The War is eastern Congo's episodic slaughter that since 1996 has waned then waxed. The Plague is the deadly Ebola virus. Spread by direct contact with body fluids, about 50 percent of its victims die within six to 16 days of contracting it.....
Ebola's 2014 visit to America could have been an epidemic and the Centers for Disease Control experts know this..
War and Plague's capital letters invoke the Book of Revelations Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Though theological and cultural interpretations clash, the White Horse symbolized Pestilence (infectious disease) and the Red Horse was War.
Before accusing me of biblical hyperbole, consider this thoughtful quote from a recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies:
"When an outbreak occurs in an active war zone, it demands a different level of security thinking: how is risk to be estimated, how much risk is acceptable, and how is risk to be managed effectively? The security challenges now appear bigger than WHO, the DRC Ministry of Health, and other partners can handle. So realistically, what more needs to happen, and what additional capacities are possible? A second vital question is how much does the threat of an Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo, in a war zone, matter to major powers?"
Sigh.
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