For what it's worth, I maintain a data repository for this outbreak (<a href="https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola_drc" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola_drc</a>) and the 2014-2015 outbreak in West Africa (<a href="https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/cmrivers/ebola</a>).
So this has happened before. If anyone here has read “The Hot Zone”, which is one of the great ‘techno-thrillers” of the 90’s (but still nonfiction), the virus spreads to Kinshasa. It’s the capital of Zaire and a major city. But then...it disappears.<p>Ebola is a weird virus. Extraordinarily fatal, about 90% during the 1995 outbreak (smallpox is around 20% for comparison), although they have better treatments now for Ebola that bring it closer to 50%.<p>Either way, lots of health workers have been documented working in a hut with an infected person and never getting infected, yet others have just passed an infected person on the subway and died.<p>The real concern here is what this means for the future of warfare.<p>A lot of people have noted that chemical weapons, and perhaps biological weapons, are perfect for distribution by drone due to their light-weightedness. Biological weapons, much like computer viruses, also can be hard to attribute, making them attractive to use.<p>The Japanese cult that put Sarin in the Tokyo subway in 1996 was also working on biological weapons. They never got far enough, but it demonstrated even non-state actors can pull off credible bio-weapons.
A few points/questions about U.S. policy and response:<p>* IIRC, the current administration cut NIH or CDC funding for preventing and/or dealing with foreign disease outbreaks. Under the prior administration, IIRC the GOP in Congress told the NIH/CDC to re-purpose those funds toward other uses. Does anyone know the current status?<p>* Regarding the Ebola outbreak in West Africa recently, I later read that the only organization in the world with the logistical resources to respond quickly at the necessary scale was the U.S. military, and Obama eventually deployed them.<p>* The article doesn't mention the U.S. at all. That seems like a major omissions; not even a no comment. Is the U.S. just standing back while these people die and an epidemic spreads, potentially to other places too?<p>* What is the current administration's stance on funding UN/WHO health operations?
Relevant Vice youtube video of the 2015 Ebola outbreak in Liberia: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANUI4uT3xJI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANUI4uT3xJI</a> for those who want more context on why its so hard to stop it in underdeveloped and insufficiently prepared African cities (not the developed ones, those tend to be able to contain epidemics)
One aspect of Ebola which makes it so terrifying and also less likely to spread widely is its rapid progression and mortality rate. The detailed accounts of a person succumbing to fatal Ebola infection are horrific. But the virus' effectiveness at rapidly multiplying results in its host dying so quickly that transmission is limited. It would be interesting to see if the reduction in mortality rates (from 90% to 50% according to another poster) correlates with a greater length/breadth of the outbreak.<p>On another note, if human strains of Ebola ever mutate for airborne transmission, we're all screwed.
I see hysteria about Ebola. As if it has the potential to wipe out millions.<p>If Ebola was prone to causing large-scale epidemics, Ebola would have caused large-scale epidemics.<p>Want to worry? Worry about flu. Worry about smallpox. Those viruses have killed millions and, most likely, will continue to do so now and again in the centuries to come.<p>But Ebola? Not a chance. How do I know? Because, there is every reason to believe the virus has been around forever, and it's never caused the type of pandemic described by doomsayers.
Interesting:<p>> The vaccine will be kept in the capital until shortly before use because of the lack of facilities in the provinces for storing it at the required temperature, between minus 60 degrees and minus 80 degrees Celsius, or between minus 76 degrees and minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit.<p>Are there any other vaccines that have to be kept at such low temperatures?
And you realize that the US is even less prepared for any major epidemics that might occur in the world and here in the US due to the Trump administration's relentless dismantling and defunding of both research and global disease research.
When you do the research you'll find that it spreads to fast. Look out for those that control the speed of the virus. Source: my research in extending human lifespan.