And yes, this is a big deal. Public health emergencies of international concern are a short list consisting of, in their entirety: swine flu ('09 to '10), polio ('14 on), ebola ('13 to '16), Zika ('16), ebola ('19 to '20), Covid ('20 to '23), monkeypox ('22 to '25) and now this [1]. It's one step down from a pandemic emergency (which, to be clear, has not been declared).
I read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains. I'm no epidemiologist but being less deadly could allow it to spread further, which is obviously concerning.
Also, the article says surveillance picked up the spread late. I wonder if the US's pulling back from the WHO and other international functions had anything to do with this, it used to make up a big chunk of its resources and staff.
It's been picked up late because it's from Goma, a region in Congo currently operated by the March 23 Movement a "rebel" group against the current Congo's government.
To expand on this, it's universally accepted that they're a group backed by Rwanda, and are there for the resources that the DRC has, which are being trafficked to Rwanda for export.
> read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains
"Case fatality rates in the past two [Bundibugyo virus disease] outbreaks, reported in Uganda and in DRC in 2007 and 2012, have ranged from approximately 30% to 50%" [1]. Given "as of 15 May, a total of 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths" were reported, the current disease's 33% fatality rate is in the historic range.
From COVID-era discussions (when virologists were briefly the stars of every talk show) I remember one explaining that it was less about fatality rates per se and more about the length of time you could carry the virus around and be nearly asymptomatic while still able to infect others.
I understand the jury is still out on whether a virus can be considered "alive" but, like us, it is capable of replicating itself and mutating. In that sense, it benefits from the same evolution strategies as more complex beings: a strain that gets its host very sick very quickly gets a lower chance to spread to a new host and multiply.
This creates an evolutionary advantage for strains of that virus that are less aggressive or at least develop the worst symptoms more slowly and more covertly.
Yeah. HIV is a good example of this. Without treatment, it is deadly pretty much 100% of the time. However, it takes a long time after the shut down of the immune system before a systematic infection takes over and kills you.
That allowed for a deadly disease that's somewhat hard to spread (mostly just through sex) to ultimately go on a rampage.
>I understand the jury is still out on whether a virus can be considered "alive"
I remember way back in med school in the mid-70s our infectious disease professor asking this same question, in a philosophical as much as a mechanistic sense.
I don't think it's just fatality rate, but also how long it takes to kill you. HIV is a great example of a disease that (untreated) has near 100% mortality rate, but can spread because it takes years to kill you.
The real issue with HIV is that you can easily spread it before being symptomatic, so far we haven’t seen hantavirus spreading before folks become symptomatic. The strain that spreads through humans has been active in south America for a while as well and hasn’t really gone anywhere yet.
The WHO is just another politically subverted organization. It declared covid for half an eternity as not airborne.
If its connected with a loos of face or economic short term losses- many actors will put the pressur on to prevent the declaration of an pandemic or other travell restrictions.
It figures: Right before the COVID-19 outbreak, Trump dismantled the White House pandemic response team and pushed to downsize the CDC—later pulling out of the WHO entirely. A new Trump term, a new pandemic?
In this case I'd guess the DOGE cuts to foreign aid are a massive, massive contributor to the problem. A lot of third-world countries heavily relied on USAID et al to keep basic sanitation and healthcare going.
how about countries with these risks take action to reduce these risks. I'm sure there's a parable about teaching someone to fish rather than feeding them
> how about countries with these risks take action to reduce these risks
With what money? There's a reason they're dependent on USAID.
> I'm sure there's a parable about teaching someone to fish rather than feeding them
Unfortunately the priorities of USAID (and European foreign aid as well) aren't exactly aligned with that paradigm. It's the worst expressed in agriculture because we just dumped our excess production on Africa to keep our prices stable, but foreign aid being sustainable is a relatively new and not really widespread requirement.
>However WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed in a statement it "does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency" and advised countries against closing their borders.
Directly contradicted by the WHO: "...spreads from person to person through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs, or other bodily fluids of infected individuals or contaminated surfaces" [1].
Many of the people worrying about this should stop worrying.
The average commentator on this website, if he or she dies this year, will be more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident or due to the complications of cardiovascular disease, or due to cancer.
If you’re going to spend time worrying, worry about all those things instead. When it comes to infectious diseases, the flu is more likely to kill the people here than hantavirus or Ebola. Make sure to get your flu vaccines.
