No research here, Knucks. You owe me a home-rolled cigar.
Ebola is contagious in close proximity. An ebola epidemic is the result of poor infrastructure, poor sanitation, misinformation and fear. Consider that a traveler from west Africa brought ebola into Nigeria. Even Nigeria had sufficient infrastructure to prevent it from becoming epidemic.
Cholera is much more easily spread than ebola, but it is also an epidemic that must rely on poor infrastructure and poor sanitation. A cholera pandemic has been spreading across the world for the past 25 years, but stops at the borders of developed countries.
There are cases of bubonic plague in the US every year. Individual cases. A plague epidemic is dependent on poor infrastructure and poor sanitation, so you don't see plague epidemics in the US. The victims just get treated, and survive quite well, thank you.
A major contributor to the ebola epidemic in west Africa is the paranoid distrust of health authorities. (Hmmm. Sounds oddly familiar.) People there continued to engage in the ritual of touching the body of a dead love one at the funerals, despite being told that it spreads ebola. Ebola victims frequently flee from the hospitals, and return to their villages to hide. Health education teams (trying to inform people about how to avoid ebola) have been attacked and killed. Rural people believe their government is causing the epidemic intentionally. These countries have not had the money to provide sufficient protective equipment for all their health workers in contact with ebola. It's a vicious cycle, and attributable to a general lack of economic development and education.
So, rather than claiming to have more accurate knowledge than those who have dedicated their lives to studying diseases and how they spread, perhaps we should all just relax and have a good home-rolled smoke. Localized occurrences of ebola may occur. An epidemic of ebola in the US or any other well developed country is improbable.
Bob
