How Has Most of Africa Avoided Ebola?
We all know about the West Africa Ebola outbreak that’s ravaging Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. There’s also a smaller outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; that outbreak appears to be contained now, and is unrelated to and over 1000 miles away from the West Africa outbreak.
And yet, we’re not seeing massive spread of Ebola to other countries in Africa. Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, and Guinea-Bisseau – all nations in the immediate vicinity of the West African Ebola outbreak – have no cases. And the two nations that did initially record secondary spread, Senegal and Nigeria, have each contained their outbreaks and will be declared Ebola-free by WHO NLT Monday barring any new cases appearing there.
How did Senegal, a nation next to Guinea, end up with fewer Ebola cases than the US? And how did the rest of Africa avoid the spread of Ebola from the West African outbreak so far?
Well, IMO here’s your answer – in “Powerpoint hell” bullet-point style:
-
TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS
-
BORDER CLOSURES
-
LUCK
You see, in much of Africa they actually understand how deadly this Ebola crap can be. So they treat it accordingly – like the deadly threat it is. Governments there don’t worry about offending some group of “special little snowflakes” because they’re being “mean”. They do what’s required to protect themselves.
And even then, they know they’ve been damn lucky so far.
What they don’t do is treat an Ebola outbreak like a pawn in a political game, some humanitarian feelgood exercise, or something minor like the common cold. Because Ebola freaking isn’t any of those. It’s an incurable, relatively easily transmitted disease for which no vaccine exists that generally kills 50+% of those it infects.
The AP has a good story discussing how African nations next door to the outbreak (and elsewhere on the continent) have remained Ebola-free – or beaten it after it was introduced by travelers. It’s excellent reading.
You need to sit down and read that article, Mr. President. And then you need to take it to heart – and direct the implementation of similar measures here in the US immediately. Otherwise, well . . . .
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Barack Obama/Joe Biden
But the feelings, Hondo! What about the feelings?
With all “due respect” – screw worrying about “feelings”. Here, we’re talking life and death. Literally.
Worrying about “feelings” is precisely why we now have two seriously ill nurses and a dead Liberian’s body in Dallas. Plus only God knows how many other cases incubating.
When you’re dead, you have no feelings to worry about. But that concept seems beyond the intelligence of most Libtards.
Spot on Hondo, this is a measurable, verifiable, and imminent deadly threat.
Sending troops who are not medical professionals or who are not trained to handle level 4 pathogens is also a very bad idea in my opinion.
Regarding that 50%? You might be a little conservative on that percentage my friend. I realize the WHO averages the death rate out to 50%, but their case studies are always sketchy at best and I often think their numbers suck until you drill down into them.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/70-percent-ebola-death-rate-calculate/
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1411100
They discuss in this article how when the review the cases with “known” clinical outcomes they are closer to a 71% death rate with a 95% confidence in the math.
70% only reinforces every you thing you say here in a larger manner.
As always well done Hondo I always enjoy your measured take on these issues of current events.
I was speaking in general, VOV.
There are multiple strains of Ebola. For the one in play here – an Ebola Zaire variant – excluding single-infection examples previous outbreaks have shown fatality rates anywhere from around 45% to 88%, with most outbreaks over 50%. So I elected to be conservative in how I phrased that.
You are correct that best indicators to date are that this outbreak’s fatality rate is approx 70%.
One of the excuses I have heard in regards to not imposing any travel restrictions is that it wastes resources. This excuse has never made sense to me, given the waste of resources that occurs by not imposing travel restrictions. Witness all of the resources being used to deal with 2 known domestic cases of Ebola thus far…. cases that would arguably not have occured if there had been sensible travel restrictions in place. We have hospital workers on lockdown, a Dallas Fires Station taped off and quarantined, a commercial aircraft taken out of service, passengers in quarantine, some schools closed, a cruise ship impacted, and an emergency response system playing defense instead of offense. I am sure there are many more resource implications that I am incapable of even thinking of.
I’m no egghead, but it seems to me that actively preventing 65-150 people a day from entering the country would have wasted a lot less resources than the hand we are currently playing.
The best reader comment I have read thus far was as follows: When you have a house full of flies, you don’t just pass out flyswatters and tell everybody to kill flies. First, you close the GD screen door!
Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, and Guinea-Bisseau seem to get it.
well, it’s an imperfect yardstick – but they report the dead fella left $500,000 in unpaid medical bills. So at a half a mill each times the population of the US…. ounds to me like a tad more than any possible trade with Liberia etc. would ever generate.
