Facts
- Ugandan officials said on Saturday that a Tanzanian doctor has been the first health care professional in the country to die from the latest Ebola outbreak. The caseload has now increased to at least 35 people. Fears are rising of a serious outbreak on the horizon.
- Seven people - including the doctor - have already died from the virus. A vaccine for the current spreading strain hasn't yet been found.
- Uganda authorities said that this current outbreak, which is attributed to the "Ebola Sudan" strain, appears to have started in a small village in the Mubende district around the beginning of September. The first casualty of this most recent outbreak was a 24-year-old man who died on Sept. 19.
- According to the WHO, the efficacy of the vaccine against the rare Sudan strain is unclear. However, the Ervebo vaccine has been found to be effective in protecting against the "Zaire variant" of the Ebola virus, which killed 2.3K during a 2018-2020 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Uganda has experienced four previous Ebola outbreaks, the deadliest of which left over 200 people dead in 2000.
Spin
Pro-establishment narrative
This current outbreak is a serious health risk to the nations of Central Africa. Ebola is a highly lethal disease, and the fact that there is no well-tested vaccine for this strain makes the stakes even higher. Outbreaks are difficult to contain, and dealing with the spread of Ebola must be a top priority for regional and international bodies.
Establishment-critical narrative
As history proves, the media has a penchant for exaggerating the risks that infectious diseases like Ebola pose to the world. Obviously, this is serious, but politicians and media entities have a habit of exploiting public health emergencies for their own ends, like a mass panic regarding Ebola in 2014. The international community has plenty of tools to handle flare-ups like this.
Nerd narrative
There's a 12% chance that there will be a novel pathogen that kills over 25 million people between 2022 and 2031(inclusive), according to the Metaculus prediction community.