A few weeks ago, I talked about the “pandemic” that isn’t actually happening, hantavirus. In the time since then, there have been four new cases and no new deaths, and the Director-General of the World Health Organization has announced that all passengers and crew are still in quarantine and the situation is “stable.” I know this is going to be very disappointing news for the guys in the comments who insisted that I said the same thing about COVID, which I did not. In the first week of February 2020 I told people that panicking would not help anything, that people outside of Wuhan were not at immediate risk of death, that people in China WERE at risk and should take precautions like wearing masks, avoiding crowds, and waiting for the vaccine, and that we all need to pay attention because this was probably going to spread and become a worldwide pandemic. All of those things were correct, just like my video on hantavirus is correct. It’s not because I’m an infallible genius–it’s because I’m just telling you what the actual consensus is amongst the experts in the relevant field. I know, crazy, right? One weird trick to almost always being right: listen to the people who know what they’re talking about.
With that in mind, I wanted to take a moment to talk about a disease that, unlike the Andes virus, does have a high body count and is currently uncontrolled: ebola. As of this recording, there have been 746 suspected cases and 176 deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (or DRC) and a few more over the border in Uganda. The disease, which is severe and fatal in about 50% of cases but sometimes as much as 90%, was spreading through the community for some time before it was identified, due in part to researchers testing for the wrong virus (as there are four that cause the disease and this ended up being a less common one). It spreads amongst humans through “direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g. bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids.”
The World Health Organization has coordinated a response to stop the spread, but they’re running into trouble. Last week, Congo residents burned down one of the treatment centers set up to help them.
“WTF is wrong with these people,” cry Redditors in…hmm, which subreddit is this? Ah, yes, “LockdownSkepticism,” a home for those who were “skeptical of an ongoing lockdown as an effective way to manage the coronavirus pandemic.” Yes, what the fuck IS wrong with these people?
What a bunch of low IQ dumbasses, exclaim the users of the Jordan Peterson subreddit: “We just need to stop feeding and giving aid to these people and let Darwin do his thing.” If only this particular eugenicist had scrolled all the way down and read this comment, which was hidden due to too many downvotes: “The DOJE dismantling of USAID negatively impacted monitoring of disease outbreaks around the world and global health programs. There will be ripple effects for years to come.”
Downvotes from the Peterson fans aside, that person is absolutely correct. After Elon Musk and his merry band of morons took a sledgehammer to USAID last year, one data analyst calculated that it led to one person dying somewhere in the world every two minutes–usually a child. The cuts affected food programs, HIV/AIDS prevention, and, yes, efforts to stop ebola. Specifically, ebola. Here’s Elon laughing about “accidentally” canceling USAID’s ebola program. Wired and the Washington Post both investigated his claim that the funding was immediately restored and found it, unsurprisingly, to be a big fat lie.
Trump also pulled the US out of the World Health Organization, while RFK, Jr.’s HHS insisted that a lab studying ebola stop working.
As someone who is highly critical of the US’s attempts to influence people in other countries, I’ve been critical of some of what USAID did. It has always been a tool of influence. But these programs were unequivocally good. They were influencing people in other countries to trust the US government by keeping them healthy and alive. And boy, were these programs already up against a tough opponent. For centuries white colonizers have been destroying Africa, stealing their land and their resources, installing puppet regimes, and yes, medically experimenting upon them in horrifically cruel ways. It happened so often that there’s an entire Wikipedia article on it: Pfizer killing eleven kids in an antibiotic trial; the CDC and WHO funding a trial in which they gave pregnant women a placebo instead of medication that would prevent the transmission of HIV to their fetuses, resulting in at least 1,000 babies being born with HIV. Forced sterilization throughout the ages.
Aid workers can’t just walk into these communities and expect trust. They have to already be in those communities, building that trust. When Elon Musk threw away USAID, he not only threw away the very monitors who were there to detect ebola before it gets out of control, but he also threw away the people who were there to coordinate with the community, educate them, address their concerns, and prevent an epidemic. Or, prevent something like, you know, the local community burning down the aid center.
One of the reasons that ebola spreads so easily is because of the area’s cultural traditions surrounding death, which involve a lot of handling of the body and acts that could contaminate drinking water. In 2014, one ebola outbreak that led to 85 cases was traced back to a single funeral, as detailed in this CDC report. The authors concluded that “To control Ebola transmission in…difficult-to-reach communities in Guinea, targeted involvement of community leaders and enhancement of public health interventions are crucial for the proper implementation of Ebola prevention and control strategies. These enhancements include 1) educating the community regarding the signs and symptoms of Ebola and its modes of transmission, 2) stressing the importance of seeking medical care and reporting suspected Ebola cases, and 3) emphasizing the potential benefit of early diagnosis and treatment. Targeted education strategies and health communication messages in local languages can help decrease the concerns of groups resistant to the Ebola intervention efforts of local public health officials (3) and can facilitate the isolation and limited treatment of patients who are unwilling or unable to seek care at an ETC.”
In other words, you can’t just wait for someone to notice an outbreak and throw a bunch of doctors at it and think it’s going to be easily contained. You need long-term community involvement and education, and with one push of a “delete” key, the world’s richest man put an end to that. Even if we guillotine Trump and Musk tomorrow, which to be clear for YouTube, I DO NOT in ANY WAY SUPPORT, we’re still looking at decades of work to rebuild the vital resources that USAID supported.
So. Could this ebola outbreak turn into the next pandemic? It’s possible, but it doesn’t seem like any experts think it’s likely. An ex CDC director said “I suspect this is going to become a very significant pandemic,” but that was Trump appointee Robert Redfield speaking to News Nation. That would be like quoting Kash Patel telling Joe Rogan that he suspects Bat Boy is going to finally be captured this year. Like, shut up, you’re all idiots.
But yes, it is a real threat for the communities in and around the current outbreak, as it has been found in major cities. And we are a very connected world, so as with COVID we could see this make the jump to other continents. But unlike COVID, you aren’t going to get it just by having dinner with someone who is infected and doesn’t know it: you can only get it by interacting with an infected animal (which is unlikely for most of my audience, I suspect, as it would likely involve eating an African fruit bat), or by getting the blood, feces, urine, sweat, or other bodily fluid into your own eyes, nose, mouth, or open wound. A person doesn’t start spreading the disease until they show symptoms, though a man who has recovered from ebola could spread the disease via oral, anal, or vaginal sex.
So, the risk of this affecting my mostly Western audience is low as it’s far easier to avoid getting this disease if you don’t have the same funeral customs and if you’re educated about what ebola is and how it spreads. But, that said, we saw what happened during COVID. There are plenty of populations here where they might not be educated about it and have cultural traditions that exacerbate the situation. AND, there’s apparently STILL an active subreddit all about being “skeptical” of the very obvious benefit of quarantine, and they have so little self-awareness that they’re asking what the fuck is wrong with these ebola victims, when in the event of ebola becoming a pandemic and hitting the US, they themselves would absolutely be drinking the blood of their recently dead relatives to “own the libs” or whatever. So as usual, my advice is “don’t panic” but do pay attention to what’s happening and understand why it’s happening.
