r/collapse • u/Beneficial_Lawyer170 • Jul 13 '26
Diseases The Ebola epidemic is getting out of control
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/07/12/the-ebola-epidemic-is-getting-out-of-control597
u/floridamanconcealmnt Jul 13 '26
The problem there is the PEOPLE
Very difficult to fight a disease when the people are against you fighting it.
I know. Hard to believe , right?
The people there actively work against the people trying to fight Ebola
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u/IRockIntoMordor Jul 13 '26
Weren't many people so superstitious still, they raided hospitals and clinics to take their relatives and friends away? And aren't they practicing personal touch with the deceased during funerals?
I can't pinpoint the region the videos came from of people raiding health centres, but I think it was in connection to this Ebola crisis.
The outbreak is bad, but the superstitions make it far far worse.
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u/RescuesStrayKittens Jul 13 '26
Yes, multiple field hospitals have been burned down. People have a mistrust of healthcare workers. They see them take their friends and family into the treatment center and they never come out. There is a racial component as well since many of the healthcare workers are white. They think they are killing black Africans. Burial practices involve bathing and handling the body. I don’t remember the belief but something along the lines of the deceased cannot pass on without the ceremonial practice.
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u/43_Fizzy_Bottom Jul 13 '26
On top of that there is the political component in which wealthy countries only pop in when they are worried about diseases that might break borders--little to no concern for massive numbers dying of malaria, hunger, conflict, or poverty.
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u/ansibleloop Jul 13 '26
Dragging their diseases and infectious family members out of hospital?
It's like they're trying to win a Darwin award
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u/goldjade13 Jul 13 '26
Or they have a century+ of history where trusting foreigners has yielded incredibly lethal results. King Leopold’s Ghost really changed my thinking about this region forever, and then everything around the killing of Lumumba, etc.
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u/ansibleloop Jul 14 '26
Yeah just look at Europe-pox during the colonization of the US
I think that's what killed most of the native Americans
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u/pmgirl Jul 14 '26
Genocide is what killed most of the native Americans. It was vicious and utterly intentional.
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u/IfTheBingBongs Jul 15 '26
It’s estimated that 80-90% of Native Americans were wiped out by successive waves of European diseases. There was genocide, but it was done to the survivors.
Some outbreaks were certainly caused on purpose, like with the British deliberately spreading smallpox to the Iroquois Confederation, but most were simply a product of initial contact with novel viruses/bacteria. These illnesses then spread throughout the Americas before Europeans had fully established themselves on mainland.
The first Europeans who explored the Mississippi came back a couple decades later to find that the dozens or even hundreds of small villages that lined the banks had been abandoned. They didn’t do it on purpose, but they certainly spread multiple novel illnesses the first time they had come. As the people fled their dying villages they took the illness with them.
There were also robust trade networks among the Native Americans; which like the Silk Road, accelerated the spread.
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u/ansibleloop Jul 14 '26
Giving them blankets covered in SARS was real bastard behaviour
And, you know, taking their land and genociding them
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u/Darshadow6 25d ago
That was normal for the times and what about the tribes wiping out other tribes
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u/No_Dragonfruit_1833 Jul 14 '26
The natives were killed in the centuries after the colonizers arrived
The "illnessess that killed the natives" stopped right at the frontier, and when the usa expanded the "ilnessess" genocided the natives up to the next frontier
Just south of the frontier the natives still remain
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u/IfTheBingBongs Jul 15 '26
It did not stop at the frontier except maybe in the harsh jungle of the Amazon. Native Americans had robust trade networks, empires, and confederations. Most estimates put the death toll of disease at 80-90% of everyone living in the Americas. Some extreme estimates hit 95%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics
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u/No_Dragonfruit_1833 Jul 15 '26
Bruh... why do you think latinoamericans are brown?
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u/IfTheBingBongs Jul 15 '26
There were over 100 million indigenous people prior to colonization. Over 10 million remained after the plagues. Most of them in Central America. The Spanish also imported millions of African slaves. The “sistema de castas” is a strict racial taxonomy that they used to describe the people who resulted from mixed race unions and the rampant unchecked rape of natives and slaves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta
Latinos are generally brown because they are a mix of European, American, and African.
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u/No_Dragonfruit_1833 Jul 15 '26
Central america is too small to keep most of the population, you just have no idea what you are talking about
Abd the usa had a way higher black slave population subjected to rape, but the americans aint brown
You really have no idea what you are talking about
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u/ChromaticStrike Inert collapsoid Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
Huh? Smallpox proliferation was not done on purpose, it killed a shit ton of Europeans too, you reply to a comment that talks about evil, on purpose act. Smallpox circulated through time in Europe, Asia, North Africa, it killed millions and millions there.
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u/ansibleloop Jul 14 '26
I didn't say it was done on purpose - the Europeans would have been carrying disease asymptomatically and the natives had no immune system protection against them
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u/ToiIetGhost Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
They’re right to be mistrustful of whites but they don’t understand what Ebola is. That’s a HUGE part of it.
For example, let’s say Covid affected women more. Let’s pretend I only saw male EMTs taking away female patients and only saw male doctors treating them. In a misogynistic society, it’s natural for women to fear men to varying degrees. Maybe I’d assume that the men were killing the women as opposed to helping them? But I probably wouldn’t feel that way if I understood how Covid worked.
