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[Morrigi]

Oh aye. Point I was making is that if the active deaths of literally hundreds of thousands of people isn't stopping air traffic, the active deaths of a few thousand with the potential for more (especially if, as noted, that potential is easily curtailed in more developed nations) almost certainly isn't.

Another factor might be that ebola is a relatively unknown disease compared to TB/Malaria, and scientists fear it might rapidly mutate to some more contagious form. Therefore these unknowns make ebola riskier in terms of containment compared to TB/Malaria.

Plus, malaria is transmitted by bugs that don't fly on planes, and TB has a well-known vaccine.

Also, malaria does not have a ~60% mortality rate. Anyway, Ebola had about 2,000 cases at the beginning of August and now it's 4,000. At this rate, it will be 20,000+ by the end of the year. It should also be noted that this outbreak has had more cases (and deaths) than every other ebola outbreak combined.

Edit: clarity

[GavJ]

So what?  It's doing what all epidemics do in numbers / time. That does not change the fact that as of yet it is almost a complete non threat to America due to the circumstances of the disease and the very different facilities and culture.

It is a non-zero threat, yes. A couple Americans may end up dying before it's over. Maybe even several. And if you could prevent that by spending a couple million dollars, or several, they probably would. But cutting off trade to half a damn continent is not "a million dollars or two." It would be a hammer blow to the economy and end up killing way more people from slipping across the line into poverty, not being able to pay as many health benefits, foodstamps, etc.

If it does mutate into some crazy super contagious version or something, that will show up in Africa first (because the chance of the mutation is proportional to where the cases are), and THEN you might see borders close to them. But this is unnecessary in the meantime

[10ebbor10]

Indeed, cutting trade with Africa now will cause widespread panic, and I dare to say it could topple the government in a few of the more unstable countries.

The deaths from civil unrest are more likely to kill more than the disease itself.

[ChairmanPoo]

I'm pretty sure this is just another swine-flu style scare.

[Sergarr]

Swine flu doesn't have 70% mortality rate, though.

[10ebbor10]

High mortality means the disease is likely to eradicate itself.

[Arx]

And along with that if I remember correctly swine flu was pretty infectious (not that ebola isn't, but I don't think it's quite the same).

[andrea]

It would be considerably harder for Ebola than for any kind of flu to reach EU,US, etc undetected and spread far enough before discovery to make containment difficult. Dangerous enough to watch, but definitely not enough to panic or to close borders entirely.

It is an entirely different matter in the areas it currently is spreading in , which have poor infrastructure for dealing with Ebola. Which is why it is causing so many deaths there.

[GavJ]

Swine flu = infectious, not very deadly (probably? more than regular flu, but not like national catastrophe levels)
Avian flu = deadly, not very infectious
ebola = deadly, not very infectious (also super obvious)

Don't let too many false alarms dull your senses though. Some day we will get another deadly AND infectious disease (like the Spanish flu) and need to be on our toes.

[ChairmanPoo]

The fact is that not too many people have died of Ebola. IIRC the toll is about ~5000, ever. Compare that with, for instance, malaria, which kills around 2000 people every day (by the way, trivia: every Ebola alert in my country so far has turned out to be Malaria). Sure, it sucks to have Ebola, and it sucks to be a healthcare worker in contact with Ebola patients. But it's not a real, public health danger to be panicking about it, anymore than other rare, deadly diseases are.

[Sergarr]

Ebola also has a problem in that it mutates really fast, so it can in theory manage to become even more dangerous.

The good part is that Ebola gets utterly destroyed by UV light.

[Arx]

ebola = deadly, SUPER infectious (also super obvious)

FTFY

It's just that by the time a guy's infectious, it's generally pretty obvious they have it, and thus people tend to try and avoid them. And it's a very short range transmission.

I may just be unscientific, but I tend to think that the very short range transmission makes it less infectious.

[scrdest]

ebola = deadly, SUPER infectious (also super obvious)

FTFY

It's just that by the time a guy's infectious, it's generally pretty obvious they have it, and thus people tend to try and avoid them. And it's a very short range transmission.

I may just be unscientific, but I tend to think that the very short range transmission makes it less infectious.

Yeah, infectiousness is not just how easily the disease can overpower the immune system - that would make AIDS hands down the most infectious disease ever - but all the other factors that determine how easily a human could contract it - so things like being transmissible before symptoms start to show (big one) or method of transmission.

As far as diseases go, Ebola is a total scrub - it basically only infects once it's dramatically obvious the person is sick, is lethal as hell so it cannot use a host too long, it has a limited transmission range... LRN2VIRUS NUB.

[GavJ]

ebola = deadly, SUPER infectious (also super obvious)

FTFY

It's just that by the time a guy's infectious, it's generally pretty obvious they have it, and thus people tend to try and avoid them. And it's a very short range transmission.

By very infectious, I mean actually successful at infecting people, which it isn't at all compared to other diseases.

Putting qualifiers on it like "Well if you don't happen to notice they're showing all the obvious symptoms, and assuming they have a motive to touch the person, then it is" isn't very meaningful, because it doesn't translate to actual national threat like simple overall success at infecting people.

In the actual population, it is still spreading immensely slower than other infectious diseases do, and would be much slower still in industrialized countries.

[Loud Whispers]

Some amongst you may already be aware of the death cult that fostered between /pol/ and /x/ around ebola that went so occult for /x/ that their threads there started getting banned for being too occult and so birthed the /pox/ thread worshiping ebola chan. In short, they anthropomorphized ebola into a pink haired loli nurse who takes wing on bats and spreads ebola across the world in a loving way that would make nurgle jealous, and has transcended to become an egregore resulting in several people constructing shrines for her and sacrificing dirty underwear, blood and other bodily fluids in the hopes that their black magic spreads ebola and furthers the death cults' cause.
You can also see why I've refrained from posting about this until now, because I'm pretty certain they want me to talk about ebola chan so that she can grow stronger and become more well known. Unfortunately my efforts are in vain because reddit in their unimaginative foolishness have reposted the fuck out of ebola chan to the point where it's gaining popularity and cannot be stopped.
And then there's this thing.
English translation.

Tl;dr, ebola has a death cult now.