I believe it was 1995when I first read "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston, a terrifying book that first introduced the rest of the United States and myself to the disease known as Ebola. His imagery was beautifully grotesque, describing a sickness that makes you bleed out of every orifice while your organs are being liquefied, a sickness that killed with 90 percent efficiency. The book tells just how easily an outbreak of this deadly virus could happen and even tells the chilling tale of how close it came to happening in Reston, Virginia. The central thought it leaves you with is that Ebola is out there, sitting in some random cave in Africa, just waiting for someone to find it. Guess what? Someone found it.
The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is by far the most widespread in history, infecting over a thousand people and leaving over 500 dead. In away, that's the good news--the mortality rate is close to 50 percent, much lower than it has been in previous outbreaks. Many attribute this to the greater availability of medical care and a better understanding of how the disease operates. The bad news is that it's spreading fast through many countries, and now the CDC has developed the rather peculiar policy of bringing infected Americans back to a major U.S. city for observation. Has it ever occurred to the geniuses in charge of our emergency disease response to maybe set up a facility with state-of the art observation and treatment equipment on a remote island somewhere so that when the inevitable accident happens, the only casualties are clumsy scientists and sea birds?
Ebola is transferred through contact with bodily fluids, which makes it kind of similar to AIDS or Hepatitis in its transmission--a much bigger danger in areas with unsanitary conditions or poor knowledge of basic protective measures. The fear is that the virus goes airborne, allowing a single sneeze to infect an entire crowded room, like a cold or flu does. When that happens, we've got problems. Basically, mass infection, end-of-the-world as we know it problems. I submit to you that we may have those problems even if it doesn't go airborne. If you've ever had or treated a bleeding wound, you know that blood gets everywhere. Couple that little tidbit with the fact that you have about 40 coworkers who are so dedicated that they won't let blood spewing from every orifice stop them from going to work, and suddenly you have a recipe for disaster.
Of course, the CDC tells you that there are things you can do if you or someone you love is infected with the disease. Their recommended treatment includes such radical therapy as hydration, air, and treating other infections that might crop up. There is still some debate as to whether hugs, chicken soup and grandma's cookies have any positive effect. There is also some mystery serum that apparently only works on Americans, based on how it's been administered so far. What the CDC doesn't really tell you is how to deal with your next door neighbor when he comes barging though your door spewing Ebola-laced bloody spit and demanding your last pop tart.
Real preparations for Ebola, or any pandemic really, should focus on the societal impact. The first thing that happens when a virus spreads is that people stop going out where other people are. This makes shopping, eating at a restaurant, or going to work or school kind of problematic. With this in mind, you should strive for a certain amount of self-sufficiency. The big advantage here goes to people who already shrugged of the trappings of society and moved to a cabin in Montana decades ago. The next advantaged group are those with a fully stocked bomb shelter or secret superhero lair. For the rest of us, there's water, dried or canned food, a first aid kit, a good knife, a flashlight and about 8 rolls of toilet paper. In all honesty, there are few disasters that can't be handled more effectively with water, dried or canned food, a first aid kit, a good knife, a flashlight and about a dozen rolls of toilet paper. The idea then is for you and your loved ones to hole up in your basement eating canned potatoes and playing charades while your neighbors slowly bleed out, allowing you to emerge alive and well long after the virus is dead. Unless, of course, the vampire bats drink the infected blood from the corpses (bats are apparently immune carriers of Ebola), allowing them to spontaneously re-infect the remaining population until everyone is essentially a pile of liquefied organs on the street corner. Cheers.
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