The months ahead will be difficult. But the medical cavalry is coming, and the rest of us know what we need to do. The final death toll from Covid-19 will depend both on how we behave going forward and how quickly innovations arrive.
The Lancet, one of the world’s most respected medical journals, comments on the final report on the World Health Organization’s handling of the Ebola crisis, a devastating critique of the WHO and its member states, which “fatally let down the people of West Africa.” It criticizes the report for not addressing lack of accountability and chronic underinvestment in the WHO, the need to create resilient health systems, and the need for universal health coverage.
The U.S.has sent soldiers to West Africa while Cuba has sent emergency health care workers. The difference is fundamental: Cuba sees both public purpose and moral imperative to help those stricken with Ebola and the U.S. sees a threat to profits at ‘home’ and a military exercise to ‘contain’ the spread of Ebola abroad.
The political manipulation of the irrational fear of immigrants spreading disease is part of an historic pattern in United States. The recent calls for a blanket prohibition on travel from West Africa is prejudice, plain, and simple: prejudging an entire group of people, based on the sickness of a small handful. They echo the kind of bigotry directed at other immigrant groups arriving in this country since the 1800s.
Animals spared from Marburg virus -- a close relative of Ebola -- even when not treated until three days after infection.
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