4 ms·

Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

132 points by simonebrunozzi 1mo ago

andrewstuart 1mo ago
[flagged]
- tw1984 1mo ago
  [flagged]
- marcyb5st 1mo ago
  Yeah, and to avoid inconveniencing airlines and their profits we should keep flying to those destinations like back then.
- throwawayqqq11 1mo ago
  This is a new strain without a vaccine and more people infected means higher risk of further mutation. When this thing gets more infectious and progresses slower ... if i were the WHO, id throw everything i got at this.
skc 1mo ago
[flagged]
- psychoslave 1mo ago
  Just open the page, it’s stating DRC right into the article title.
- gspr 1mo ago
  > Very lazy headline. Which "Congo"? This is a ridiculous gripe. If you don't want to actually read, you can just assume the union of both possibilities, and absolutely nothing about the takeaway here changes unless you're literally in one of the Congos or the immediate surroundings, in which case you probabably know enough about the situation at hand to make the question moot. Some people.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
wartywhoa23 1mo ago
[flagged]
iberator 1mo ago
[flagged]
gucci-on-fleek 1mo ago
(Originally posted as a reply to a dead comment) While there was some controversy regarding how COVID spreads in the early days (droplets vs aerosol, how many virions you needed to be exposed to to become infected, whether asymptomatic transmission was possible, etc.), most of the details were fairly well understood within a year after the pandemic started. Plus, we were already aware that coronaviruses are capable of spreading via the air and causing mass outbreaks [0], so even at the very beginning I doubt that many experts would have claimed that it was impossible for COVID-19 to cause a pandemic. However, Ebola has been around for 50 years now [1], so we have a pretty good idea how it works. And every source that I've read says that it spreads exclusively through direct fluid contact with someone who is symptomatic [2] [3] [4] [5], and so does every other virus in the same family [6], so it seems almost impossible for Ebola to cause the same type of worldwide outbreak that COVID-19 did. (I'm not claiming that Ebola will never spread to North America/Europe, or that an outbreak won't spread to and kill lots of people in Africa, just that it should spread much slower than COVID-19 and that it should be much easier to prevent its transmission.) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbrea... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#History [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/causes/index.html#heading-xkphh2xybz https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/causes/index.html#heading-xkphh2xy... [3]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ebola-disease#:~:text=Transmission https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ebola-disea... [4]: https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/18/what-is-ebola-and-how-does-it-spread/#:~:text=How%20does%20Ebola%20spread https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/18/what-is-ebola-and-how-d... [5]: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/ebola/prevention-ebola.html#a1 https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/ebo... [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filoviridae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filoviridae
- rjsw 1mo ago
  Before COVID, I had thought that bushmeat [1] could be the route that spread Ebola to Europe, people smuggle it in their luggage. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat
  - 1mo ago
hn_submit 1mo ago
I chide the people in Africa for not following up on best health practices as far as Ebola victims are concerned. It seems there's a ritualistic need for people in Africa to touch and kiss the deceased before they're buried. This is a bad idea as far as Ebola is concerned. There've even been cases where family members attacked UN hospitals to remove their loved ones remains, perpetuating the spread of the disease. A couple hundred years ago they didn't know any better so you could forgive them. But these days we do know better and to still insist on rituals that lead to the spreading of Ebola is just plain dumb. As far as I'm concerned there should be stronger travel restrictions for people from Africa, especially the ones near the Ebola outbreak.
- contubernio 1mo ago
  People on the street, so to speak, don't know better even in advanced nations with strong educational systems. Look how much rejection of vaccination there is in spite of "knowing better". In many African nations there is very reasonable suspicion of European authorities - as there is a long history of abuse and degradation that has moreover been weaponized politically kn the post colonial era. The solution is trustworthy and pedagogical people on the ground doing a lot of hard work and that requires lots of institutional support.
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  - hn_submit 1mo ago
    By insisting on these rituals there will be a permanent, low-level Ebola epidemic which could spread outwards quickly if the conditions become favorable. Even in Africa people are becoming more mobile making the spread of the disease a real possibility. At the moment Ebola isn't a severe threat because of the fast incubation and mortality, but if it does become more widespread governments should claim the bodies of the victims and burn them in a large firepit.
- Arodex 1mo ago
