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On Ebola, Don’t Breathe Easy

Scientists worry that the African plague could go pneumonic
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One day, in a college history class, the professor lectured about the Black Death in medieval Europe, which killed The plague was not simply bubonic (transmitted by flea bite, and first manifesting in the lymphatic system) but pneumonic, transmitted by sneezing and coughing and breathing on the uninfected, and first manifesting in the lungs. The professor told us that people who acquired the plague pneumonically fell sick within a day, and were in nine out of 10 cases dead the next day. You could be walking down the street, be coughed on by someone carrying the plague who didn’t know it, and be dead within two days.

Historians estimate that at least 20 million people — one-third of Europe’s population — died in the five plague years (1347-52).

I had forgotten about that chilling lecture — until the top epidemiologist Michael Osterholm wrote this in the NYT:

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has the potential to alter history as much as any plague has ever done.

There have been more than 4,300 cases and 2,300 deaths over the past six months. Last week, the World Health Organization warned that, by early October, there may be thousands of new cases per week in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria. What is not getting said publicly, despite briefings and discussions in the inner circles of the world’s public health agencies, is that we are in totally uncharted waters and that Mother Nature is the only force in charge of the crisis at this time.

There are two possible future chapters to this story that should keep us up at night.

Read the whole thing. I think you’ll want to. Osterholm says this virus is changing faster than anything we’ve ever observed:

The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years. Each new infection represents trillions of throws of the genetic dice.

It seems so far away, Ebola does, but if it goes pneumonic, all it takes is a plane ride and it’s here.

How do you think the US government and American society would respond to an Ebola epidemic here?

 

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