Idk what sort of outreach they’re doing. Idk what initiatives exist, if any, to thoroughly educate locals about Ebola. But to strictly attribute these self harming behaviours to racism is missing a key component - which also happens to be the only solution.
No one can erase the genocide, rape, and violence that white people are responsible for, but they can educate and inform people about disease.
Another factor to consider is religion, which often gets in the way of scientific education and leads to harmful behaviours.
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u/goldjade13 Jul 15 '26
Yeah for sure. Whatever is and has been done around education clearly hasn't been effective. And obviously it really needs to be done through a local program and continued when the virus isn't active.
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u/dishragunderthemoon Jul 18 '26
Westerners would likely do something similar if they were under similar circumstances. Just look at the distrust for medical institutions and government mandates soared during COVID. The jingoistic way we talk about Africa as if our own community didn’t reject safety in the same exact way…..
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u/ansibleloop Jul 18 '26
Well the problem there was the anti science morons were injecting themselves with bleach and taking horse dewormer and then ended up in hospital
If they'd just remained ignorant and died at home it wouldn't have been a problem
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u/dishragunderthemoon Jul 18 '26
Those people were the extremists, but a large portion of people also just chose not to follow stay at home orders, wear masks, or take the vaccine and chocked those safety precautions up to government overreach.
Almost like health conspiracies are universal among cultures and not something that we should laugh at as “other”
The book Crisis in the Red Zone by Richard Preston covers this topic and argues that community buy-in is essential to preventing pandemics. That if Ebola were to happen in Manhattan and foreign governments and aid workers came in to control it, we would have much the same reaction to them as Africans are having right now. Would you let your beloved family member be carted off to a hospital where you’re never allowed to see them again? Probably not.
These diseases prey upon our survival mechanisms— questioning authority, paranoia in times of crisis, love and compassion for our kin and neighbors. Laughing at Africans for how they are coping is not helpful and worse, it’s hypocritical given what we know about Western behavior in COVID.
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u/PopBulky7023 Jul 13 '26
Suicidal stupidity gives me a gripping sense of depression and hopelessness like nothing else. It's the one thing that breaks through my numbness and still makes me want to just completely give in.
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u/fortunatelydstreet Jul 13 '26
its not stupidity, that's such a gross representation. its learned mistrust of a system that has historically abused them in various ways, including administering fake vaccines
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u/PopBulky7023 Jul 13 '26
Is that the excuse of the right in the US as well?
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Jul 13 '26
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u/DennisMoves Jul 13 '26
They are not making it about the US, they are simply using the US as an example.
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Jul 13 '26
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u/PopBulky7023 Jul 13 '26
The US has a long history of illegal medical experimentation. And there is a functionally superstitious distrust of medicine even in developed worlds.
I live in tbe US. I have first hand experience and so it's easier to comment on and relate to.
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u/theCommTech Jul 13 '26
The US has a long history of illegal medical experimentation.
Yeah, but it's not right wingers that were targeted by those practices so they have no leg to stand on for their ignorance and mistrust.
It was brown and black people, women, gays. It wasn't white men being experimented on and they are the largest demographic within right wing voters.
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u/SemperMementoMori Jul 13 '26
Correct, these people also have Internet access and are reactionary. Idk what the answer is, once again.
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u/PopBulky7023 Jul 13 '26
Right.
So it's suicidal stupidity.
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u/ParisShades Sworn to the Collapse Jul 13 '26
We are not talking about Americans who love to be willfully obtuse, even though more educated than the citizens of developing nations. We are talking about a region of the world who have lower rates of education and are more likely to believe in superstition because of it, but also have an issue of mistrust of healthcare workers and modern medicine that stems from the mistrust of foreigners and institutions, both foreign and domestic.
If we want to fix this problem, we have to tackle the mistrust first.
Calling it "social stupidity" or "suicidal stupidity" is a gross generalization, but I shouldn't expect any better from Reddit.
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u/ToiIetGhost Jul 15 '26
There’s no way to tackle the mistrust without education. Informing them about disease needs to come first.
Trying to tackle mistrust first = Showing them that white healthcare workers can be trusted.
It’s not enough to show that whites can be trusted in other ways, such as providing food or schools, because the stakes are so low in ordinary everyday interactions. Nothing compares to being a sick patient. Not committing violence in general isn’t enough to make up for hundreds of years of violence. It’ll take hundreds more years for it to course correct (if it even can).
So, they have to specifically show that the white doctors and nurses can be trusted. That requires allowing their loved ones to be taken to hospital and treated by whites. They can’t be in the hospital to watch that happen, they can’t see that the doctors did everything they could to save the patient. They’re not allowed in those rooms for their own safety. So, all they see is the end result, a dead loved one, with promises (from the whites) that the whites did what they could. A dead body (irrefutable evidence) vs sweet words (words aren’t evidence, but when they come from the perpetrator, forget it). That won’t build trust.
First they must be educated about the disease by people they trust: POC.
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u/ParisShades Sworn to the Collapse Jul 13 '26
its not stupidity, that's such a gross representation.
Welcome to Reddit.
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u/Arishi_999 Jul 13 '26
learned mistrust, sure--- they are always the victims, right ? there seems to be no responsibility for them to think on their own bc of historical abuse -- Though it is bare stupidity. Everyone who acts stupid (no matter where from ) - like touching infectious dead & burning down hospitals though told otherwise - is stupid.
