economiccollapseblog | If Ebola continues to spread like wildfire throughout West Africa, it
is probably just a matter of time before it starts popping up in major
cities in other areas of the globe.
If this were to happen in the United States, life would change for all of us almost overnight.
It is hard to put into words that kind of chaos that we are
witnessing over in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone right now. Panic
and fear are everywhere, and the corpses just keep piling up. The
following is an excerpt from a recent New York Times article...
The Ebola epidemic is spreading rapidly in Sierra Leone’s densely packed capital - and it may already be far worse than the authorities acknowledge.
Various models of the growth of the epidemic here “all show an exponential increase,” said Peter H. Kilmarx, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team in Sierra Leone. “The conditions are amenable to Ebola spread.”
“Since last month, it’s every day, any minute and hour, and often, they are coming” to bury the Ebola dead, said Desmond Kamara, a police officer.
A cloudy stream drains from the area of the new graves into the slum, further frightening the residents.
“We are at risk, big risk,” said Ousman Kamara, a resident. “We have made many complaints.”
But the bodies, he said, keep coming.
“Even at night,” he said. “You stand here, and you see them coming.”
Could you imagine something like that happening in America?
At this stage of the crisis in West Africa, all existing treatment facilities are absolutely overwhelmed.
Because there are no more beds, large numbers of people with Ebola are being turned away. Many end up dying just outside of the walls of some of these clinics...
A new Ebola clinic opened in Monrovia this week, but bodies lay on the ground outside its walls. Ambulances filled with Ebola patients, some that have traveled seven hours to get there, are not unloaded. Without help to get them inside, the patients fall in the dirt, mere feet away from treatment.
If things are this bad already when we only have thousands of cases,
what are things going to look like when we have more than a million
cases?
A representative for Samaritan’s Purse admitted the other day that "it's too late. Nobody's going to build 100,000 beds."
And it can be absolutely heartbreaking for health workers to turn away people that are dying.
The following is firsthand testimony from a health worker that is on the front lines of this crisis that is actually having to do this...
The first person I had to turn away was a father who had brought his sick daughter in the trunk of his car. He pleaded with me to take his teenage daughter, saying that whilst he knew we couldn't save her life, at least we could save the rest of his family from her.
Other families just pulled up in cars, let the sick person out and then drove off, abandoning them. One mother tried to leave her baby on a chair, hoping that if she did, we would have no choice but to care for the child.
I had to turn away one couple who arrived with their young daughter. Two hours later the girl died in front of our gate, where she remained until the body removal team took her away.
Those that are working on burial teams often see things that are even worse. Just consider the following example...
Dressed from head to toe in white protective suits and thick goggles, the burial teams try to stay safe, but nothing can shield them from the unspeakable horrors they've seen when they make their regular rounds. On Friday, Kiyee described what he saw when he entered a home:
"I took the key and opened the door and went in and saw a 6-month-old child licking on the mother's skin," said Kiyee. The mother was lying on her stomach. She had died from Ebola. The baby was searching for the mother's milk. "Right away I started shedding tears."
This is the kind of pure hell that we could see in the United States if Ebola starts spreading here.
Just because we have a more advanced medical system
and better living conditions does not mean that we will be able to stop
the spread of this virus.
In fact, some medical professionals are already warning that we are not prepared for an Ebola pandemic.
If cases of Ebola do start appearing in major
cities throughout America, you will want to be prepared to stay at home
as much as possible. There will not be any magic pill that you can pop
that will "cure" you of this disease. It is a brutally efficient killer
that does not show any mercy.