> Pursuant to paragraph 2 of Article 12 - Determination of a public health emergency of international concern, including a pandemic emergency of the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR), the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), after having consulted the States Parties where the event is known to be currently occurring, is hereby determining that the Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), but does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency, as defined in the IHR.
Multiple articles mention a vaccine for the Zaire strain but not this one. Is it possible to use one for the other? Does the existence of one make it easier to develop another?
Technically (nitpicking) it mentions no _approved_ vaccine. There can be vaccines without being approved for use in said countries.
But I have no clue how far along vaccines are, and even if they exist how feasible it would be to use in e.g Congo. Similar to how we can treat tuberculosis, yet many people keep dying of it.
> There can be vaccines without being approved for use in said countries.
Unfortunately, the hotbed being Africa makes the situation much worse given historical events - the entire continent has a dark history regarding colonial and modern abuses of power for medical "experiments" [1], and the entire topic resurfaced during the early Covid era [2].
First hantavirus now this. Look, there's valid reason to be concerned here but people who are fearing a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic are seemingly missing why Covid was a pandemic. Covid spread so much for four main reasons:
1. It could spread airborne;
2. It spread relatively easily. Not quite measles-level of contagiousness but still, pretty good;
3. Unlike something like the flu, there really wasn't any kind of natural resistance. What we now call the modern flu is a descendant of the Spanish flu that killed tends of millions in 1919-1920 in its first outbreak and it becamse less lethal for a variety of reasons; and
4. (This is the big one) It would spread when the carrier was asymptomatic. The flu can also spread asymptomatically but AFAIK it's less common. People with the flu tend to self-isolate showing symptoms.
Still, what's probably most concerning about Covid is the number of people who truly believe it was and is fake. The public health implications of that as well as the societal and psychological impacts is something we're going to be studying for decades to come.
The exact contagion mechanism for hantavirus isn't confirmed. Previously it's been from, say, rat to human. It's believed there was human-to-human transmission with the plague cruise ship of doom but whatever the case, it's simply not as contagious.
Ebola generally requires contact to spread. How it's spread in a lot of these African regions has historically been from funeral rites. Family of the deceased would touch the body and this contact would spread the disease. So while it was quite contagious, it didn't spread airborne (as far as we know). It's also quite lethal, which naturally tends to limit spread. The king of long-dormant viruses is of course HIV.
But at least we aren't dealing with cordyceps [1] so we've got that going for us at least.
Covid turned into a pandemic because it wasn't taken seriously at the start. (Looking at you, China.)
Public-health experts never seemed concerned about hantavirus. They are with this. It's appropriate to take their declarations seriously.
> Ebola generally requires contact to spread
"Human infection occurs through close contact with the blood or secretions of infected wildlife, such as bats or non-human primates, and subsequently spreads from person to person through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs, or other bodily fluids of infected individuals or contaminated surfaces. Transmission is particularly amplified in health-care settings when infection prevention and control (IPC) measures are inadequate, and during unsafe burial practices involving direct contact with the deceased" [1].
So yes on traditional burial. But much easier to spread than HIV.
First, we still don't know the origins of Covid-19. The most accepted answer is zoonotic origin but there are problems with that, namely that Wuhan is far from the suspected bats and there is no documented case of Covid-19 in any wild population. The other competing theory is the "lab leak" family but again there's no evidence of this eitehr. Research and findings of Covid-19 in Italian sewerage suggest that Covid-19 might've been circulating in Italy in 2019 [1]. So another possibility is that Covid-19 resulted from forming a virulent strain in a person who was infected with multiple strains at once [2].
We may never know the true origins of Covid-19.
So with asymptomatic spread and a novel virus, it's unlikely that whatever China did actually mattered at all. Once cases reached the US in particular, it was game over. People just can't miss work. There were very few places that maintain zero Covid for any significant period of time (eg Australia) through a combination of luck, geography and extreme quarantine. By geography I mean Australia doesn't have any land borders. And even then it only lasted so long.
> Covid was exactly the right amount of deadly, 0.5-1%
Tough to say that's "exactly the right amount of deadly" for a pandemic when the Black Death and Spanish flu killed larger fractions of their total affected populations (in the latter case, of humans) [1].
It was good practice for pandemic response. I think (blasphemy, which on its own is wild) the global reaction was too strong on an acute level, but was worth it as prepararion for a deadlier pandemic.