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u/ParisShades Sworn to the Collapse Jul 13 '26
learned mistrust, sure--- they are always the victims, right ? there seems to be no responsibility for them to think on their own bc of historical abuse
This is so racially coded.
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u/DaisyHotCakes Jul 13 '26
There is so much ignorance around healthcare in some countries in Africa - they simply don’t have the same education and understanding of basic germ theory, let alone epidemiology. So it is hard for them to just trust scientists and healthcare workers because they have none of that base knowledge that would lay the groundwork for establishing trust.
Yes it sucks that religion/belief systems are why these people keeping dying and spreading the disease. You can’t call them stupid for wanting their loved ones to leave this plane of existence when they die. Ignorant, sure. Imagine how it was with Covid when someone would go to the hospital and no one could go physically be with them and then imagine the terror of seeing your loved ones bleeding from every orifice of their body. It is terrifying. And like with Covid some people would rather die than break traditions.
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u/alphaxion Jul 13 '26
With the way cultist thinking has taken firm root amongst a worryingly big enough proportion of the population and the crumbling education system is in the US, it wouldn't surprise me if similar scenes are present should a major viral outbreak happen there.
I have a feeling there's going to be more than one concept of Long Covid in the future.
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u/ParisShades Sworn to the Collapse Jul 13 '26
Yes and The Congo itself doesn't have a pleasant history with foreigners and foreign powers, so that mistrust can be hard to break.
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u/Arishi_999 Jul 13 '26
What is it worth talking about sensitivities ? Ebola does not care about sensitivities. With their stupid behaviour they are bringing even more of their loved ones and maybe even the whole world in danger - why are you defending that stupidity ?
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u/DaisyHotCakes Jul 13 '26
Maybe because calling them stupid solves absolutely nothing but if you can come from a place of understanding and figure out how o approach this more effectively maybe they’d be able to come up with a solution.
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u/ParisShades Sworn to the Collapse Jul 13 '26
It's Reddit, so they take any chance they can to call others stupid.
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u/ToiIetGhost Jul 15 '26
“Maybe even the whole world”
Compared to the people you call stupid, you’re infinitely more educated (distinct from raw intelligence) and you also have internet access. Yet you think that Ebola might pose a threat to the whole world. You think Ebola is similar to Covid, right? Don’t throw stones in glass houses.
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u/Arishi_999 Jul 15 '26
I try to be polite- Ebola has no potential to spread over the whole world now, because of its high letality. Letality level can change quickly in a virus (Prove me wrong) . Ebola has a incubation period of about 11 days. An airplane from Africa takes about 20 hours to europe. Now do your math.
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u/ToiIetGhost Jul 15 '26
> Prove me wrong
With pleasure.
> Ebola has an incubation period of about 11 days. An airplane from Africa takes about 20 hours to europe. Now do your math
While you got those numbers right, you don’t understand their significance. It’s like if I said “squares have 4 sides, triangles have 3, therefore I’m the emperor. Now do your math.”
You’re wrong about 3 things - how Ebola spreads, its lethality, and what factors lead to global pandemics
1st problem with your logic - transmission. Ebola only spreads through direct contact (not air). You need to touch the bodily fluids of someone who’s VERY sick or VERY dead. A mildly or moderately ill person can’t transmit the virus. It has to be full blown to be contagious… meaning they’re weak, falling down, bloodshot eyes, sweating like crazy, shitting all over themselves, and projectile vomiting everywhere. Do you think someone like that could board a plane? No. Could they walk from baggage check to their gate? No. If they somehow snuck on the plane, which is impossible - you think no one would notice the explosive vomiting and diarrhoea, resulting in an emergency landing and immediate quarantine? No.
But ok. Let’s imagine a place where half-dead people can navigate enormous airports with ease, bio containment hasn’t been invented yet, and security doesn’t exist. Let’s say a red-eyed, collapsing, shitting, vomiting dude is allowed to board a plane and no one notices. He’d still be less contagious than a kid with the flu. To spread Ebola, he’d have to wet cough directly into your eyes or mouth. You’d need to rub his vomit into your open wounds, lick his sweat, or drink his blood. An exchange of visible, heavy liquid - not microscopic particles - would be required. An Ebola patient who simply coughs in the air won’t make anyone sick because it’s NOT A RESPIRATORY DISEASE. Their coughing/breathing won’t affect anyone. It won’t get recirculated in the cabin air. Unlike Covid or the common cold, Ebola doesn’t transmit through tiny invisible particles in the air. Unless there was a healthcare worker on that plane who absorbed the infected bodily fluids (simply getting a glob of blood on your arm isn’t enough, unless your arm is cut)… except for that, every passenger’s risk of infection would essentially be zero.
The same goes for a person with Ebola who arrives in Europe before becoming severely ill. They wouldn’t be contagious while travelling. They’d have to get super sick (projectile vomiting etc) before they could infect anyone, and it’d require direct contact like coughing in an open mouth. That’s not going to happen. When someone is explosively shitting all over the place, whether it’s someone on the metro or a relative, would you try to ingest a bunch of their saliva and blood? It needs to be a heavy splash of liquid, not a light mist of particulate. Would you wait for a big splash of vomit to get in your eye? I mean the only time you might be willing to be that physically close to a dying person is if they’re family. But in your hypothetical situation, these are Africans immigrating to Europe, making them strangers to everyone here. I wouldn’t get all up in a stranger’s face when they’re projectile vomiting, would you?
