[Marxism] Ebola and the Western powers

[Philip Ferguson]

While it's horrible that anyone is dying form Ebola, it's a bit strange
that western media are so focused on it, when the vast majority of people
in Africa die from easily preventible other diseases.

Indeed, it seems part of the exoticisation of Africa and western paranoia
about 'the other'.

See:
http://rdln.wordpress.com/2014/10/22/what-have-people-in-africa-been-doing-since-the-ebola-outbreak-started/

[Jeff]

This post might be inappropriate. Click to display it.

[Lüko Willms]

on Mittwoch, 22. Oktober 2014 at 13:42, Jeff via Marxism wrote:

> This isn't my field, but I'm pretty sure that there has never in
> recorded history been a widespread epidemic with any similar rate of
> exponential growth. Never had the human race only two years left if
> current rates of infection continued.

What about the pestilence plague in the Middle Ages?

This did exterminate large parts of the population.

Even the exponential spread of infections -- one person gets infected, and infects two others, etc -- can't continue just by the mathematical formula, since the curve will go down, if not enough people are around to be infected. And effective isolation of infected pations will slow down the spread of the infections (I myself have been in my childhood in an isolation station for having an infectious disease).

Ebola was registered the first time in the 1970ies; there were outbreaks in remote villages in the D.R. of Congo, but it then died down. The difference is that now this virus got into population centers which have multiple interconnections with other population centers. It is also not sure, if the Ebola virus will not die down similiar to the SARS virus.

The real scandal, in my view, is that the total commercialisation of health care and the parmaceutic industry has prevented an early development of a cure and an immunisation, because that seemed not to be profitable because of the small number of people affected in isolated areas of one of the poorest and most poorly managed semi-colonial countries. The development of an Ebola treatment would not have resulted in a spike of the stock prices of those pharma companies working on such.

Qualifying the previous it has to be noted that scientific analyses of the virus had been conducted, but because of the short lived and limited appearences of it, it might have been difficult to test a treatment or vaccination. Nonetheless, the pharma industry which is mainly driven by financial speculations would not have done very much to find a cure.



Cheers,
L?ko Willms

[Jeff]

At 16:56 22-10-14 +0200, =?iso-8859-15?Q?L=FCko_Willms?= via Marxism wrote:
>
> What about the pestilence plague in the Middle Ages?
>
> This did exterminate large parts of the population.

Well yes, that is about the closest case one could cite. Though I don't
think its rate of exponential growth could have been as high as doubling
every month since each of those outbreaks continued over a few years and
wouldn't have been recognized as epidemics in their earlier stages. And I
believe they were exacerbated in the medieval cities due to rats, poor
sanitation, and overcrowding, while the relative infrequency of
international travel meant that it didn't break out in all areas
simultaneously like we see now. In any case, if we are now comparing the
ebola epidemic to the black plague, then I have made my original point in
regards to the original post whining about the media overplaying the
epidemic's danger.

> Even the exponential spread of infections -- one person gets infected,
and infects two others, etc -- can't continue just by the mathematical
formula, since the curve will go down, if not enough people are around to
be infected.

Yes I thought about that when I was writing it but didn't feel a need to
complicate the formula. I just calculated when the current rate of growth
would equal 7 billion, but didn't literally mean that it would be the end
of human life on earth. The decrease in the infection rate due to a
decreasing human population, which Luko correctly mentions, shouldn't be of
much consolation since it only becomes a significant factor after a large
part of the population has perished! So instead of saying that "all" of the
human race would be killed after 24 months, I could have more accurately
said that "only 1/4 of the human race" would be killed after 22 months. And
in any case I don't literally believe that either because rates of
exponential growth will change due to other factors. And what's more, there
is at least a 50% survival rate given good care (although it isn't clear
that most people would get good care after there were billions of cases) so
not all of humanity would perish but only half. Is that disclaimer
reassuring to anyone??

>And effective isolation of infected pations will slow down the spread of
the infections (I myself have been in my childhood in an isolation station
for having an infectious disease).

And my point is that they are trying to do that in the affected countries,
and the epidemic is STILL doubling every month. So this is obviously an
extremely contagious virus and after it doubles another 5 or 10 times,
there aren't possibly going to be enough medical personnel with space suits
to attend to the victims, let alone insure to public health and the
continuation of the economy and food supply.

> The real scandal, in my view, is that the total commercialisation of
health care and the parmaceutic industry has prevented an early development
of a cure and an immunisation, because that seemed not to be profitable

Well that is absolutely right, and was admitted an hour ago on the BBC by a
spokesman from Glaxo-Smith-Klein. He said that they had consulted with the
WHO earlier this year, but at that point it wasn't clear that there would
be a serious epidemic so they didn't feel working on a vaccine or cure was
needed. He only left out the word "profitable," but unmistakably that is
what he was talking about.

- Jeff