I am terrified of that Ebola virus, and I am sure that I am not alone in this opinion. Whether true or false, this story will be bad for the Moroccan tourist industry.
Here’s the deal....if this makes it to Morocco....there’s at least a thousand German tourists per week who vacation there on the ‘cheap’. All it takes is for one of them to get into contact with someone....drag the virus back to the Frankfurt airport, and infect a dozen folks on the flight back, and another fifty at the airport. Within a week...you’ve got a thousand Germans with the deadly virus.
As long as it stayed in rural areas of Africa...we were all safe. Once it gets to an urban area where aircraft fly frequently out of....it’s a bad deal.
I read that it varies from around 40%-90% mortality, depending on the type and circumstances.
I find those numbers very concerning, too.
Thankfully, and hopefully, it tends to seem to be self-limiting. The highest number of known deaths from any outbreak was 280 in 1976.
Whether true or false, this story will be bad for the Moroccan tourist industry.
If it is true, I hope so. There are other places to vacation.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks for a list of previous outbreaks.
There is at least one similar virus in the United States. The Hantavirus in the western US usually presents as Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome. It has a 38% mortality rate. I live where it exists, and am very careful when I clean anywhere a mouse may have been, since mice are how it spreads.
http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/hps/symptoms.html