You shouldn’t be scared of Ebola. At least, that’s what author (and microbiologist) Nathan Wolfe indirectly argues in his 2011 book, The Viral Storm.
However, when Wolfe says that Ebola is not necessarily something to worry about, he's not referring to its ability to inflict substantial harm to infected individuals, but to entire populations. Ebola is incredibly deadly, but it isn’t easily transmitted, so it’s not likely to cause a pandemic or widespread damage of any kind soon.
Last summer, I took a course to get credentialed as an EMT. I got to work a couple of shifts with an ambulance and later spent half a day in the Duke Hospital ER, which was pretty sick. Besides the handy raw experience I got from the course, I also learned some potentially life-saving lessons. One of the key lessons I took away was this: Don’t let “distracting injuries” draw your attention away from potentially greater life threats. Distracting injuries are exactly what they sound like, injuries that are extremely conspicuous, but possibly may also be drawing attention away from deadlier issues.
Say you stumble upon a man lying on the sidewalk next to an upset ladder. They’ve fallen off the top end and though they aren’t saying anything comprehensible, the way they're clutching their leg suggests it’s broken. Furthermore, you see that the area they’re clutching is noticeably swollen, and angry red splotches of blood spatter the fingers of the unfortunate chap.
Thanks to your marvelous high school health education, however, you know just what to do. After dialing 911 and informing the operator of the situation, you begin attempts to mitigate the bleeding. You think you’re doing great until abruptly, broken leg guy collapses backward, eyes rolling back into his head. You now notice that one side of the man’s face is sagging to one side and that he had been babbling incomprehensively the entire time. Not in a leg-just-got-broken way, but a stroke-induced aphasia way. Stroke. He had a stroke.
Your attempts at life-saving were valiant and well-intentioned, but quite improperly prioritized. Had you been perhaps slightly more clear-minded and less hyperfocused on the viscerally alarming sight of another person’s lifeblood, you at least could have identified means by which the poor sap would meet his end.
That’s what a distracting injury is. Fortunately, I never was faced with such a circumstance in the short time I spent as a baby EMT.
Where does this long-winded humblebrag tie into Wolfe’s book? Ahem.
Avoiding hyper-focusing on distracting outbreaks is a key point Wolfe discusses in his book. He states his conviction that we ought not to expend all our energy to monitoring threats, but keep an eye out for new ones.
How can one possibly hope to identify new pathogens in time? There’s a lot of ground (literally) to cover, isn’t there?
The dead meme speaks the truth. There’s a lot of ground to cover only if you don’t know where to look. Identify the populations that are on the metaphorical frontiers of the viral wilderness, and you’ve made the task of monitoring for new human outbreaks much easier.
How does Dr. Wolfe recommend we forecast viral storms? Although Wolfe discusses emerging methods that take advantage of the substantial amounts of data gathered by entities such as Google and Facebook (i.e. monitoring trends in disease-related searches), these are yet to be implemented. A method that Wolfe has shown to be fairly effective is simply checking hunters for viruses. To be more specific, mainly African hunters. Wolfe explains why this is doubly so. Populations in developing countries often rely on hunting in order to feed themselves. The act of killing and butchering animals results in a lot of exposure to animal bodily fluid, which Wolfe explains is ideal for transmission of any infectious agents that the hunted animal harbored.
Furthermore, Wolfe discusses animals more similar to us are much more likely to be afflicted by viruses and other pathogens that can also make the jump to us. As primates are not excluded from the hunting season in some parts of Africa, you can see where this is going.
Which brings up an interesting point on giving aid to developing countries like Africa
Wolfe never directly mentioned this, but it seems like a pretty obvious conclusion from the evidence discussed. Don’t want to be altruistic and donate to developing countries? Fine. Then be selfish, donate so that subsistence hunting can become a thing of the past. It's not just about saving the animals, it's about saving us as well. Stop the interaction of hunters between potential reservoirs of new, deadly viruses, and you’ve got one less thing to worry about. Food for thought.
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