[NOTE: In light of the pandemic coverage of Ebola, I have decided to reprise this commentary, which I published originally on September 26. In the two weeks since, U.S. officials have held so many press conferences to hail the resources available to treat victims here (compared to what’s available in Africa) that they bordered on gloating.
Therefore, I am waiting with baited breath for their press conference to explain – not just why one of the five victims to receive treatment here ended up dying yesterday (i.e., the way so many Ebola victims die in Africa), but also whether it’s just a patented coincidence that he just happened to be the only Black among them….]
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What is it about the continent of Africa that it suffers the worst not only of man’s inhumanity to man, but also of Mother Nature’s wrath?
After all, no continent has been more beset by genocidal wars and political corruption on the one hand, and by drought and disease on the other. This led me to coin the alliterative lament (in one of my first commentaries on March 7, 2005) that Africa too often features among the continents of the world as a dark, destitute, diseased, desperate, disenfranchised, dishonest, disorganized, disassociated, dangerous and, ultimately, dysfunctional mess.
Alas, this latest outbreak of Ebola only affirms the Dark Continent’s dubious distinction in these respects:
Yet another set of ominous projections about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa was released Tuesday, in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that gave worst- and best-case estimates for Liberia and Sierra Leone based on computer modeling.
In the worst-case scenario, the two countries could have a total of 21,000 cases of Ebola by Sept. 30 and 1.4 million cases by Jan. 20 if the disease keeps spreading without effective methods to contain it. These figures take into account the fact that many cases go undetected, and estimate that there are actually 2.5 times as many as reported.
(New York Times, September 23, 2014)
In fact, of all outbreaks of deadly viruses over the past 50 years, including Marburg, MERS, and SARS, Ebola is by far the most deadly: the W.H.O. reports that, to date, more than 2900 deaths have been linked to Ebola; and, perhaps most fateful, its locus just happens to be in Africa. By comparison, 775 deaths were linked to MERS, and its locus was in China.
All the same, arguably in a show of man’s humanity to man, President Obama is leading a coalition of the willing to fight Ebola that is almost as impressive as the coalition he is leading to fight Daesh (aka ISIS).
The United States is dispatching 3000 soldiers as well as medical and public health troops to Liberia with an unprecedented mission: Wage war on Ebola by helping the battered Liberian public-health and medical community, including setting up treatment units in each of Liberia’s 15 counties. President Obama called for a ‘campaign for community care.’
(The Boston Globe, September 24, 2014)
My thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected. But I feel constrained to note that, despite panic-inducing media reports, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 10 times as many people die in the United States from the flu each year than the number of those who have died from Ebola in all of Africa. Not to mention W.H.O. data showing that 100,000 times as many people die right there in Africa from HIV/AIDS, malaria, and starvation each year….