Read an AP article online last night that claimed our pretender in chief said something along the line of…
He isn’t opposed to travel restrictions but…
IF we did ban air travel from infected countries then people wouldn’t be honest when filling out the questionnaires about ebola when they got on a plane in those countries to fly here.
And are these Dallas healthcare workers purposely trying to spread it?
One gets off shift and hops a plane to visit family. Now they’re looking for ~800 people that might be impacted.
And another takes a Caribbean cruise? There’s another 1000+ people right there. And they’re from all over the world.
Working with Ebola? Minute chance you might have been exposed? Stay the hell home until you’re cleared.
I have to wonder if you’re right about the ‘workers purposely trying to spread it.’ Once I can forgive as human nature and stupidity. But literally getting off-shift with an ebola patient and promptly scattering to the four winds?
I don’t believe in coincidence. It’s time to start filing charges.
What charges, Pinto Nag? None were under any legal prohibition against travel, and none knew that they were infected at the time they began travel. Our good CDC director had assured them they could safely “handle an Ebola patient” (or words to that effect).
Yes, it’s arguably poor judgement. But in general, neither poor judgement nor stupidity is a prosecutable crime. Only specifically defined acts are.
HIV patients have been charged with offenses related to exposing other people to their disease. Those were the charges I was referring to; they don’t fit exactly, because as you say, these people are not showing symptoms yet, but the fact is, as contagious as Ebola is proving itself to be, these people are putting others at risk by travelling within the (accepted) 21 day incubation period. I think there should be charges for that act.
The individuals with HIV who were prosecuted were prosecuted for knowingly endangering others. One of the elements of the crime was that they knew they were HIV positive, yet persisted in having unprotected sex without informing their partners of their HIV-positive status.
Good luck using those laws to prosecute anyone who didn’t know they were infected at the time they traveled. That’s particularly true after the CDC initially characterized them as being in a lower-risk group which allowed travel.
Oh, I know there’s about as much chance of them being charged with anything as there is I could flap my arms and fly to the moon, Hondo. The above is my opinion, and it has nothing to do with the reality of the situation.
Here’s the article about the cruise ship case.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/texas-health-worker-isolated-on-cruise-ship-over-possible-ebola-contact/ar-BB9ygyZ
The US governemtn wanted to dock at Belize so that the passenger (now in quarantine on the ship) could be transported to a Belizean airport for transport back to the USA.
The Belize government said ‘NO!’.
What does that tell you?
Just what the hell does it take to get some frakking common sense into this (lack of) administration?
“Just what the hell does it take to get some frakking common sense into this (lack of) administration?”
To quote something I’ve recently read wrt this administration and specifically, this President, it has to be either criminal incompetence or Treason. It can be nothing else, IMO. The list of head-scratching actions, or non-actions has grown so long as to make any other conclusion a clear example of the use of Occam’s Razor.
I’m currently against a travel ban. I say currently for a reason. First, I think it’s helpful to remember that we’re probably ALL for or against a travel ban, depending upon the severity of the situation in Liberia (or other West African countries). If one person is sick in the entire country, we don’t need a travel ban. If two million people are sick, we do. Presumably there are no disagreements with that? So the question isn’t “Should we ban travel?”, it’s “WHEN should we ban travel?” A related question is what would a travel ban accomplish? Opinions on this vary from people who think it would protect us to others who think it would do more harm than good. Both of these options are possible, but both also have a probability associated with their likelihood. A travel ban will likely lessen the near-term cases we see in the US, and there’s a vanishingly small chance that in the interim the virus could ‘burn out’ in West Africa, but that goes against all projections and expectations of experts. It would buy us some time for expedited vaccines and treatments, but not much. In total, it seems to have no real chance of stopping the virus in its entirety, which means we’ve only delayed the inevitable. In the interim, the outbreak will grow in size, likely spreading to Europe, South America and Asia, … and then do we ban more travel? Even if we shut down our own economy -no shipping, no travel, no nothing- eventually the virus will find itself in Mexico and Canada, and it will find a way in. Repeatedly. This is the scenario that pretty much every model and expert says is likely, and so the question becomes are we better off fighting what is essentially a small deadly outbreak outside our borders now, or a large deadly outbreak inside our borders later? Often times people use the imagery of wildfires to help, since we have less experience with things like Ebola. A one thousand acre wildfire now, or let it grow and fight a one hundred… Read more »
