Who remembers: in May 1995, when a disease called Ebola became a newspaper headline? The so-called "hemorrhagic fever (HF)" killed more than a hundred people in Zaire.
The event resonated and led filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen to conceive of such an event happening in the US, in the film EPIDEMIA (Outbreak), in the same year, which can now be watched in the afternoon movie slot.
At the time, I was 13 years old and already meditating on the end times, but Ebola was very intense; death occurred from 1 (one) day to two weeks after the onset of symptoms, which include widespread skin rashes, as well as bleeding from all orifices (nose, anus, mouth, and eyes).
The intensity of a disease, contrary to fictional literature, is not a disadvantage, because the faster the infected person becomes bedridden, the lower the risk of transmission.
One fact about this is HIV, which with new drugs, an HIV-positive person can have a moderate but normal life, living for decades, even without showing symptoms. Thus, the risk of contagion is higher, a fact identical to what happens with Hepatitis.
HIV, as you know, results in AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), and leads 100% of virus carriers to death, but without extremism, I can mention another pandemic, that of oral herpes. It is estimated that in many countries 90% of the population has the virus. In the US and Europe, 1/5 are carriers of herpes, a disease that causes mouth sores during periods of low immunity, such as during times of sadness, stress, excessive sun exposure, or poor diet.
New research links the oral herpes virus, both type 1 and 2, to Alzheimer's disease, a fact that, if proven, will cause a stir in the concept of oral herpes as a common inconvenience.
Diseases don't seem to be like they used to be.
The Spanish flu, the bubonic plague, Ebola, among others mentioned in history books, had in common the fact that after an intense and rapid genocide, they disappeared along with their martyrs.
Swine flu killed 18,000, and then found its place among everyday illnesses. The most interesting thing about all of this is that when a disease intensely threatens the Global North, drugs and vaccines emerge rapidly.
Chagas disease kills thousands in the Global South. Many doctors and researchers appeal to large laboratories for some medicine, but this disease, like sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis, is IGNORED by major research centers because they only kill the poor and destitute of the Global South.
Sílvio Lôbo,
