There are now treatments and vaccines available–but does anyone want to spend the money?
If I’m not mistaken, isn’t it still as hard to transmit as before - requiring direct contact with body fluids - unlike an aerosolized disease like Covid?
It’s never totally gone away, but at least now, we know what to do, especially if a Westerner gets sick.
It’s popped up again, this time in the Congo/South Sudan/Uganda region. So far, there are about 250 confirmed cases, and about 65 deaths. This strain is especially frightening, because it has no known vaccine, or treatment beyond symptomatic care.
In the meantime, an American physician identified as Dr. Peter Stafford was diagnosed, and will be medevacked to Germany, along with 7 other Americans who will be held in quarantine. One may assume that this will include his wife, who also worked with him at the same hospital, and their two young children.
This story gives more details. Also quarantined will be Dr. Rebekah Stafford, another presumably American physician, and the Staffords’ FOUR young children. (The picture I saw earlier had two kids with their faces fuzzied out.)
BTW, does anyone else here remember what the Dumpster said in 2014? In so many words, he said something like “The aid workers are great, but they should stay there for treatment.”
Which is actually the correct answer. If impolitic.
Even a broken clock spinning madly backwards is right now and again. Not due to luck, but due to the Intermediate Value Theorem. They can’t avoid being right occasionally no matter how hard they try. And in his case, he tries really really hard to be wrong all the time.
I heard a radio news story that US Secretary Rubiosaid today that all American citizens hospitalized with Ebola will be quarantined in Kenya. The reporter said we have to build a quarantine camp for that to occur.
Ebola Alcatraz?
That’s a non-terrible idea. Until Ebola escapes Kenya.
I saw on NBC that the WHO Director-General Tedros has gone to the Democratic Republic of Congo to provide support. Maybe he can garner enough support to curtail the current outbreak. I can see there are many in-country hurdles but am with Tedros in sentiment.
Latest word I heard is that a Kenyan judge ruled that they can’t open the quarantine facility in Kenya.
Last I heard about Dr. Stafford, he is recovering, and none of the people who were quarantined “with” him have gotten sick.
There was an NPR report from a Bunia hospital in eastern Congo. A spokesperson for the hospital said the staff is dissatisfied because they regularly run out of disposable gloves to treat the patients. Where I live in the US, disposable gloves are available in every store.
I was waiting for the narrator to blurt out the hospital address so listeners could possibly ship them some gloves. Naturally the solution is too complex for that but my mind usually goes to “Damn, I’ll ship them a box.”
There was another NPR report on the radio at work saying the medical staff at the same Bunia hospital is now on strike for payment problems. Perhaps they need more foreign aid to keep a damper on this outbreak.
There was a story on NBC that the Democratic Republic of Congo just received 16,000 doses of an Ervebo (sp?) vaccine, with more next week. WHO said it’s not the exact strain of the Ebola that’s spreading. I hope it works!
The Ebola outbreak that is spreading at unprecedented speed in Congo has not peaked yet and could be three times the current known size, according to data from authorities and Africa’s top public health agency.
It is history’s fastest Ebola outbreak, and the World Health Organization says it is on track to surpass the deadliest on record, which was between 2014 and 2016, with over 11,000 deaths across West Africa.
This latest outbreak has recorded 2,516 deaths out of the 5,290 confirmed cases as it rages in Congo’s vast eastern region, exacerbated by an intensely mobile population, including those displaced by armed conflicts, and distrust of medical authorities.
I wonder where on Earth we could find another highly mobile population that has a high level of distrust of competent medical authority? And even worse, a high level of trust in incompetent medical authority? Hmm.
9 out of 10 Doctors surveyed smoke Lucky Strike. Or is it Chesterfield? I forget.
I just read an NBC headline, the content of which was firewalled, as “Ebola epidemic outpaces containment despite influx of money and supplies.” I’m not smart enough to think of what anyone can do about containing it.