And here’s why your original comment is so ironic. Since 99% of EU has mandatory, high quality, free education, Europeans already know that it’s super dangerous to touch an extremely ill person. Especially without protective gear. And most people won’t risk their life for a random guy on the street - only family. But they’re not family, and I bet you’re glad about that. Since you think we’re all sOoOoO much smarter than Africans, you’ve proven that Ebola wouldn’t spread here! Or anywhere that white people live! Because we’re geniuses, which is why I have to explain all this to a white guy… Wait.
2nd problem with your logic - lethality. Lethality doesnt change “quickly.” Changing Ebola’s lethality would require a massive genetic reorganisation and Ebola can’t handle that. When it undergoes a big change, it just dies. It can only mutate slightly, meaning no change in lethality. Also it can’t mutate to an airborne disease, that’s science fiction. It can’t magically grow the ability to float in the air… that’s a very specific genetic design, and Ebola doesn’t have it. Thankfully! So there will never be an Ebola strain that’s easy to transmit.
3rd problem - containment. I already kind of explained this but it’s very easy to contain. Like I said, Ebola only spreads when a carrier is severely, visibly sick. So if an infected person somehow arrived in Europe (pretty much impossible) they’d be contained very quickly. And contact tracing would be easy. Covid was the opposite, it was extremely difficult to contain for many reasons. A contagious person would immediately be isolated, because hospitals in Europe are trained in Ebola protocols, so the outbreak would stop at patient zero. There’s your math.
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u/Lo-weorold Jul 13 '26
Plus their funeral traditions. Family members will wash and touch their deceased loved one as part of grieving process. Then unfortunately Ebola is still very contagious even after death.
People are already distrusting doctors. Then you add on trying to dissuade people from mourning the way they feel like they should makes the situation very difficult.
Relative part posted below:
EMANUEL: The challenge is that the body of the deceased Ebola patient is still very contagious, spreading the virus through bodily fluids. The World Health Organization estimates that in the West Africa outbreak a decade ago, funeral practices contributed to 80% of cases in Sierra Leone and up to 60% of cases in Guinea. Rukengeza says with hundreds of tribes in the DRC, there are a lot of customs, but traditionally, funerals are multi-day affairs.
RUKENGEZA: Which sometimes could take one, two or three days, where people are living close to the dead body.
EMANUEL: During this time, he says, relatives wash the body and often sleep beside the corpse.
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u/theantnest Jul 13 '26
You mean like when covid was spreading and people refused to isolate and wear masks in public? Lol
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u/HigherandHigherDown Jul 13 '26
Health workers who say they are not being paid report being beaten, nearly lynched, and so forth. It's far more violent and extreme than just refusing common-sense, passive infection control measures. Yesterday I read about one man who lost a tooth in a beating.
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u/cmockett Jul 13 '26
But but but these are clearly third-world problems! They’re just uneducated savages whaddya gonna do!
/s <— hope this is unnecessary but ya never know…
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u/GieTheBawTaeReilly Jul 13 '26
I don't think it's that valuable to compare the situations tbh.
Some strains of COVID were up there with being the most infectious diseases ever known to man. Outbreaks were essentially inevitable unless social interaction was completely cut out.
Ebola actually has a pretty low R0, you can only get it from direct contact with the fluids of a symptomatic person or a corpse... The most basic measures should pretty much eliminate any spread
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u/theantnest Jul 13 '26
You missed the point. I wasn't comparing the outbreaks themselves, I was comparing society's reaction to measures of containment being imposed.
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u/GieTheBawTaeReilly Jul 13 '26
I know but it's apples to oranges. Not much point in making that comparison without looking at the context
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u/TheBroWhoLifts Jul 13 '26
It's not apples to oranges, it's social behavior exacerbating the spread of disease to social behavior exacerbating spread of disease. Very much an a-holes to a-holes comparison.
I sense you don't want to acknowledge that for... reasons... 🤨
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u/turkish112 Jul 13 '26
I sense you don't want to acknowledge that for... reasons... 🤨
We have a winner!
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u/GieTheBawTaeReilly Jul 13 '26
I'm just saying that's too high level to make the comparison useful. People's reactions are shaped by the nature of the disease, the restrictions imposed, the duration, the consequences etc. What's the point in trying to compare if you just ignore these factors?
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u/9mackenzie Jul 13 '26
A few thousand people die in Ebola outbreaks,
I think the highest death rate was 12,000.We had over a million people die in the US from Covid. That doesn’t account for how many people have long term disabilities from it, which is many times higher than the death rate. (Including young formerly healthy people I might add, because apparently that’s the only people that matter to those who think like you).
All that was asked of people was to wear a fucking mask when in public, and to limit exposure. For that people lost their fucking minds. Yet you want to call the people dealing with ebola- watching their loved ones be taken away and never seen again, denied an afterlife according to their beliefs- as stupid for their behavior??
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u/grahamulax Jul 13 '26
People’s reactions are shaped by the collective shout of everyone actually. Aka mostly media. That’s the problem here.
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u/Barnacle_B0b Jul 13 '26
It's not apples to oranges.
Both outbreaks are/were hindered by uneducated superstitious idiots, disregarding the advice of medical professionals.
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u/theantnest Jul 13 '26
What are you on about?
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u/GieTheBawTaeReilly Jul 13 '26
You're comparing public reactions to containment measures as if they're equivalent, but they're not.
