Criticizing Our Ebola Quarantine Unit In Kenya? You're Very Welcome.

You'd think public health officials would be more grateful for American help and any help offered during the Ebola outbreak in the Congo. We would just rather not have Ebola in our country.

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CIDRAP: Uganda shuts DR Congo border as Ebola outbreak continues to grow

Chris Dall, MA May 28, 2026

"As the number of cases in the Ebola outbreak centered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to rise, neighboring Uganda has closed its border.

"The Ugandan Ministry of Health said on X that the border closure is temporary and that crossings will be authorized for outbreak response, humanitarian operations, food and cargo transportation, and security reasons. 

“All authorized entrants shall be subjected to strict health screening, completion of locator forms, documentation, and continuous monitoring at all ports of entry in accordance with Ministry of Health surveillance protocols,” the post said.

"Anyone entering from DRC under other circumstances will be taken into mandatory isolation for 21 days.

"Uganda currently has eight confirmed cases of Ebola and one death in the outbreak, which is caused by the rarer Bundibugyo species, a variant that has no approved treatment or vaccine. According to data presented today by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), DRC has 1,077 suspected cases (129 confirmed) and 246 suspected deaths (18 confirmed). Global charity Save the Children reports that 25% of the 17 confirmed deaths have been in children.

"The outbreak began in DRC’s Ituri province, which is in the northeastern part of the country, bordering Uganda and South Sudan. Over 90% of cases have been reported in the province, which has been plagued by conflict between government forces and militia groups, resulting in displacement of millions of refugees. Although the outbreak was first reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) on May 15, officials believe it began weeks earlier. 

"It’s the 17th Ebola outbreak in DRC since the virus was first identified in 1976.

"WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said today in a message to people in Ituri that the agency is working closely with the DRC government to stop the outbreak and that he will be coming to Bunia, the capital of the province, in the next few days. He also urged warring parties in the region to declare a ceasefire.

“No cause, no conflict, no grievance is worth condemning innocent people to death from a preventable disease,” Tedros said. “A ceasefire, even a temporary one, would save lives. I urge you, I implore you: give us the space to help the people who need it most.” 

Aid supplies arrive

"Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that aid supplies donated by the European Union were delivered today to Bunia, where health workers have been struggling to contain the spread of the virus with a limited supply of gloves, masks, boots, and medication. An official with UNICEF, which is helping deliver the supplies, said the aid is expected to arrive in batches over the next eight days.

"The Guardian reports that several doctors and nurses treating Ebola patients at healthcare facilities in DRC have died after contracting the virus. Healthcare workers and family members often face the greatest risk of infection with the virus, which spreads through contact with bodily fluids, because of their proximity to infected patients. 

"The US State Department said today that it will allocate $80 million to partners on the ground—including UNICEF, the World Food Program, World Vision, and the International Organization for Migration—to scale up procurement and delivery of personal protective equipment and diagnostics, border screening and surveillance, and contract tracing. 

"The State Department also said it has committed $50 million to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to fund up to 50 Ebola response clinics in the affected areas.

"But in a press conference today, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya, MD, MPH, said he’s concerned about international funding for the response after initial pledges of $500 million dropped to $290 million in a few days.

“We cannot afford to stop this outbreak without resources,” he said. Kaseya also called out travel restrictions imposed by some western countries. “It’s not acceptable.”

US quarantine unit in Kenya under fire

"US officials also confirmed today that Kenyan officials have agreed to a US plan to establish a quarantine unit in Kenya for Americans exposed to Ebola in the current outbreak, according to the Wall Street Journal. More than 30 US public health officers are on their way to Kenya to staff the 50-bed unit.

"The plan is being widely criticized by public health experts, who’ve argued that the United States already has specialized treatment centers specifically designed for Ebola and other deadly infectious diseases and that quickly setting up a high-quality clinic in Kenya will be impossible.

“Building and staffing a new unit in Kenya during an active outbreak for Americans exposed to Ebola is deeply concerning,” Infectious Diseases Society of America President Ronald Nahass, MD, said in a statement. “It raises serious questions about resources, timing and the level of care Americans sent there will receive.” 

