9 ms·

WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

328 points by zzzeek 5mo ago

MontagFTB 5mo ago
Multiple articles mention a vaccine for the Zaire strain but not this one. Is it possible to use one for the other? Does the existence of one make it easier to develop another?
- Insanity 5mo ago
  Technically (nitpicking) it mentions no _approved_ vaccine. There can be vaccines without being approved for use in said countries. But I have no clue how far along vaccines are, and even if they exist how feasible it would be to use in e.g Congo. Similar to how we can treat tuberculosis, yet many people keep dying of it.
  - mschuster91 5mo ago
    > There can be vaccines without being approved for use in said countries. Unfortunately, the hotbed being Africa makes the situation much worse given historical events - the entire continent has a dark history regarding colonial and modern abuses of power for medical "experiments" [1], and the entire topic resurfaced during the early Covid era [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_experimentation_in_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_experimentation_in_Afr... [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/8/medical-colonialism-in-africa-is-not-new https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/8/medical-colonial...
plombe 5mo ago
Non-paywalled link: https://apnews.com/article/congo-ebola-uganda-who-africa-emergency-6f93a87ff28107bdda8990599bbcd52d https://apnews.com/article/congo-ebola-uganda-who-africa-eme...
deleted 5mo ago
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lanyard-textile 5mo ago
Notably (from NPR): >However WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed in a statement it "does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency" and advised countries against closing their borders.
- deleted 5mo ago
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- rob_c 5mo ago
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  - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    > "no evidence of human to human transmission" Directly contradicted by the WHO: "...spreads from person to person through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs, or other bodily fluids of infected individuals or contaminated surfaces" [1]. [1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2026-DON602 https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...
    - dpark 5mo ago
      That’s a reference to the early Covid 19 investigations/reporting. https://x.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?lang=en https://x.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?lang=en
      - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
        Ooooh, got it.
      - mindslight 5mo ago
        People always bring this up as if there is some collective responsibility for they themselves having believed an obviously politically motivated narrative. Like personally I'd just take some responsibility, admit I was suckered, and try to do better in the future. But rather with the context of how it's brought up, it's clear they're just still at it buying into new nonsense political narratives. "Can't get fooled again"
thinkcontext 5mo ago
I read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains. I'm no epidemiologist but being less deadly could allow it to spread further, which is obviously concerning. Also, the article says surveillance picked up the spread late. I wonder if the US's pulling back from the WHO and other international functions had anything to do with this, it used to make up a big chunk of its resources and staff.
- microtonal 5mo ago
  Also worrying that the existing approved vaccine does not protect against this variant. That said I'm quite hopeful, since there is a vaccine for other strains.
- BLKNSLVR 5mo ago
  I was wondering about that with the hantavirus, whereby if it's got a higher fatality rate then it's less likely to be easily transmitted. Is that like a general rule, or pure bunk? (I'd probably assume the answer 'depends').
  - RobotToaster 5mo ago
    I don't think it's just fatality rate, but also how long it takes to kill you. HIV is a great example of a disease that (untreated) has near 100% mortality rate, but can spread because it takes years to kill you.
    - mlinhares 5mo ago
      The real issue with HIV is that you can easily spread it before being symptomatic, so far we haven’t seen hantavirus spreading before folks become symptomatic. The strain that spreads through humans has been active in south America for a while as well and hasn’t really gone anywhere yet.
  - alamortsubite 5mo ago
    Definitely, but the hantavirus incubation period ranges from 1-8 weeks after exposure.
jmyeet 5mo ago
First hantavirus now this. Look, there's valid reason to be concerned here but people who are fearing a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic are seemingly missing why Covid was a pandemic. Covid spread so much for four main reasons: 1. It could spread airborne; 2. It spread relatively easily. Not quite measles-level of contagiousness but still, pretty good; 3. Unlike something like the flu, there really wasn't any kind of natural resistance. What we now call the modern flu is a descendant of the Spanish flu that killed tends of millions in 1919-1920 in its first outbreak and it becamse less lethal for a variety of reasons; and 4. (This is the big one) It would spread when the carrier was asymptomatic. The flu can also spread asymptomatically but AFAIK it's less common. People with the flu tend to self-isolate showing symptoms. Still, what's probably most concerning about Covid is the number of people who truly believe it was and is fake. The public health implications of that as well as the societal and psychological impacts is something we're going to be studying for decades to come. The exact contagion mechanism for hantavirus isn't confirmed. Previously it's been from, say, rat to human. It's believed there was human-to-human transmission with the plague cruise ship of doom but whatever the case, it's simply not as contagious. Ebola generally requires contact to spread. How it's spread in a lot of these African regions has historically been from funeral rites. Family of the deceased would touch the body and this contact would spread the disease. So while it was quite contagious, it didn't spread airborne (as far as we know). It's also quite lethal, which naturally tends to limit spread. The king of long-dormant viruses is of course HIV. But at least we aren't dealing with cordyceps [1] so we've got that going for us at least. [1]: https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Cordyceps_brain_infection https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Cordyceps_brain_infectio...
