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CDC Director Warns that Congo’s Ebola Outbreak may not be Containable

posted by martyb on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the shtf-scenario-4a dept.

canopic jug writes:

The Washington Post is reporting that the Center for Disease Control's director is warning that the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola outbreak may not be containable. The ongoing conflicts in the region might ensure that the disease becomes entrenched instead of coming under control. If it becomes endemic to the province then it will become impossible to trace contacts, stop transmission chains, and contain the outbreak. Apparently 60% to 80% of the newly-confirmed cases have no known epidemiological link to prior cases, indicating loss of control and fewer options for prevention or treatment. High level political attention is becoming needed at this point for there to be a solution.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:32PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:32PM (#760406)

    Do we have the ability to send large numbers of people to those places?

    Nope, so it may not be possible to contain the outbreak. One of the benefits of AI cars would be that in extreme situations like a highly contagious outbreak, people wouldn't need to go out and interact with each other. Items could be sterilized at each step of the process the box leaving the robotic warehouse, the box coming into somebody's home, the contents of the box via microwaving.

    It might not completely stop an outbreak, but it would likely contain it to a small percentage of the population. Most viruses that are dangerous like that tend not to survive very long outside the body and in cases like this where there's such difficulty in spreading, they'd likely die off naturally in a matter of a few weeks.

    However, in the current state of society, it's hard to get everybody to stay indoors away from other people for long enough for such contagious diseases to wipe themselves out by running out of uninfected hosts.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Sunday November 11 2018, @12:44AM

    by legont (4179) on Sunday November 11 2018, @12:44AM (#760532)

    Most viruses that are dangerous like that tend not to survive very long outside the body and in cases like this where there's such difficulty in spreading, they'd likely die off naturally in a matter of a few weeks.

    That's simply because they did not kill us - the observers - yet. Nobody's left to report more robust ones.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.