People Escaping Ebola Quarantine Zone
Kevin Felts 05.24.18
Ebola has reared its ugly head once again. This time the virus struck in the city of Mbandaka, which is in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The situation has not been bad enough for the World Health Organization to declare an emergency.
What has happened though, the city of Mbandaka was placed under a quarantine, and three patients escaped the quarantine area. Two of the three were found dead, and one was found alive.
Part of my prepping plan is to take history, and incorporate it into an overall survival plan. For example, how did people react when the Black Death was happening in 1348-1350? How did people act during the Plague of London in 1665-1666? What services broke down? When people panicked what did they do?
Here we have a modern outbreak, a city under quarantine, and people are escaping the quarantine area.
From the Daily Star – Ebola patients ESCAPE quarantine in city of 350,000 people.
Three patients escaped from quarantine in the city of Mbandaka in north western Democratic Republic of Congo. Two of the three have been found dead, while a third patient has been found alive.
Medecins Sans Frontieres’ (MSF) mission in the city confirmed the incident as they work to treat cases of Ebola.
The death toll of the outbreak has reached 27 as health chiefs crackdown on the virus.
World Health Organization bosses have previously warned spread in the city could mean a repeat of the 2014 outbreak – which killed over 11,000.
The good news is the World Health Organization is trying a new Ebloa vaccine.
Opinion
During outbreaks of the plague in Medieval Europe people would flee the cities. Sometimes it was in an attempt to distance themselves from the disease. While other times the people were starving and fled to the country side in an attempt to find food. There are numerous accounts of people dying along the roads, in the bushes, in the fields, or wherever they fell.
With the situation in Mbandaka, we have a modern example of people fleeing the cities. Though it was only three, we can guess two of them were infected as they were found dead. The big question is, how many people did they infect?
Let’s speculate a city such as Atlanta, Georgia were put under quarantine. Could we expect people to flee the city? Sure we could. We have historical and current examples of people doing just that.
With that knowledge could we expect the government to establish an effective quarantine zone? Nope, not at all. We have over 600 years of history, and modern examples, showing people will flee the quarantine areas.
