US left the WHO. expect the worst

> read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains

"Case fatality rates in the past two [Bundibugyo virus disease] outbreaks, reported in Uganda and in DRC in 2007 and 2012, have ranged from approximately 30% to 50%" [1]. Given "as of 15 May, a total of 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths" were reported, the current disease's 33% fatality rate is in the historic range.

[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...

It's been picked up late because it's from Goma, a region in Congo currently operated by the March 23 Movement a "rebel" group against the current Congo's government.

I was wondering about that with the hantavirus, whereby if it's got a higher fatality rate then it's less likely to be easily transmitted.

Is that like a general rule, or pure bunk? (I'd probably assume the answer 'depends').

Also worrying that the existing approved vaccine does not protect against this variant.

That said I'm quite hopeful, since there is a vaccine for other strains.

The WHO is just another politically subverted organization. It declared covid for half an eternity as not airborne. If its connected with a loos of face or economic short term losses- many actors will put the pressur on to prevent the declaration of an pandemic or other travell restrictions.

The us is not involved in this mess.

It figures: Right before the COVID-19 outbreak, Trump dismantled the White House pandemic response team and pushed to downsize the CDC—later pulling out of the WHO entirely. A new Trump term, a new pandemic?

I suspect this is to mitigate perverse incentives for countries to avoid reporting outbreaks and collaborating with the WHO for fear of tanking their economy

> seems like an abuse of the word "global"

The WHO language is "a public health emergency of international concern," but not "a pandemic emergency."

Technically (nitpicking) it mentions no _approved_ vaccine. There can be vaccines without being approved for use in said countries.

But I have no clue how far along vaccines are, and even if they exist how feasible it would be to use in e.g Congo. Similar to how we can treat tuberculosis, yet many people keep dying of it.

Covid turned into a pandemic because it wasn't taken seriously at the start. (Looking at you, China.)

Public-health experts never seemed concerned about hantavirus. They are with this. It's appropriate to take their declarations seriously.

> Ebola generally requires contact to spread

"Human infection occurs through close contact with the blood or secretions of infected wildlife, such as bats or non-human primates, and subsequently spreads from person to person through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs, or other bodily fluids of infected individuals or contaminated surfaces. Transmission is particularly amplified in health-care settings when infection prevention and control (IPC) measures are inadequate, and during unsafe burial practices involving direct contact with the deceased" [1].

So yes on traditional burial. But much easier to spread than HIV.

[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...

forgot 5. Covid was exactly the right amount of deadly, 0.5-1% which made it easy to "roll the dice" on making containment harder.

> People with the flu tend to self-isolate showing symptoms.

Do you have any other fantasy tales you’d like to tell?

2, 3 and 4 apply to the hantavirus as well.

Just finished watching the last episode of season 2 with my daughter this morning. Now biting my nails for another 6-12 months awaiting season 3... Dammit.

"no evidence of human to human transmission", was something repeated far too often and far too politically for me to take them serious on the next issue, serious or not.

> "It would spread when the carrier was <LARGELY> asymptomatic" , the largely is very important here otherwise containment would have been a lot different.

The main concerns for covid were also limited to a novel strain of a known virus type (again a KNOWN TYPE) being released into a global general populous with no inherent immunity. Aka expect ~5% of cases to probably have complications and some smaller %-age of that to be serious. If we didn't know what covid was we wouldn't be calling it "covid-19" to expressly describe which genus we're talking about. (Followed by general stupidity from people of pretending we don't know how other covid strains progress (regardless of any 'novel' effects)). Sill no sensible scenario put death rates >1% for anyone not in an at risk group. I mean everyone forgets the south-park sars skit that there's a 97% chance of catching that practically without symptoms. Why this became polarised about steam rolling through untested technology onto the populous is identical to the "green coal" and "tech will solve the carbon footprint" thinking...

> Unless it has some really unlucky novel mutations

2014 was Ebolavirus proper (Zaire, I believe). This outbreak is this fucker of a chimera [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundibugyo_ebolavirus

Sorry, your takeaway from Covid is to ignore public-health experts when they warn that something is breaking containment and could turn into a pandemic if it isn't controlled?

> calling it a global health emergency is laughable

Your complaint is with the NYT's re-phrasing, not the WHO.

WHO declaration is: "determined a public health emergency of international concern" https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d...

Obviously it's a local public health emergency, and some international concern seems warranted anytime an ebola strain pops up...

But I do worry a bit about dying in a car accident, it's why I wear my seatbelt, drive safe, try to drive defensively.

Adding both those risks together still is a higher risk than before...

This misses the point. The individual health risk might be low, the societal response to the risk might severely impact your life regardless of your personal risk exposure.

You're right that this shouldn't cause worry. But it should command attention. At least as much as that stupid hantavirus nothingburger did.

By "import ebola" you of course mean repatriated a fine American citizen:

> Brantly attended Abilene Christian University in Texas, where he earned an undergraduate degree in biblical text in 2003. It was here, at ACU, where he pledged Pi Kappa, a men's social club founded on a deep sense of Christian brotherhood, regardless of which denomination that member belonged to

Say what you will about religion, this is someone who put its teachings into action. Meanwhile, you destructionists have jumped the shark long ago.

Just wondering, do you think it's not relevant to help the reader understand context on the US' impact? Positive or negative?

> we'll just throw that in to the story anyway, even though we have no facts either way

We don't have a tight chain of causation. But we have plenty of facts pointing entirely one way.

We know there was "a critical four-week detection gap between the onset of symptoms of the presumed index case...and the laboratory confirmation of the outbreak" [1]. This has contributed to "significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread associated with this event at the present time" [2]. And tying all of this back to DOGE, we know USAID's "more than 50 staffers dedicated to outbreak response" were cut to "just six people to handle Ebola, Marburg virus, mpox and bird flu preparedness" [3].

Musk and Trump didn't cause this outbreak. But we would have had a better chance of catching this sooner, and with more precision, if we had those resources there.

[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...

[2] https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d...

[3] https://www.spyuganda.com/another-one-us-cuts-aid-to-fight-e...

Your linked article is dated at

> 17 July 2019

(people never seem to look for/check dates any more)

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