Friday, August 8, 2014

Afica* (for Africa, African)

The western African nations of Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria are all struggling with deadly outbreaks of the Ebola virus. A common misconception about Ebola is that there’s no cure for it and no surviving it, and even if the truth is scarcely more comforting—the mortality rate for this species (Zaire) can be as high as 90 percent but is currently hovering around 60 percent—health officials are spreading the word that people who think they’ve been infected should seek treatment. At the opposite end of the spectrum are those who completely deny that Ebola exists. But adopting this extreme position will certainly not help the more than 900 souls who have died so far.

Afica* is a high-probability typo. There are 28 English-language entries in OhioLINK and 264 in WorldCat.

(Educational poster from the CDC Ebola page)

Deb Kulczak

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