OT: Ebola

"Outbreak" was released over ten years ago. It's a movie starring Dustin Hoffman, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Rene Russo, Kevin Spacey, Morgan Freeman and Donald Sutherland about an ebola virus in the U.S. The virus gets in through a rare monkey, smuggled in from Africa by U.S. Customs employees on the take. When the virus gets loose it starts killing people. The U.S. Army has an an antidote but does not make it available because, as Hoffman's character finds out, they wanted to use ebola as a weapon and save the antidote for U.S. troops. While he is trying to figure out what to do, the ebola virus mutates into a strain that is resistant to the antidote. Kevin Spacey's character dies. Hoffman's character finally develops a new antidote to the mutant ebola virus only to learn that Sutherland's character, a U.S. Army major general, is ready to bomb a whole town of infected people and kill them. Their deaths are just the nominal cost of keeping the military secret that the Army has an antidote for the first virus. I think it's available on Netflix.

Ebola is a terrible disease and if it ever became truly airborne like the flu the world would be in big trouble.The thing that drives me crazy is how the media in the US is starting to whip up a frenzy.

Ebola is HARD to contract currently, if you want proof look at the countries where the outbreak started. They are beyond poor with incredibly bad sanitary and living conditions and the people live is massively overpopulated cities. Through all of that they have less than 10,000 cases in populations that are in the millions, again all in a very small area.

The news media though is well on their way to convincing people that every person who coughs probably has Ebola. Drunk drivers kill more people in a year than Ebola does.

No offense occurious but Ebola seems to infect 2 people for every person infected.

Can you imagine if anyone who ever drank and drive killed 2 people? staggering!

I'm not sure where you see that every Ebola victim infects 2, yes it seems true in the two western cases that have occurred but that is just an anomaly. Currently in the African countries with the outbreak there about 8,000 confirmed cases. The population of the 3 countries with those cases is 22 million with a high population density. That's an infection rate of 0.3%. The population of the US is about 320 million assuming the same infection rate you would have 96,000 cases in the US. However the US has much higher standards of living, less density and better medical care so the infection rate would be nowhere near that.

Even if the infection rate in the US were the same the current mortality rate of Ebola is about 50% so we're talking 48,000 deaths which is terrible however last year in the US approximately 40,000 people died from seasonal flu.

Yeah, in the US we tend to be very emotional and reactionary, and rarely look at the big picture. Take AIDS for example. Most people think AIDS is an incredibly destructive disease illing millions every year, and we need to throw zillions of $$$ at it to fix it. But in fact the deaths from AIDS are microscopically small compared to child starvation, heart disease, and on and on. But we get these popular emtional issues that everyone gets so wound up about, and in the process forget the truly important ones.

Okay, so now who is going to be the first to claim i hate gays or something....in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....

"so we're talking 48,000 deaths'

You seem curiously blasé about that. I'm not going to dispute your math (after all, I'm not "in finance"), but I think you grossly underestimating the social impact. The first time an American contracts Ebola on U.S. soil, Fox News, CNN, etc will be all-Ebola all-the-time. A national ticker will go up tracking Ebola cases/deaths. Parents will pull their kids out of school. Malls will be deserted. All international flights will be grounded.

48,000 Ebola deaths in a year? The country will be under martial law way before that.

Not to mention the hell it will play with the stripper extras supply curve.

"Okay, so now who is going to be the first to claim i hate gays"

The Ebola Gay?

Jerikson40-dude...I don't think you hate gay dudes. You're a little overly concerned with the anal action sometimes, but I don't think you hate.

To be fair, a lot more goes into deciding where to spend health care (and biomedical research) dollars than raw numbers of deaths. After all, we largely know how to prevent heart disease (diet and exercise would do a lot) but its hard to force people to do what they need to. Not sure if you were talking about America or the world, but child starvation is -- to my knowledge -- very rare in America. If I recall correctly, I saw a statistic suggesting 10 or 20 million children live with food insecurity. But that seems high, so I don't know where the line is drawn for that. Worldwide starvation is huge. Hell, malaria and worm are far worse than AIDS. But largely in poor countries.

I'm not worried about ebola. The supposed stripper who claimed to be scared of going to Dallas motivated the #ebola.strippers joke. But it is a sad situation. That is really the comment.

@occurious - I suspect Holdem2 is referring to the exponential increase in East African cases. Some days ago I heard an interview with an epidemiologist asserting there was exponential growth, and I have no reason to doubt that is the case in Africa.