- ticulatedspline 5mo ago
  forgot 5. Covid was exactly the right amount of deadly, 0.5-1% which made it easy to "roll the dice" on making containment harder.
  - rob_c 5mo ago
    [flagged]
thrownthatway 5mo ago
The headline from the WHO reads: Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-07-2019-ebola-outbreak-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-declared-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-07-2019-ebola-outbreak-in-t...
- mentalgear 5mo ago
  Your linked article is dated at > 17 July 2019 (people never seem to look for/check dates any more)
  - wizzwizz4 5mo ago
    Coincidentally (or perhaps not), their recent article claims the same thing: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-disease-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-and-uganda-determined-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d... > Pursuant to paragraph 2 of Article 12 - Determination of a public health emergency of international concern, including a pandemic emergency of the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR), the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), after having consulted the States Parties where the event is known to be currently occurring, is hereby determining that the Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), but does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency, as defined in the IHR.
  - alt227 5mo ago
    Its even in the pasted url!
    - thrownthatway 5mo ago
      In my defence, it was the top search result using one of the common search providers, and at least it goes to the WHO website rather than the New York Times. Why would a search engine turn up a 7 year old reference as the top hit. Seems like the sort of thing one could end up relying on and dead.
soupspaces 5mo ago
adding it to my list of apocalypses to prepare for
asah 5mo ago
seems like an abuse of the word "global"
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > seems like an abuse of the word "global" The WHO language is "a public health emergency of international concern," but not "a pandemic emergency."
  - parineum 5mo ago
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- etiam 5mo ago
  No, if it makes to a busy long distance travel hub, there is ample cause for global. Everywhere should contribute to containing this, out of pure self-interest if nothing else.
JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
This is the WHO announcement: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-disease-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-and-uganda-determined-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d... This is our CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/index.html And yes, this is a big deal. Public health emergencies of international concern are a short list consisting of, in their entirety: swine flu ('09 to '10), polio ('14 on), ebola ('13 to '16), Zika ('16), ebola ('19 to '20), Covid ('20 to '23), monkeypox ('22 to '25) and now this [1]. It's one step down from a pandemic emergency (which, to be clear, has not been declared). (Helpful explainer: https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2026-DON602 https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2....) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_emergency_of_international_concern#Declarations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_emergency_of_int...
- nrdxp 5mo ago
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- cyanydeez 5mo ago
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  - blurbleblurble 5mo ago
    The cynic in me sees this kind of outbreak as exactly the intention of the current US administration in gutting CDC funding and leaving the WHO. It's misanthropic behavior, fueled by their big bunch of various essentialist inferiority/superiority complexes.
    - qingcharles 5mo ago
      It's just a continuation of their anti-science policy which their voters support.
ls612 5mo ago
We went through this whole song and dance in 2014. Unless it has some really unlucky novel mutations it won’t spread well outside the tropics.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > Unless it has some really unlucky novel mutations 2014 was Ebolavirus proper (Zaire, I believe). This outbreak is this fucker of a chimera [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundibugyo_ebolavirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundibugyo_ebolavirus
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SoftTalker 5mo ago
"It is unclear how that [closure of US-AID program] might have affected the response to this outbreak." But, we'll just throw that in to the story anyway, even though we have no facts either way.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > we'll just throw that in to the story anyway, even though we have no facts either way We don't have a tight chain of causation. But we have plenty of facts pointing entirely one way. We know there was "a critical four-week detection gap between the onset of symptoms of the presumed index case...and the laboratory confirmation of the outbreak" [1]. This has contributed to "significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread associated with this event at the present time" [2]. And tying all of this back to DOGE, we know USAID's "more than 50 staffers dedicated to outbreak response" were cut to "just six people to handle Ebola, Marburg virus, mpox and bird flu preparedness" [3]. Musk and Trump didn't cause this outbreak. But we would have had a better chance of catching this sooner, and with more precision, if we had those resources there. [1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2026-DON602 https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2... [2] https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-disease-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-and-uganda-determined-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d... [3] https://www.spyuganda.com/another-one-us-cuts-aid-to-fight-ebola-in-uganda/#:~:text=The%20funding%20cut,bird%20flu%20preparedness. https://www.spyuganda.com/another-one-us-cuts-aid-to-fight-e...
- Take8435 5mo ago
  Just wondering, do you think it's not relevant to help the reader understand context on the US' impact? Positive or negative?
  - SoftTalker 5mo ago
    The larger paragraph I pulled that from strongly implies that it's a negative, but then they weasel by throwing in the "it's unclear how that affected anything" line.
