by Outcast_Searcher » Thu 14 Nov 2019, 02:22:35
As a point of balance, instead of doom or fear mongering, I was watching "93 Days" on Netflix, and looked up "Ebola cure rate" and found this encouraging news:
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')Ebola drugs show ‘90% survival rate’ in breakthrough trial
Ebola may soon be a "preventable and treatable" disease after a trial of two drugs showed significantly improved survival rates, scientists have said.
Four drugs were trialled on patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is a major outbreak of the virus.
More than 90% of infected people can survive if treated early with the most effective drugs, the research showed.
The drugs will now be used to treat all patients with the disease in DR Congo, according to health officials.
On Tuesday, two people cured of Ebola using the experimental drugs were released from a treatment centre in Goma, eastern DR Congo, and reunited with their families.
The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which co-sponsored the trial, said the results are "very good news" for the fight against Ebola.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49326505So, while Ebola and any potential pandemic are damn scary, let's keep things in perspective.
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')The survival rate among patients with low levels of the virus in their blood was as high as 94% when they were given REGN-EB3, and 89% when on mAb114, the agency said.
The findings mean
health authorities can "stress to people that more than 90% of people survive" if they are treated early, said Sabue Mulangu, an infectious-disease researcher who worked on the trial.
(Blue font mine, for emphasis).
Now, whether logic and data can overcome fear and mistrust is, of course, an open question. But clearly if early treatment can result in a cure rate of over 90%, that's got to be a hell of a lot better approach than a cluture of fearful patients ignoring or hiding the problem.