  >I chide the people in Africa for not following up on best health practices as far as Ebola victims are concerned God, how can you say that with a straight face after the "ritualistic" response people in the West had during COVID? Fighting against wearing masks, having their mind break because they couldn't go drink in bars, going crazy for snake oil solutions and destroying public health care. We have had in almost every western country politicians and executives asking to lift any restrictions "because we all die one day anyway, we shouldn't be afraid, get back to work".
inference-god 1mo ago
I get the feeling the reason this is out of control is the political climate, at one point in time, a good US president or EU council would've sent aid, doctors, equipment, etc to help tackle this, now everyone is so broke (allegedly) and angry that it's just political suicide to say you're sending money to help "foreigners" in Africa. The face of rich people and philanthropy has changed too. The billionaires (and nearly trillionaires?) don't need to pretend to care anymore. They have a moat right now where it's fine to be hoarding all the money while thousands die from something which we could stop if the resources and political clout was available to help. China was entering into this space but seems not to be helping now either, I guess because the west isn't helping, they don't need to pretend anymore that they're the good guys. Obviously, it's the right thing to do is help, even if just for selfish reasons, ie we don't want this thing in other countries, but you cannot do that anymore because it's just political suicide to do so.
- fliglr 1mo ago
  How many decades have we been helping Africa for, and for what?
  - inference-god 1mo ago
    When Ebola is eating your face you will find out for what. Africa might be the least fortunate people but you don't get a pass for ignoring that and not helping, we're all in this together, like it or not.
  - dumberquestions 1mo ago
    Why ever help people in need?
  - pensatoio 1mo ago
    It went, primarily, to their politicians and warlords. The West needs to face the fact that we aren’t the world’s savior, and fixing other countries problems is not our job.
  - thrance 1mo ago
4g 1mo ago
The documentary on the last outbreak remain relevant to this day, the causes are still local hygiene practices, and this will not be solved by dropping in medical teams and hospitals and the WHO holding conferences and getting more money. What solved this last time was the local population learning the importance of washing ones hands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG1aY5OOR2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG1aY5OOR2o
croemer 1mo ago
There's a Bayesian forecast from some folks at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine that's useful to see if the outbreak has reached peak size: https://epiforecasts.io/BVDOutbreakSize/stable/analysis#Summary https://epiforecasts.io/BVDOutbreakSize/stable/analysis#Summ... The last update finally had a growth rate confidence interval straggling 0, meaning the peak seems to be within reach: "The latest growth rate is estimated to be 30% -0.005–0.008" There's a nice figure showing Rt over time: https://epiforecasts.io/BVDOutbreakSize/stable/analysis#Reproduction-number-over-time https://epiforecasts.io/BVDOutbreakSize/stable/analysis#Repr...
- croemer 1mo ago
  Newest run from 2026-08-25 shows Rt likely above 1 again unfortunately (percentages are confidence intervals): 30% 1.05–1.19, 60% 0.99–1.31, 90% 0.82–1.6. Daily growth rate: 30% 0.005–0.014, 60% -0.001–0.021, 90% -0.013–0.034 per day.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
ncr100 1mo ago
Today 300 died from ebola in Congo according to news reports.
ButlerianJihad 1mo ago
Here is what my friend related to me about respiratory troubles in Africa. There is a class of poachers, or claim-jumpers as it were, who illegally glean from mines. They do this primarily by scraping and abrading the walls and gleaning the powder or dust that comes off into ores. Now since this is illegal activity, it's done on the downlow, and obviously it's done by quite poor people without sufficient PPE. So they don't go in there with respirators and masks and HEPA filters. They may have a cloth over their mouth as they scrape over the walls and kick up an underground storm of dust in the dimly lit caverns. So of course, this dust contains hazardous materials, especially arsenic and other nasty stuff. And the gleaners tend to come down with respiratory ailments. You'd get a chronic cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, and ultimately, coughing up blood. You'd be prone to secondary respiratory infections along the way. Now if you're a poacher and you get seen in a hospital or clinic, you won't admit that you're conducting illicit activities in mines. That would be rather foolish to out yourself. So you lie to the physicians, and you don't really know how your lungs got this way: must be voodoo, or a witch doctor or curse or something. So it seems that a lot of allegedly Ebola cases get assigned to these poachers who won't admit that they inhaled arsenic, basically, chronically over the years they've been sneaking into mines at night. But the Ebola bugaboo is powerful, and ubiquitous, and easy to diagnose at arm's length, so basically anyone who comes in presenting with respiratory distress, they're going to pin Ebola on them without a second thought. I don't know if the foregoing is plausible or true, but I'm just saying, it's not far-fetched based on what I know of medicine the way it is in 2026, and it sure would be a shame if a whole region is getting it all wrong because large gangs of thieves won't own up to their own wrongdoings.

