5:00, Your Final Dose of Ebolology: How Does This End?

5:00, Your Final Dose of Ebolology: How Does This End?

I’ll give my infamous answer…it depends.  It depends on our response, on how much we are willing to support stopping the outbreak (socially, financially, politically, philanthropically, et cetera), on how much we are willing to trust experts over charlatans looking for their 15 minutes, and how much we are willing to let people do their jobs.  The suggested interventions of airport screening on entrance is certainly not a failsafe; after all, Duncan and Vinton flew and both would have legitimately passed by the screeners.  Closing the borders would largely be a bad move because 1.) it does nothing to solve the problem; and 2.) undocumented entrance would be completely unmonitored.  It is also, frankly, un-American.  “Give us your tired, your weak, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore”…I love this line from the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty.  It’s something to be proud of, and it’s something to live up to.  Another thought that bears repeating: we know how to solve this problem.  We just need the will and the labor to do it.  I’d also argue we know how to prevent it in the future.  Passive transfer of antibody (ie, treating people with blood transfusion from recovered patients, or ZMapp) being associated with recovery strongly indicated that a simple killed vaccine would be successful.  I’ll leave you all with a quote from the great Will Eisner: “We have this history of impossible solutions to insoluble problems”.  This problem has a solution. Support it!