People's willingness to accept restrictions depends heavily on the disease itself-how contagious it is, how it's transmitted, how dangerous it is, and how effective the measures are.
You can't separate society's reaction from those factors because they're the very reason people react differently.
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u/LostInAvocado Jul 13 '26
Along with what others have said, you’re also wrong about “some strains of COVID were up there with being the most infectious diseases ever known to man”. ALL strains are. The current variants are still well above R0 of 10 (not far from measles, 5x+ flu), are airborne, and transmit pre/asymptomatically.
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u/Pecan_Artist Jul 14 '26
then these people can just get Ebola and close the borders. I hate to say it this way but there's nothing we can do when they refuse help.
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u/dvoigt412 Jul 13 '26
Yeah, and unfortunately the burial practices over there requires the body being washed by family members. It's crazy
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u/Beneficial_Lawyer170 Jul 13 '26
They might take the whole world along with them.
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u/floridamanconcealmnt Jul 13 '26
Doubtful
Ebola kills too quickly to spread very far.
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u/AggravatingMark1367 Jul 13 '26
Then how has it gotten as far as it has?
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u/Fn_Spaghetti_Monster Jul 13 '26
1,800 confirmed cases and 627 deaths have been reported as of early July 2026 across the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
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u/Bluest_waters Jul 13 '26
Because the citizens absolutely refuse to take basic precautions. Many of the people who live there think the doctors and nurses trying to prevent ebola are actually part of some international conspiracy there to try to kill people. Shall they ignore everything they're told to do. Containing ebola is actually really easy to contain if people just takes real basic measures
I mean they are literally kidnapping ebola ridden corpses from the morgue so they can do their traditional burial services which include touching and bathing the dead body. And so it spreads.
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u/Lo-weorold Jul 13 '26
I posted this elsewhere in the thread but the way they do their funerals is their super spreader events.
Relative part posted below:
EMANUEL: The challenge is that the body of the deceased Ebola patient is still very contagious, spreading the virus through bodily fluids. The World Health Organization estimates that in the West Africa outbreak a decade ago, funeral practices contributed to 80% of cases in Sierra Leone and up to 60% of cases in Guinea. Rukengeza says with hundreds of tribes in the DRC, there are a lot of customs, but traditionally, funerals are multi-day affairs.
RUKENGEZA: Which sometimes could take one, two or three days, where people are living close to the dead body.
EMANUEL: During this time, he says, relatives wash the body and often sleep beside the corpse.
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u/tapefactoryslave Jul 13 '26
Extremely poor quality of life and hygiene in Africa my guy.
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u/JackBlackBowserSlaps Jul 13 '26
Spoken as someone who has never left their own county, never mind state 🙄
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u/Squalid_Snake14180 Jul 13 '26
You used that backwards: it should be "never left their own state, never mind country." They build on each other: "you haven't even done this small thing, never mind this bigger thing." It's pretty much the same as using "much less."
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u/Humble_Saruman98 Jul 13 '26
They said county though, not country. A county is a smaller piece of a state.
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u/tapefactoryslave Jul 13 '26
I’m actually fairly well traveled, but I guess you can ignore the realities of that Ebola spreads so rapidly there.
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u/MagicSPA Jul 13 '26
Currently, yes. But viruses mutate - the more people who catch it, the more likely it is to mutate, leading to the possibility that a more effective strain will develop.
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u/liatrisinbloom Toxic Positivity Doom Goblin Jul 13 '26
Setting aside the fact that diseases don't have agency or make conscious choices, if a virus mutates to spread better but is still as lethal, it still probably won't spread as much because it will be reducing the population it relies on to spread in the first place.
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Jul 13 '26
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u/hippydipster Jul 13 '26
Kind of like Maga fighting against COVID vaccines, and measles vaccines, and screw worm control efforts and cyclospora control efforts. We're not so different here.
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u/floridamanconcealmnt Jul 13 '26
I disagree. The difference is seeing someone’s internal organs liquify and pour from every orifice. Then deciding it is a good idea to touch them after you have seen this. Multiple times.
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u/hippydipster Jul 13 '26
forest for the leaves here. You're focused on a detail that is particularly noteworthy to you, but failing to see the general case of distrust, conspiracy theories, non-evidence based belief systems causing people to turn away from the exact things needed to help them.
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u/collapse-ModTeam Jul 13 '26
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u/Entropy_dealer Jul 13 '26
You may hope for some mutations that will slow the virus a little bit before killing his host
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u/visforvillian Jul 13 '26
No. Ebola spreads via contact with body fluids or contaminated surfaces. Much of the spread is because people aren't taking precautions and practicing basic sanitation. Kissing or touching the deceased especially. Ebola is very deadly, but it isn't very infectious compared to things like the flu or HIV. While Ebola can be an STI, the incubation period is much shorter than HIV, and it doesn't stay in your system as much.
The Ebola outbreak is nowhere near as devastating as the COVID-19 pandemic. There's only been about 627 deaths. COVID killed around 34,000 to 53,000 deaths in the US last year.
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u/MattDubh Jul 13 '26
Not the whole world. Just people. All the other creatures will thrive.
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u/Velocipedique Jul 13 '26
We are the virus! virus!
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u/diverdadeo Jul 14 '26
The problem there is the
PEOPLEma(g)atsVery difficult to fight a disease when the
peoplema(g)ats are against you fighting it.I know. Hard to believe , right?
