Discussion for article #227030
I heard an interview with Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the CDC. He’s currently touring Liberia and Siera Leone and he sounded as freaked out as the CDC ever sounds. The scope of the problem is much larger than the reporting of the local authorities indicate and the health system is completely breaking down. I personally think we’re about to have a regional pandemic. The thing that’s kept prior outbreaks from going crazy is the fact that they generally are in very rural areas and they stay there. Now that Ebola is loose in large cities, all bets are off. The odds of it spreading in the west are very, very low, simply because we can afford and routinely use infection prevention measures and have ready supplies to be able to treat every health encounter as a potential chance to spread it. The infrastructure and supplies simply do not exist over the majority of Africa, and actually the majority of Asia and lots of Eastern Europe, to be able to do that. This could be truely nightmarish. Not to be crazy person, but anything up to a million dead would not surprise me.