132 points by simonebrunozzi 1mo ago

andrewstuart 1mo ago

[flagged]

tw1984 1mo ago
[flagged]
marcyb5st 1mo ago
Yeah, and to avoid inconveniencing airlines and their profits we should keep flying to those destinations like back then.
throwawayqqq11 1mo ago
This is a new strain without a vaccine and more people infected means higher risk of further mutation. When this thing gets more infectious and progresses slower ... if i were the WHO, id throw everything i got at this.

skc 1mo ago

[flagged]

psychoslave 1mo ago
Just open the page, it’s stating DRC right into the article title.
gspr 1mo ago
> Very lazy headline. Which "Congo"? This is a ridiculous gripe. If you don't want to actually read, you can just assume the union of both possibilities, and absolutely nothing about the takeaway here changes unless you're literally in one of the Congos or the immediate surroundings, in which case you probabably know enough about the situation at hand to make the question moot. Some people.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]

wartywhoa23 1mo ago

[flagged]

iberator 1mo ago

[flagged]

gucci-on-fleek 1mo ago

(Originally posted as a reply to a dead comment) While there was some controversy regarding how COVID spreads in the early days (droplets vs aerosol, how many virions you needed to be exposed to to become infected, whether asymptomatic transmission was possible, etc.), most of the details were fairly well understood within a year after the pandemic started. Plus, we were already aware that coronaviruses are capable of spreading via the air and causing mass outbreaks [0], so even at the very beginning I doubt that many experts would have claimed that it was impossible for COVID-19 to cause a pandemic. However, Ebola has been around for 50 years now [1], so we have a pretty good idea how it works. And every source that I've read says that it spreads exclusively through direct fluid contact with someone who is symptomatic [2] [3] [4] [5], and so does every other virus in the same family [6], so it seems almost impossible for Ebola to cause the same type of worldwide outbreak that COVID-19 did. (I'm not claiming that Ebola will never spread to North America/Europe, or that an outbreak won't spread to and kill lots of people in Africa, just that it should spread much slower than COVID-19 and that it should be much easier to prevent its transmission.) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbrea... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#History [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/causes/index.html#heading-xkphh2xybz https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/causes/index.html#heading-xkphh2xy... [3]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ebola-disease#:~:text=Transmission https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ebola-disea... [4]: https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/18/what-is-ebola-and-how-does-it-spread/#:~:text=How%20does%20Ebola%20spread https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/18/what-is-ebola-and-how-d... [5]: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/ebola/prevention-ebola.html#a1 https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/ebo... [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filoviridae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filoviridae

rjsw 1mo ago
Before COVID, I had thought that bushmeat [1] could be the route that spread Ebola to Europe, people smuggle it in their luggage. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat
- 1mo ago

hn_submit 1mo ago

I chide the people in Africa for not following up on best health practices as far as Ebola victims are concerned. It seems there's a ritualistic need for people in Africa to touch and kiss the deceased before they're buried. This is a bad idea as far as Ebola is concerned. There've even been cases where family members attacked UN hospitals to remove their loved ones remains, perpetuating the spread of the disease. A couple hundred years ago they didn't know any better so you could forgive them. But these days we do know better and to still insist on rituals that lead to the spreading of Ebola is just plain dumb. As far as I'm concerned there should be stronger travel restrictions for people from Africa, especially the ones near the Ebola outbreak.

contubernio 1mo ago
People on the street, so to speak, don't know better even in advanced nations with strong educational systems. Look how much rejection of vaccination there is in spite of "knowing better". In many African nations there is very reasonable suspicion of European authorities - as there is a long history of abuse and degradation that has moreover been weaponized politically kn the post colonial era. The solution is trustworthy and pedagogical people on the ground doing a lot of hard work and that requires lots of institutional support.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- hn_submit 1mo ago
  By insisting on these rituals there will be a permanent, low-level Ebola epidemic which could spread outwards quickly if the conditions become favorable. Even in Africa people are becoming more mobile making the spread of the disease a real possibility. At the moment Ebola isn't a severe threat because of the fast incubation and mortality, but if it does become more widespread governments should claim the bodies of the victims and burn them in a large firepit.
Arodex 1mo ago
>I chide the people in Africa for not following up on best health practices as far as Ebola victims are concerned God, how can you say that with a straight face after the "ritualistic" response people in the West had during COVID? Fighting against wearing masks, having their mind break because they couldn't go drink in bars, going crazy for snake oil solutions and destroying public health care. We have had in almost every western country politicians and executives asking to lift any restrictions "because we all die one day anyway, we shouldn't be afraid, get back to work".