It was a natural reaction though. People saw the Italian hospitals overflowing and thought "oh crap! We can't let that happen here!" At least where I am they tightened and/or relaxed restrictions on a county by county level based on how full hospital beds were getting.
In another time it might have been good practice, but in reality I think, between the grifters pushing fear and those just too self-centered to go a few months without a haircut (yes oversimplifying and straw-manning), it actually precluded the chance that many people will ever cooperate with a pandemic response again.
Shit pay, no benefits, and managers who threaten to fire you if you dont show up. Sick? Puke in the bathroom.
Whys this the case? Cause we Americans have garbage for labor laws. You can be fired for pretty much any reason. And you are NOT protected if youre sick.
When I had to work food seevice, at starbucks, subway, random pizza chain, etc, I begrudgingly came in sick, infected LOADS of customers. My choice was to work, or get fired (or not fired but 0 hours for next 2 weeks on schedule as punishment).
Who knows how many I got sick and potentially killed due to compromised immune systems. Im sure I did.
This is the real, hidden external cost, of our unmitigated capitalism. People get sick and die for the reason of making the boss more money, and too fucking bad.
Divorcing health care from employment would be a wonderful change, but I don't see it ever happening. Employers love it because it makes employees fear for their job, and insurers love it because if everybody saw how much they were actually paying every month they would fight to change the system.
The world is bigger than the US. Also, not everybody in the US is an underpaid service worker with no benefits. Also, if you limit yourself to just the US, you're still just wrong [1]:
> Approximately one-quarter (26%, n = 303/1169) of adults (aged 16–64 years) with self-reported ILI took time off work for their illness for a mean of 3.3 days, compared with 31% (n = 31/99) and 20% (n = 3/15) of those with confirmed influenza A or B, respectively, who reported missing a mean of 3.8 and 3.0 days.
Just finished watching the last episode of season 2 with my daughter this morning. Now biting my nails for another 6-12 months awaiting season 3... Dammit.
"no evidence of human to human transmission", was something repeated far too often and far too politically for me to take them serious on the next issue, serious or not.
> "It would spread when the carrier was <LARGELY> asymptomatic" , the largely is very important here otherwise containment would have been a lot different.
The main concerns for covid were also limited to a novel strain of a known virus type (again a KNOWN TYPE) being released into a global general populous with no inherent immunity. Aka expect ~5% of cases to probably have complications and some smaller %-age of that to be serious. If we didn't know what covid was we wouldn't be calling it "covid-19" to expressly describe which genus we're talking about. (Followed by general stupidity from people of pretending we don't know how other covid strains progress (regardless of any 'novel' effects)). Sill no sensible scenario put death rates >1% for anyone not in an at risk group. I mean everyone forgets the south-park sars skit that there's a 97% chance of catching that practically without symptoms. Why this became polarised about steam rolling through untested technology onto the populous is identical to the "green coal" and "tech will solve the carbon footprint" thinking...
Ah yes, WHO, the very trustworthy totally non political global public health authority that did such a great unbiased job before and during COVID. Definitely trustworthy, reputable, competent, and unbiased.
Snark aside, there may be an Ebola outbreak and no doubt it's affecting certain African countries but calling it a global health emergency is laughable and I'd trust TMZ's analysis on reporting orders of magnitude more than I'd ever trust anything the WHO has to say.
Sorry, your takeaway from Covid is to ignore public-health experts when they warn that something is breaking containment and could turn into a pandemic if it isn't controlled?
WHO tried to cover up the virus at the beginning; they also aided China in masking its origins.
The CDC did fine, but not WHO. I wouldn't even call WHO public health experts at this point - it's just a political racket that's pretty analogous to the UN at this point in terms of how useful they are.
I've had 12+ COVID vaccines and one of my degrees is a BSc so it isn't like I'm some antivaxxing conspiratorial anti-science hillbilly. WHO isn't really about science though, they're about funding and pushing particular agends which is... antithetical to actual science.
> we'll just throw that in to the story anyway, even though we have no facts either way
We don't have a tight chain of causation. But we have plenty of facts pointing entirely one way.
We know there was "a critical four-week detection gap between the onset of symptoms of the presumed index case...and the laboratory confirmation of the outbreak" [1]. This has contributed to "significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread associated with this event at the present time" [2]. And tying all of this back to DOGE, we know USAID's "more than 50 staffers dedicated to outbreak response" were cut to "just six people to handle Ebola, Marburg virus, mpox and bird flu preparedness" [3].
