The effort to contain this outbreak starts with four strikes against it:
Momentum
Location
(Lack of) Medical Countermeasures
Weakened Global Response Capacity
Let's look at each.
Momentum:
The >1000 cases so far are undercount; # still rising fast as true scale emerges.
For context, the huge West Africa outbreak in 2014 was detected at 49 cases and rose to 208 a month later. So this one starts off *much* bigger. who.int/emergencies/di…
It's instructive to compare this against other major past outbreaks.
The largest Ebola outbreak in history, West Africa/2014 (which I worked on for @USAID), was detected at a far earlier stage (49 cases / 29 deaths) than this one (246 cases/65 deaths).
Deaths are now >88 and ⬆️
This one has already built up more momentum at time of detection.
Worrying because Ebola risk and response scale in an exponential, not linear, fashion.
Each extra uncontrolled case means tens of more people potentially exposed in super spreading events.
To mark the 6 month anniversary tomorrow of Trump‘s deal to end the war in Gaza, we at @RefugeesIntl teamed up with humanitarian partners to assess its humanitarian impact.
The headline: it is failing. But political will could salvage it.
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The problem is not the plan itself; the problem is an execution failure.
Many of the humanitarian and civilian protection commitments of the plan are good & right.
But they are failing - and the deal's guarantors (the USG foremost) are letting that happen.
Getting the humanitarian components right is a crucial proof of concept for the wider deal, and a confidence building measure toward future steps.
If those elements fail with impunity, it is hard to see how disarmament & political/governance elements could ever succeed.