special report
6 Obiter Dicta
A Different Kind of Love
Why a pandemic in one country is business as usual in another
G
michael capitano › news editor
iven how Ebol a has been
spreading through West
Africa without any signs of
slowing down, one would
think there’d be greater panic with the
announcement that the infectious disease has entered America. But that’s not
the case. Public health officials echo the
words of Tom Frieden, Director of the
Centre for Disease Control, “[T]here are
core tried and true public health interventions that stop it…There is no doubt
in my mind that we will stop it here.”
Basically, this consists of treatment, quarantine, and observation.
Even with doctors at Texas Health Presbyterian
Hospital mistakenly sending Thomas Eric Duncan,
the man who arrived from Liberia incubating
the virus, home due to some miscommunication
between electronic medical records and staff (or a
lack of symptoms, or a lack of insurance, who really
knows?), there is very little risk of an outbreak happening in the United States. Those at risk of having
ê Photo credit: Morgana Wingard for USAID.
been infected have been traced and are being monitored. They’ve been instructed to remain isolated, just
in case. Unfortunately, solitude is a luxury that much
of the world cannot afford.
While developed countries like the United States
and Canada have precise guidelines and protocols in
place for containing infectious diseases like Ebola,
the affected countries in West Africa aren’t so lucky.
The movie Outbreak, with its state of chaos and military intervention, will never be a reality. The amount
of people dying from liquefying organs in North
America will likely be able to be counted with one
hand. People are panicking on Twitter, so what? For
us, that’s the only outbreak likely to ensue.
In West Africa, the death toll is exceeding thirtyfive thousand, confirmed by the World Health
Organization. Ebola’s reproduction rate (the rate at
which it spreads)
is less than two.
That means for
every one person
i n fe c t e d , t wo
more cases result.
Compared to the flu or measles whose reproduction
rate enters the double digits, that’s nothing. Ebola
is not airborne; it can only be spread through direct
contact—an exchange of fluids. Latex gloves, surgeon
masks, good hygiene are all easy ways to prevent its
spread. If all else fails, stay away.
That may seem like common sense to us, but it goes
against the very human impulse to care for and nurture our sick, to cradle them in our arms and tell them
it’s all going to be okay. Fluids like blood inevitably
transfer through touch. The current Ebola pandemic
has a fatality rate of around seventy per cent. How do
you tell a mother to abandon her infected child? That,
if she stays to administer care, she too risks contracting the virus. What would ordinarily result in convalescence is a death sentence in disguise.
The majority of infected victims are women. The
disease cuts through families, those in close quarters working together to survive each day. That’s the
insidious thing about Ebola—it preys on our natural
inclination to love, and threatens to break the bonds
of our humanity. That doesn’t mean much to us. We
have the Internet for communication and companionship, days of work and isolation units for monitoring, experimental vaccines and blood transfusions
for treatment. But for those in Liberia, Sierra Leone,
and Guinea, it’s terrorizing. Suspicion and panic are
guaranteed.
T h e i m a ge s
in West Africa
speak for themselves: little boys
on the brink of
death bleeding in
the street, untouched by wary bystanders; sick parents, exhausted and writhing in pain, unable to kiss
their still healthy children goodbye; men trying to
escape quarantine camps because they don’t want to
die. Who can blame Mr. Duncan (assuming he knew
he had possibly contracted the virus) for escaping to
Texas? Sure, it wasn’t a noble thing to do, but with
borders closing, for many it may seem like the only
way to survive.
“...it preys on our natural
inclination to love...”
» see ebola, page 19