Musk and Trump didn't cause this outbreak. But we would have had a better chance of catching this sooner, and with more precision, if we had those resources there.
This is the WHO announcement: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d...
This is our CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/index.html
And yes, this is a big deal. Public health emergencies of international concern are a short list consisting of, in their entirety: swine flu ('09 to '10), polio ('14 on), ebola ('13 to '16), Zika ('16), ebola ('19 to '20), Covid ('20 to '23), monkeypox ('22 to '25) and now this [1]. It's one step down from a pandemic emergency (which, to be clear, has not been declared).
(Helpful explainer: https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2....)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_emergency_of_int...
I read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains. I'm no epidemiologist but being less deadly could allow it to spread further, which is obviously concerning.
Also, the article says surveillance picked up the spread late. I wonder if the US's pulling back from the WHO and other international functions had anything to do with this, it used to make up a big chunk of its resources and staff.
It's been picked up late because it's from Goma, a region in Congo currently operated by the March 23 Movement a "rebel" group against the current Congo's government.
To expand on this, it's universally accepted that they're a group backed by Rwanda, and are there for the resources that the DRC has, which are being trafficked to Rwanda for export.
> read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains
"Case fatality rates in the past two [Bundibugyo virus disease] outbreaks, reported in Uganda and in DRC in 2007 and 2012, have ranged from approximately 30% to 50%" [1]. Given "as of 15 May, a total of 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths" were reported, the current disease's 33% fatality rate is in the historic range.
[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...
I was wondering about that with the hantavirus, whereby if it's got a higher fatality rate then it's less likely to be easily transmitted.
Is that like a general rule, or pure bunk? (I'd probably assume the answer 'depends').
From COVID-era discussions (when virologists were briefly the stars of every talk show) I remember one explaining that it was less about fatality rates per se and more about the length of time you could carry the virus around and be nearly asymptomatic while still able to infect others.
I understand the jury is still out on whether a virus can be considered "alive" but, like us, it is capable of replicating itself and mutating. In that sense, it benefits from the same evolution strategies as more complex beings: a strain that gets its host very sick very quickly gets a lower chance to spread to a new host and multiply.
This creates an evolutionary advantage for strains of that virus that are less aggressive or at least develop the worst symptoms more slowly and more covertly.
Yeah. HIV is a good example of this. Without treatment, it is deadly pretty much 100% of the time. However, it takes a long time after the shut down of the immune system before a systematic infection takes over and kills you.
That allowed for a deadly disease that's somewhat hard to spread (mostly just through sex) to ultimately go on a rampage.
>I understand the jury is still out on whether a virus can be considered "alive"
I remember way back in med school in the mid-70s our infectious disease professor asking this same question, in a philosophical as much as a mechanistic sense.
I don't think it's just fatality rate, but also how long it takes to kill you. HIV is a great example of a disease that (untreated) has near 100% mortality rate, but can spread because it takes years to kill you.
The real issue with HIV is that you can easily spread it before being symptomatic, so far we haven’t seen hantavirus spreading before folks become symptomatic. The strain that spreads through humans has been active in south America for a while as well and hasn’t really gone anywhere yet.
Definitely, but the hantavirus incubation period ranges from 1-8 weeks after exposure.
Also worrying that the existing approved vaccine does not protect against this variant.
That said I'm quite hopeful, since there is a vaccine for other strains.
I hear people are calling this the Trump Ebola strain. Many people are saying it.
The WHO is just another politically subverted organization. It declared covid for half an eternity as not airborne. If its connected with a loos of face or economic short term losses- many actors will put the pressur on to prevent the declaration of an pandemic or other travell restrictions.
The us is not involved in this mess.
> us is not involved in this mess
If by not involved you mean still massively subject to the public health and econonomic consequences of a containment failure, then sure.
It figures: Right before the COVID-19 outbreak, Trump dismantled the White House pandemic response team and pushed to downsize the CDC—later pulling out of the WHO entirely. A new Trump term, a new pandemic?
In this case I'd guess the DOGE cuts to foreign aid are a massive, massive contributor to the problem. A lot of third-world countries heavily relied on USAID et al to keep basic sanitation and healthcare going.
how about countries with these risks take action to reduce these risks. I'm sure there's a parable about teaching someone to fish rather than feeding them
> sure there's a parable about teaching someone to fish rather than feeding them
This is less about feeding a neighbor than digging them a latrine so they stop crapping in your water supply.
