It is clear that everything flows and changes, but sometimes events burst into our life with lightning speed and also disappear with lightning speed. So it was with the Ebola fever - the whole world was "in a fever" for some time and silence … Today we will consider some versions - what actually it was - a sudden and transient epidemic, or another deception pursuing other goals …
The Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976 in the region of the river of the same name in Africa. Fever has several strains, and some of them have a mortality rate of 90%. Ebola first reported outbreaks in Nzara, Sudan, Yambuku and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as in a village near the Ebola River, from where it got its name.
The outbreak that occurred in 2014 is considered the largest and most complex to date. Starting in Guinea and spreading between countries across land borders from Sierra Leone to Liberia, and by air (only 1 passenger) to Nigeria and by land (1 passenger) to Senegal, while killing 5 times more people than all previous ones outbreaks combined.
The Filoviridae virus family includes 3 genera: Lloviu, Marburg and Ebola. 5 species are identified: Zaire, Bundibudgio, Sudan, Reston and Tai Forest. The first three of these - the Ebola viruses Bundibujio, Zaire and Sudan - have been associated with major outbreaks in Africa. The virus that caused the 2014 outbreak in West Africa is of the Zaire species. The WHO Director-General has declared the outbreak an emergency of international concern. Several countries were most severely affected - Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
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By September 2014, more than 3,200 people have died from Ebola. And the attention of the whole world was riveted on an exotic disease. All the media in the world tirelessly trumpeted the ongoing horror and the threat of global infection. Many companies operating in Africa quickly curtailed their activities, fearing the threat of infection.
According to the American magazine Time, he named the title "Person of the Year" -2014, awarded to people caring for patients with the deadly Ebola virus.
Note that the coverage of the Ebola epidemic has reached the point where messages turn into hysterics and do not carry a desire to educate the population about prevention or warning about danger, but look like intimidation, crossing all conceivable norms and indifferent to human values.
Let us note the fact that, for example, just as a plane crash attracts close attention to itself as a tragedy, while many more people die in road accidents, so Ebola caused massive panic, while ordinary flu die every year tens of thousands and this number cannot be compared with Ebola. However, we sometimes hear much less about the flu than about the fever …
The threat of the spread of Ebola outside West Africa has forced many countries of the world to join forces and act as a united front against the disease. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have pledged about $ 300 million to the hardest-hit countries, with the US contributing $ 175 million and sending 3,000 troops from Washington to the region.
And the first strange moment in the fight against Ebola was the direct involvement of the military. Not virologists and epidemiologists, but the military.
Here is such a headline, as the first swallow in a string of mistrust, appeared in Newsday: Military Plan to Fight People Traffickers and Ebola. News of the Day: Military Plan to Combat Traffickers and Ebola (BBC NEWS).
Virology experts believe that the decision to send US troops to fight Ebola is at least strange, because it is not at all clear how exactly the military can fight the terrible disease.
According to Mikhail Shchelkanov, professor at the N. V. Ivanovsky (interview with "MP") - American troops, as it was in Afghanistan, can help organize checkpoints on the roads, but the health of the African population is hardly the true purpose of their arrival. The professor does not exclude that the US military will try to test epidemiological rhetoric as a pretext for the introduction of troops instead of the idea of democracy, which has exhausted itself. It's like reconnaissance in force.
The second strange moment was the meeting of the American President Obama with the leaders of African countries, in which the most active phase of the Ebola epidemic was recorded.
Obama Hosts West African Leaders (Obama hosts West African leaders). The president met with the leaders of the Ebola-affected nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea (New York Times).
Regardless of Washington's real plans, doubts about the purity of the US military's intentions in Liberia began to appear in the Western media as well. The British The Guardian, having published an article about conspiracy theories around international crises, which are becoming more and more popular on social networks around the world, received an active response. the degree of mistrust in the official versions of the leaders of countries, in particular the United States, is off scale.
The first good reasons for mistrust of US actions in Africa are emerging. Back in March 2014, when there was no talk of Ebola at all, The New York Times published an article about the expansion of humanitarian missions organized by the American armed forces in Africa.
Judging by these data, for several years now the US African Command has had another, more important military goal: confronting terrorist organizations cooperating with Al-Qaida, including the radical group Boko Haram, which is building up its forces in the region. The article deals with the fact that the Pentagon is trying to juggle with two opposing missions: it contains the terrorist threat of Islamists, while trying not to send numerous troops to the region.
