[gbrown]

You have no idea what you're talking about. Sealing off the area wouldn't just be a crime against humanity, but it isn't possible. This is a region with little infrastructure and extremely porous borders.

The reason things got out of control is that the world relied on charitable organizations to fix things, but the wonderful folks at the MSF were quickly outgunned.

[rwallace]

I would suggest actually reading about the facts of the case before commenting with such unfounded confidence. Empirically, sealing off the area has been working so far. The wonderful folks at the MSF were not outgunned - they had resources that seemed adequate to the task - if you read the article I linked, it explains the actual reason things got out of control. And this disease has the potential to rack up a nine digit death toll if we fail to contain it. Allowing that to happen would be the crime against humanity.

[gbrown]

If you'd followed the outbreak as you seem to claim, you will have seen that they succeeded to a large extent in Guinea, but the subsequent spread to other areas overwhelmed their capacity quickly, and that efforts to contain the spread were complicated by having to work with three (unprepared and weak) governments. Oh, did I mention that Guinea did try closing the borders and was unable to?

I'm writing a dissertation on infectious disease spread, and your comments strike me as uninformed and harmful. The time for massive action is now, and pipe dreams of impossible (and downright inhuman) international quarantine cordons only confuse the issue.