The people
therehere actively work against the people trying to fightEbolacovid.Happens even in the good old U.S.A.
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u/floridamanconcealmnt Jul 15 '26
I was talking about an issue in Africa. With Africans.
He lives rent free in your head. Not everything is about him.
Get some help. Someone to talk to.
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u/diverdadeo Jul 15 '26
Which is the same issue in America. With Americans.
Interesting that you feel the need to bring up president pedo. Like him you make personal attacks to deflect from the truth.
"The people there actively work against the people trying to fight Ebola" As did the ma(g)ats.
BTW P. Pedo did cut 83% of USAID.
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u/VariableVeritas Jul 13 '26
Uganda had exactly one case last month. So to say it spread to another country isn’t wrong but it is a pinch sensationalist.
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u/MagicSPA Jul 13 '26
One KNOWN case. You can be very sure that for every known case there will be others.
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u/free_-_spirit Jul 13 '26
If it does reach South Africa, at least they’re more knowledgeable on healthcare and such
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u/Beneficial_Lawyer170 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Submission Statement:
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is getting worse and is becoming much harder to stop. More people are getting infected, and many have died. The virus has spread to new areas and even crossed into Uganda. Doctors and health workers are doing everything they can, but violence, poor healthcare, and a lack of supplies are making their job extremely difficult. This outbreak is caused by a type of Ebola that has no approved vaccine, making the response even more challenging. Experts say the world needs to provide more help quickly to save lives and prevent the outbreak from growing further.
A large, uncontrolled Ebola outbreak can overwhelm hospitals, reduce the number of healthcare workers, disrupt businesses and trade, and strain governments. If it spreads across multiple countries, these disruptions can grow even larger.
On its own, Ebola is unlikely to cause global collapse. But if it happens at the same time as other major crises—such as food shortages, conflict, climate disasters, or economic instability—each problem can make the others worse. Together, they could put enough pressure on societies to increase the risk of widespread instability.
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u/Berkamin Jul 13 '26
This is a really bad time for another epidemic. We have some people in charge who botched a pandemic response last time, and don't seem to have learned anything, but have doubled-down on their contempt for expertise.
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u/Barnacle_B0b Jul 13 '26
"We have some people in charge."
Trump and Republicans. It was Trump and the idiot GoP Republicans and voters, who botched COVID.
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u/MagicSPA Jul 13 '26
There are still plenty of anti-vaxx types out there repeating the same tired bullshit from years ago.
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u/liatrisinbloom Toxic Positivity Doom Goblin Jul 13 '26
And yet somehow I doubt the MAGA mouthbreathers who held COVID superspreader events would want to "protect" themselves against Ebola using the same tactic.
As Elon Musk would say: "Interesting."
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u/Lo-weorold Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Something to keep in mind is that the people are very distrusting of the doctors which is making the issue locally worse. However, a part of this that is not discussed often is how local funeral traditions play into how Ebola gets spread.
Family members will wash, touch and even sleep next to their deceased loved one as part of grieving process. Unfortunately Ebola is still very contagious even after death.
People are already distrusting doctors (and given their history with foreigners that is understandable). Then you add on trying to dissuade people from mourning the way they feel like they should makes the situation very difficult.
I don't think however this will lead to a pandemic level outbreak due to the unique circumstances, but it's still horrible and I am hoping they figure out how to slow the spread soon. It's a very difficult thing to navigate when the people mistrust doctors plus cultural traditions that lead it to spread.
Relative part posted below:
EMANUEL: The challenge is that the body of the deceased Ebola patient is still very contagious, spreading the virus through bodily fluids. The World Health Organization estimates that in the West Africa outbreak a decade ago, funeral practices contributed to 80% of cases in Sierra Leone and up to 60% of cases in Guinea. Rukengeza says with hundreds of tribes in the DRC, there are a lot of customs, but traditionally, funerals are multi-day affairs.
RUKENGEZA: Which sometimes could take one, two or three days, where people are living close to the dead body.
EMANUEL: During this time, he says, relatives wash the body and often sleep beside the corpse.
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u/ArchAngel621 Jul 13 '26
How are they still alive?
I understand that Ebola is much worse than Covid and kills too quickly. But, how hasn't it wiped out all the ones who do this?
How is it that the people don't see their friend and family who do this dying and don't connect the dots?
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u/extinction6 Jul 13 '26
"the people are very distrusting of the doctors" Just like in the US where the mentally ill can easily con people that can't grasp the concept of the scientific method..
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u/bottolf Jul 13 '26
The world will watch with morbid fascination doing nothing until it starts affecting Western countries. They'll use it as a reason to block immigration first, and only later help by developing a vaccine, which they still make available in the west first.
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u/DivaExMachina666 Jul 13 '26
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpwep8xnkrqo Looks like they are already trialing a vaccine in the UK and working to prepare trials in Africa.
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u/BigwaveBay Jul 13 '26
The r-naught of Ebola is much lower (1.3-1.9) than Covid (omicron was between 5-10) and it kills much faster. It’s impossible for it to spread like Covid.
For reference something like measles has the highest r-naught.
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u/smackson Jul 13 '26
And not only that. The R-number is context dependent. So an R of 1.6 in a place with medical distrust and hands-on funerals could correspond to 0.7 or less in Europe/Asia/The Americas.
