Man, they gotta suck it up and start burning the fucking bodies. I get it, burials are a traditional thing blah blah. But jesus christ, ebola is mutating and this outbreak might not have happened if people would just light the damn bodies on fire after they die of ebola. Get over your feelings or religion or whatever and don't contribute to the deadliest virus in Africa mutating all over the place.
Now scientists and doctors are dying because they try to help these idiots who for some reason need to have fucking funerals. Funerals! For people who are by definition already dead!
It's a little more complicated than that. It's not just about funeral rights, it's about appalling hygiene and little-to-no public health. Cholera has killed 4 times as many people in Haiti over the past four years as Ebola has killed in West Africa and we've had treatments for cholera for a hundred years or more. Yeah, there's ignorance and distrust to magnify the effects of 3rd world sanitary conditions, but there's also 3rd world sanitary conditions. The WHO wants a half-billion dollars to deal with the situation. For perspective, that's 1,1000th what Japan got after the Tsunami. But it's a country full of brown people that lick their dead or whatever and since they have no oil or diamonds, we're mostly concerned with the ook factor. Besides, $500m gets you about one and a half of these:
It's very easy to be sitting in a place of comfort and throw in the most inhuman solution and pretend like that is all we need to solve the issue. Guinea (the source) is not your typical country. First, it's a third world country. Second, it has been struggling with very disturbing political climate that we never here about in our daily media outlet in the west. I am from Guinea and I get regular updates from the situation not only from the internet and Guinean news but from my family that lives there. Let me give you something you don't hear on the news here: The city of Friya did not have access to electricity for almost 2 years now. Water shortage is an everyday problem. They are struggling with very harsh conditions and Ebola (a very potent virus) is only one of the problems. Information does not flow as easily as it flows in the West or in more developed countries. A lot of people still do not believe, or are not aware that there is an Ebola outbreak. It is easy for us, we are bombarded with information in our said comfortable sit. I get mad every time I hear about funerals and ceremonies in times like these. But if you think about it, despite the bombing and killings, a hot zones like Israel, Palestine, Syria and Iraq, people are still celebrating weddings, birthdays, and making the most of their lives. I don't blame you to say burn the bodies, yes it will stop the spread of the virus through this channel. But it is not the only channel of contagion. The solution like others have pointed out is education and communication. The borders of the affected countries have been closed, that's a major step towards containment. Now there needs to be committees traveling in the country educating the population from the biggest cities to most remote. This will have a better effect and should be the long term solution. And since we are in the subject, let me tell you what else we could do other the sit here and ramble. Things like hand sanitizers and and plastic gloves are very hard to come by. Hospitals and clinics are not well equipped and need the best tools money can buy. Start a freaking Ice bucket challenge if you have to. Let's not waste time talking nonsense here. We can make a difference, and who knows, you might feel good about yourself in the process.
burning diseased bodies is inhuman? didn't stop with this non sequitur I appreciate your perspective and hope your family is taking precautions to remain safe. I don't appreciate you making a lot of assumptions about what I know and don't know about your country, ebola and what it will take to end this outbreak. I seem to be more or less alone in thinking that maybe, just maybe, basic human dignity and cultural affectations have to be tossed out the fucking window when thousands of people are dying horrifically. Hand sanitizer and more doctors and hospital guidelines and quarantines and everything would help. So would not holding funerals and letting twenty people come into contact with every ebola victim after they die. One of those goals is more realizable than the other, unfortunately.and pretend like that is all we need to solve the issue.
that we never here about in our daily media outlet in the west.
But if you think about it, despite the bombing and killings, a hot zones like Israel, Palestine, Syria and Iraq, people are still celebrating weddings, birthdays, and making the most of their lives.
It's a case of education. You're dealing with a superstitious and suspicious population. Imagine the World when the first person suggested tiny unseeable organisms live on everything and some of them could make us sick so we should wash things, including ourselves? That's essentially what you're dealing with. It's no mean feat to at once convince these people such things exist and these things are making them sick and they should expend with a lifetimes worth of learning about their religions and beliefs and burn bodies as well as convincing them that certain hygiene steps would help. You have to remember some of these people still visit a witch doctor when sick. They truly believe the disease is a curse in some areas.
For real. If you have spent your whole life being taught the evil spirit theory of disease and have a life time of evidence to back the theory up it's kind of hard to jump on a scientific theory of disease that you have no evidence or context to support. Government doesn't do a whole hell of a lot for many of these people aside from exploit or ignore them, it's easy to see how it would be easy to dismiss the party line. Pile on the fact that violating all their traditional burial customs (which if you are superstitious is probably going to be something you super superstitious about) is ultimately being pushed by White people who have a pretty grim track record of being brutally exploitative to the people of Africa.
I am obviously aware of the cultural background and if anything am pushing for something like martial law. Sometimes culture has to be thrown out the window. Mutating diseases present a danger to the entire world. You're not gonna. Time to force them. It's sad, and shitty, but it should have happened the moment ebola hit urban areas.It's no mean feat to at once convince these people such things exist and these things are making them sick and they should expend with a lifetimes worth of learning about their religions and beliefs and burn bodies as well as convincing them that certain hygiene steps would help.
Here is some more in depth information about the epidemiological conclusions reached by the team sequencing the ebola strains. As you you may have heard, five of the authors themselves died of EVD before the paper was published. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/08/27/science.1259657.full