Remember where you enslaved the peoples that built your country.
theres also one about pennywise, pound foolish
If them not fishing means your people are at risk, you go and teach them to fish.
> how about countries with these risks take action to reduce these risks
With what money? There's a reason they're dependent on USAID.
> I'm sure there's a parable about teaching someone to fish rather than feeding them
Unfortunately the priorities of USAID (and European foreign aid as well) aren't exactly aligned with that paradigm. It's the worst expressed in agriculture because we just dumped our excess production on Africa to keep our prices stable, but foreign aid being sustainable is a relatively new and not really widespread requirement.
How callously you blame the victims. Remember your humanity.
Notably (from NPR):
>However WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed in a statement it "does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency" and advised countries against closing their borders.
and let's not forget "no evidence of human to human transmission"...
> "no evidence of human to human transmission"
Directly contradicted by the WHO: "...spreads from person to person through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs, or other bodily fluids of infected individuals or contaminated surfaces" [1].
[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...
That’s a reference to the early Covid 19 investigations/reporting.
https://x.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?lang=en
Ooooh, got it.
Many of the people worrying about this should stop worrying.
The average commentator on this website, if he or she dies this year, will be more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident or due to the complications of cardiovascular disease, or due to cancer.
If you’re going to spend time worrying, worry about all those things instead. When it comes to infectious diseases, the flu is more likely to kill the people here than hantavirus or Ebola. Make sure to get your flu vaccines.
You're right that this shouldn't cause worry. But it should command attention. At least as much as that stupid hantavirus nothingburger did.
The headline from the WHO reads:
Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern
https://www.who.int/news/item/17-07-2019-ebola-outbreak-in-t...
Your linked article is dated at
> 17 July 2019
(people never seem to look for/check dates any more)
Its even in the pasted url!
Coincidentally (or perhaps not), their recent article claims the same thing: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d...
> Pursuant to paragraph 2 of Article 12 - Determination of a public health emergency of international concern, including a pandemic emergency of the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR), the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), after having consulted the States Parties where the event is known to be currently occurring, is hereby determining that the Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), but does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency, as defined in the IHR.
seems like an abuse of the word "global"
> seems like an abuse of the word "global"
The WHO language is "a public health emergency of international concern," but not "a pandemic emergency."
We went through this whole song and dance in 2014. Unless it has some really unlucky novel mutations it won’t spread well outside the tropics.
> Unless it has some really unlucky novel mutations
2014 was Ebolavirus proper (Zaire, I believe). This outbreak is this fucker of a chimera [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundibugyo_ebolavirus
Non-paywalled link: https://apnews.com/article/congo-ebola-uganda-who-africa-eme...
Multiple articles mention a vaccine for the Zaire strain but not this one. Is it possible to use one for the other? Does the existence of one make it easier to develop another?
Technically (nitpicking) it mentions no _approved_ vaccine. There can be vaccines without being approved for use in said countries.
But I have no clue how far along vaccines are, and even if they exist how feasible it would be to use in e.g Congo. Similar to how we can treat tuberculosis, yet many people keep dying of it.
> There can be vaccines without being approved for use in said countries.
Unfortunately, the hotbed being Africa makes the situation much worse given historical events - the entire continent has a dark history regarding colonial and modern abuses of power for medical "experiments" [1], and the entire topic resurfaced during the early Covid era [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_experimentation_in_Afr...
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/8/medical-colonial...
adding it to my list of apocalypses to prepare for
First hantavirus now this. Look, there's valid reason to be concerned here but people who are fearing a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic are seemingly missing why Covid was a pandemic. Covid spread so much for four main reasons:
1. It could spread airborne;
2. It spread relatively easily. Not quite measles-level of contagiousness but still, pretty good;
3. Unlike something like the flu, there really wasn't any kind of natural resistance. What we now call the modern flu is a descendant of the Spanish flu that killed tends of millions in 1919-1920 in its first outbreak and it becamse less lethal for a variety of reasons; and
4. (This is the big one) It would spread when the carrier was asymptomatic. The flu can also spread asymptomatically but AFAIK it's less common. People with the flu tend to self-isolate showing symptoms.