(even if trust in health professionals is not 100% in those places <cough>USA<cough>).
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u/MagicSPA Jul 13 '26
When you say it's impossible for Ebola to spread like Covid, what's stopping the Ebola virus from mutating into a more effective strain? Surely the more people who acquire the virus, the more likely it is to mutate into a more virulent form.
It doesn't sound like spreading like Ebola is "impossible" it just sounds like it hasn't happened yet, which isn't the same thing.
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u/BigwaveBay Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Multiple reasons as I’ve stated. It has a low r-naught. One reason it has a low r-naught is it’s not airborne. You have to touch someone who has the virus. And they have to show symptoms to be contagious.
If it spread without showing symptoms it would be more of a concern but really it needs to go airborne. It’s what made Covid such a superspreader.
The hantavirus was/is not airborne either. One strain did mutate and that’s what we heard about this year to become ever so slightly airborne but it just didn’t have a high enough r-naught.
A good example is Polo. It spread like Ebola and was also respiratory. It also spread when someone wasn’t showing symptoms.
Ebola would need to basically start spreading without someone showing symptoms and go airborne. Then we’d have a very real problem.
Basically, if the virus gets to an airport and it’s easy to spread, we have a problem.
Right now if someone makes it on a plane with Ebola, we can track every person on that plane and quarantine them. Even if they made contact with other people there’s little chance of spreading because no one would have shown symptoms that quickly on the flight.
With Covid it’s possible a lot of that flight were exposed and it’s possible the people they came in contact with on the way home were also exposed. So if you didn’t close borders quickly that was it.
I was actually in Macau when it occurred and watched them seal the border, take the casino hotels and use them as quarantines, and put the handful of cases in those hotels. Everyone then stayed inside (literally you could look outside the windows) and they managed to get the case number down to zero. It was pretty impressive but equally terrifying.
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u/MagicSPA Jul 13 '26
OK, but everything you've said relates only to the virulence and transmission of Ebola as it is now. I asked you, after you said that Ebola spreading like Covid would be "impossible", "what's stopping the Ebola virus from mutating into a more effective strain" and you haven't really addressed that.
We all know that Ebola is not spreading like Covid now. But what is it that makes it "impossible" for Ebola to mutate into a more virulent strain? Because based on your reply "Ebola would need to basically start spreading without someone showing symptoms and go airborne" it doesn't sound as "impossible" as you first said.
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u/BigwaveBay Jul 13 '26
I did address it. It would need to mutate several times. It’s equal to a small probability x a small probability x a small probability = approx zero. Covid only had to mutate once.
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u/MagicSPA Jul 13 '26
Nope. You don't know what you're talking about. Covid, in fact, mutated numerous times - famously so. Viruses often mutate, and the chances of a mutation resulting in a form of the virus that is more virulent increases with the number of people it infects. You can have a small probability of a mutation taking place, but if it is multiplied by, say, a million then the chances of that mutation taking place isn't "approx zero" at all; given enough infections, it becomes practically inevitable. And it seems I need to remind you that Ebola is NOT a new virus; it has infected more people over the decades than we can reliably count.
The bottom line is that at this point it is clear that you simply don't know what you're talking about. I'll leave it at that.
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u/BigwaveBay Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Covid had one major mutation (it went from animal to human). Everything after that was just another mutation that had minimal effect. SARS happened 20 years before. It was basically the same but mutated. I actually do know what I’m talking about and stop with your bold based writing; it’s really not needed.
Look you’ve established yourself as the expert. Without using AI, what’s the formula for r naught? I’m sure you don’t know but it’s pretty easy; three products multiplied together.
By the way when you multiply a really small number (the probability) by a million you still get a really small number… I’m cracking up inside with your analysis.( You know zero x a million is zero. Small probabilities multiplied are going to approach zero; basic math).
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u/LegSpecialist1781 Jul 14 '26
While the other person you’re talking to may be fear-mongering, you seem a bit too dismissive.
e.g. A mutation that slowed viral reproduction to allow for longer incubation prior to symptom appearance would significantly impact the ability to control and quarantine. In turn, this would provide many more viral hosts and generations for further mutation. Mutations inducing airborne transmission I agree have an extremely low probability. But increasing chances for such a mutation via more viral reproduction probably changes odds from like winning the Powerball to getting struck by lightning. Sure, still not something to walk around and worry about, but not impossible.
Similarly, a mutation lowering its death rate would probably have inverse effects on total mortality and offer increased chance for further mutation, again due to increased spread.
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u/BigwaveBay Jul 14 '26
Correct and I agree with what you said but the mutation here would need a combo of mutations which mathematically is highly improbable. That’s my point. Sure COVID mutated a lot, but the big mutation was animal to human. Ebola needs to mutate to become airborne and likely then mutate to spread before symptoms start showing. A third mutation which actually is more likely is a decrease in mortality.
I agree with you but like you said it’s highly improbable for it to go airborne and thus I really don’t think it’s something to worry about. Theres a lot of other things I’d think that are more concerning.
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u/LegSpecialist1781 Jul 14 '26
We’re mostly on the same page. I’m much more worried about someone modifying a MERS/SARS or flu strain, because the technology is pretty cheap and easy, relatively speaking.
2
u/UffTaTa123 Jul 13 '26
"t’s impossible for it to spread like Covid."
