What next after Ebola?

Are America and the world any more ready for a pandemic than they were for COVID-19?

The recent Hanta virus outbreak on a cruise ship was a nasty reminder that that diseases can sometimes spread very easily around the world. Some passengers on board had already left the ship and flown to their homes around the world before the disease was recognised. Diseases vary in how, and how easily, they spread, and how lethal they are. Fortunately, that particular Hanta strain, while it spreads between humans unlike other Hanta strains, does not spread easily and the outbreak will be contained.

But it brings to mind the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, blocking travelers flying into the US from affected areas was not enough to prevent the disease’s arrival as it took dog legs, arriving from elsewhere. Many in the U.S. died because Trump’s administration ignored the pandemic playbook it had inherited, made some bad decisions and touted quack cures. The Lancet blamed Trump for hundreds of thousands of deaths. I wrote a series of articles about this back in the day, starting with this one. Or if you want a really deep dive into how that pandemic unfolded, check out my timeline. It mentions a few other pandemics for comparison. I really hope that this does not develop into a similar global pandemic.

Here in the UK, Boris Johnson got off to a good start with COVID vaccinations, but otherwise made a pig’s ear of it too. There was a lot of corruption.

I fear that Trump will have learnt nothing from the COVID pandemic when faced with the next pandemic, and that his now blatant corruption will cost many more people their lives. I’m not the only one.

So, now there is a new outbreak of Ebola. When there was an outbreak under Obama, Trump’s simplistic solution would have been to ban travel, saying Obama should have resigned for allowing one doctor to return to the US.

This is a very nasty disease with a roughly 50% mortality rate. Fortunately, close contact is necessary to catch it.

In the past, experts in Africa were able to contain many episodes of Ebola. This time, however, Trump’s and Musk‘s cuts have kneecapped their efforts. USAID was there for the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO has undercut it, too. Other countries have cut back, too. And now Trump’s demands and his Iran war are causing more money to be spent by other countries on defence against missiles and armies, and less for defence against disease and climate change.

Trump has reacted by banning by non-citizens travel from the affected area, which would not be enough to stop a COVID-like disease. Citizens will be screened. One American has already tested positive, and has been taken to Germany - whether because Trump said he could not return (Trump denies it) or because the journey was shorter and there is a specialised facility there. Trump said he is ‘concerned’. If he lets that doctor return to the USA will he resign like he said Obama should have?

There are no vaccines or therapeutics for this disease. The UK is developing a vaccine, but it is early days.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the WHO, which the USA has left, had declared the outbreak “a little late”. He apparently did not appreciate that armed conflict in the area had caused the displacement of more than 100,000 people. Nor that the USAID cuts have fueled rising conflict across Africa as well as cutting the resources to deal with diseases. Nor that many illnesses begin with similar symptoms, delaying diagnosis. Understanding (or caring) that their actions have consequences does not seem to be the Trump administration’s long suit.

Such a lack of understanding is not limited to the non-medical departments of the administration.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a lawyer with no medical experience who has some crazy ideas and who has undermined vaccines.

The man now leading the U.S. response to the hantavirus outbreak, Admiral Brian Christine, is a urologist specializing in penile implants, and also believes conspiracy theories (who in the administration doesn’t?).

So, I’m not hopeful of the U.S. response. I hope I don’t end up doing another series of pandemic articles.

This disease is one to watch. And even if it is contained, it should shed light on how prepared the USA and the world are for another global pandemic, which is bound to happen sooner or later given how much we are encroaching on the habitat of species and populations which we have not come into contact with before.