childrenslumsebolaAt 100 or more new reported cases a day
(and, obviously, an unquantified number of unreported cases) coupled with the deliberate “removal” of dead victims from the official tally, it is apparent that the Ebola outbreak continues to rage and is far from contained.
As has been mentioned here and elsewhere in the Realism Blogosphere Math Just Is.  As the Daily Mail UK reports, scores of orphaned children left to care for themselves after close contact and sustained exposure to a parent or other caregiver who has died from Ebola are  “ticking timebombs”.

The predictable response by the marxist leaning local authorities – that this is the fault/responsibility of non-Africans – follows:
” …’This is a global problem,’ he says. ‘We don’t have the resources and capacity to deploy the number of people required. We need 32,000 people. We have 3,000.’
Maybe the global community needs to answer why it is not happening. We are trying to meet the challenge but this is not a Liberian crisis, it is a global crisis. That’s the fault of the global community. This is a problem for the entire world. We are still in a crisis. Ebola is not finished yet.’  ”

Everything is the “fault” of the West, according to Progressives.  Everything.  They demand that the free, non-socialized capitalist West step in and fund/solve their problems …. while simultaneously complaining that the engagement represents “racism” and the vestiges of “colonial oppression”.
Obama’s response – to fund treatment centers and to deliberately import Ebola cases to the US (repatriation of Ebola afflicted health care workers, et al) has been firmly rejected by other Western governments, leaving him the outlier in the global paradigm.  It is also an approach that has been criticized as “self-serving” by those within the outbreak zone who are tasked with managing/ending the crisis.
“Jallah says it is unfortunate that much of the current international aid spending is now focussed on building treatment units when money is needed for more urgent work. What is needed, he says, is funding for teams of people – known as contact tracers – to follow up on reported cases such as the one in Clara Town.”
While the article outlines the failures of the local governments and its citizens to follow basic hygiene and self-quarantine protocols, it fails to challenge the belief of the West African authorities that other countries are somehow “responsible” for the choices of their citizens to ignore epidemic management protocols (no matter how dumbed down/simplified) within the outbreak zone.
EbolaKills
You can read the whole article here.
You know what else is glaringly missing from these reports about the Ebola outbreak?
Any acknowledgement or thanks to  Western volunteers, agencies and groups that have been assisting the African governments with providing direct health care as well as funding for education, treatment and outreach in an effort to contain the pandemic.  Or any mention of the millions that has already been spent over the past four decades in basic “sanitation and healthcare education”, without any marked improvement or behavioral change.
Instead of thanking these groups for the work/money they have already provided while stating that more assistance would be appreciated (ie: you get more flies with honey than vinegar), there are only unilateral demands and attempts to guilt the West (aka, in the lexicon of marxists, “rich white people” ) for “not doing more”, appealing to the western tradition of Christian charity, even if the outcome is predictable with or without massive global intervention.  Many western groups have already provided the tools,  information and funding for a massive public education/awareness campaign which has, as the article so clearly lays out, been rejected by the local population.  Somehow, this is the fault of the “globe” as well.

unicef-ebola-posterThe article states the obvious:

“Even in the Clara Town slum, in the heart of the capital, lapses are obvious. I watch as the ten children run from the ‘Ebola house’ and mingle freely with the dozens outside – ignoring the chlorine-washing prescribed.

Yards down the street, at a water pump, residents take it in turns to push down on the handle, no-one bothering to disinfect it or themselves, happily sharing jokes, no-one worrying about bodily contact. It doesn’t look like an area in lockdown.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pretty consistent pattern here, no matter what the cause du jour may be.

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