avazhi 5mo ago
[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  Sorry, your takeaway from Covid is to ignore public-health experts when they warn that something is breaking containment and could turn into a pandemic if it isn't controlled?
  - avazhi 5mo ago
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    - Tyrubias 5mo ago
      I think it’s very arguable that the WHO tried to cover up the virus or aided China in masking its origins. The WHO relies on voluntary cooperation by its member states. China did try to downplay the outbreak and delayed sharing data with the WHO that indicated human-to-human transmission. It didn’t look great for the WHO to praise China’s “cooperation”, but they could hardly excoriate China for not sharing information and then expect them to cooperate. The CDC made its own share of mistakes during the beginning of the pandemic, including insisting _against_ masking at first. Frequently, the CDC’s own advice was influenced by the first Trump administration, so I would not say the CDC is any less exposed to US political influence than the WHO is to the political influence of its member states. These days, given that the CDC has been hollowed out by the second Trump administration and the US defunded and left the WHO, I’m not sure either organization can be trusted to be effective. The CDC has gone on an anti-science bender and the WHO probably lacks the resources to maintain effectiveness. If anything, I’d be worried the WHO isn’t raising _enough_ concern about new disease outbreaks. Also, you should probably specify what “agendas” the WHO is pushing such that warning countries to beware the spread of a deadly hemorrhagic virus is morally dubious.
- majormajor 5mo ago
  > calling it a global health emergency is laughable Your complaint is with the NYT's re-phrasing, not the WHO. WHO declaration is: "determined a public health emergency of international concern" https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-disease-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-and-uganda-determined-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d... Obviously it's a local public health emergency, and some international concern seems warranted anytime an ebola strain pops up...
ViktorRay 5mo ago
Many of the people worrying about this should stop worrying. The average commentator on this website, if he or she dies this year, will be more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident or due to the complications of cardiovascular disease, or due to cancer. If you’re going to spend time worrying, worry about all those things instead. When it comes to infectious diseases, the flu is more likely to kill the people here than hantavirus or Ebola. Make sure to get your flu vaccines.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  You're right that this shouldn't cause worry. But it should command attention. At least as much as that stupid hantavirus nothingburger did.
- prism56 5mo ago
  But I do worry a bit about dying in a car accident, it's why I wear my seatbelt, drive safe, try to drive defensively. Adding both those risks together still is a higher risk than before...
  - wartywhoa23 5mo ago
    The risk of dying is 100% for everyone alive.
    - jjk166 5mo ago
      But the risk of dying by having your entire body break down in uncontrollable bleeding is substantially less than 100%, and I for one would like to keep it that way.
  - RetroTechie 5mo ago
    So just to be clear: wearing your seatbelt will increase your chances of death-by-falling-coconut. Or Ebola. Take your pick.
- nailuj 5mo ago
  This misses the point. The individual health risk might be low, the societal response to the risk might severely impact your life regardless of your personal risk exposure.
866-RON-0-FEZ 5mo ago
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- designerarvid 5mo ago
  People still wear masks? Which part of the world? Haven’t seen a single on since 2022 in Sweden.
bekon 5mo ago
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- ImPostingOnHN 5mo ago
  Welcome to HackerNews, new hacker! Rather than posting things like this, please take a moment to review the posting guidelines[0], so that you can be a positive member of the community. 0 – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - bekon 5mo ago
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    - dgellow 5mo ago
      If that's what you expect from HN you will be very disappointed
  - wartywhoa23 5mo ago
    > so that you can be a positive member of the community. I'll bite and argue that the parent is a totally positive new member of the community, by the virtue of demonstrating the right attitude to this old beaten biohazard doomsday scarecrow.
    - bekon 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      - wartywhoa23 5mo ago
        Been there during the covid frenzy, my friend! For not loving that proverbial grandma.
    - deleted 5mo ago
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trunkiedozer 5mo ago
[flagged]
- mindslight 5mo ago
  By "imported ebola" you of course mean repatriated a fine American citizen: > Brantly attended Abilene Christian University in Texas, where he earned an undergraduate degree in biblical text in 2003. It was here, at ACU, where he pledged Pi Kappa, a men's social club founded on a deep sense of Christian brotherhood, regardless of which denomination that member belonged to Say what you or I will about religion, this is someone who was putting its better teachings into action. Meanwhile, you societal arsonists have jumped the shark long ago.
  - trunkiedozer 5mo ago
    A fine American citizen with ebola
    - mindslight 5mo ago
      Yes, that was implied by the context. We get it - in your societal arsonist worldview, there is always some reason to other someone else, leave them to fend for themselves, and relish in their suffering as just desserts. And so you begrudge a halfway-competent government that didn't let that happen.
AbstractH24 5mo ago
Didn’t they do this like a decade ago?
- billfor 5mo ago
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Kenji 5mo ago
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glass1122 5mo ago
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jaspervanderee 5mo ago
You can expect a lot of these kinds of fear based message hurled into the world in the upcoming years.
1970-01-01 5mo ago
The nice thing about the DRC is there isn't a few billion people living in it. If this was China or India it would be right back to 2019 levels of growth. There is a huge population damper before it can become global pandemic.

