A Few Reasons to Fear Congo's Ebola Outbreak

The Democratic Republic of Congo is struggling to contain an outbreak of Ebola in two remote villages near the border of South Sudan. By the latest count, the epidemic has killed 31 people, including five health workers. The death toll is now twice what it was just a week ago, and the World Health Organization suspects that about 65 more people are infected. Another 108 are being kept under surveillance. Authorities believe that the outbreak started with a batch of tainted bush meat, but now that it’s out, the fierce, rapidly lethal filoviral disease is tearing through villages at an alarming rate.

Should you be scared? Well, that depends on how much of a hypochondriac you are. But just to be safe, here are some things you should know that might completely terrify you.

Just touching someone with Ebola will turn your body into a bloody ruin. With a mortality rate as high as 90 percent, the Ebola virus is one of the deadliest mankind has ever seen. Part of the reason it’s so dangerous is that it’s so infectious and contagious, especially in poor, isolated areas like northeast Congo. The disease is easily spread by contact with body fluids from infected humans or animals. Even a handshake with an infected person could transmit the disease. In this latest outbreak, the situation is made worse by local customs that require bodies of the deceased to be washed by hand and put on display in order to show love and respect for the dead. Unfortunately, this just puts more people in danger of contracting the virus, since even the bodies of victims are contagious. There is no cure.

Ebola’s symptoms are utterly horrifying, starting with the hiccups. This is a disease of Biblical proportions. Since it has a fairly long incubation period, victims can be carrying the virus for nearly a month before symptoms start to appear, and even then it’s not necessarily cause for alarm. At first, it looks a lot like the flu — fever with chills, sore muscles, cough, headaches, fatigue. One of the most telltale signs that Ebola is about to eat your insides: hiccuping. Then it gets worse. Nausea turns into abdominal pain then vomiting and diarrhea, both of which spread the disease further. The next stage of the disease brings disfiguring symptoms like rashes, purple spots caused by hemorrhaging capillaries and bleeding under the skin that causes widespread bruising. In about half of the cases, this leads to unstoppable bleeding from the mucous membranes. That means blood pouring out of the nose, eyes, gums and genitals. In the final stages of Ebola, the body’s organs simply shut down.

Ebola is difficult to contain. Because it often pops up in poverty stricken villages with little or no health care, after hunters have come into contact with sick primates, the virus often spreads unchecked until international health workers can swoop in and quarantine the infected individuals. But it doesn’t take much for things to get out of hand. “The epidemic is not under control. On the contrary the situation is very, very serious,” Eugene Kabambi, a WHO spokesman told Reuters. “If nothing is done now, the disease will reach other places, and even major towns will be threatened.” Fortunately for over-privileged Westerners, Ebola has yet to spread beyond Africa’s shores, but all it would take is a slight mutation to make the disease more mobile. That, or some infected individual hopping on a flight to JFK.

Hollywood already has you on edge. You know those movies starring some unknowing rhesus monkey, Dustin Hoffman in a hazmat suit, Matt Damon shouting at the phone, and lots of bleeding dead people? Those movies aren’t about exactly Ebola. But they may as well be.

Ebola can be weaponized. Naturally terrorists would be interested in using something so deadly, untreatable and terrifying. Aum Shinrikyo, the sick Japanese cult that carried out a chemical attack on Tokyo’s subway in 1995, have been trying to get their hands on samples of Ebola for years. They even sent a group on a fact-finding mission to Congo back in 1993 but, thankfully, failed to collect a sample of the virus.

But you can survive Ebola. After suffering sudden pains and being bedridden for two months, this Ugandan nurse survived an outbreak of Ebola in Bundibugyo District in 2007. His plan for when Ebola returns – as it has in other parts of Uganda this summer: “I would run.”