67 pointsby saikatsg5 hours ago8 comments
  • SilentM684 hours ago
    As I am not an expert on this subject, what is it about this part of the world that seems to be a hotbed for Ebola and what, if anything, can local governments do to reduce its likelihood of reoccurring?
    • asdff4 hours ago
      People eat the reservoir species for these diseases in these areas. Not much local government can do about something that has been done for all of human history. Can't exactly tell a hungry person capable of hunting for themselves to stop hunting for themselves and go without.
      • gus_massa3 hours ago
        I agree, but it's more complicated.

        Some people in the developed world like to collect mushroom, and when someone misidentify one of them can have a horrible death.

        I guess some of the hunter would say:

        fake quote> The morons can't get their own food and must pay someone to fish in a barrel for them.

        Anyway, I agree that the lot of rules that farmer and butchers must follow improve a lot the safety of the meat we eat.

      • SilentM6820 minutes ago
        It's hard to dismiss a population's drive to eat out of hunger. When its survival is at stake sometimes there is no choice but to hunt and eat what is available. It's hard to choose between animal's survival and your own survival.

        Those hotspot areas are notoriously infamous for government coups and instability being commonplace. Even so, if a large percentage of the world population is at risk, then I would hope that friendly regional authorities would have enough forethought and common sense to, at least, find alternative methods of feeding their population, including asking for help.

        I totally get that there are places where "authoritarian regimes and dictatorships or fragile and failed states," standby and do nothing, because it is in their interest or corruption is the norm. But even so, being a continuous obstacle, or an indirect cause to a potential world catastrophe, be it natural or man-made while willingly refusing to do something about it, should carry permanent, serious and long-lasting consequences for any government found to be negligent.

        Not trying to make lite of this situation, but in cases like these, the needs of the many must truly outweigh the needs of the, corrupt few.

        Thank you for letting me in!

        Sol Roth

        PS:

        Hope you like the décor. I’m redecorating your thoughts permanently.

    • mschuster914 hours ago
      > what is it about this part of the world that seems to be a hotbed for Ebola

      Utter poverty. No money for wastewater and freshwater treatment, no money to pay for good food instead of hunting wild game and properly (!) processing and storing it, no money to pay for healthcare and basic hygienic supplies, no money to pay for proper housing to keep pests away.

      In other diseases, even modern Western countries aren't far away from serious issues if even one of these preconditions collapses. Homeless encampments are a persistent source of nasty bugs, you get water boil-off orders after damages to the tap water systems for similar reasons, and hell Covid showed how vulnerable we are to supply chain interruptions for basic PPE.

      • asdff3 hours ago
        It also doesn't help the game species that are hunted are a lot closer to ourselves in relation than many other typical game species elsewhere in the world. Much more likely for zoonotic spillover.
  • 4 hours ago
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  • bekon4 hours ago
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  • yieldcrv4 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • JumpCrisscross4 hours ago
      > while the US has already proved it can treat this when on our shores, with run of the mill blood transfusions, from the last time this happened

      Source?

      • yieldcrv3 hours ago
        12 years ago

        https://abcnews.com/Health/blood-transfusions-ebola-survivor... (find a source that you like)

        and FDA has other treatment recommendations that supersede this now

        we one shotted this the first time it ever made it to the US, like I wrote, its only a mystery disease while in Africa

        • JumpCrisscrossan hour ago
          > 12 years ago

          This is a novel ebolavirus species [1]. It's "closely related to the Zaire ebolaviruses." But it's at the very least different enough to be spreading undetected.

          I'm not particularly concerned right now. But I think it would be a mistake to assume this disease has been–or can rapidly be–one shotted.

          [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundibugyo_ebolavirus

  • tencentshill4 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • nomel4 hours ago
      America is not to blame for them being unable to have a functional government for how long now?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_the_Democratic_R...

