Revisiting Ebola With A View Of The Future
Claudewell S. Thomas, MD, MPH, DLFAPA, is an established psychiatrist who is currently retired ,, He received his medical degree in 1956 at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and specializes in social psychiatry, public health psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Thomas was board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry... more
A recent issue of Sigma XI presents a view of the future of our interaction with the menace of Ebola. This is done through a new computer model. The article begins with a header that states..."Factors like climate change and greater poverty could make an outbreak more likely"..."the model tracks how changes in the environment and in human societies could affect the deadly virus's spread. It predicts that Ebola outbreaks could become more likely by 2070 if the world continues on a path toward a warmer climate and a cooling economy. Ebola on average, kills half of all people who contract the virus. In previous outbreaks, the fatality rate has risen to as high as 90 percent. So the ability to forecast where Ebola could wreak havoc next could save thousands of lives by ensuring that people are better able to spot the disease, get care, and take steps to stop the virus from spreading." The readers may wish to access my previous writings on FindaTopDoc to refamiliarize themselves with notions about Ebola strains and transmissibility.
In fire and flood, earthquake and famine, the poor, the elderly, the disabled, and significantly the poorly educated, suffer the most health and life equity loss. The visible minorities sharing territory with dominant groups usually occupy low land prone to flooding and displacement during tremors and flash fires. To the extent that such groups are uninsured or underinsured, they rely on emergency care for routine care. We have previously discussed the threat that this represents for them and for the nation. Of course, Ebola in its various manifestations can spread like wildfire in poor areas and find new hosts like moles, mice, and rats, in addition to or in place of bats.
The ability to model and predict requires the sharing of information across national boundaries, succinctly put it requires a functioning World Health Organization and the non participation in, non cooperation with, and even worse condemnation of WHO activities by the USA is a crippling posture. WebMD supplies us a list of the eight most deadly viral illnesses afflicting mankind and Ebola is high on the list. The only listed viral illness that is 100% fatal if untreated is rabies. Significantly those viral illnesses that go from endemic to epidemic. Then eventually pandemic status with climate change, loss of biodiversity, and economic decline are resistant to being deterred by individual or group social and economic advantage. A public health approach to the problem of Ebola indicates a desperate need for the rapid address of the problems of poverty and global warming.
The major deterrents to the requisite cooperation are greed and stupidity, often masquerading as patriotism and fiscal realism. If indeed we only have six months to arrest global warming and we have idiosyncratic state postures on gun control, auto emissions, abortion, opioid use, marijuana legalization, etc., it is hard to see the USA leading the way to survival.
