According to press reports, worldwide some 1,500 people have died world wide from Ebola. Yet, every year, thousands of people die from the flu in every major city on earth. So why are we so concerned about Ebola, which is so much less deadly than the flu?
If the press reports are to be believed, Ebola is contracted by direct contact with an infected person, and is almost invariably fatal.
This would make it self limiting, both in terms of people infected, and in geographical extent.
It seems very unlikely for it to become more than a very localised, and very minor problem. Except, of course, for the very few people infected.
So, why the panic?
Is this just another artificial crisis generated by government agencies who need to justify their own existence, or is it a real problem?
While it is true that thousands die from the flu, many many millions more recover perfectly well after the flu.We’ve all had it, so we aren’t afraid of it.
Its fatal like 60% of the time. There is no known cure. It spreads quite easily.
How many percent of flu are fatal?
The flu is treatable in the vast majority of cases.
Until recent developments getting Ebola was (and may still be) a virtual death sentence.
The folks who die from the flu are generally very young, very old, or already very sick, or can’t get even basic care.
Ebola doesn’t give a shit about how much money you have of how good your doctors are. That’s why it scares the shit out of people with access to healthcare.
You need to understand that everything that’s reported in the news is meaningless, because news, by definition, is about things that rarely happen. The bad stuff you need to worry about is the bad stuff that is so common it’s not news.
And actually I was quite obsessed with the pandemic flu outbreak five years ago, much more than I care about the current ebola outbreak. I also got the swine flu myself, which I don’t think will happen with ebola. Then again if ebola starts spreading to other continents, we’re in deep, deep trouble, and it’s worrying that people in afflicted areas are ignoring medical advice and thus spreading the disease.
(double post)
Because of the high mortality and gruesome (but often exaggerated) nature of the disease.
It’s not a big deal. I don’t give a shit about ebola. Don’t let the tabloid press dictate what is a big deal for you.
I don’t think it’s correct to say that every city on Earth sees thousands of flu deaths per year.
It all reminds me of the HIV scares 20 years ago.
The big worry is mutation. If the virus ever becomes airborne, Ebola becomes a very big deal indeed.
News media loves worry.
The 1918-19 worldwide flu epidemic probably killed as many people as all the deaths - military and civilian - in the WWI combined. And possibly far more. Record keeping during an epidemic was spotty at best in many countries.
A repeat of that, still vivid in medical history, is what petrifies doctors whenever a similar breakout seems possible. Flu vaccines have gotten much better since 1918 but there are so many possible types of flu that a new one with no stocks of vaccines can appear at any time.
Viral infections are potentially the hugest disasters to hit mankind next to a devastating solar flare. We’ve been lucky that all have been containable for the last 100 years, due to better vaccines, quick isolation, and strains that are weaker than first feared, but any threat of a worldwide outbreak should scare the pants off of everybody and goad everybody to do everything possible in the way of prevention. Remember that Ebola is contagious as soon as symptoms appear, but those early symptoms are similar enough to less fatal diseases that an infected person can come into contact with hundreds before realizing what they have.
Does the scaremongering of 24/7 news coverage help this or does it hurt by numbing people with overkill? That’s a legitimate argument and I could take either side on alternate days, like parking. Mostly, though, if they are screaming loudly enough to get through the jaded brains of people who have been scared too often I’m glad for my sake that somebody is doing so.
This current outbreak is larger than previous outbreaks. The majority of outbreaks in the past have been in remote villages and burn themselves out after 30 or so deaths. And there are still a lot of unknowns about Ebola. Depending on the study you read, it’s somewhere between 60 and 90% fatal. And they’re still uncertain what its carrier is and how patient zero in each outbreak catches it.
Does the flu require level IV biohazard procedures?
You might want to read “The Hot Zone”.
I have a vague memory of reading that most of the death in the 1918-19 epidemic were due to secondary infections. Advances in ant-biotics since then would mitigate a lot of that.
Aside from the high mortality rate and lack of a cure is novelty. Malaria kills millions but we are used to it. Ebola feels more novel. Also ebola could evolve or be weaponized to be more contagious. This will make the pandemic much worse.
Because the media says it is a big deal. What you know is what it is profitable for the information/industrial complex to tell you.
Yes. In fact we just had a thread on this, Flu Vaccine Deaths in 1918?. Pneumonia was the cause of death once the virus took hold and pneumonia is now both preventable and curable. Even so, treating tens of millions of patients around the world would strain resources to the limit, especially in countries with 50 doctors total.
Cool. It only took four posts to prove my point. 
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jtur88, I told you only about a month ago to keep political jabs out of General Questions. This is an official warning. Further remarks of this kind will be subject to additional warnings.
Colibri
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I’ve read The Hot Zone (I had an audio version of it, too, which I’ve listened to many many times on commutes), and I find its treatment of Ebola somewhat inconsistent. After the buildup about how easily the disease could be spread by contact with fluids (from a patient who’s throwing up, having diarrhea, and otherwise leaking fluids, no less) and how lethal the disease is, with its high mortality rate, he then in the second part of the book presents a doctor who goes in to treat the disease with no special covering or obvious precautions, and who berates others for being overly concerned with catching the disease. Author Richard Preston never addresses the discrepancy, either to explain why you should have a particular level of caution, or how the doctor making these claims is mistaken. Certainly the infection of two American workers in Africa who were trying to observe strict seclusion suggests that the doctor was wrong (as do all the biohazard suits everyone is wearing), but you’d think he’d have given a better description of needed levels of caution.
To me, the most interesting thing was that there was an outbreak of a related disease, the Marburg filovirus, albeit among primates, already here on the shores of the US.