inference-god 1mo ago

I get the feeling the reason this is out of control is the political climate, at one point in time, a good US president or EU council would've sent aid, doctors, equipment, etc to help tackle this, now everyone is so broke (allegedly) and angry that it's just political suicide to say you're sending money to help "foreigners" in Africa. The face of rich people and philanthropy has changed too. The billionaires (and nearly trillionaires?) don't need to pretend to care anymore. They have a moat right now where it's fine to be hoarding all the money while thousands die from something which we could stop if the resources and political clout was available to help. China was entering into this space but seems not to be helping now either, I guess because the west isn't helping, they don't need to pretend anymore that they're the good guys. Obviously, it's the right thing to do is help, even if just for selfish reasons, ie we don't want this thing in other countries, but you cannot do that anymore because it's just political suicide to do so.

fliglr 1mo ago
How many decades have we been helping Africa for, and for what?
- inference-god 1mo ago
  When Ebola is eating your face you will find out for what. Africa might be the least fortunate people but you don't get a pass for ignoring that and not helping, we're all in this together, like it or not.
- dumberquestions 1mo ago
  Why ever help people in need?
- pensatoio 1mo ago
  It went, primarily, to their politicians and warlords. The West needs to face the fact that we aren’t the world’s savior, and fixing other countries problems is not our job.
- thrance 1mo ago

4g 1mo ago

The documentary on the last outbreak remain relevant to this day, the causes are still local hygiene practices, and this will not be solved by dropping in medical teams and hospitals and the WHO holding conferences and getting more money. What solved this last time was the local population learning the importance of washing ones hands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG1aY5OOR2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG1aY5OOR2o

croemer 1mo ago

There's a Bayesian forecast from some folks at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine that's useful to see if the outbreak has reached peak size: https://epiforecasts.io/BVDOutbreakSize/stable/analysis#Summary https://epiforecasts.io/BVDOutbreakSize/stable/analysis#Summ... The last update finally had a growth rate confidence interval straggling 0, meaning the peak seems to be within reach: "The latest growth rate is estimated to be 30% -0.005–0.008" There's a nice figure showing Rt over time: https://epiforecasts.io/BVDOutbreakSize/stable/analysis#Reproduction-number-over-time https://epiforecasts.io/BVDOutbreakSize/stable/analysis#Repr...

croemer 1mo ago
Newest run from 2026-08-25 shows Rt likely above 1 again unfortunately (percentages are confidence intervals): 30% 1.05–1.19, 60% 0.99–1.31, 90% 0.82–1.6. Daily growth rate: 30% 0.005–0.014, 60% -0.001–0.021, 90% -0.013–0.034 per day.

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

ncr100 1mo ago

Today 300 died from ebola in Congo according to news reports.

ButlerianJihad 1mo ago

Here is what my friend related to me about respiratory troubles in Africa. There is a class of poachers, or claim-jumpers as it were, who illegally glean from mines. They do this primarily by scraping and abrading the walls and gleaning the powder or dust that comes off into ores. Now since this is illegal activity, it's done on the downlow, and obviously it's done by quite poor people without sufficient PPE. So they don't go in there with respirators and masks and HEPA filters. They may have a cloth over their mouth as they scrape over the walls and kick up an underground storm of dust in the dimly lit caverns. So of course, this dust contains hazardous materials, especially arsenic and other nasty stuff. And the gleaners tend to come down with respiratory ailments. You'd get a chronic cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, and ultimately, coughing up blood. You'd be prone to secondary respiratory infections along the way. Now if you're a poacher and you get seen in a hospital or clinic, you won't admit that you're conducting illicit activities in mines. That would be rather foolish to out yourself. So you lie to the physicians, and you don't really know how your lungs got this way: must be voodoo, or a witch doctor or curse or something. So it seems that a lot of allegedly Ebola cases get assigned to these poachers who won't admit that they inhaled arsenic, basically, chronically over the years they've been sneaking into mines at night. But the Ebola bugaboo is powerful, and ubiquitous, and easy to diagnose at arm's length, so basically anyone who comes in presenting with respiratory distress, they're going to pin Ebola on them without a second thought. I don't know if the foregoing is plausible or true, but I'm just saying, it's not far-fetched based on what I know of medicine the way it is in 2026, and it sure would be a shame if a whole region is getting it all wrong because large gangs of thieves won't own up to their own wrongdoings.