If there had been a travel ban to/from individuals originating in or passing through the outbreak countries in September, Duncan would not have been able to come to the US. Had Duncan not come to the US, we would not today have one death and two seriously ill with Ebola on US soil. We also would not today have several hundred innocent individuals who potentially have been exposed and may be in the incubation phase of the disease. The disease is still out of control and growing exponentially in all 3 outbreak nations. The total number of Ebola cases (believed to be approximately 2.5 times the officially-acknowledged number) is around 22,500 – or just short of 0.11% of the population of those countries (roughly 20.9 million between the three). Since the number of cases roughly doubles in each generation of the outbreak, that means that around 1 in every 1,000 individuals in those three countries are today infected with the virus – and, since it’s growing with a doubling rate of between 15.5 and 31 days, depending on the country, that number may now well be closer to 1 in 500. Given those numbers, it is simply freaking insane to allow unquarantined entrance to the US for individuals from or who have recently traveled to those three nations. Simply freaking insane. This may sound cold and harsh – but I personally don’t care that a travel ban may make it more difficult for the people in the outbreak area. The US government’s first duty is to protect our nation. How protecting our nation might affect the rest of the world is a secondary consideration, and is much less important than actually protecting the USA. When there’s a thunderstorm with blowing rain, you don’t leave the windows open and repeatedly mop the floor in an attempt to keep it dry. You freaking close the windows first. Then you clean up the mess. Here, a travel ban – or at the very least, a mandatory and enforced 21-day entry quarantine – is equivalent to closing the windows. We should have done that… Read more »
Well said!!! It seems that this administration has forgotten, or is ignoring, that it’s first duty is the protection of US citizens. The excuse that a travel ban would hurt the outbreak countries economically is bullshit.
You are forgetting the ideology to which this admin is known to hold itself.
The best interest of the US or its citizens has no part or place in that ideology.
I do so wish that people would quit with the bullshit about all this shit happening due to stupid.
It’s malicious intent, all the way.
It’s true that if a travel ban was in place, Duncan would not have come here. And we would not have had that death nor the subsequent cases, or any of the current people being watched for symptoms.
But what’s the long game here? Do you honestly feel the US can just ‘hide’ from this virus if the exponential growth continues? This fight will be won or lost over there, controlling the outbreak in the next few critical months. And this isn’t about African nations or economies – the future of the United State of America’s fight against Ebola will be determined largely by how well we contain the outbreak in West Africa.
It isn’t about making it difficult for the average Liberian citizen, it’s primarily about two key effects – the ability of aid workers to do their job, and the desire to avoid a panic that would result in a massive exodus from those countries, spreading the epidemic. Again, making daily life harder for people? Not my concern. I just want to minimize the chances for a severe global pandemic.
To use your example, this isn’t closing a window to avoid water on the floor in a rainstorm. This is telling someone they can’t go outside, even for essentials like food and water, lest they track a bit of rain in when they come back. Fine, you keep yourself dry in the meantime, but long term -if the rain storm doesn’t stop- you’re just screwing yourself over with that policy.
I’d rather the occasional case here and an overall diminished epidemic there than no cases here but a totally out of control epidemic there. The latter case is a much harder fight.
“I’d rather the occasional case here and an overall diminished epidemic there than no cases here but a totally out of control epidemic there.”
Okay. We need volunteers. No. You don’t get to volunteer yourself. You get to volunteer your family members to be the “occasional next” victims. You good with that?
I don’t like any of it. I simply think it’s the right course of action to minimize long-term risk to Americans.
LC: the two (an inbound travel ban/mandatory quarantine and providing assistance in West Africa) are not mutually exclusive. However, failing to implement the former is sheer idiocy.
We seem to get a lot of that from the current
DC clown krewe in chargeAdministration. So this is really no surprise.It’s just that the stakes here are literally life and death vice dollars and cents. You think maybe that would cause the application of a bit of common sense.