328 points by zzzeek 5mo ago

Multiple articles mention a vaccine for the Zaire strain but not this one. Is it possible to use one for the other? Does the existence of one make it easier to develop another?

Insanity 5mo ago
Technically (nitpicking) it mentions no _approved_ vaccine. There can be vaccines without being approved for use in said countries. But I have no clue how far along vaccines are, and even if they exist how feasible it would be to use in e.g Congo. Similar to how we can treat tuberculosis, yet many people keep dying of it.
- mschuster91 5mo ago
  > There can be vaccines without being approved for use in said countries. Unfortunately, the hotbed being Africa makes the situation much worse given historical events - the entire continent has a dark history regarding colonial and modern abuses of power for medical "experiments" [1], and the entire topic resurfaced during the early Covid era [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_experimentation_in_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_experimentation_in_Afr... [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/8/medical-colonialism-in-africa-is-not-new https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/8/medical-colonial...

plombe 5mo ago

Non-paywalled link: https://apnews.com/article/congo-ebola-uganda-who-africa-emergency-6f93a87ff28107bdda8990599bbcd52d https://apnews.com/article/congo-ebola-uganda-who-africa-eme...

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lanyard-textile 5mo ago

Notably (from NPR): >However WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed in a statement it "does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency" and advised countries against closing their borders.

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rob_c 5mo ago
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- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > "no evidence of human to human transmission" Directly contradicted by the WHO: "...spreads from person to person through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs, or other bodily fluids of infected individuals or contaminated surfaces" [1]. [1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2026-DON602 https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...
  - dpark 5mo ago
    That’s a reference to the early Covid 19 investigations/reporting. https://x.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?lang=en https://x.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?lang=en
    - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
      Ooooh, got it.
    - mindslight 5mo ago
      People always bring this up as if there is some collective responsibility for they themselves having believed an obviously politically motivated narrative. Like personally I'd just take some responsibility, admit I was suckered, and try to do better in the future. But rather with the context of how it's brought up, it's clear they're just still at it buying into new nonsense political narratives. "Can't get fooled again"

thinkcontext 5mo ago

I read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains. I'm no epidemiologist but being less deadly could allow it to spread further, which is obviously concerning. Also, the article says surveillance picked up the spread late. I wonder if the US's pulling back from the WHO and other international functions had anything to do with this, it used to make up a big chunk of its resources and staff.

