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WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

nytimes.com

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Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#71

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ticulatedspline wrote: post #13
jmyeet wrote: post #8

First hantavirus now this. Look, there's valid reason to be concerned here but people who are fearing a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic are seemingly missing why Covid was a pandemic. Covid spread so much for four main reasons: 1. It could spread airborne; 2. It spread relatively easily. Not quite measles-level of contagiousness but still, pretty good; 3. Unlike something like the flu, there really wasn't any kind of…

forgot 5. Covid was exactly the right amount of deadly, 0.5-1% which made it easy to "roll the dice" on making containment harder.

> Covid was exactly the right amount of deadly, 0.5-1%

Tough to say that's "exactly the right amount of deadly" for a pandemic when the Black Death and Spanish flu killed larger fractions of their total affected populations (in the latter case, of humans) [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics_and_pandemic...

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#72

Post by [deleted] »

nrdxp wrote: post #70
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46

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 (…

[dead]

[deleted]

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#73

Post by whynotmaybe »

thinkcontext wrote: post #7

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.

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.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#74

Post by jmyeet »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54
jmyeet wrote: post #8

First hantavirus now this. Look, there's valid reason to be concerned here but people who are fearing a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic are seemingly missing why Covid was a pandemic. Covid spread so much for four main reasons: 1. It could spread airborne; 2. It spread relatively easily. Not quite measles-level of contagiousness but still, pretty good; 3. Unlike something like the flu, there really wasn't any kind of…

Covid turned into a pandemic because it wasn't taken seriously at the start. (Looking at you, China.) Public-health experts never seemed concerned about hantavirus. They are with this. It's appropriate to take their declarations seriously. > Ebola generally requires contact to spread "Human infection occurs through close contact with the blood or secretions of infected wildlife, such as bats or non-human primates, an…

First, we still don't know the origins of Covid-19. The most accepted answer is zoonotic origin but there are problems with that, namely that Wuhan is far from the suspected bats and there is no documented case of Covid-19 in any wild population. The other competing theory is the "lab leak" family but again there's no evidence of this eitehr. Research and findings of Covid-19 in Italian sewerage suggest that Covid-19 might've been circulating in Italy in 2019 [1]. So another possibility is that Covid-19 resulted from forming a virulent strain in a person who was infected with multiple strains at once [2].

We may never know the true origins of Covid-19.

So with asymptomatic spread and a novel virus, it's unlikely that whatever China did actually mattered at all. Once cases reached the US in particular, it was game over. People just can't miss work. There were very few places that maintain zero Covid for any significant period of time (eg Australia) through a combination of luck, geography and extreme quarantine. By geography I mean Australia doesn't have any land borders. And even then it only lasted so long.

[1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7428442/

[2]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9059428/

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#76

Post by ViktorRay »

Many of the people worrying about this should stop worrying.

The average commentator on this website, if he or she dies this year, will be more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident or due to the complications of cardiovascular disease, or due to cancer.

If you’re going to spend time worrying, worry about all those things instead. When it comes to infectious diseases, the flu is more likely to kill the people here than hantavirus or Ebola. Make sure to get your flu vaccines.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#77

Post by lejalv »

rob_c wrote: post #39
mschuster91 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case I'd guess the DOGE cuts to foreign aid are a massive, massive contributor to the problem. A lot of third-world countries heavily relied on USAID et al to keep basic sanitation and healthcare going.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#78

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ViktorRay wrote: post #76

Many of the people worrying about this should stop worrying. The average commentator on this website, if he or she dies this year, will be more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident or due to the complications of cardiovascular disease, or due to cancer. If you’re going to spend time worrying, worry about all those things instead. When it comes to infectious diseases, the flu is more likely to kill the people her…

You're right that this shouldn't cause worry. But it should command attention. At least as much as that stupid hantavirus nothingburger did.

Re: WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

#79

Post by dpark »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #51
rob_c wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> "no evidence of human to human transmission" Directly contradicted by the WHO: "...spreads from person to person through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs, or other bodily fluids of infected individuals or contaminated surfaces" [1]. [1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...

That’s a reference to the early Covid 19 investigations/reporting.

https://x.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?lang=en

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