There are basically four things that you might want to really know about Ebola and where this current event in Africa might go onto.
First, Ebola has no drug or treatment to stop it. Since discovered in a outbreak in the mid-70's.....what the medical folks have found is that it runs through a community....you quarantine those affected....they die at a ninety-percent rate....and no one has put much time or resources into finding the cause or drug to fight it. The chief organ affected? The liver. But you start bleeding out of various orifices once you get to the final stage, and there's nothing left at that point. Incubation period? Somewhere up to three weeks....that you could walk around with it and show only minimum affects.
Second, it comes up every year or two....some medical folks arrive in some community and they quarantine the affected. You can draw a square of roughly four-hundred by four-hundred miles, and it's typically staying in that square.
Third, the medical guys think it's all related to some disease from monkeys....but beyond that....it's not settled science. Yeah, unlike global warming.....no one really cares much to research this.
Fourth.....everyone felt safe until the disease this month kinda stepped out of the square and got into Nigeria, and some Americans tending the sick were identified having the disease.
The scenarios that worry folks? Let's say that Johan of Germany.....business guy....gets sent down to Nigeria and entertains various companies for three weeks, and on the last couple of days....meets up with some guy at a fancy bar. The lady next to business coughs a bit and Johan notices that she sweats a bit. Six days later....Johan boards the plane with joint pain starting up. Fourteen hour flight back to Germany, and he feels a mild fever by the landing point.
Johan crosses through customs in Frankfurt....takes a train home....calls his boss and just says he's tired and needs a week off.
Johan buys up some groceries....stops at the drug store for flu medication.....and has come into contract with 352 people since the night at the bar.....to include another 198 on the plane home.
Johan has serious fever issues by the fourth day at home....thinking he might go to the doctor the next day. By the fifth day....he's not able to rise out of bed and no one knows his crisis situation. Two days later, he passes away in bed.
The boss gets the cops to come out two days later because Johan won't answer the phone. Dead Johan.....cops puzzled by the mess....lots of flu medicine out.....blood coming out of various parts of Johan's body.
Med staff arrives....isolates the place....refusing to touch him. The Hamburg clinic that handles stuff like this is called and takes four hours to get there. By the seventh day since coming back into country....they've discovered the Ebola connection.
Now? There's at least twelve people who came into contact with Johan....getting flu-like symptoms.....who the authorities are racing to figure out who the 500-odd people are that might have issues. It'll take a full day to figure out the 500 and then shock everyone that a dozen people are now quarantined, and likely to die within five days. The folks they came into contact with? Numbering up into the six-hundred range. Forty of them will be determined to have Ebola by the next day.
At this point, the German government can't keep it quiet, and are privately worried about how to force people into quarantine.....even if they aren't showing symptoms.
By day thirty-six upon Johan's return to Germany.....around 39 people are now dead, and at least five-hundred are in quarantine, with another 2,000 people on the soon-to-be-quarantined list.
By day sixty-five upon Johan's return to Germany.....around 320 people are now dead, and at least six thousand are in some form of quarantine. Mothers refuse to send kids to school. Teachers refuse to come to school. Bus drivers are questioning the right to refuse to work. Bundeswehr troops are now introduced to quarantine camps and actively controlling people with authority of law that no one ever believed to exist.
By day one hundred.....one thousand people have died and forty thousand people are now in some form of quarantine. Grocery operations have slowed to only five days a week. Gas only gets delivered once a week to stations. Airports now have authority to halt any and all travelers to the US or any country for that matter.
By day three hundred.....two million Germans dead, and around three million in some form of quarantine.
The whole scenario thing revolves around one thing.....it stays in that square area of Africa, period. If it leaves that area and branches out into other countries with major airline traffic....we are screwed.
Those surviving the Ebola? I suspect because of the liver being the focus of the disease....it'll really hit the liver hard. You might survive....but I'll bet your liver is screwed up for the rest of your life. So avoiding it.....is priority number one.
And if we miss on this time around? Great. But there's always next year or some day five years down the line....when it'll leave that square area, and get to civilization. And then.....we are screwed.
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