Ebola isn’t all that hard to contain, but it is still around
Sierra Leone has recorded four new cases of Ebola in a village on its northern border and will likely see more infections in a further setback to efforts to end an 18-month West African epidemic, a senior health official said on Tuesday.
The new cases recorded since the start of the weekend in Sella Kaffta, a village in Kambia District, were all individuals who came into direct contact with a woman who died of the disease late last month.
Pallo Conteh, head of Sierra Leone’s National Ebola Response Centre, said the woman’s family had failed to notify authorities when she fell ill and instead cared for her themselves.
“I am expecting more cases,” he said. “We are sure that the body was washed … so all those who took part in the washing of the corpse, all those who were helping her when she was having wet symptoms would all become infected.”
While soldiers and police have been brought in to ensure that over 1,000 villagers remain in their homes during a quarantine period, Conteh said one individual who had been in contact with the dead woman was still missing.
Authorities were attempting to track her through her telephone communications, he added.
The longer this thing hangs around, the more it adapts to humans – and the methods they use to contain it. All it has to do is hit the right gay flight attendant, and the carnage would begin.
When you can’t stop people from washing and kissing the bodies of Ebola victims, you have a problem. Ebola won’t be the big one, but it shows you how if something highly contagious, like the right Flu strain hit, how it would rip through humanity. It would not only take out the idiots and the disease prone (read third worlders and gays), but it would also eliminate a large swath of those who associate with the idiots (read liberals).
I still think something disease-wise may be the apocalypse’s path. It would certainly do a thorough job of cleaning out the gene pool, and restoring the natural order.
Apocalypse cometh™
If people in Africa could quit fornicating with monkeys, eating bushmeat, and getting up close and personal with dead people that moments ago were spewing blood, bile, and shit from every orifice imaginable, that would be fantastic.
Failing that, if we could quit allowing said people into our own country, that would work for me as well. I can deal with skyrocketing chocolate prices and the media telling me what a heartless bastard I am better than I can deal with three quarters of my friends and neighbors dying in a pool of their own fluids.
Agreed. Same here.