I can still distinctly remember back in the day, seventh grade, in spanish class, the small talk made about the…ebola virus. It had finally arrived within th

The Ebola Virus

e US, and one man had become contained within a hospital in Dallas Texas. As a younger impressionable person, I think many of us had at least an inkling of a thought as to… “Well what if it shows up in Illinois??”. Don’t worry I definitely thought the same thing, but  well, where’d it end up going?

 Well, for those of you who didn’t really follow the news and just wanted to hear whether or not it had spread, only four had been officially diagnosed with the ebola virus in America, all within a two week span. Two of those people had been nurses who had treated Duncan, patient Zero in America, and the other was a doctor who had been working with Doctors without Borders and had just arrived from Guinea, West Africa. 

But why was it so short lived, not that I’m complaining of course, but it’s such a prevalent virus within underdeveloped areas of other countries so why did we not see a massive rise of the virus within America? Well the thing is, there is no vaccine for ebola as of yet. The reason so many have died from this virus in other underdeveloped countries is due to how ebola can be treated. When ebola is caught in the beginning stages, and quarantined and treated with rehydration and other symptom treatments, the virus can be reduced and then exterminated within each person.

However, the problem is that in underdeveloped countries there is no way to get to the virus on time for each and every person who has it. Therefore, people die quickly because they are unable to get treatment, and are surrounded by people with Ebola every single day. While many may say that trying to fight ebola and devoting resources is a lost cause, the World Health Organization has a clearly different view. 

About three months ago, an amazing breakthrough was made on Ebola, a vaccine which has been effective in protecting people from ebola, created by the numerous scientists from all different countries working together. It’s so crazy that people have dedicated the time and found a way to combat the ebola virus, something that has taken a  painstakingly long five years to find, after more than 8 vaccines have been tried against Ebola. 

According to the WHO, this virus takes a protein from the Zaire strain of Ebola and when intaken, the vaccine provokes an immune response to the ebola virus. Now the extent to which people had to study to find this one protein within this strain must have clearly been the time and effort the scientists had to put in to find this and to be able to use it in such a way to understand that it could provoke an immune response within humans. 

The extent to which our biotechnology has come to nowadays shows the sheer extent to which humans will go to to protect others less fortunate, as well as making our planet a safer more inhabitable place. Awe is the only word that comes to my mind when I look up biotechnology, and see the different diseases scientists are working on nowadays to help and change our society, whether it be Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s, or other cancers and such. 

Well, I mean, hopefully they can also find a way to solve the coronavirus outbreak am I right? Otherwise it might be that whole seventh grade situation all over again.