microtonal 5mo ago
Also worrying that the existing approved vaccine does not protect against this variant. That said I'm quite hopeful, since there is a vaccine for other strains.
BLKNSLVR 5mo ago
I was wondering about that with the hantavirus, whereby if it's got a higher fatality rate then it's less likely to be easily transmitted. Is that like a general rule, or pure bunk? (I'd probably assume the answer 'depends').
- RobotToaster 5mo ago
  I don't think it's just fatality rate, but also how long it takes to kill you. HIV is a great example of a disease that (untreated) has near 100% mortality rate, but can spread because it takes years to kill you.
  - mlinhares 5mo ago
    The real issue with HIV is that you can easily spread it before being symptomatic, so far we haven’t seen hantavirus spreading before folks become symptomatic. The strain that spreads through humans has been active in south America for a while as well and hasn’t really gone anywhere yet.
- alamortsubite 5mo ago
  Definitely, but the hantavirus incubation period ranges from 1-8 weeks after exposure.

jmyeet 5mo ago

First hantavirus now this. Look, there's valid reason to be concerned here but people who are fearing a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic are seemingly missing why Covid was a pandemic. Covid spread so much for four main reasons: 1. It could spread airborne; 2. It spread relatively easily. Not quite measles-level of contagiousness but still, pretty good; 3. Unlike something like the flu, there really wasn't any kind of natural resistance. What we now call the modern flu is a descendant of the Spanish flu that killed tends of millions in 1919-1920 in its first outbreak and it becamse less lethal for a variety of reasons; and 4. (This is the big one) It would spread when the carrier was asymptomatic. The flu can also spread asymptomatically but AFAIK it's less common. People with the flu tend to self-isolate showing symptoms. Still, what's probably most concerning about Covid is the number of people who truly believe it was and is fake. The public health implications of that as well as the societal and psychological impacts is something we're going to be studying for decades to come. The exact contagion mechanism for hantavirus isn't confirmed. Previously it's been from, say, rat to human. It's believed there was human-to-human transmission with the plague cruise ship of doom but whatever the case, it's simply not as contagious. Ebola generally requires contact to spread. How it's spread in a lot of these African regions has historically been from funeral rites. Family of the deceased would touch the body and this contact would spread the disease. So while it was quite contagious, it didn't spread airborne (as far as we know). It's also quite lethal, which naturally tends to limit spread. The king of long-dormant viruses is of course HIV. But at least we aren't dealing with cordyceps [1] so we've got that going for us at least. [1]: https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Cordyceps_brain_infection https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Cordyceps_brain_infectio...

ticulatedspline 5mo ago
forgot 5. Covid was exactly the right amount of deadly, 0.5-1% which made it easy to "roll the dice" on making containment harder.
- rob_c 5mo ago
  [flagged]

thrownthatway 5mo ago

The headline from the WHO reads: Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-07-2019-ebola-outbreak-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-declared-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-07-2019-ebola-outbreak-in-t...

mentalgear 5mo ago
Your linked article is dated at > 17 July 2019 (people never seem to look for/check dates any more)
- wizzwizz4 5mo ago
  Coincidentally (or perhaps not), their recent article claims the same thing: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-disease-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-and-uganda-determined-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d... > Pursuant to paragraph 2 of Article 12 - Determination of a public health emergency of international concern, including a pandemic emergency of the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR), the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), after having consulted the States Parties where the event is known to be currently occurring, is hereby determining that the Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), but does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency, as defined in the IHR.
- alt227 5mo ago
  Its even in the pasted url!
  - thrownthatway 5mo ago
    In my defence, it was the top search result using one of the common search providers, and at least it goes to the WHO website rather than the New York Times. Why would a search engine turn up a 7 year old reference as the top hit. Seems like the sort of thing one could end up relying on and dead.

soupspaces 5mo ago

adding it to my list of apocalypses to prepare for

asah 5mo ago

seems like an abuse of the word "global"

JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> seems like an abuse of the word "global" The WHO language is "a public health emergency of international concern," but not "a pandemic emergency."
- parineum 5mo ago
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etiam 5mo ago
No, if it makes to a busy long distance travel hub, there is ample cause for global. Everywhere should contribute to containing this, out of pure self-interest if nothing else.

