This Ebola outbreak convinced me to read the hot zone. As awful and scary as Ebola is I want everyone reading this to know that it is not a global threat at the moment. This is not a disease that spreads easily.
It would take a very specific species (Ebola Reston) jumping from primate to human for it to become airborne. So long as your country has a well funded medical system that can afford proper cleanliness, you are okay.
The current outbreak is awful and tragic and honestly preventable but it is very unlikely to be a major global threat, as much as news media might present it that way sometimes.
My understanding is that it’s just too good at killing people. The virus needs to have a long incubation period where the person is infectious, but doesn’t show symptoms to really get going.
Yes and no, it does kill people so fast that it would run into spreading roadblocks here and there but its main issue is that it is not airborne. Should it be, the rate it kills people would be unlikely to matter unless we took very serious precautions that some countries have proven to be unwilling to do. It also has a decently long incubation period that could shed disease while not obviously infected.
If Ebola Zaire were airborne (while being as infectious as it is through other methods which is admittedly a stretch but not a huge one) and it got into a major American city and we did not quarantine in time it’d be fucking over. Like we would be unbelievably fucked. The casualties world wide would be astronomical. Covid would be a joke in comparison.
Ebola has the potential to be a big fucking deal but thankfully it is not.
I am actually more scared of Ebola Sudan for the kill rate reason. If it became airborne I think things could be worse. However, Ebola Reston is more closely related to Ebola Zaire so we don’t need to worry about that just yet.
Oh yeah good point, being airborne is a big factor for sure. And yeah, if covid is anything to go buy, we’re just gonna let Ebola rip.
