re: What We’re Afraid to Say About Ebola

quote:

---

This West African outbreak is the first to really see Ebola show up in urban areas and large population centers.

---

I was naive to think that most on this board understood that Ebola had never before been found in a densely packed human population. The West Point slum of Monrovia has some 75,000 people packed into a couple of square miles, for example.

The Liberian government has sealed off the area and will not let anyone enter or leave West Point. The slum amounts to a crucible for Ebola to evolve into a strain with a more efficient human-to-human mode of transmission, namely airborne.

While all virologists know this is a possibility, few, like Dr. Osterholm, are willing to speak publicly to the subject. To me, this ostrich-head-in-the-sand approach is denying attention to the West African outbreak that it deserves.

Ebola has a new environment, dense population centers, in which to thrive and evolve. If it gets established in Lagos, a megacity of 21 million, Ebola may become the plague many have been predicting since the Spanish flu of 1918.

We shouldn't be arguing the minutiae of its evolution. We should be assuming the worst from its effects and adopting a much more global interest in stopping it. I think the people of 5 West African nations are already on board with that idea.