NYT: What We’re Afraid to Say About Ebola

2014-09-17 Ebola_virus_virion

Michael T. Osterholm’s piece on Eblola for the NYT pretty much confirms what I’ve been thinking about this unfolding crisis. First: what’s to stop the virus from spreading from West Africa to megacities in the developing nation. He mentions Lagos, Nairobi, Kinshasha, or Mogadishu (in Africa) or even Karachi, Jakarta, Mexico City, or Dhaka. If you’re curious, here are the population figures for those cities:

Just for some context, New York City has a population of 8,405,837 and a density of 27,779 per square mile. So some of these cities are more than twice as big and Dhaka, at least, is more than twice as densely populated. Of course, unlike New York City, they don’t have First World sanitary and medical services. The devastation wreaked by an outbreak in such densely populated regions could be horrific, not to mention the accompanying chaos from fear and quarantine measures.

The other fear, however, is that the virus will mutate to become airborne. Right now it is spread only by direct contact with bodily fluid of someone who is infected, which is why First World nations are probably not as vulnerable to widespread contagion. But, like many viruses, Ebola mutates a lot. What’s particularly worrisome, however, is that the more people that get sick, the more copies of the virus there are to mutate. Every new host is trillions of new chances for an airborne version to emerge. This is why fighting the outbreak now is a global concern, other than for the obvious humanitarian reasons.

I’m not writing this as a scare article. There’s no guarantee that the virus will mutate. This is the worst Ebola outbreak ever, but it’s certainly not the first. I had just wondered, myself, if mutation to an airborne strain wasn’t the primary reason for concern. But I hadn’t heard anyone mention it. Until now. Looks like it is the primary concern. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. (Osterholm’s piece has recommendations for hos to fight the virus now, most of which involve the UN.)

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