Dr. Steven Novella

But also there's conflict happening in the region right now.

So it's not a safe place to be.

And they're very resource poor.

So it's kind of like a perfect storm, you know, where we do not want to have, you know, this kind of simmering outbreak happening.

especially with a virus as deadly as any of the Ebola variants.

The size of these outbreaks is mostly determined by how big of a village or town or city they get into, you know.

You get one person getting into a bigger, like a small city or a big town, and suddenly it jumps by an order of magnitude in terms of the spread.

So it's a risk.

And, of course, that can keep happening, and especially in any cities with distant travel.

This is how, like, patients wound up in the United States, you know, in whatever that was 10, 15 years ago in one of those outbreaks.

So that's one of the stories, right?

The other story is...

is our response to this outbreak and why it is not good.

Are we even having a response?

Well, yeah, there is a response, absolutely.

Like from our government?

So the U.S.

is responding, the World Health Organization is responding, the CDC is responding, and local organizations are responding.

But the response is way too little.

And it is disorganized and ineffective.