The Nova Music Festival Exhibition

I love the powerful writing at Spiked and appreciate the sympathy and understanding they show for the Jews and for Israel. I would like to see this exhibit here in the United States, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were immediately vandalized by hateful antisemites. 

You would've expected to see an outpouring of sympathy after the October 7 pogroms. Instead you saw an explosion of violent Jew-hatred such that I never saw and that I still can't understand.

Just as millions still don't believe that the Holocaust happened, they have preferred to twist, deny, or explain away October 7. But in both cases, photographs and personal items do not lie. 

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By Hugo Timms at Spiked Online, 5-27-26

The unforgivable betrayal of the Nova Festival victims. When revellers at the Nova festival were brutalised by Hamas, Western cultural elites said they deserved it. 

"‘How much evil?’

"That was the question asked by Ayala Avraham, reflecting on her experience at the Nova Music Festival on 7 October 2023. No three words do a better job of summarising the terror, disgust and heartbreak one can’t help but share as you walk through the new London exhibition that bears witness to the events of that morning. 

"Avraham was an unlikely survivor of the terror unleashed by Hamas at the gathering of music-lovers, near Kibbutz Re’im in southern Israel. She was abducted along with her husband, Ilan Avraham, whose birthday they were celebrating. Ayala fled, but Ilan could not. His captors demanded he call out to her, hoping that in doing so she would be lured back to them. His refusal saved her life and ended his. Ilan was shot in the head, before an entire magazine was expended into his lifeless body. He was then ‘unrecognisable’, according to his wife.

"The events that Ayala’s short monologue conveys a small part of began at 6.29am, as the sunrise was breaking out across the desert landscape. The music abruptly stopped when an organiser of the festival appeared on the main stage, issuing a ‘red alert’ to the crowd of 3,500. A short distance away, 3,000 terrorists were flooding across the border that separates Gaza and Israel. About one in 10 – 378 people – listening to the announcement would not survive. In the following hours Hamas expanded its attack across neighbouring kibbutzim, killing a total of 1,200 civilians, 310 Israeli soldiers and 58 police. No greater loss of Jewish life had occurred in a day since the Holocaust.

"The Nova Exhibition lets the horror speak for itself. You can look at and touch the tents, the shoes, the water bottles and the iPhones. They carry a simple and poignant message – does any of this look and feel familiar to you? Does it remind you of the sweat, the dust, the hangover? To everyone there, the answer is probably yes, it does – we’ve all been there. Until you remember that the sneakers in your hands quite possibly belonged to someone who was raped, then shot, then dragged into Gaza and paraded before an ecstatic crowd of young men. Perhaps his or her lifeless body was returned, months after a traumatised family had to witness it being used as a bartering chip by the terrorists. Or perhaps it wasn’t returned at all.

"Fast forward to June 2025. It’s the annual Glastonbury Festival, in a sunny field in Somerset. Here, tens of thousands of predominantly young people have gathered to do the very same thing that, less than two years earlier, the revellers at Nova had done. To listen to music, to dance with their friends until sunrise – to be swept up in the intoxicating feeling of common humanity that draws people to music festivals from across the world.

"You might expect such people to feel an affinity for the victims of Nova. But instead, there was the opposite. Glastonbury 2025 was effectively a Palestine Action rally, a celebration of the ‘resistance’ that began when the first shots were fired by Hamas at the defenceless attendees of the Nova festival. Irish rap trio Kneecap – one of whose members had publicly praised Hamas – performed in front of a sea of Palestinian flags and led the crowd in a chant of ‘Free Palestine’. Bob Vylan frontman Pascal Robinson-Foster took things further, leading the crowd in chants ‘Death to the IDF (Israel Defence Forces)’. ‘Widespread support for Palestine was evident in every bar, audience and campsite’, wrote one journalist in glowing approval.

"Despite having everything in common with those at the Nova festival, there was a collective refusal on behalf of everyone at Glastonbury to acknowledge it. The same thing could be said for Coachella in the US, or just about any music festival in the West. 

