The standard Ebola picture. Wikipedia/CDC
Chaos erupted in the West Point slum in Liberia as protesters and government troops clashed over the quarantine for Ebola. -Yahoo/Reuters. The protesters were trying to break the quarantine and the soldiers opened fire with live ammunition. At least four people were injured, including a young boy who had most of his leg shot off. Liberia is running out of supplies and medicine while the West Point slum is running out of everything, including food. Costs of even the most basic goods in the slum have skyrocketed.
My Comment:
For the sake of clarity, West Point is the slum where looters attacked an Ebola clinic and stole infected blankets and other goods. And this is exactly what I was worried about. Ebola is terrible enough on its own but the economic and social conflicts that the disease is causing are the real threat. But what else can they do? West Point is most likely doomed and to let free travel from the slum could kill even more people. Of course shooting a bunch of people will just turn more people against the government and make it harder for those people to believe the governments line on Ebola. No matter what happens Ebola wins. This situation is horrible.
As a side note I'm not sure where Reuters is getting the 1350 number for the death toll. The last number i saw was 1427 and those numbers are a week old. And even those numbers are optimistic because many cases and deaths have not been reported yet. And I doubt it counts the people who died in the Democratic Republic of Congo, though that may be a separate outbreak.
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