We called this one last month: The outbreak, while still active, has virtually been stopped dead in its tracks.
In the last month, there have been only 13 additional deaths (in a month!), and the number of confirmed EVD cases has gone down. (IOW, some cases they thought were Ebola, turned out not to be.)
Caveats:
1) It's Africa: they could f**k up a crowbar in a sandpile, and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory left unsupervised. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
2) There are a couple of areas of active outbreak where the armed nitwits there have driven away all aid, clinic, contact tracking, and vaccination efforts. This is roughly the equivalent of having a gunfight inside a nuclear power plant. In both cases, everything could blow up catastrophically.
But based on how it looks, this one's going to go away, eventually.
Think happy thoughts.
This is what happens when it hits people too poor to get away, and we have a highly effective vaccine.
So far, so good.
Until next time.
So science can create a vaccine for Ebola but not for HIV?
ReplyDeleteThings that make you go Hmmm.
Science doesn’t create anything, people do. Mainly white males if you want to break it down, but whatever.
DeleteYou’re an idiot if you think every single medical advancement is going to happen simultaneously. By your idiotic reasoning, “Science can create a vaccine for polio, but not for Ebola? Things that make you go hmmm-hurr-durr”.
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteYeah, because the receptor sites on Ebola don't mutate like the ones on HIV do.
Science: still an actual thing.
Turn in your tinfoil millinery at the desk.
Just this morning on the local Omaha news, our University Med Center (UNMC) was touting their upgraded Ebola treatment capabilities. A seemingly effective vaccine, better quarantine procedures, more training, yada yada. No mention of the problem of having more than 12 patients at one time or enough supplies for an epidemic. But they are ready to help out! Just what Omaha needs, an imported virus.
ReplyDeleteThank whitey for saving them, they will not.
ReplyDeleteThis epidemic may be ending.
ReplyDeleteWhen and where will the next one appear?
I think we should spend a few million dollars here in the US manufacturing and stockpiling several hundred thousand doses over the next few years. The EU Europe and Japan and Korea in Asia should either do the same, or pay for us to do it for them. Because you know those vaccines will be used sometime in the next two to five years. If we can hit it hard and fast with ring vaccination, we hopefully can stop it quickly, and most importantly, IN AFRICA.
This is "Foreign Aid" I can support.
RE
John Wilder nailed it. But the ChiComs are investing in Africa, and THEY understand how to deal with such. They're doing OK with their Muslims, unlike any Western nation...
ReplyDelete"So far so good ..."
ReplyDeleteOK, but what is the mutation rate of this little beastie?
Whelp...NPR said yesterday that current estimates are 24 new cases per day! On the other hand, *THIS* is where i come for news about Ebola! Thus, wondering if Aesop has checked on this subject recently?
ReplyDelete"nuke it from orbit" sure...consider that was in reference to a scourge occurring on an *ALIEN* planet, i'd prefer not add to the radioactive fallout we already have generated on THIS planet...the only one any of us realistically has an option of calling home...