Time Magazine Highlights How Mpox In Sierra Leone In 2025 -- Sounds An Echo -- To The 2014 Disaster Of Ebola, There, While The World Looked Away.

We cannot let our own local calamities -- here in the US -- blind us to the unfolding crisis (which is now very much a haunting echo, of the narrative of our initial inattention -- to Ebola, in 2014 -- in Sierra Leone). This one is called. . . Mpox. [And, this is an appropriate Friday the Thirteeth post, indeed.]

It seems a more communicable Mpox variant, called G.1, has mutated from the earlier strains, and is spreading largely unchecked in communities throughout central Africa.

And we cannot let what happened with Ebola in 2013-14 (tens of thousands dead) play out, solely due to our preoccupation with a certain Tangerine-hued dotard.

Do help the world. . . wake up. Here's the fine Time story -- and a bit:

. . .A dangerous mpox outbreak is unfolding in Sierra Leone. In just the first week of May, cases rose by 61%, and suspected cases surged by 71%. Roughly half of all confirmed mpox cases in Africa now come from this small West African nation. The virus is moving widely, across geographies, genders, and age groups.

And the virus is changing.

Genomic analysis has revealed a fast-moving new variant of mpox -- called G.1 -- that likely emerged in late November. At first it circulated silently but has since taken hold and quickly began sustained human-to-human transmission. Cases have been doubling every two weeks. Estimates suggest more than 11,000 people in Sierra Leone may already be infected. . . .

This is how outbreaks become epidemics, and mpox, as a pandemic, could be brutal. . . .

Sierra Leone has been here before, at the epicenter of a disease outbreak while the world looked away. In 2014, Ebola swept through the West African region. A single mutation supercharged its spread just as it reached Sierra Leone. Tens of thousands died. Health systems collapsed. The global cost soared into the billions. The lesson? Delay is deadly. . . .

I'll be in the skies tomorrow, at US protest time -- but let them be vast, into the millions of bodies -- and mightily vocal, and of course peace filled. But let the people chant. . . [Call:] "Show me what democracy looks like! -- [Response:] THIS is what democracy looks like!"

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