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You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Some very good Ebola news

Some very good Ebola news

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In 2014, the last few weeks of the election season were dominated by headlines about the Ebola menace. It was used to whip up fear, xenophobia and otherness. That stopped about thirty eight seconds after the last ballot was accepted in Alaska.

And now practical and effective vaccines are now available that can be used to quickly isolate outbreaks.

Time to celebrate a bit of good news.

Reader Interactions

25Comments

  2. 2.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Andrew Wakefield has already booked a flight so he can help in the newest battle against this scourge on mankind.

    Sorry, couldn’t resist.

  3. 3.

    oldster

    “…headlines about the Ebola menace… used to whip up fear, xenophobia and otherness.”

    “… practical and effective vaccines…that can be used to quickly isolate outbreaks”

    That’s about as good a summation of “their team” versus “our team” as you could get.

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    OT but news about American healthcare delivery:

    About 7 million fewer Americans have health insurance today than did four years ago, a new survey has found, the highest uninsured rate since 2014. The results come after sustained Republican attacks on government-backed health schemes, including the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. The survey’s findings come as the public is increasingly interested in government-run health programs.

    The United States is the only large, highly developed country that lacks universal health coverage. At the same time, healthcare costs in the US are the highest in the world, and can be financially catastrophic. This fact has perplexed international health advocates, such as the former UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon, who told the Guardian last fall the American health system is “morally wrong”.

    The new figures come from a survey, conducted by Gallup, which since 2008 has asked roughly 28,000 people a quarter “Do you have health insurance?”. In 2018, pollsters found 13.7% of Americans lacked health insurance, the highest levels since 2014. The change represents a net increase of 7 million uninsured individuals. Comparably in 2014, the number of people without insurance was decreasing because Obamacare was going into effect. At its peak, just after Obamacare was passed but before it went into effect, nearly one-in-five Americans lacked health insurance.

    Uninsured rates were at their lowest around the time of Donald Trump’s election in 2016 (around 10.6%), Gallup reported, and began to rise after a series of sustained Republican attacks on the law.

    On the other hand:

    Another poll released this week from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed how Americans feel about proposals to expand government-run health programs. While a majority (56%) supported single-payer coverage (akin to the UK’s NHS], called Medicare-for-All, large majorities on both sides supported “buy-ins” to existing government-run health plans. In those scenarios, people who do not get health insurance from an employer could buy health insurance through either Medicaid or Medicare. Two-thirds of Republicans and wide margins of Democrats and independents supported the proposals.

  7. 7.

    MattF

    Yeah. I recall a RWNJ at work who was all worked up over Ebola, and Fox ‘news’ was devoting a large percentage of their reporting to the supposed threat. All bullshit. Epidemiologists will remind anyone who is willing to listen that you have to catch a disease from someone.

  11. 11.

    Barbara

    I know that this will help everyone, but the availability of a vaccine also means that it could become much less onerous to help victims of Ebola — I know that they are still in the early stages and are unlikely to relax protections, but perhaps not having to don the equivalent of huge astronaut suits and limit patient contact to an hour at a time (because the suits are so uncomfortable). And of course, many of the most affected countries have a lot of needs and relatively few medical personnel. Losing a doctor or nurse to Ebola has a wide impact on many people, not just Ebola victims. So this is just incredibly good news.

  14. 14.

    Cermet

    While glad this terrible illness can be controlled, what about the various wars in the Congo – over its mineral wealth that is used to fuel our needs? A low level war that has killed well over ten million people that dwarfs the deaths by Ebola and yet, isn’t addressed? If that many people were killed and still being killed anywhere else in the world, you’d hear endlessly about it. Yet, we hear of Ebola killing people but not the still running conflicts in that region that is still killing so many Congolese.

  16. 16.

    randy khan

    This is incredibly good news and, as Barbara mentioned, particularly good news for health care personnel in areas where Ebola might strike.

  17. 17.

    Luciamia

    Wow, that’s amazing! But sure there are still Repubs out there saying Pfft, Eggheads, what do they know?

  19. 19.

    pcpablo

    Offer anti-vaxers a free trip to Africa, then ask them if they want an EBOLA vaccine. Line forms to the left!

  21. 21.

    Felanius Kootea

    This is wonderful news!

    @pcpablo:
    You’d get quite a few takers: from my rough estimates, only 6 of the 54 countries in Africa have experienced an Ebola outbreak. I’d pretend to be an anti-vaxxer for a free trip to Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Senegal, Botswana, Tanazania (hike up Kilimanjaro!) or Kenya. I’m from Nigeria
    though ;-).

  22. 22.

    The Midnight Lurker

    Some years ago… I think it was during the Bird Flu scare. There was a press briefing with the CDC. The alarmist media were shouting the most insane questions. And this young scientist, clearly fed up with the panic, shouted:
    “Will you people please calm down?! Influenza killed fifteen thousand people last year!”

    When he put it in context, the press people STFU.

    Don’t quote me verbatim on the above, it’s from my flagging memory. But I bet one of you clever computer Juicers could find it in the ‘tubes’.

  25. 25.

    Hob

    @OzarkHillbilly: The error is in the Guardian article, which very wrongly says that single-payer coverage is “akin to the NHS”; Kaiser didn’t say that. Also, Kaiser referred to “a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare-for-all, in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan,” which the Guardian changed to say that “Medicare for all” is the exact same thing as single-payer.

    The Guardian’s coverage of US politics is pretty odd at times, in ways that suggest maybe they’re getting all their information from a single US resident who isn’t terribly well informed and is also a hardcore Bernie-or-buster.

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