Still, what's probably most concerning about Covid is the number of people who truly believe it was and is fake. The public health implications of that as well as the societal and psychological impacts is something we're going to be studying for decades to come.
The exact contagion mechanism for hantavirus isn't confirmed. Previously it's been from, say, rat to human. It's believed there was human-to-human transmission with the plague cruise ship of doom but whatever the case, it's simply not as contagious.
Ebola generally requires contact to spread. How it's spread in a lot of these African regions has historically been from funeral rites. Family of the deceased would touch the body and this contact would spread the disease. So while it was quite contagious, it didn't spread airborne (as far as we know). It's also quite lethal, which naturally tends to limit spread. The king of long-dormant viruses is of course HIV.
But at least we aren't dealing with cordyceps [1] so we've got that going for us at least.
[1]: https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Cordyceps_brain_infectio...
Covid turned into a pandemic because it wasn't taken seriously at the start. (Looking at you, China.)
Public-health experts never seemed concerned about hantavirus. They are with this. It's appropriate to take their declarations seriously.
> Ebola generally requires contact to spread
"Human infection occurs through close contact with the blood or secretions of infected wildlife, such as bats or non-human primates, and subsequently spreads from person to person through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs, or other bodily fluids of infected individuals or contaminated surfaces. Transmission is particularly amplified in health-care settings when infection prevention and control (IPC) measures are inadequate, and during unsafe burial practices involving direct contact with the deceased" [1].
So yes on traditional burial. But much easier to spread than HIV.
[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...
First, we still don't know the origins of Covid-19. The most accepted answer is zoonotic origin but there are problems with that, namely that Wuhan is far from the suspected bats and there is no documented case of Covid-19 in any wild population. The other competing theory is the "lab leak" family but again there's no evidence of this eitehr. Research and findings of Covid-19 in Italian sewerage suggest that Covid-19 might've been circulating in Italy in 2019 [1]. So another possibility is that Covid-19 resulted from forming a virulent strain in a person who was infected with multiple strains at once [2].
We may never know the true origins of Covid-19.
So with asymptomatic spread and a novel virus, it's unlikely that whatever China did actually mattered at all. Once cases reached the US in particular, it was game over. People just can't miss work. There were very few places that maintain zero Covid for any significant period of time (eg Australia) through a combination of luck, geography and extreme quarantine. By geography I mean Australia doesn't have any land borders. And even then it only lasted so long.
[1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7428442/
[2]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9059428/
forgot 5. Covid was exactly the right amount of deadly, 0.5-1% which made it easy to "roll the dice" on making containment harder.
> Covid was exactly the right amount of deadly, 0.5-1%
Tough to say that's "exactly the right amount of deadly" for a pandemic when the Black Death and Spanish flu killed larger fractions of their total affected populations (in the latter case, of humans) [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics_and_pandemic...
It was good practice for pandemic response. I think (blasphemy, which on its own is wild) the global reaction was too strong on an acute level, but was worth it as prepararion for a deadlier pandemic.
It was a natural reaction though. People saw the Italian hospitals overflowing and thought "oh crap! We can't let that happen here!" At least where I am they tightened and/or relaxed restrictions on a county by county level based on how full hospital beds were getting.
In another time it might have been good practice, but in reality I think, between the grifters pushing fear and those just too self-centered to go a few months without a haircut (yes oversimplifying and straw-manning), it actually precluded the chance that many people will ever cooperate with a pandemic response again.
and that's a whopping over-estimate
> People with the flu tend to self-isolate showing symptoms.
Do you have any other fantasy tales you’d like to tell?
Yea, I recently caught flu from someone else that "could not miss their work". So these things don't really apply well to the US at all.
Yep. This is called "food service".
Shit pay, no benefits, and managers who threaten to fire you if you dont show up. Sick? Puke in the bathroom.
Whys this the case? Cause we Americans have garbage for labor laws. You can be fired for pretty much any reason. And you are NOT protected if youre sick.
When I had to work food seevice, at starbucks, subway, random pizza chain, etc, I begrudgingly came in sick, infected LOADS of customers. My choice was to work, or get fired (or not fired but 0 hours for next 2 weeks on schedule as punishment).
Who knows how many I got sick and potentially killed due to compromised immune systems. Im sure I did.
This is the real, hidden external cost, of our unmitigated capitalism. People get sick and die for the reason of making the boss more money, and too fucking bad.
>Cause we Americans have garbage for labor laws
And healthcare being tied to "having a good enough job".