According to many experts and journalists, the United States uses any occasion to recall the presence of its armed forces in West Africa. Here, before Ebola, there were already 3,600 military personnel performing both various humanitarian missions and helping the armed forces of some countries (for example, in Burundi, the army was assisted by two American snipers).
It was also believed that the military is needed to protect oil fields developed, in particular in Liberia - American companies Chevron, Exxon, Anadarko work here, and since Liberia is one of the poorest countries in the world, the development of its subsoil is associated with high risks.
There have been press reports suggesting that Americans are being drawn to Liberia by large reserves of oil and gas. Where there is gas and oil, as well as air defense, American troops are trying to get there. Wherever they go, they never leave.
Let's note one more side of this problem - there are companies that have benefited from the Ebola epidemic, American medical corporations - Tekmira, Sarepta Therapeutics, BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, which have been developing a cure for Ebola. Note that with the start of mass hysteria, Tekmira shares rose in price by $ 6 in a day - from September 30 to October 1 - from $ 23 to $ 29. The sudden rally was explained by the fact that Tekmira had previously collaborated with the Pentagon, and the anti-Ebola remedy it developed was effective.
Note also that there is still no vaccine for this fever, nor an effective treatment. The US Department of Defense, which financed the development of a vaccine until 2012, suddenly suspended funding, explaining that the disease would most likely not appear again. In this case, the drug was almost ready. A completely natural question arises: why are the US military interested in the Ebola virus and why are they stopping the development of a vaccine against it (despite the fact that the drug was almost ready) and why then private companies are dealing with this issue during the next outbreak?
By the way, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) owns a curious patent that covers the Ebola virus strain known as EboBun. The patent was obtained in 2010 and its number is CA2741523A1. The patent applicant is none other than the government of the United States of America (represented by a representative from the CDC). The description contains this phrase - an isolated strain of the human Ebola virus. One more point - the first infected in Africa were rushed to the United States. Experts suggest that Ebola is a man-made disease, a biological weapon created by human hands.
Returning to the issue of a patent, we note that a patent, as you know, is the sole right to use a brand, mark, or, as in our case, a disease. It turns out that the United States alone owns the Ebola virus. They did not patent cancer, diabetes, influenza, SARS and other diseases, but for some reason Ebola was awarded a separate right to be property. With this patent, US authorities are allowed to single-handedly develop Ebola vaccines. Thus, the patent proclaims the United States the sole developer and owner of the disease, and if an Ebola outbreak occurs somewhere else, no one except the United States will be able to create a vaccine - Europeans cannot tightly close their borders to people arriving from Africa. Therefore, almost every European hospital will be forced, just in case, to purchase these drugs at exorbitant branded prices - and replace them after the expiration date.
However, this patenting looks strange from all sides. After all, Ebola is not the flu that sweeps all over the mine every autumn and from which hundreds of thousands die - Ebola outbreaks are not so serious and there is no economic effect due to the narrow market. However, experts believe that the patent was taken only so that in the event of a new mass hysteria on the occasion of another swine or bird flu, the symptoms of which are very similar to the onset of Ebola, it would be possible to immediately provide a ready-made vaccine. And the governments of countries where an incomprehensible disease appears will buy up huge quantities of the vaccine. By the way, experts are inclined to believe that outbreaks of such strange diseases are often nothing more than a leak from laboratories that create them as a bacteriological weapon.
Regarding Ebola, there is another version - given the nature of its spread - it is a point weapon, it is a weapon capable of destroying certain targets - cities and villages, without much spreading outside. A point-and-shoot weapon of mass destruction tested in Africa.
Interestingly, the US authorities only acknowledged that they had a vaccine called "ZMapp" against Ebola when two US doctors fell ill. It also turned out that the United States has a highly effective high-tech vaccine, TKM-Ebola, developed by the biolabs of the Canadian company Tekmira. Tekmira signed a $ 140 million contract with the US Department of Defense in 2010 to deploy therapeutic RNA interference using proprietary Liquid Nanoparticle (LNP) technology to treat Ebola. However, virologists and epidemiologists of the world, including American ones, argue that to create a vaccine, the blood of a recovered person is enough, without any nanoparticles and other things. But the company started its work, conducted experiments on animals, the next stage needed experiments on humans. And now there is an outbreak in Africa. What a luck.
And another interesting version - the last Ebola outbreak began (according to unverified data) in a secret Guinean laboratory, in which microbiologists, biochemists, immunologists from the United States worked …
And suddenly, almost instantly, Ebola disappeared and today we can only listen to many questions about it, but at the same time receive few answers, put forward dozens of versions, one more interesting than the other, and also have our own opinion on what is happening …