JumpCrisscross 5mo ago

This is the WHO announcement: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-disease-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-and-uganda-determined-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d... This is our CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/index.html And yes, this is a big deal. Public health emergencies of international concern are a short list consisting of, in their entirety: swine flu ('09 to '10), polio ('14 on), ebola ('13 to '16), Zika ('16), ebola ('19 to '20), Covid ('20 to '23), monkeypox ('22 to '25) and now this [1]. It's one step down from a pandemic emergency (which, to be clear, has not been declared). (Helpful explainer: https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2026-DON602 https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2....) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_emergency_of_international_concern#Declarations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_emergency_of_int...

nrdxp 5mo ago
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- deleted 5mo ago
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cyanydeez 5mo ago
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- blurbleblurble 5mo ago
  The cynic in me sees this kind of outbreak as exactly the intention of the current US administration in gutting CDC funding and leaving the WHO. It's misanthropic behavior, fueled by their big bunch of various essentialist inferiority/superiority complexes.
  - qingcharles 5mo ago
    It's just a continuation of their anti-science policy which their voters support.

ls612 5mo ago

We went through this whole song and dance in 2014. Unless it has some really unlucky novel mutations it won’t spread well outside the tropics.

JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> Unless it has some really unlucky novel mutations 2014 was Ebolavirus proper (Zaire, I believe). This outbreak is this fucker of a chimera [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundibugyo_ebolavirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundibugyo_ebolavirus
deleted 5mo ago
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SoftTalker 5mo ago

"It is unclear how that [closure of US-AID program] might have affected the response to this outbreak." But, we'll just throw that in to the story anyway, even though we have no facts either way.

JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> we'll just throw that in to the story anyway, even though we have no facts either way We don't have a tight chain of causation. But we have plenty of facts pointing entirely one way. We know there was "a critical four-week detection gap between the onset of symptoms of the presumed index case...and the laboratory confirmation of the outbreak" [1]. This has contributed to "significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread associated with this event at the present time" [2]. And tying all of this back to DOGE, we know USAID's "more than 50 staffers dedicated to outbreak response" were cut to "just six people to handle Ebola, Marburg virus, mpox and bird flu preparedness" [3]. Musk and Trump didn't cause this outbreak. But we would have had a better chance of catching this sooner, and with more precision, if we had those resources there. [1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2026-DON602 https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2... [2] https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-disease-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-and-uganda-determined-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d... [3] https://www.spyuganda.com/another-one-us-cuts-aid-to-fight-ebola-in-uganda/#:~:text=The%20funding%20cut,bird%20flu%20preparedness. https://www.spyuganda.com/another-one-us-cuts-aid-to-fight-e...
Take8435 5mo ago
Just wondering, do you think it's not relevant to help the reader understand context on the US' impact? Positive or negative?
- SoftTalker 5mo ago
  The larger paragraph I pulled that from strongly implies that it's a negative, but then they weasel by throwing in the "it's unclear how that affected anything" line.

avazhi 5mo ago

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JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
Sorry, your takeaway from Covid is to ignore public-health experts when they warn that something is breaking containment and could turn into a pandemic if it isn't controlled?
- avazhi 5mo ago
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  - Tyrubias 5mo ago
    I think it’s very arguable that the WHO tried to cover up the virus or aided China in masking its origins. The WHO relies on voluntary cooperation by its member states. China did try to downplay the outbreak and delayed sharing data with the WHO that indicated human-to-human transmission. It didn’t look great for the WHO to praise China’s “cooperation”, but they could hardly excoriate China for not sharing information and then expect them to cooperate. The CDC made its own share of mistakes during the beginning of the pandemic, including insisting _against_ masking at first. Frequently, the CDC’s own advice was influenced by the first Trump administration, so I would not say the CDC is any less exposed to US political influence than the WHO is to the political influence of its member states. These days, given that the CDC has been hollowed out by the second Trump administration and the US defunded and left the WHO, I’m not sure either organization can be trusted to be effective. The CDC has gone on an anti-science bender and the WHO probably lacks the resources to maintain effectiveness. If anything, I’d be worried the WHO isn’t raising _enough_ concern about new disease outbreaks. Also, you should probably specify what “agendas” the WHO is pushing such that warning countries to beware the spread of a deadly hemorrhagic virus is morally dubious.
majormajor 5mo ago
> calling it a global health emergency is laughable Your complaint is with the NYT's re-phrasing, not the WHO. WHO declaration is: "determined a public health emergency of international concern" https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-disease-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-and-uganda-determined-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d... Obviously it's a local public health emergency, and some international concern seems warranted anytime an ebola strain pops up...