But yea, it's a huge mess.
Divorcing health care from employment would be a wonderful change, but I don't see it ever happening. Employers love it because it makes employees fear for their job, and insurers love it because if everybody saw how much they were actually paying every month they would fight to change the system.
The world is bigger than the US. Also, not everybody in the US is an underpaid service worker with no benefits. Also, if you limit yourself to just the US, you're still just wrong [1]:
> Approximately one-quarter (26%, n = 303/1169) of adults (aged 16–64 years) with self-reported ILI took time off work for their illness for a mean of 3.3 days, compared with 31% (n = 31/99) and 20% (n = 3/15) of those with confirmed influenza A or B, respectively, who reported missing a mean of 3.8 and 3.0 days.
[1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9748403/
You've replied to the wrong comment.
Anyway: taking time off work when too sick to work != isolating when the symptoms first appear.
I swear there is an element of the virus that drives you out of isolation, to spread it?.
It always goes like this with me, the first few days:
- Hm, am I coming down with something? Not too sure. Feel a bit under the weather
- I'm feeling great! Let's go shopping/for coffee/to the supermarket/see friends
- OHH I definitely have flu
2, 3 and 4 apply to the hantavirus as well.
Just finished watching the last episode of season 2 with my daughter this morning. Now biting my nails for another 6-12 months awaiting season 3... Dammit.
"no evidence of human to human transmission", was something repeated far too often and far too politically for me to take them serious on the next issue, serious or not.
> "It would spread when the carrier was <LARGELY> asymptomatic" , the largely is very important here otherwise containment would have been a lot different.
The main concerns for covid were also limited to a novel strain of a known virus type (again a KNOWN TYPE) being released into a global general populous with no inherent immunity. Aka expect ~5% of cases to probably have complications and some smaller %-age of that to be serious. If we didn't know what covid was we wouldn't be calling it "covid-19" to expressly describe which genus we're talking about. (Followed by general stupidity from people of pretending we don't know how other covid strains progress (regardless of any 'novel' effects)). Sill no sensible scenario put death rates >1% for anyone not in an at risk group. I mean everyone forgets the south-park sars skit that there's a 97% chance of catching that practically without symptoms. Why this became polarised about steam rolling through untested technology onto the populous is identical to the "green coal" and "tech will solve the carbon footprint" thinking...
Ah yes, WHO, the very trustworthy totally non political global public health authority that did such a great unbiased job before and during COVID. Definitely trustworthy, reputable, competent, and unbiased.
Snark aside, there may be an Ebola outbreak and no doubt it's affecting certain African countries but calling it a global health emergency is laughable and I'd trust TMZ's analysis on reporting orders of magnitude more than I'd ever trust anything the WHO has to say.
Sorry, your takeaway from Covid is to ignore public-health experts when they warn that something is breaking containment and could turn into a pandemic if it isn't controlled?
WHO tried to cover up the virus at the beginning; they also aided China in masking its origins.
The CDC did fine, but not WHO. I wouldn't even call WHO public health experts at this point - it's just a political racket that's pretty analogous to the UN at this point in terms of how useful they are.
I've had 12+ COVID vaccines and one of my degrees is a BSc so it isn't like I'm some antivaxxing conspiratorial anti-science hillbilly. WHO isn't really about science though, they're about funding and pushing particular agends which is... antithetical to actual science.
"It is unclear how that [closure of US-AID program] might have affected the response to this outbreak."
But, we'll just throw that in to the story anyway, even though we have no facts either way.
Just wondering, do you think it's not relevant to help the reader understand context on the US' impact? Positive or negative?
> we'll just throw that in to the story anyway, even though we have no facts either way
We don't have a tight chain of causation. But we have plenty of facts pointing entirely one way.
We know there was "a critical four-week detection gap between the onset of symptoms of the presumed index case...and the laboratory confirmation of the outbreak" [1]. This has contributed to "significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread associated with this event at the present time" [2]. And tying all of this back to DOGE, we know USAID's "more than 50 staffers dedicated to outbreak response" were cut to "just six people to handle Ebola, Marburg virus, mpox and bird flu preparedness" [3].
Musk and Trump didn't cause this outbreak. But we would have had a better chance of catching this sooner, and with more precision, if we had those resources there.
[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...
[2] https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d...
[3] https://www.spyuganda.com/another-one-us-cuts-aid-to-fight-e...