Surrending to Ebola is not an option

It’s all about Ebola. And beheadings too. Both virulent and both shocking and horrific. But while the former evokes our finest feelings, the latter arouses nothing but revulsion and contempt for the perpetrators who, seemingly, have nothing of value to contribute to the human condition.

         Ebola is a biological agent that recognizes no frontier. It threatens most of its victims with an impartial, squalid death. Unfortunately, the world’s response has, so far, been relatively limp. This lack of resolve in tackling the threat has been difficult to understand, especially since the epidemic has been knocking at doors all around the world.

It is a hundred years since the first recognizably viral epidemic became pandemic, killing some 20 million. Then, as now, the spin doctors fell over each other to create as much confusion as possible, while real doctors had their work cut out trying to contain it. Eventually, the spin doctors satisfied their appetite for mischief by settling on Spain as the source of the epidemic. Thus “Spanish Flu” was born and, for better or worse became the name by which the first influenza pandemic became known.

Around that time, too another game was in progress. In the score card of that one, some say, lie the seeds of the unending chaos in the Middle East that continue to germinate one horror after another. But that was then.

Now is now and we have, in the intervening decades, learned a lot about viruses and the diseases they cause. We know precisely how most of them transmit from person to person and from which animal species some of them migrate. But there is a lot we still don’t know and that has left space for the range of crack-pot notions such as those pervading the internet. They certainly do not need my help for their propagation so I will not mention them. I will also for now, forgo the pleasure of listing the Nobel laureates who, by their work on viruses and virus-related disease have made life safer and better for billions.  Too bad the messages contained in their acts of valor are drowned by foolish utterances of conspiracy theorists who have nothing useful to say.

But perhaps we would not be where we are today with this epidemic and soon-to-be pandemic, Ebola, if others, responsible for keeping the world safe, had taken their job seriously. We are told, for example, that unusual sickness and deaths began to be observed in Guinea in December 2013. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1409858. Yet, astonishingly, neither the Guinean authorities, nor the WHO reported the looming threat until March 23, 2014. We were in Sierra Leone in January/February and, at that time news began to emerge of an outbreak of a hemorrhagic fever in Guinea that was already spreading to Liberia and eastern Sierra Leone. What were the authorities doing? Why did they have to wait till March before sounding the alarm?

Now, today, there are over 8000 Ebola cases in the region, with an overall mortality of more than 50%. And today WHO, perhaps compensating for its earlier dereliction, is pumping up projections of new cases for the next two months. However, one might take comfort in the fact that in Sierra Leone the incidence figures and death statistics are not as dire as the overall picture in the region might suggest, although the slope of the graph describing total cases is getting steeper as the weeks go by.

Sierra Leone Ebola Stats to  12 October 2014

Also, death rate is still being maintained at a steady 30-40%. Grim enough, but not as devastating as for untreated Ebola. Trouble is, can we rely on the quality of the data that the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health put out in their daily briefings? Further, we are now hearing that cases are being turned away from treatment centres. So it is likely that there is under-reporting anyway. Indeed, one online paper is suggesting that the government of Sierra Leone is tacitly surrendering to the virus because it is now encouraging home treatment of patients: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/10/ebola_patients_in_sierra_leone_to_be_treated_at_home.html.

Surrender? Probably not. At least not just yet. Just another way of fighting a relentless foe, against which all available tactics must be deployed.

Tell Fren Tru