becoming epidemic in the US. Short of complete economic and environmental collapse of the US, which we no longer can completely rule out due to a decade of diddling.
If we spent as much building sanitation infrastructure in other countries as we do arming for armageddon, the ebola virus likely would recede into the background like smallpox, polio, and anthrax. Speaking of which….
That is how the virus spreads now. Mutagenesis, or mutagenic drift, which could increase the ease at which the virus is spread, especially if it becomes airborne, is a threat the longer this epidemic continues. In the past, most Ebola outbreaks quickly died out, making nay possibility of mutagenesis leading to a more transmittable virus less likely. Unfortunately that is not the case with this current outbreak.
Quite frankly, I’m more afraid of right-wing hysteria about ebola than the possibility of mutagenesis of ebola into an airborne virus.
The fact is that we know in general terms what to do to prevent epidemics in terms of infrastructure and technology but lack the political will to do it because for now, it’s just happening to “them”. And unless some member of the 1% can make a profit off of “them”, nothing will happen.
I agree with you on that.
“making nay possibility of mutagenesis leading to a more transmittable virus less likely.”
Not really. It’s not something that vanishes into thin air in between human outbreaks. The recent discovery of 2 cases contracted independently from the same bat cave tourist attraction, is a very important finding.
In between outbreaks, when the virus is cycling in bats, the possibility of mutation is present as well. It has not mutated to a more lethal form that might include airborne transmission. Bats live in caves where they shit all over everything, and it’s a lovely petri dish with all the other organisms living and thriving in that shit(aka, guano). Shit is a “bodily fluid”, after all. If there ever was a place for mutation, these bat caves are it.
WHO dismissed MSF’s early reports that the outbreak required more intervention than they were equipped to provide if an epidemic was to be averted.
“Imagine if this were happening in the US right now”
It DOES happen, all the time, with things like Malaria, Dengue and now Chikungunya. Dengue in particular can cause similar symptoms as Ebola, if all 4 strains are contracted by the patient: bleeding out. That’s why it’s called Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. But because it’s endemic to many parts of the world, residents there think nothing of it. The same with Malaria.
Here in the U.S., heads spin when we get a few cases simply because we don’t routinely experience outbreaks, and I’ve witnessed this first hand in my job in mosquito control. Each of the initial introductions of disease I have first hand experienced with was ruled by a suddenly aware sector of the health profession that we depend on for solid information: physicians. This caused, as an artifact of this sudden alertness, a spike in cases reported. This begs the question of whether we are having a spike in cases, or simply a spike in REPORTING of cases. Chikungunya was just discovered last year in the West, but that’s because many Caribbean countries have no local testing and rely on the CDC. It was probably there at least a year before because once they started looking, nearly EVERY country has cases. And the ones that don’t, aren’t really looking for it.
We had Yellow Fever rampant 100 years ago, why do you think that is no longer a threat? Because our standards of living are magnitudes higher than where Ebola is raging. And it will rage until it reaches areas where ignorance and poor hygiene around the dead are not prevalent. Even if it reaches the U.S., it will be a flash in the pan. As TarHeelDem notes, the hysteria will be worse than the disease, because its not very contagious. There is no vector other than direct contact with bodily fluids. Yes, mutation is always a possibility, but it hasn’t since the 70’s when it was discovered. Not all viruses are mutation factories like flu viruses are.
Yes. This. It will NOT happen here, in the sense that we have modern sanitation, ample food, we embalm the dead, and have public health departments which can enforce quarantines. Without these, we would indeed be Nigeria or whatever. We have these things BECAUSE we enacted laws/regulations early in the 20th century to deal with epidemics and Typhoid Marys. If it does make it to our shores, I recommend we send the Libertarians to the front lines…