171–180 of 260 posts
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But I do worry a bit about dying in a car accident, it's why I wear my seatbelt, drive safe, try to drive defensively. Adding both those risks together still is a higher risk than before...
The risk of dying is 100% for everyone alive.
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> sure there's a parable about teaching someone to fish rather than feeding them This is less about feeding a neighbor than digging them a latrine so they stop crapping in your water supply.
Wow, why hasn't world leader China and progressive Europe stepped up to make up the difference? Don't they care about their own safety? They should be tripling funding to the WHO. This lies directly at their feet.
Why should we expect anyone to step up? The default state of diseases is that they are not managed.
And as China (and maybe even Europe) do pivot, I'm not sure why they'd prioritise preventing it from spreading to Americans (we have troops stationed in the region) versus to their own homelands.
This is the WHO announcement: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d... This is our CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/index.html And yes, this is a big deal. Public health emergencies of international concern are a short list consisting of, in their entirety: swine flu ('09 to '10), polio ('14 on), ebola ('13 to '16), Zika ('16), ebola ('19 to '20), Covid ('20 to '23), monkeypox (…
The only actually serious one on that list is Covid, and the title and the nyt are lying, they declared an international emergency, not a global one, there is no chance this spreads outside of sub-saharan Africa.
That's the only one on the list that turned into a pandemic emergency.
> they declared an international emergency, not a global one
...you're mincing words in a silly way.
> there is no chance this spreads outside of sub-saharan Africa
Not what the public-health experts are saying! We currently don't actually know where it's gone. Given multi-week incubation periods, we won't know for a couple weeks where it is right now.
Keep in mind that eastern DRC and South Sudan are host to multiple internationalised conflicts right now. There are easy ways this could spread to the Gulf, Russia, America or Asia through troops and trade.
This is the WHO announcement: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d... This is our CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/index.html And yes, this is a big deal. Public health emergencies of international concern are a short list consisting of, in their entirety: swine flu ('09 to '10), polio ('14 on), ebola ('13 to '16), Zika ('16), ebola ('19 to '20), Covid ('20 to '23), monkeypox (…
No it's not a big deal. Ebola is deadly if you catch it but it is not very contagious at all. You need to be in contact with someone's fluids basically. It can't go very far.
This isn't straight Ebolavirus (Zaire), but this thing [1]. We don't have enough data yet to confirm it spreads like Ebola among humans.
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It's been picked up late because it's from Goma, a region in Congo currently operated by the March 23 Movement a "rebel" group against the current Congo's government.
GDP per capita, $1,884. I don't think poverty is a coincidence. Helping them become wealthy is a global health priority.
I read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains. I'm no epidemiologist but being less deadly could allow it to spread further, which is obviously concerning. Also, the article says surveillance picked up the spread late. I wonder if the US's pulling back from the WHO and other international functions had anything to do with this, it used to make up a big chunk of its resources and staff.
> read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains "Case fatality rates in the past two [Bundibugyo virus disease] outbreaks, reported in Uganda and in DRC in 2007 and 2012, have ranged from approximately 30% to 50%" [1]. Given "as of 15 May, a total of 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths" were reported, the current disease's 33% fatality rate is in the historic range. [1] https://www.who.int/emerge…
The OG Ebola had almost 100% fatality rate, and a short gestation time (I think only a few days). It didn't spread too far. The one that killed a few thousand people, though, had about a 50% fatality rate, and I think its gestation period was a bit over a week (these are the products of a faulty memory, but quoting LLM output isn't considered polite, hereabouts, and, for all we know, they could hallucinate the stats, anyway). Also, a hemorrhagic fever pretty much chews up your organs, so it's likely to drive bad health outcomes, for the rest of our lives, even if we survive.
HIV/AIDS has (the meds just keep it at bay) a 100% fatality rate, but a very long gestation period.
COVID, I believe, had about a 1% rate, in the OG variant, and that brought the world to a standstill. I think Spanish Flu (another world standstill), had about 2.5%, and a relatively short gestation period, but it was also quite communicable.
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> and are there for the resources that the DRC has Oh dear. This has found its way on to HN. Since finding resources that clearly explain the situation is difficult from the west and difficult in english, the situation is many times more complicated. It's true that some of the resources that flow out of the eastern DRC flow out through Rwanda. It's true that M23 is clearly backed by Rwandan people and money. And for…
Thank you for the insightful summary! Found this interesting tidbit on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Rwanda : > Although these groups were distinct and stratified in relation to one another, the boundary between Tutsi and Hutu was somewhat open to social mobility. The Tutsi elite were defined by their exclusive ownership of land and cattle. Hutus, however, though disenfranchised socially and politica…
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To expand on this, it's universally accepted that they're a group backed by Rwanda, and are there for the resources that the DRC has, which are being trafficked to Rwanda for export.
> and are there for the resources that the DRC has Oh dear. This has found its way on to HN. Since finding resources that clearly explain the situation is difficult from the west and difficult in english, the situation is many times more complicated. It's true that some of the resources that flow out of the eastern DRC flow out through Rwanda. It's true that M23 is clearly backed by Rwandan people and money. And for…
You start like you're disagreeing with me, but in the end it seems to me you're just providing some (very much needed) context around the whole quagmire.
The Eastern DRC has been a mess since forever, and nobody's actions seem to be towards improving the situation. But ultimately, M23 control parts of it, probably couldn't care less about public health, and they're why Rwanda is suddenly a major resource exporter for things it doesn't have. Nobody is saying it's simple, but that's the headline.