Worse Than Isis. Mosul dam foundation dissolving. Half a million Iraqis could die State Dept. Warns

[deutsey]

33. I'm referring to how this was allowed to become a crisis by the world community

The US included.

There have been outbreaks before and mobilizations have responded quickly to contain them.

I was reading about this outbreak and how bad it was long before I remember it being mentioned in mainstream media in any significant way in the US.

There were many reasons for the outbreak spiraling out of control, from the lack of a modern healthcare infrastructure in that part of Africa, deforestation which has brought humans and diseased bats together, budget cuts at WHO, etc.

Or, in a word, given the deadly and highly contagious nature of the disease, stupidity on our part. We know how horrific and dangerous this disease is, and yet we cut budgets, deforest the land for a slimy buck, etc.

From the Washington Post:

So how did the situation get so horribly out of control?

The virus easily outran the plodding response. The WHO, an arm of the United Nations, is responsible for coordinating international action in a crisis like this, but it has suffered budget cuts, has lost many of its brightest minds and was slow to sound a global alarm on Ebola. Not until Aug. 8, 4 1 ⁄ 2 months into the epidemic, did the organization declare a global emergency. Its Africa office, which oversees the region, initially did not welcome a robust role by the CDC in the response to the outbreak.

Previous Ebola outbreaks had been quickly throttled, but that experience proved misleading and officials did not grasp the potential scale of the disaster. Their imaginations were unequal to the virulence of the pathogen.

"In retrospect, we could have responded faster. Some of the criticism is appropriate," acknowledged Richard Brennan, director of the WHO's Department of Emergency Risk Management and Humanitarian Response. But he added, "While some of the criticism we accept, I think we also have to get things in perspective that this outbreak has a dynamic that's unlike everything we've ever seen before and, I think, has caught everyone unawares."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/10/04/how-ebola-sped-out-of-control/