I would make three observations. African healthcare is marginally effective. I’ve watched the video clips of what they do and offer. Limited IV usage...limited food....limited care....limited drugs. If you kept a guy hydrated, with some liquid food, and pumped up on drugs for a week....I think you could get the survival rate up to around forty-to-fifty percent.
Second, unless something changes...I agree with the 1.4 million cases by January. But why stop with January 2015? We could imagine by January of 2020 that sixty million residents of central Africa will pass away. The marginal infrastructure that exists today? It’ll spiral out of control.
Third, mass hysteria is just a step away. Toss in CNN, Fox News and MSNBC doing live intereviews outside of some hospital in Dallas, and people will start to freak out. They can’t handle panic and stress like this.
In my view, (staying on Monrovia), the city could be sectored off....taking the remaining clean sectors, and grouping them together, while putting in a bunch of investigators to chase down any infected and quarantine their contacts..
This leaves you with the slums and poorer area where most of this is taking place. These people have to get out to find food and water, etc..this is how they are being infected. So the answer there in intensive aid, distributed to local distribution areas near the residences or shanty’s, in this case.
Once you get that going, and gain some trust with the locals, you can do the same thing with medical investigators and try to stop the spreading..
But you have to build some infrastructure to do this and the city is a mess, I am sure..
It will take several months, perhaps a year, but I really think it can be done.
We in the US have been dealing with various outbreaks of nasty microbes for most of out history. Most of todays generations don’t know much about that. They don’t have knowledge of Cholera, or the Spanish flu that killed 10-20 % of those infected and ended up killing about 6% of the global population. It did not attack the old or the very young, it hit the people in their prime.
All this past experience has built quite a knowledge base and we can use it in Africa. I think we must...
If total panic ensues, and refugees begin moving across borders, it’s not just Africa in danger.
Thankfully, ebola while deadly, is a fairly simple and well understood disease. it is resistant to major mutations (which complicated the Spanish flu) and that gives you some sense of how to deal with it. So drugs and treatments designed today will be expected to work tomorrow. You also know the elements of progression and it’s almost always the same. So it’s not something that you can’t fight, or contain. But you have to have some degree of assistance from the people there, or you can’t help them.
I’ve already carried out the math to its ultimate logical conclusion:
Ebola May Infect Earth’s Entire Population by December 1, 2015; 50-75% Fatal
self | 2014-09-30 | UBSOTOS
Posted on 9/30/2014, 10:40:47 PM by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3209668/posts