Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

gucci-on-fleek•about 1 hour 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_outbrea...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#History

[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/causes/index.html#heading-xkphh2xy...

[3]: 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-d...

[5]: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/ebo...

[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filoviridae

mppm•6 minutes ago

Note to self and others who have read Richard Preston's "Hot Zone": The 1989 Reston (US) incident was NOT caused by a single-base mutation of Ebola, but by a distinct monkey virus. Preston seems to have made that up to dramatize events.

biorach•about 1 hour ago

No one worth listening to is claiming that there will be a COVID-style pandemic. The concern here is the very high mortality rate. Granted the transmission rate is low, but in countries where facilities and health-care workers are scarce this disease is still capable of being a real problem.

glenstein•19 minutes ago

Well they did just say it was in reply to a dead comment, so I suspect that was one person entertaining the possibility of widespread transmission, and there's already at least one more comment here if not two (depending how you interpret them) entertaining the possibility of mutation that leads to easier transmission.

Maybe the "worth listening to" caveat is intending to dismiss those, but I certainly don't think it's the case that nobody is suggesting it or that it's not worth pushing back against.

rjsw•about 1 hour 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

alex43578•25 minutes ago

Were it to spread to Europe, I imagine contact tracing and societal norms would result in a drastically lower r naught and basically make community spread a non-factor.

Europeans (at least European health authorities) would hopefully cut down on funeral activities like touching and kissing the bodies of Ebola victims, caring for relatives at home without PPE and sanitation, etc.

African countries face challenges with fighting Ebola, but they sure do make things even harder for themselves with certain practices that are pretty rough even through 19th century germ theory lens.

justin66•31 minutes ago

> people smuggle it in their luggage

Really?

alex43578•17 minutes ago

Yeah. There's a reason why customs is so strict about the sloppy importation of food: it's host to diseases and pests, capable of causing ridiculous damage because someone has to have that "taste of home".

api•41 minutes ago

True right now, but what happens if it mutates?

A few thousand is nowhere close to pandemic but it's enough to give the virus many opportunities to evolve against its new environment.

On the plus side, most viruses become less deadly as they adapt to their host. COVID luckily did this, it seems. If Ebola does this it'll become like the flu, but we don't want yet another flu-level disease circulating.

alex43578•18 minutes ago

There's a genetic continent between hemorrhagic fever and coronavirus, and I'd be far more worried about something like MERS or another already-respiratory virus breaking out than Ebola.

hn_submit•9 minutes 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.

Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

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