<story><title>Firestone Stopped Ebola in Its Tracks</title><url>http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/06/354054915/firestone-did-what-governments-have-not-stopped-ebola-in-its-tracks/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>danieltillett</author><text>&amp;gt;This article is exactly WHY I am not legitimately concerned about a wide-spread infection in the Western world.&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the moral argument of preventing huge numbers of innocent people from dying Ebola if we can, there are two reason we in the west should be concerned:&lt;p&gt;1. There is a serious risk that Ebola will mutate to become more infectious. It is very unlikely to become airborne (this is about as likely as pigs becoming airborne), but it could relatively easily mutate to slow down its kill speed. At the moment Ebola kills so quickly that there is little time for a patient to spread it to other people. Ebola is under huge selection pressure to slow down the disease progression in humans. We could see a strain arise that takes a month to kill you where you are asymptotically infectious for a couple of weeks. Model this sort of virus and things look far less rosy for us in the west. The more people we let Ebola infect the more likely that such a strain will arise.&lt;p&gt;2. Once the number of cases get very large (25,000 a day by Jan 2015 according to the CDC) this is going to start disrupting international trade as countries close their borders. We already saw the sort of recession that can result from disruptions to trade when this happened in the GFC and the Asian crisis in the 90s. With interest rates at or near zero in most countries there is not much that can be done to buffer us economically.</text></item><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>Honestly what it really boils down to is resources and money (&amp;quot;resource&amp;quot; can also be described as &amp;quot;money&amp;quot; therefore really money and money).&lt;p&gt;Up until very recently there were simply not enough hazmat suits, not enough burn-able bedding, not enough people (who wants to work with Ebola?), not enough disinfectant, and heck even clean water in SOME areas.&lt;p&gt;Then you have to consider how damn hot it is there, so a $5 hazmat suit may not cut it (this article covers that). Now you&amp;#x27;re dealing with suits costing tens of times more than that for basic AC, just to allow the people in them to work longer shifts.&lt;p&gt;You also have a lot of local population pushback. The hazmat suits scare people, and all locals see is Ebola patients go into treatment and die. There is a lot of suspicion that Westerners are getting people sick to kill them, so they hide away family members until they get infectious.&lt;p&gt;What can be done? Money, and resources. It isn&amp;#x27;t a magic bullet but if you train a metric ton of local people and give them everything they could possibly need it would at least slow the spread if not reverse it entirely...&lt;p&gt;PS - This article is exactly WHY I am not legitimately concerned about a wide-spread infection in the Western world. We are simply too rich, we have or can acquire the resources, and even your average Joe Smith on the street can Google how to protect themselves from Ebola exposure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Shivetya</author><text>the real threat is that this disease is going to come to more Westernize countries and fester amongst poor populations who already do not trust their local officials. combine this with a sense of entitlement far too many people have when it comes to travel and restrictions of such, already in the US there is push back from those being monitored who had contact with the Dallas patient. We even have protesters rallying because a dog was put down.&lt;p&gt;How do you contain irrational actions, the mutation of the disease may occur or not occur, but damn if a bunch of people aren&amp;#x27;t exercising self destructive behavior.&lt;p&gt;People love to ridicule the Africans suffering through this as backward and superstitious all the while ignoring that entitlement, arrogance, and such, will cause similar containment issues in supposedly better countries.&lt;p&gt;The fact that traffic hasn&amp;#x27;t been stopped already is criminal, its starting to read like World War Z. Europe will have it worse as they cannot easily control people getting in, the US has an ocean but air travel tends to mitigate that.</text></comment>
<story><title>Firestone Stopped Ebola in Its Tracks</title><url>http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/06/354054915/firestone-did-what-governments-have-not-stopped-ebola-in-its-tracks/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>danieltillett</author><text>&amp;gt;This article is exactly WHY I am not legitimately concerned about a wide-spread infection in the Western world.&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the moral argument of preventing huge numbers of innocent people from dying Ebola if we can, there are two reason we in the west should be concerned:&lt;p&gt;1. There is a serious risk that Ebola will mutate to become more infectious. It is very unlikely to become airborne (this is about as likely as pigs becoming airborne), but it could relatively easily mutate to slow down its kill speed. At the moment Ebola kills so quickly that there is little time for a patient to spread it to other people. Ebola is under huge selection pressure to slow down the disease progression in humans. We could see a strain arise that takes a month to kill you where you are asymptotically infectious for a couple of weeks. Model this sort of virus and things look far less rosy for us in the west. The more people we let Ebola infect the more likely that such a strain will arise.&lt;p&gt;2. Once the number of cases get very large (25,000 a day by Jan 2015 according to the CDC) this is going to start disrupting international trade as countries close their borders. We already saw the sort of recession that can result from disruptions to trade when this happened in the GFC and the Asian crisis in the 90s. With interest rates at or near zero in most countries there is not much that can be done to buffer us economically.</text></item><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>Honestly what it really boils down to is resources and money (&amp;quot;resource&amp;quot; can also be described as &amp;quot;money&amp;quot; therefore really money and money).&lt;p&gt;Up until very recently there were simply not enough hazmat suits, not enough burn-able bedding, not enough people (who wants to work with Ebola?), not enough disinfectant, and heck even clean water in SOME areas.&lt;p&gt;Then you have to consider how damn hot it is there, so a $5 hazmat suit may not cut it (this article covers that). Now you&amp;#x27;re dealing with suits costing tens of times more than that for basic AC, just to allow the people in them to work longer shifts.&lt;p&gt;You also have a lot of local population pushback. The hazmat suits scare people, and all locals see is Ebola patients go into treatment and die. There is a lot of suspicion that Westerners are getting people sick to kill them, so they hide away family members until they get infectious.&lt;p&gt;What can be done? Money, and resources. It isn&amp;#x27;t a magic bullet but if you train a metric ton of local people and give them everything they could possibly need it would at least slow the spread if not reverse it entirely...&lt;p&gt;PS - This article is exactly WHY I am not legitimately concerned about a wide-spread infection in the Western world. We are simply too rich, we have or can acquire the resources, and even your average Joe Smith on the street can Google how to protect themselves from Ebola exposure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wobbleblob</author><text>&amp;gt;Ebola is under huge selection pressure to slow down the disease progression in humans. We could see a strain arise that takes a month to kill you where you are asymptotically infectious for a couple of weeks.&lt;p&gt;The virus doesn&amp;#x27;t gave a goal, to kill the patient. The death of the host is just an unfortunate side effect that really harms the spread of the virus. The really successful viruses have mutated to a form where they don&amp;#x27;t kill the host, don&amp;#x27;t make you sick enough to stay in bed, and just make you go to work and cough and sneeze all over everyone at the office.</text></comment>