Parasites that kill their hosts are basically committing suicide. More successful parasites keep their hosts alive. Tapeworms, for example, can hunker down in someone’s intestines and grow to obscene lengths before the host even notices. The most successful parasites, such as the microorganisms that live in our stomachs, actually benefit their hosts, making infestation a win-win situation.
Liberia has been horribly stricken by Ebola, but, all of a sudden, the number of cases is plummeting. This, even though the American troops and other foreign help haven’t got started yet.
From As Ebola declines in Liberia, health officials reassess response plans – The Washington Post:
MONROVIA, Liberia — The rate of new Ebola infections here has declined so sharply in recent weeks that even some of the busiest treatment facilities are now only half-full and officials are reassessing the scale of the response needed to quell the epidemic.
The turnaround has occurred without the provision of a single treatment bed by the U.S. military, which has promised to build 17 Ebola facilities containing 100 beds each across Liberia. Those treatment units will be constructed, said Bill Berger, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Disaster Assistance Response Team here. But the option of initially opening some with as few as 10 beds is “being discussed,” he said.
That would provide people in all parts of the country access to a nearby treatment unit should they become infected in the months to come. And each facility would be constructed so that it could be quickly expanded to as many as 100 beds if the need arises, he said. The United States has spent $360 million so far fighting Ebola in West Africa.
No one tracking the outbreak is close to declaring the deadly hemorrhagic disease vanquished, and all are wary that the virus, which has receded at times over the past seven months, could suddenly flare again in this impoverished country, the epicenter of the West African Ebola catastrophe.
But five days after the World Health Organization said new infections were declining in Liberia, a 157-bed treatment center in the city of Foya, where the epidemic began seven months ago, held no patients Monday, according to a nurse there. The same facility received no new admissions last Wednesday, the most recent day for which government statistics were available.
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