ViktorRay 5mo ago

Many of the people worrying about this should stop worrying. The average commentator on this website, if he or she dies this year, will be more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident or due to the complications of cardiovascular disease, or due to cancer. If you’re going to spend time worrying, worry about all those things instead. When it comes to infectious diseases, the flu is more likely to kill the people here than hantavirus or Ebola. Make sure to get your flu vaccines.

JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
You're right that this shouldn't cause worry. But it should command attention. At least as much as that stupid hantavirus nothingburger did.
prism56 5mo ago
But I do worry a bit about dying in a car accident, it's why I wear my seatbelt, drive safe, try to drive defensively. Adding both those risks together still is a higher risk than before...
- wartywhoa23 5mo ago
  The risk of dying is 100% for everyone alive.
  - jjk166 5mo ago
    But the risk of dying by having your entire body break down in uncontrollable bleeding is substantially less than 100%, and I for one would like to keep it that way.
- RetroTechie 5mo ago
  So just to be clear: wearing your seatbelt will increase your chances of death-by-falling-coconut. Or Ebola. Take your pick.
nailuj 5mo ago
This misses the point. The individual health risk might be low, the societal response to the risk might severely impact your life regardless of your personal risk exposure.

866-RON-0-FEZ 5mo ago

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designerarvid 5mo ago
People still wear masks? Which part of the world? Haven’t seen a single on since 2022 in Sweden.

bekon 5mo ago

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ImPostingOnHN 5mo ago
Welcome to HackerNews, new hacker! Rather than posting things like this, please take a moment to review the posting guidelines[0], so that you can be a positive member of the community. 0 – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bekon 5mo ago
  [dead]
  - dgellow 5mo ago
    If that's what you expect from HN you will be very disappointed
- wartywhoa23 5mo ago
  > so that you can be a positive member of the community. I'll bite and argue that the parent is a totally positive new member of the community, by the virtue of demonstrating the right attitude to this old beaten biohazard doomsday scarecrow.
  - bekon 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - wartywhoa23 5mo ago
      Been there during the covid frenzy, my friend! For not loving that proverbial grandma.
  - deleted 5mo ago
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trunkiedozer 5mo ago

[flagged]

mindslight 5mo ago
By "imported ebola" you of course mean repatriated a fine American citizen: > Brantly attended Abilene Christian University in Texas, where he earned an undergraduate degree in biblical text in 2003. It was here, at ACU, where he pledged Pi Kappa, a men's social club founded on a deep sense of Christian brotherhood, regardless of which denomination that member belonged to Say what you or I will about religion, this is someone who was putting its better teachings into action. Meanwhile, you societal arsonists have jumped the shark long ago.
- trunkiedozer 5mo ago
  A fine American citizen with ebola
  - mindslight 5mo ago
    Yes, that was implied by the context. We get it - in your societal arsonist worldview, there is always some reason to other someone else, leave them to fend for themselves, and relish in their suffering as just desserts. And so you begrudge a halfway-competent government that didn't let that happen.

AbstractH24 5mo ago

Didn’t they do this like a decade ago?

billfor 5mo ago
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Kenji 5mo ago

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glass1122 5mo ago

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jaspervanderee 5mo ago

You can expect a lot of these kinds of fear based message hurled into the world in the upcoming years.

1970-01-01 5mo ago

The nice thing about the DRC is there isn't a few billion people living in it. If this was China or India it would be right back to 2019 levels of growth. There is a huge population damper before it can become global pandemic.