A grave digger in Liberia. If the WHO is right he will be very busy. Yahoo/AP
The World Health Organization, (WHO) is estimating that in as little as two months there could be 10,000 new Ebola cases a week. Yahoo/AP. Currently there has been around 1000 new cases a month, but that number is likely to explode if nothing is done. The WHO estimates that 70% of cases need to be isolated if there is to be any hope of combating the disease. They are especially concerned that the disease is out of control in the capital cities of Freetown, Conakry and Monrovia. The focus now is on setting up small clinics and delivering home treatment kits. The WHO also acknowledged that the fatality rate for this outbreak is a full 20% higher then they admitted to before. Before they claimed that only half of people that caught the disease but in reality 70% who catch the disease die.
My Comment:
None of this is new news but it is alarming to hear the WHO admit it. It's been clear for a long time that Ebola's growth is exponential and that it is killing far more then the lower 50% estimate. Of course even if the number of new Ebola cases stayed steady and didn't increase it would still be a massive disaster that would eventually destroy West Africa. But if it does end up infecting 10,000 people a week, then the end will come much sooner. And a large majority of those people will die from the disease alone, not to mention the famine, civil disorder and general chaos that is sure to follow. Remember the combined population of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea is only 20 million people. At 10,000 people a week it wouldn't take long before the question stops being how many people have died from Ebola (and the breakdown of society) and becomes how many people are left that haven't. I seriously doubt that the infection rate will cap at 10,000 cases a week. It will only go up.
The situation is apocalyptic in West Africa right now. There is no other way to say it. It doesn't even seem possible to stop this outbreak with conventional means. And if we don't stop it in West Africa we won't stop it everywhere else. If things keep going the way they are going the epidemic is going to spread out of control in other third world countries and cause untold chaos, even in first world ones. So we have to start asking ourselves some hard questions. At what point do we have to say to ourselves "do the lives of 20 million people in West Africa matter more then the rest of us?" If the answer to that question is no, then eventually we may have to pull back and quarantine the whole area. A total closing of the borders in those countries would be a death sentence for West Africa, true, but it might end up being necessary. Some would argue that we have no right to condemn 20 million people to death. My question is if the epidemic can't be contained and continues to grow at an exponential rate do we really have the right to not do so?
I really, really hope it doesn't come to that. Containment might work. New drug treatments might work. The disease could mutate into a less dangerous form. People might wise up in West Africa. An effective vaccine might be found. But humanity, as a species, needs to start preparing as if none of those things will happen. If we don't it might just be the end of all of us, or, at the very least, the end of our civilization. We must fight Ebola with everything we have, but if it starts to look like Ebola has won in West Africa we must keep all options on the table. Even the unthinkable ones...
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