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Comment by hn_submit | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

> But these days we do know better and to still insist on rituals that lead to the spreading ...

Thus explaining why RFK has his current position.

>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".

I think that what happened with Covid was the big gap between the very strict measures enacted and the perceived risk.

When people think "it's just the flu" it's easy to become defiant.

On the other hand, Ebola has a known fatality rate of 50%+ and so refusing to follow best practices is plain suicidal.

Also events like Partygate in the UK really didn't help, people were already pretty done with the pandemic lifestyle after nearly two years of it on and off including fairly heavy-handed enforcement; the British government then lost all its practical moral authority to impose restrictions when it became clear the very people imposing them had been having massive boozy parties throughout the worst parts of the pandemic. That more than anything was the final nail in the coffin for things like mandatory masking and the 'rule of six' from what I remember.

I wish that public leaders realised just how much their personal moral fibre determines what people in general will and won't tolerate. The public trust they cheerfully destroy in minutes takes decades to rebuild, and I'm genuinely worried that if there's a pandemic with this still in the majority of people's memory they will go 'so you're going to put us under house arrest and have massive parties again? Why should we listen to you?' and it'll be a very difficult question to answer.

Well for Covid it became clear that the risk was indeed quite low if you were not elderly or with an underlying condition while the restrictions were drastic and poorly targeted: Young people suffered a lot even when Covid was really no worse than the flu to them (and most people). Countries like Sweden that didn't go into lockdown also proved that strict restrictions were over the top.

Now, again Ebola is very seriously deadly so it does not make sense to compare people refusing to follow Covid restrictions then to people refusing to follow Ebola best practices now.

>Now, again Ebola is very seriously deadly

Says who? Bunch of 'experts', I'd wager. We've 'ad enough of their rubbish.

Sweden, you mean the country with the highest level of single-occupancy housing, and universal health care?

Maybe they don't perceive the risk to be high, just like during covid the Westerners refusing to social distance or get vaccinated perceived the risk to be low. Let's not pretend that either group is carefully assessing the epidemiology.

Plus vaccines now

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