I've never seen animals treat their younglike this

[malaise]

Man to man is so unjust

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/08/21/342216397/the-10-year-old-boy-has-died-probably-of-ebola
<snip>
It was a photo that took the Ebola outbreak raging in West Africa and made it very personal. A little boy named Saah Exco, 10 years old, lies in a crumpled heap.

As NPR's Nurith Aizenman Wednesday, hours before, the boy had been found naked on a beach in West Point, an impoverished neighborhood in Monrovia, Liberia's capital city. At one point, Saah had been a patient at the Ebola holding center there, for suspected cases. It's unclear when or why he was released.

But now he was on his own, drifting in and out of consciousness.

People in the neighborhood knew him. Somehow, they brought him to an alleyway. They gave him a shirt and pants. But no one wanted to hold him, to take him into a home.

Many folks in West Point — and throughout West Africa — don't think Ebola is real. Yet they were afraid. What if Ebola really is real and what if the boy had the virus? It's what NPR photographer David Gilkey, who took the photo of the boy that ran on our website, calls "an evil Catch 22."

Efforts were made to get him to a clinic but the clinic said no: The facility was not equipped to handle suspected Ebola patients.

[shenmue]

1. Good Lord

[LisaL]

2. This article says he was pulled from Ebola center by a mob.

Who didn't believe Ebola is real and took bloody bedding, etc.

"Saah was reportedly in a holding center for Ebola patients when it was overrun by a mob in the West Point neighborhood of Monrovia."

http://nypost.com/2014/08/20/abandoned-10-year-old-a-tragic-symbol-of-the-ebola-epidemic/

[Warren DeMontague]

4. Right. Certainly in the running for one of the stupidest moves this year.

Stealing the ebola-soaked mattresses and sheets.

Whoops.

[LisaL]

6. Not only that, but patients that were there had to run out on the street.

Apparently this poor child was in that center.
As I remember there was a photo of a man running with a crying boy in his hands.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. Yeah, it's horribly tragic all the way around.

There's basically zero medical care on the ground, there.

While I am glad Dr. Brantly has recovered and wish him well, I have a little bit of trouble swallowing the "thanks and glory be to God" angle he professed in his statement. Seems to me an allegedly omnipotent deity dropping a massively lethal hemorrhagic fever smack dab into the middle of the already most poor, blighted and suffering people in the world, is either arguing against his own existence or his own sense of decency.

I suppose one conceivably bright outcome to all this, at the end of the day, would be if it ended up finally putting these exceedingly dirt poor nations and their infrastructure on the global map and conscience, but we're a long way off from finding a silver lining to this turd.

[LisaL]

8. I don't know why God would pick Dr. Brantly to cure over all these other people either.

Could his cure have something to do with that experimental drug rather than God?

[Warren DeMontague]

9. Secular minded eggheads like myself might think so

Indeed

[840high]

12. Why not both?

[alterfurz]

14. "To those who believe that God controls everything...

...thanking Him for sparing you from a pestilence that has killed hundreds of others is a bit like sending a thank-you note to a serial killer for stabbing the family next door." -- Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian

[tblue37]

23. +1 !! nt

[Mariana]

26. Maybe it was the drug, maybe not.

This disease is not 100% fatal. There are many survivors who never had any experimental drugs.

[Warren DeMontague]

5. Very sad.

They did clothe him. I can't blame people for being afraid of that virus. It's horrible stuff.

It's worth remembering here that the enemy isn't people, it's a massively lethal strand of RNA encased in protein.

[Brigid]

10. And don't think that we will behave any better if the virus takes hold here.

We will not.

[tblue37]

24. But he wouldn't have been naked, without food or water, and completely alone on the street

if the mob of people that were too frightened to take care of him had not destroyed the holding clinic and forced the patients out.

[Warren DeMontague]

25. You are absolutely right.

Like I said upthread, that was a monumentally stupid move.

[Johnyawl]

11. You're not watching enough wildlife shows.

I don't write this to in anyway lessen the horror of that little boy's story or to excuse the wretchedness of mankind in general, but your title is naive in the extreme.

Male bears will eat bear cubs, even ones that might be theirs; male lions that drive off and replace pride males will kill the nursing cubs, which puts the females back into their fertility cycle so they can bear the new pride males offspring.

Animals killing the offspring of their species is not that unusual. Herd, or 'group' animals are much better about this than predators, although chimpanzees life in groups, or tribes, and the females will kill the young of other females.

It's an extraordinarily cruel world out there; animals do those cruel things because instinct and the drive to survive and reproduce drive them to it. And maybe at some level the poor, ignorant and helpless people of West Point are only trying to survive and protect their offspring when they reject a sick little boy and allow him to die lonely and abandoned in an ally. But what drives the people of the richest nation on earth to send 50,000 children back to their homelands to life and die in poverty, disease and hopelessness? For all of our civilization and riches, are we just animals?

[SheilaT]

13. I was going to post something similar.

Animals have been known to abandon their young. The non-human world is NOT a benign and wonderful place. It really isn't.

That doesn't justify what humans do. But it's important not to romanticize other species.

[elias49]

15. What are you referring to here?

".. the richest nation on earth to send 50,000 children back to their homelands to life and die in poverty, disease and hopelessness?"

[EX500rider]

16. I believe children being sent back to country of origin in Central America. n/t

[raven mad]

17. And the medical/legal/billionaire complex in the US

Refuses to provide the drugs that may have helped.

[LisaL]

19. There are no approved drugs at this time.

[raven mad]

20. Nope.

But approved doesn't mean there's not experimental stuff out there that could help. If you're going to bleed out and die anyway, why not? I know that sounds callous; but I'd take the chance in a heartbeat.

So much for "approval" is politics.

[LisaL]

21. They only had a few doses of ZMAPP.

It takes a long time to make because they have to grow the plants.
They are completely run out.

[raven mad]

22. It's like any other "help" out there for those who suffer from a rare disease.

There is always a shortage of some type, requiring great gobs of government funds to the pharmaceutical industries. Bullshit that the plants weren't already there.

[spanone]

18. ......