All the Blood in Your Body (re: Ebola in Africa) [View all]

[WilliamPitt]

(Photo: European Commission DG ECHO / Flickr)

All the Blood in Your Body
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Tuesday 29 July 2014

A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.

- Albert Camus, "The Plague"

It begins with symptoms analogous to influenza: fever, chills, sore throat, muscle aches. Nothing to worry about, right? We've all had the flu.

After that are the headaches, seizures, confusion, exhaustion, as the central nervous system comes under attack. Toward the end, you start bleeding - from the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the anus, the vagina, the skin - and every drop of blood that leaves your body is loaded with the virus that is killing you, in search of a new host to burn down. One by one, your organs fail, your body drowns within itself, and you're gone.

That is Ebola, for close to 90 percent of the people who contract it. It gestates within you for thirteen to twenty-five days before it sinks its teeth into you, so you have from two weeks to almost a month to spread it around - sexual contact is the easiest way, but there are others - before it takes you over. For those first two weeks, you have no idea that you are a ticking bomb.

The worst Ebola outbreak in recorded history is currently burning through several countries in Africa. It began in Guinea back in February. By the end of May, it had spread to the capital, Conakry, a city of some two million people. The disease was found in several counties in Liberia by the end of March, and in Sierra Leone by the end of May. Days ago, a case of Ebola was discovered in Nigeria, carried by a man from Liberia who arrived by airplane in the city of Lagos, which has almost 20 million residents. The man died not long after his arrival, and a resurgence of the disease has since been reported in both Guinea and Liberia.

(snip)

There are some who fear the disease can now be transmitted through the air, which would not only explain the rapid spread of this new outbreak, but would also explain how three trained doctors taking every available precaution also became infected.

I think of that, and remember the man from Liberia carrying the disease who arrived by plane in Lagos. I think of all the people who shared that plane with him, and wonder where they are now. I think of this disease infiltrating densely-populated cities in Guinea, Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and all the attached airports that connect to more large cities and more airports, and I remember that the disease sits and waits, sits and waits, sits and waits for two weeks before mimicking the flu, before it explodes. I remember that as many as nine out of ten people do not survive exposure.

The book The Hot Zone, published in 1994, explains in graphic detail what this disease is capable of, and what can happen if it gets loose in the high-traffic international air routes that wrap the planet like a web. Someone once said that a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth puts its pants on. In this instance, Ebola can be strolling blithely through Laguardia, or O'Hare, or LAX, before anyone is the wiser...and if the theory that this disease has become airborne has any validity, that scenario presents a crisis of unprecedented proportions.

We live, here in America, in an age where it is expected that nothing gets done. At this moment, the only groups working to curtail this Ebola outbreak are Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, and a few Christian missionary organizations. The local medical facilities and staff in the affected countries are woefully inadequate to the task.

In the strongest possible terms, I suggest the Centers for Disease Control, along with any and all pertinent Federal and state agencies, pool their resources and go to Africa as soon as possible. I suggest Congress write them a check sufficient to fund what will doubtless be a highly dangerous medical rescue/research operation. I suggest other nations with sufficient medical capabilities join in this endeavor.

This disease likes to travel, and the first case that pops up in New York or Chicago, thanks to a plane flight, will have the whole country wearing surgical masks behind closed doors. If we're lucky.

Remember the anthrax panic after 9/11? People picking up their mail with oven mitts? That was paranoia. This is all too real, and must be addressed immediately.

The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/25241-all-the-blood-in-your-body