World War E has started

[John Galt]

drudge has been posting stuff about ebola all year. i dismissed it as fear mongering but the situation is out of control.

ebola spreads slower than like smallpox but it's doubling every 3 weeks. it's got between 40 and 70% fatality rate... even if was on the low side it's still a bigger threat than smallpox ever was

the latest report on ebola in Science pinpoints the original source of this outbreak to one person. 5 of the authors of this report are dead though, killed by ebola. there are right now 8033 known infections. the good thing is flying foxes are where the virus resides, and if we can get the outbreak under control we won't have it resurface again (outside of when some person gets an flying fox's blood in their eye again) like smallpox; the virus need flying foxes to survive long term (smallpox's reservoir was humans). the bad thing is that all 8033 of those people came from one single source. if we don't fix this there will be 64k cases by christmas, quarter of a million by February. with 8k i think we can stop it. i do think obama was right to send military over there. but i don't think he's sent enough. it's not so much the handling of the sick but the military needs to be put in place to basically act as an occupying force to restrict people's movements

[The Dharma Bum]

well, bats are bats, and there are plenty here too, not to mention they have been the source of transmission for various type of hemorrhagic fever in the past

we "discovered" american in the wake of a epidemic that wiped out up to 96% of the indigenous population

[John Galt]

[The Comrade]

it didn't wipe out 96% of the population because that would put the pre-discovery population in the hundreds of millions.

[The Dharma Bum]

thinking that and knowing that is the situation are different things and since indigenous bat species are known to carry various forms hemorrhagic fever and other virii I'd say that there is a considerable measure of doubt in that thinking.

besides who knows how the disease will evolve in a new environment. it could do something completely unexpected.

definitely not a good idea to get started on any 30 year wars at this juncture, we could hose ourselves but good by jumping the gun.

[The Dharma Bum]

[eynon81]

[The Comrade]

[John Galt]

[The Dharma Bum]