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http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/24/opinion/garrett-ebola/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- The Ebola epidemic now raging across three countries in West Africa is three-fold larger than any other outbreak ever recorded for this terrible disease; the only one to have occurred in urban areas and to cross national borders; and officially urgent and serious. At least 1,090 people have contracted the awful disease this year, though the epidemic's true scope is unknown because of widespread opposition to health authorities in afflicted Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Coming across a border near you........

Africa has a population of 1.1 Billion people.

CNN calls an estimated 1000 Ebola cases an epidemic? 672 dead? Epidemic? Maybe they ought to look the word up, before using it where adults with brains can read.

Now, if it truly lives up to it's reputation of wiping out folks of global proportions, there in Africa, I think we ought to help them repopulate their continent. We have plenty here that aren't doing anything but crapping a kid every 9 months from age 12 onward.

We could send them over by boat or plane in a never ending stream.

Seriously. Worry about a deadly contagious disease that truly kills millions. Like TB or Measles. Combined they kill 2.5 MILLION people PER YEAR.

Both are flooding our Southern Border now...and have been.

I wish I knew if this will get interesting.

If we start smelling Africa from here, it got interesting...

Funny how deadly disease origins come from Africa, huh? Yet, they are surprisingly resilient there.

They aren't to aids though. It's rampant.

It's rampant in Africa. It's just not real efficient. Not if there are still 1.1 billion Africans walking around the continent.

I have given this a lot of thought.

Ebola is unlikely to be much of a problem. At least, not by itself. While it kills maybe 90% of those infected, it is relatively easy to avoid infection.

The chances of any one disease/infection being a major problem just is not that high. What is a major threat to us is our own stupidity coupled with the cavalier attitude we have concerning the spread of these infections and diseases.

Example: Lyme disease. Depending upon where you are it is epidemic to pandemic and people just do not listen when you explain what they are up against and how to prevent it.

Example: E Coli 0157/H7. Instead of preventing it, we establish standards for how much E Coli we allow in our ground beef. Treatment of an E Coli 0157/H7 infection consumes a very large amount of medical resources (like Lyme), and yet, wild meat virtually never produces it. Pasture fed beef no matter how poorly pastured, reduces it in beef by 90% in a couple weeks.

Example: Even bubba knows about antibiotic resistance, even if he thinks he personally is immune to one antibiotic or the other. Yet, we have done absolutely nothing to remove antibiotics from animal feed. If we keep dumping antibiotics into animal feed and thus into their gut, it is not a question of if we produce E Coli with the virulence of 0157/H7 and resistance to everything we have, but simply of when. This, while we are simultaneously exposing people to these antibiotics in the meat. That exposure produces very wide ranging allergic reaction to the antibotics, witness the 2001 anthrax scare on the East cost where they passed out Doxycycline like Pez and found out in a hurry that a fairly hgh percentage of people were having reactions to it. Ergo, they switch to Ciprofloxacin which has damn near the same incidence of allergic reaction on initial clinical exposure.

Even with those examples, it's not the bugs alone that will get us. What is going to kill a lot of people is the summation of all those small insults to the population putting us into a situation in which we do not begin to have the medical personnel to handle the much more difficult and labor intensive cases that we are busy producing.

A good example will be coming soon in Gaza. Destroy the infrastructure, stress the medical support infrastructure to beyond it's ability to provide care for those who need it and it will quickly revert to not just decades past problems, but centuries past. The Ebola outbreak is at most right now an unmistakeable precursor. We have lost the ability to compel public health in the US. 5-15 percent of the kids in our schools are not properly vaccinated. Herd health is no longer probable for much longer.

We have been emasculating and depopulating our public health system for just over thirty years. There will be an accounting to nature for all these small insults to keeping us as a global population well. We may be one nasty flu epidemic away from real disaster. There are literally truck loads of smallpox virus gone missing inside Russia. A disaster like those we could have managed fifty years ago perhaps. We managed to wipe out small pox if/when it gets re-released, it will be much more difficult than our current effort trying to wipe out polio which has now basically begun to lose ground.

We have the skill. We have the knowledge. We just keep cutting off noses to spite faces.

For sure, Miles.

If we impress everyone we have into service with post grad medical training, Nurses, paramedics, EMTs, Veterinarians, Dentists, ODs, psychiatrists, etc, I do not believe we are going to be able to manage the coming crisis. This while we today have the ability to prevent it if we choose to. How does a person get his head around the magnitude of dealing with infections by amputation instead of a dime's worth of antibiotics?

When I was a young child people who lost body parts to amputation in the pre-antibiotic era were still a common part of society, and it's difficult for me to comprehend where we are headed, much less why.

Of course a society weakened by the AIDS virus would be very susceptible to the Ebola virus.

Ebola's deadliness will probably keep it contained because the victims die too fast to spread it, but the viral hemorrhagic fevers are scary!

I had not heard that this had hit there again. Time to pray for our brothers and sisters over there.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ebola-town-rapper-shadows-smash-hit-soundtrack-killer-plague-1458650

Liberia has so far witnessed 129 deaths from Ebola in the latest outbreak, according to the World Health Organisation. On Monday, one of the country's top doctors died from the disease after treating victims himself.

Two other medical experts have also contracted Ebola from close contact with victims, in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

The disease has just arrived in Nigeria via an airline passenger whose flight landed in Lagos, triggering fears Ebola could be poised to spread to another country or result into a global outbreak.

The killer virus causes victims to bleed to death from their eyes and all orifices. A carrier can have the virus for three weeks without knowing it and pass it on in that time. There is no cure.

Those who have the time and inclination might want to read; "The Hot Zone". I believe the author is Preston (?).

Reference the experiment in Reston, Va.

What is currently happening is a situation where the selection pressure on the Ebola virus is in favor of a form that can be readily transmitted via drops of saliva on one's breath.

This already happens with similar forms infecting monkeys. As referenced "The Hot Zone" is science-based fiction where a slight shift to human/human transmission occurs

Such a mutation seems entirely probable given the multiple crowded population centers where the virus is now loose. I lived in West Africa for three years; any bus or taxi as folks may take every day and you are jammed in, in full contact with your fellow passengers.

That two Western health workers, absent accidental needle pricks on their part, should come down with the disease in quick succession is NOT reassuring.

This continuing West African ebola outbreak is a smoldering ember that could yet burst into a nightmare.

Bears watching.

Birdwatcher

The virus is so virulent, and turns you to goop inside so quickly and horribly I dunno that ANY human is significantly less susceptible than another.

The 33yr old American doctor who just came down with it looks like he runs marathons.

IIRC your immune system doesn't have the time to even begin to respond and none of our anti-viral drugs have any effect.

Like with rabies, once the symptoms are evident all they can do is isolate and sedate you and wait for the outcome.

Birdwatcher

Hell the flu kills more people each year!!

I have paid at least SOMe attention to previous outbreaks. It appeared they petered out rather quickly because the virus lost some mojo with every downward transmission until it no longer held virulence. THIS one is acting very very differently. It does NOT appear to weaken as it is passed down. Liberia has closed its border crossings. Pandoras box is already open. It could appear here overnight.

Now try to imagine Ebola passed along like the flu.