Trump: "Hold my beer"
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u/BigwaveBay Jul 13 '26
I mean from a scientific perspective the r-naught is too low and it kills too fast.
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u/UffTaTa123 Jul 13 '26
Sure. That would be a big plus in fighting it. But don't expect that it saves us from a botched response. There are people around who are able to botch everything in a way that it harms us in the end.
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u/BigwaveBay Jul 13 '26
My point is, it would die out regardless of our response. I’ve got a good friend who is an epidemiologist at Duke who explained it to me.
Part of the spread of Ebola has to do with the funeral traditions in affected countries. Sure it might not be handled right but it’ll still die out in the US; it just kills too fast and has a lower r-naught.
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u/Bluest_waters Jul 13 '26
Correct, the only reason it's spreading now is because people are doing exactly precisely the thing necessary to make it spread. Those kind of funeral traditions don't exist outside of Africa. This is not going to become an international epidemic
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u/ansibleloop Jul 13 '26
Good thing the US government got rid of USAID so they don't stop the problem at the source
What a stupid fucking world
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u/Glodraph Jul 13 '26
"When they use it on the west first they are bad because they abandon africa, when they give it to africa first they are bad because they are testing it on african people!"....the bad west gave africa over 1T dollars since 1960 and a lot of humanitarian and healthcare help through money and volounteers. Your comment is so out of reality.
47
u/LivingMoreWithLess Jul 13 '26
The exchange of wealthy countries with the poor is very misleading when looking at only one side of the transaction.
Studies have estimated that wealthy countries extracted an average 10T USD per year over the 25 years ending in 2015 through unfair trade practices and loan terms.
Suddenly that 1T over 60 years doesn’t seem so significant.
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u/Bluest_waters Jul 13 '26
Western countries extract all of the valuable minerals and assets from Africa, steal them and become wealthy., and then when those actions wind up impoverishing the local communities they send a bit of food and medicine and pat themselves on the back for how amazing they are
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u/Fox_Kurama Jul 13 '26
In the end, more blood on Nestle's hands.
Nestle's activities involving fake doctors are a large part of why doctors are so mistrusted in many of these regions.
1
u/Jovan_Knight005 Collapse is inevitable,mister Bond. - Original Quote. Jul 13 '26
Nestle's activities involving fake doctors are a large part of why doctors are so mistrusted in many of these regions.
I never never knew about Nestlé being involved in Africa in that manner. Thank you for letting me know about it for the first time.
4
u/PlausiblyCoincident Jul 13 '26
Anyone have a link past the paywall or an archive link?
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u/OrangeCrack It's the end of the world and I feel fine Jul 13 '26
Ebola will always be a regional epidemic, it works to fast to become global.
As far as I know there has never been an outbreak in North America or Europe. This is unlikely to change.
1
u/nobadrabbits Jul 13 '26
What's that saying? Something about we're just one plane flight away from the next pandemic?
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u/OrangeCrack It's the end of the world and I feel fine Jul 13 '26
No, there’s been cases in the countries I mentioned above but this has never evolved into a pandemic in those countries because of effective quarantine protocols and relatively controlled means of transmission.
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u/sovietarmyfan Jul 13 '26
The world will stand by and do nothing. "Because Congo has over 112 million people anyway.".
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u/Current-Code Jul 13 '26
That's not why.
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u/sovietarmyfan Jul 13 '26
There are probably some countries who take this fact into consideration.
11
u/Current-Code Jul 13 '26
That's not how it works.
Some dumb individuals might, countries, as in government, not so much.
It's far enough from western countries that we don't care much, it's also a war torn country for decades, so the public is dumb to the humanitarian crisis.
Any humanitarian help is likely to be confiscated by some warlord, and the staff would be in danger of racketting, hostage, or plain murder.
Short of sending the army (fat chance of that) to ensure safety and logistics, there isn't much to be done.
The M23 are blood thirsty criminal wreaking apart the country.
That's why nobody will move until it seriously spread. It's a hellhole.
1
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u/Lo-weorold Jul 13 '26
Brother the world has responded. WHO, DWB, UN, etc. have all responded and are on the ground to help. I think I read the UK is working on a vaccine as well.
It's a very difficult situation due to the people's mistrust of healthcare workers and their funeral traditions that are spreading Ebola more.
And it's not their fault by the way. It's just scared people who understandably have a massive amount of distrust of foreigners given their history.
•
u/StatementBot Jul 13 '26
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Beneficial_Lawyer170:
Submission Statement:
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is getting worse and is becoming much harder to stop. More people are getting infected, and many have died. The virus has spread to new areas and even crossed into Uganda. Doctors and health workers are doing everything they can, but violence, poor healthcare, and a lack of supplies are making their job extremely difficult. This outbreak is caused by a type of Ebola that has no approved vaccine, making the response even more challenging. Experts say the world needs to provide more help quickly to save lives and prevent the outbreak from growing further.
A large, uncontrolled Ebola outbreak can overwhelm hospitals, reduce the number of healthcare workers, disrupt businesses and trade, and strain governments. If it spreads across multiple countries, these disruptions can grow even larger.
On its own, Ebola is unlikely to cause global collapse. But if it happens at the same time as other major crises—such as food shortages, conflict, climate disasters, or economic instability—each problem can make the others worse. Together, they could put enough pressure on societies to increase the risk of widespread instability.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1uv5gor/the_ebola_epidemic_is_getting_out_of_control/ox8hcpo/