In America or Europe I don't see Ebola being an issue, unless people do stupid shit like the Spanish nurse (sounds like her thought process was "I treated somebody with Ebola and now have a fever...no biggie..."). I don't understand that.

Sorry guys I was off in my view on AIDS deaths worldwide. Apparently it's the #6 killer worldwide. For some reason I thought it was MUCH less. WHO says 1.5 million deaths from AIDS in 2012. Heart disease and stroke combined are a little over 14 million. AIDS deaths are a bit more than road injury deaths.

Also about 58% of all causes of death in 2006 were due to malnutrition/hunger around the world...36 million out of 62 million total deaths. AIDS is still a very small percentage, but much more significant than I thought.

That suicide number is shocking. I had no clue it was that high.

Motörhead - that one really bombed!

Zombie strippers

If an outbreak were to happen here in the states, I don't think the government is prepared for it. They say they are and act like they would have it under control, but when does our country ever have anything under control?

All kidding aside, I don't understand how so many Drs over in Africa have gotten it. I understand they are in direct contact with infected people but I bet they are also wearing hazmat suits, respirators, etc so how are they catching it?

Ebola is getting attention because it is doubling every 3 weeks and the death rate is 50% or so. Some deadly disease that keeps doubling every 3 weeks is a concern because it is growing so fast. If I was paid a penny on day one and agreed that my employer would double my salary every day for a month, I would make a lot more by the end of the month than my current salary. It starts off slowly and tIny. Over a million people will be infected early next year at this rate. Tens of million in months if nothing changes with several million dead in Africa. Of course if the world manages to get a vaccine for Ebola and stops it, then the media will stop talking about it.

Shark sez: "If I was paid a penny on day one and agreed that my employer would double my salary every day for a month, I would make a lot more by the end of the month than my current salary."

Yeah, probably. I figure it's something like $11 million after 30 days.

Occurious, I think one thing to factor in with the U.S. and Europe as opposed to the African countries is mobility. People of the first-world countries travel a lot more and a lot further than those in third-world countries, which could increase the chances of widespread outbreaks a lot more. The incubation time for the virus and the amount of time it's contagious would also play a large factor in that.

Gatorfan, Zombie Strippers -- fun and silly movie. Highly recommended!

SuperDude,

You might enjoy a book I read back in the 90's called "The Hot Zone". It's non-fiction, but was written in the style of a science-thriller (think Michael Chriton). It's an account of the first Ebola outbreak in the US (in monkeys) at a lab in Virginia. He traces the history of the virus back to its origins in Africa. At times, it was heavy in the science, but it was a very entertaining read.

I'll admit to not being the foremost authority on Ebola. I don't want to contract it for sure. Yet it seems that the media is really banging the Enola drum at the same time that our civil liberties are at risk and are being taken away. I'm no conspiracy theorist but it's interesting to watch the airport security screenings play out

One more thing. Smallpox took the lives of millions of Native Americans from Alaska to Argentina. We still have Native Americans and the mixed offspring of them(me). The plague took the lives of millions of Europeabs and Asians. Humanity will survive.

Steve, as I wrote that I was thinking someone was going to say I was very blase about 48,000 deaths. I really didn't mean it that way, that's a horrible toll in human life. I was using it as a comparison to the number of flu deaths each year and how there is not panic in the streets about that. It's more a comment on how the media whips up a frenzy beyond proportion to the threat.

As a society we have problems with handling things in a proportional manner. 1 person enters the US with Ebola and suddenly we're talking about shutting down flights from Africa. One incompetent terrorist sets fire to his shoes and we have to take our shoes off before we board a flight yet we allow all manner of other things through security that could be used for evil.

And yet they don't check our underwear. Go figure.

Some of the conspiracy people have different angles to it. claims some people might believe.
bioengineered Russian virus and not really Ebola but very similar symptoms, escaped biowarfare

another engineered virus that genetically kills certain people more, biowarfare

They already have a vaccine but are waiting for the virus to affect millions of people with money. profit

one theory is that Ebola is planned to generate world wide terror so that everyone across the globe accepts a gene altering vaccine where they claim the vaccine is worse than Ebola and what you need to worry about.

Of course it might be none of the above but we always have people who never want a crisis go to waste.

"Of course it might be none of the above but we always have people who never want a crisis go to waste."

And we always have people with absolutely no excitement in their lives who conjure up crap and conspiracy theories so they'll have some fucking excitement in their incredibly mundane lives.

Very well articulated arguments, occurious.