The Ebola Epidemic Is About to Get Worse

The Ebola Epidemic Is About to Get Worse. Much Worse. -- Michael T. Osterholm, Politico

As in: We need to order 500 million vaccines. Now.



Ebola is spreading faster than anyone would like to admit, and the current, slow international response to the deadly disease is morphing into a modern tragedy. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta confirmed the first case in the United States, in Dallas. If Ebola has already arrived on these shores, imagine how quickly it could be spreading in Africa.



Ebola’s dispersion on the African continent must be stopped soon. But right now there exists no realistic scheme to do so: Plan A is failing, there is no real Plan B and the best chance for a magic bullet—Plan C—is at best many months away.



Plan A—smothering the virus where it is currently an epidemic—hinges on having a sufficient number of Ebola treatment-center beds in African countries and necessary health-care providers for every Ebola virus disease (EVD) patient. In this ideal setting, each EVD patient is isolated and is no longer in a position to transmit the virus to family members or others in the community. Once patients are identified, public health workers begin to track down their contacts to ensure that if contacts become sick with EVD-like symptoms they are quickly provided a treatment-center bed, where they, in turn, can be isolated and the process repeats itself. This strategy has worked in containing every previous Ebola outbreak.



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My Comment: This epidemic is out of control