I agree they’re not mutually exclusive – but there are side effects that pop up due to a travel ban that need to be considered. Chief amongst these side effects are (1) the chance of wide-spread panic, (2) a cascade effect on transportation related to aid and (3) people taking less tracked methods of transportation out of the area. (1) I’ll use Liberia as the example since it’s the worst hit. There’s plenty of different mentalities in Liberia right now, some outright crazy, but no matter what mindset I adopt, if I’m a Liberian and I hear the world is closing off all travel to my country, I’m going to think we’re pretty well fucked. And I’m going to get the hell out of dodge. Whether that’s out of fear of being bombed, or Ebola spreading unchecked, or simple starvation as chaos ensues, it isn’t a good situation, and lots of people -some of whom will be sick, even if not yet symptomatic- are going to leave. And now instead of three primary hot spots, we’ll have seven. Then twelve. Then 23. And even if none of those new hot spots are within the US, containment is questionable and it will reach us here eventually. So, we don’t want people to panic. Again, not because of African interests, but because of our own. (2) If we shut down travel, so will others. If everyone shuts down travel, that severely impacts aid. If you don’t think so, I’d be curious as to what you know versus what MSF knows, since they’re the ‘boots on the ground’ there and are concerned about this. Can we set up flights for aid crews? Sure, .. but who is going to fly them? (3) The general epidemiological method to contain the spread of Ebola is contact tracing, but if people are crossing borders and stowing away on ships, we don’t have any method for doing this. We won’t know where people who die went and who they came in contact with, and thus can’t monitor for secondary cases and take precautionary measures – like quarantines.… Read more »
There is a White House Petition to ban flights to and from Ebola stricken areas of Africa:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/have-faa-ban-all-incoming-and-outgoing-flights-ebola-stricken-countries-until-ebola-outbreak/FFJHH9yX
As I see it, ANY solution involving logic or common sense WILL NOT BE TOLERATED by B. Hussein 0bama & Company, ONLY politics and political correctness will be tolerated by them!
There’s another factor likely at play as well: The people in Africa most likely to contract Ebola (poor, rural, little access to high-quality, high-intensity medical care) are also the least likely to travel widely, if at all, thus limiting exposure to others.
Now it has been passed into the world-traveling population…..
PavePusher: that was true at the beginning of the outbreak. I’m not so sure that’s true now – many of the new cases now appear to be in the larger cities (Monrovia, Freetown, Conarky). My guess is that it’s now established in those cities.
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/geographic-map-03-oct-2014.png?ua=1
When the folks in a position to stop the spread of this disease willfully refuse to stop the spread of this disease one can only conclude that they wish for it to spread.
Oh, wait. I forgot that talking about something solves it without further action required. Dang. They always get me on that one.
I still insist that ebola is not a problem if you just toss it in the dishwasher with all the other dirty dishes.
I still miss my childhood “HOPALONG CASSIDY” ebola, and I still want a BIG ebola of soft vanilla ice cream to soothe my irritated throat.
Turns out that Nurse Vinson may have been ill prior to her return to Dallas. So, if viral efficiency rate holds true, and if transmission data is 100% correct, nothing is going to happen at all because I am sure she didn’t trade body fluids and I am sure she didn’t cough to induce droplets for inhalation…right? And, the CDC said her temp had to be over 101!!
But, if anything about transmission is wrong, each person on both flights has the potential to be infected, and thereby a minimum of two people more will also be infected and so on…
“…I do admit it’s spreading faster, faster all the ti-i-ime…” (Thanks, John, Paul, George and Ringo…)
Hondo…Thank you. “What they don’t do is treat an Ebola outbreak like a pawn in a political game, some humanitarian feelgood exercise, or something minor like the common cold.”
There in lies the American Administration’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, non-answers regarding this whole issue. No leadership, no concern for the American people and do nothing unless the polls say it feels good to everyone.
Read about what this woman did, carefully. If it really gets going here, this might be how you and your family can survive.
http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-in-liberia-woman-fight-ebola-20141005-story.html
A couple of Foreign Legion guys I know that have “retired” in Senegal say its no coincidence their border got closed quite effectively. One guy who sneaked in was tracked down immediately and isolated for his own good
“In the unlikely event that someone with Ebola does reach our shores, we’ve taken new measures so that we’re prepared here at home.”
Barack Hussein Obama (Lifetime Community Organizer and 2009 winner of Nobel Peace Prize for Doing Nothing): Sept 16, 2014
Four days later, Liberian Thomas Duncan arrived in the USA at Dulles Airport. It took all of four days for Obama’s “unlikely event” to occur. So, the answer is clear: By not having obama as president, most of Africa has avoided Ebola.
I see nothing wrong with aid and health care being flown into those countries. They are so backwards that Ebola could wreck their fragile “civilizations”.
The only thing flying out should be health care workers who have been quarintined who are taking a break.
Those shitholes don’t have a damn thing the rest of the world needs.