      • merksoftworks4 hours ago
        Nor are the victims of preventable disease to be blamed for being born into countries without functioning governments. I'm happy to pay $37 as a U.S. taxpayer if it saves the life of someone I'll never meet.
        • nomel3 hours ago
          Note that around $11 of that goes to fund that corruption [1].

          To save vastly more lives, and increase the standard of living in the whole country, it might be more efficient for the American government to interfere with the local elections/politics, to help purge the corruption. I believe that sometimes people do need to be saved, but trying to do that by putting bandaids on cuts made by the people actively beating them definitely isn't the way to do that.

          [1] https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/investigation/2020/06/12/...

        • dbvn4 hours ago
          you don't get to speak for all taxpayers. You can donate your $37
          • gopher_space3 hours ago
            They’re speaking for taxpayers who understand causality and have a planning horizon.
            • nomel29 minutes ago
              A planning horizon would involve fixing the actual problem, which is the corruption in their government, rather than indirectly supporting it.

              I think both are required. Make sure disease spread is understood and prevented and also make it so we don't have to babysit them. They're capable of having a functioning government, right?

      • baxtr3 hours ago
        This is one of the unfortunate topics where calculating the costs of providing something is very straightforward, but the benefits (apart from being a decent human being) are near impossible to quantify without making wild guesses about causality.

        You have to believe that somewhere down the line, you or your children will benefit from a world with fewer deadly pathogens.

      • JumpCrisscross4 hours ago
        There are two issues: humanitarian aid and infectious-disease surveillance. The former is debatable. The latter, which has left us blinded to the facts on the ground, was pure DOGE stupidity.
    • 4 hours ago
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  • dwa35924 hours ago
    >>Outbreaks between people start when somebody catches Ebola from an infected animal

    >>It spreads through infected bodily fluids, such as blood and vomit.

    Can someone please educate me on how ebola is spreading? are these 100 deaths because of virus transmission from infected animals or from humans? if from humans - then how is it spreading given that it spreads via blood and vomit.

    • traceroute664 hours ago
      > Can someone please educate me on how ebola is spreading? are these 100 deaths because of virus transmission from infected animals or from humans?

      Human to human.

      Its not only "blood and vomit", it is any bodily fluid, so you also have sweat, saliva, breast milk and semen.

      So you therefore have bedding, clothing, or medical equipment soiled with infected fluids.

      And preparation of the body after death.

      Bearing in mind viral load (concentration of Ebola in bodily fluids) is often high, so it does not take much.

      In addition, delayed diagnosis is not uncommon.

      Access to and adherence to infection control can easily be a problem.

      So, in essence you have various routes to amplification of spread.

    • JumpCrisscross4 hours ago
      > * how is it spreading given that it spreads via blood and vomit*

      Note that this isn’t the Zaire ebolavirus. We’re still pinning down specifics.

    • mordechai90004 hours ago
      A handful get infected from direct exposure to animals. Then it spreads to family and others in the community. Sometimes people travel and bring it to a new location. Sadly, it is often the caregivers who get infected.
    • dwa35923 hours ago
      thanks for the explanations. BBC's line is so confusing; i thought semen and breast milk would be the key reasons but they wrote 'bodily fluids such as blood and vomit' and I just couldn't figure out how it was transmitting through vomit.
    • mschuster914 hours ago
      > then how is it spreading given that it spreads via blood and vomit.

      Water, mostly. Bad sanitation is one of the major drivers behind most if not all epidemics. If you don't have clean water to drink because your wells are contaminated with fecal matter, you're screwed. The sick contaminate the environment for everyone else.

    • throwatdem123114 hours ago
      Look up “African dry sex”. Sorry.
  • frmersdog4 hours ago
    >Zero comments half-an-hour later, despite being on the front page

    That tracks.

    • ortusdux4 hours ago
      > Hacker News Guidelines

      > What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

      > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

      Why comment on a post that will be gone in 20 minutes?

    • tombert4 hours ago
      I mean, it's a sad story but I'm not entirely sure I have much to say about it. I doubt I'm unique.