For a week now, the media has been reporting on the Ebola epidemic in Africa. The mood, I must say, is panic. They talk about the high mortality rate from this fever and the ease of infection. There are fears that the virus will spread to Europe and America. But for some reason this story is very reminiscent of the hysteria with the swine flu virus.
In recent days, the news feeds of the leading media have again begun to resemble frontline reports. Only instead of describing the battles and losses of the warring armies, their subject was the spread of the deadly Ebola virus. He appeared in Europe and in Hong Kong, and American bloggers are outraged that two Americans from Liberia were brought to the United States for treatment.
Even if in a special medical plane, with all precautions, but what if a malicious virus still breaks out of medical control and wipes out almost the entire population of the "citadel of democracy"? After all, the death rate from the "hemorrhagic fever" caused by it, as reported by medical (and now all other) sites, reaches 90 percent.
Well, let's not argue - you can really die from Ebola. The virus infects blood vessels, making them more permeable; the liver, in which blood clotting factors are formed; kidneys, lungs and other organs. And you can get infected with it literally by any known ways - contact-household (through objects infected with the patient's secretions), airborne droplets (through inhalation of air containing sputum of the sick person), even directly through the blood and using non-sterile syringes for injections.
But it is this last circumstance that is alarming in terms of the real danger of this disease. Because with such an abundance of ways of infection, the epidemic would have to spread at lightning speed. Meanwhile, since 1976, when this virus was identified in Africa, the number of its victims is estimated at a maximum of thousands in one outbreak and tens of thousands for the entire time.
True, supporters of the "extreme danger" of Ebola insist that it is too deadly - they say, the virus does not have time to spread beyond the outbreak, since almost all patients in it die. First, not all, but only up to 90 percent. Secondly, the incubation period between infection and the onset of clinical symptoms reaches three weeks. For comparison, the plague has a maximum of three days.
Promotional video:
But the "black death" in the Middle Ages regularly mowed down from a third to almost 100 percent of the population of cities and entire countries. Despite the fact that then communications were exhausted by horses, carts and primitive sailing ships, and not by airplanes and trains, as now. That is, people who fell ill with "Ebola" should have spread the infection at least throughout Africa - well, around the world too.
It seems that the situation with the African virus is very similar to that of 5 years ago - with the "swine flu", down to the smallest details. Then, too, the World Health Organization every hour updated the increasing number of cases - and nearby, an impressive percentage of deaths, reaching 80. The strictest security measures were taken in the world, reaching the level of uniform hysteria. As in Ukraine, for example, when people walked the streets in masks, and the then “orange” ruling in all seriousness offered to cancel the next presidential elections, which, by the way, they failed miserably.
Meanwhile, when the hysteria subsided, it turned out that the death rate from the "deadly" swine flu is two times lower than from its traditional seasonal counterpart. No, no one invented patients dying in clinics for the press. It's just that such (and even more) cases of complications occur with very many viral infections. Influenza, for example, is also very fond of affecting blood vessels (why patients have red eyes), it causes damage to the kidneys, heart, and brain. Adenovirus infection often causes diarrhea (as with Ebola), etc.
So there is only one manipulation in such cases of artificially inflated panic - with statistics. Yes, in both swine flu and Ebola, the number of deaths of patients diagnosed with this or that virus can reach very high percentages. But the key point is that only those people in whom this virus has been laboratory-confirmed are taken into account! And these are just those patients who developed a severe course, which made them go to the hospital.
Meanwhile, tens and hundreds of times more people will not even think of passing rather complex tests, which not every laboratory is capable of doing. And the symptoms that have arisen in themselves, and the invited doctors, are interpreted as "a common cold." Well, maybe ARVI is an acute respiratory viral infection. And they will begin to treat it, as a rule, with "folk methods" - with a high probability of a mild course and quick recovery.
One can only guess why the hype about the "deadly Ebola" is now being directed in the world media. So "dangerous" that until now, against this "terrible" virus, no one really even started making a vaccine. Because spending tens of millions of dollars to develop it, hundreds to buy doses to vaccinate billions of people, and all in order to save tens of thousands from force (orders of magnitude less than dying from the flu) is somehow not very rational.
However, perhaps just now some large corporation is already "on the verge of a revolutionary discovery" of the anti-Ebola vaccine and is going to stir up a multi-level advertising campaign. Just like five years ago, Swiss pharmaceutical firms with American shareholders managed to improve their business very well, selling overnight the deposits of the rapidly losing Tamiflu.
However, it is possible that the stuffing about the "epidemic threatening the world" was made for a purely political purpose - to divert public attention from some more pressing problems. Like the destruction of the Palestinians by the Israelis, the Ukrainian Nazis - the inhabitants of Donbass, the preparation of the United States for the Third World War, etc.
Naturally, all of the above does not mean that Ebola is something like a harmless rhinitis. Even if, judging by the epidemiological statistics, it is in this form that most of the cases of her diseases proceed. Any disease requires a respectful attitude towards oneself, a mandatory visit to a doctor - otherwise, you can quickly find yourself among the unfortunate. It's just that you shouldn't give in to panic - medical sensations on the topic of "new deadly infections" on Ebola did not start and Ebola will not end.
Yuri Nosovsky