"Why? Because most of those at the Nova festival were Israelis, and very likely Jewish. And if there is one unquestionable progressive doctrine of our times, it is that Israelis can never – under any circumstances – be seen as ‘people like us’, let alone as victims.

"The ‘radicals’ who spent Glastonbury denigrating Israel and praising its enemies would do well to spare an hour at the Nova exhibition in Shoreditch, east London – no doubt it is a short distance from where many of them work or live. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. Because Ayala Avraham’s question – ‘How much evil?’ – might not be the only one troubling their conscience. It will be replaced by something possibly worse: ‘How could we have betrayed you?’"

The Nova Exhibition in London is now open to the public. Book tickets and find out more here.

Your Local Epidemiologist:The Dose, 5-27-26

Here's Your Local Epidemiologist with another roundup of important medical news.

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Ebola, chemical plants and health, hantavirus, common colds, heat and more
Katelyn Jetelina, The Dose: May 27

As they say, bugs have ears. Public health has had a relentless May. Chemical plant (near) explosions, Ebola, hantavirus, and that's before you even get to the usual suspects: common colds, heat, and ticks.

Here’s an attempt to keep you up to speed and, more importantly, what it means for you and your community.

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But first, an announcement: World Cup

The World Cup starts in 15 days (not like anyone is counting down), and we are hanging TVs in the Health Security Operations Center. It’s going to be a gorgeous, chaotic celebration of basically every culture on earth. And it’s going to take a team effort—from communities to individuals, from public health to health care—to keep people healthy.

That’s where you come in.

If you’re going to the games or live within 30 miles of a stadium, we would love to hear from you. Sign up for a weekly survey here. Thanks to the more than 1,280 people who have already signed up…you will be hearing from us soon!!

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Global disease “weather report”

Hantavirus: Two more cases

The global count of cruise ship passengers with hantavirus has now increased to 13 cases (11 confirmed), with three deaths. The two new cases are overseas and among people who were already quarantining:

1. A crew member in the Netherlands.

2. A Spanish national passenger who was quarantining at home tested positive through daily monitoring. They are now in a biocontainment unit.

In the U.S., everyone remains negative.

There may be more cases, given that the incubation period of hantavirus (the time from exposure to infection) is 45 days. But this week, we will reach a major milestone: the median incubation window is 18 days, and that will pass on May 29.

Timeline of the hantavirus outbreak and the end of quarantine. Image created by Your Local Epidemiologist.

What this means for you: Your risk from this cruise ship outbreak remains essentially nil at this point.

Ebola rages on in Central Africa

Big thanks to Dr. Craig Spencer, a humanitarian physician who has treated and survived Ebola, for jumping in to provide the YLE community with an update. Craig, take it from here…

The combined confirmed and suspected Ebola cases in DRC are now more than 1,000. All signs are pointing to a very long and catastrophic outbreak in Central Africa:

1. This is a vast undercount. We know this because the test positivity rate is hovering around 50%, only 20% of contacts are being traced (and in some areas, no contacts at all), and more cases keep popping up with no known connection. This all points to widespread and undetected community transmission.

2. This is in only a week of detection. Compared to previous outbreaks, the growth is very fast, as the huge West Africa outbreak in 2016 was first detected at 49 cases and rose to 208 cases a month later. It took four months for that outbreak to reach the size of the current one in the DR Congo.

3. The cases are spread out across 16 health zones. There are now multiple epicenters, making containment very difficult.

Next door in Uganda, the case count is seven. While this number is low compared to DRC, a concerning development is that two health care workers recently tested positive with uncertain exposure histories. If they weren’t treating known Ebola cases, this means it’s spreading undetected in Uganda as well.

On the ground, backlash, including the burning of health centers, has emerged, a pattern seen in nearly every outbreak and rooted in deep community distrust. It often stems from outside actors working in communities without fully understanding or addressing local priorities. Affected populations may recognize the severity of Ebola while still holding other concerns as more pressing, such as where their loved ones are buried. Community trust is essential to an effective response, but difficult to build during an active emergency. It is best established long before a crisis begins.

U.S. priorities are made clear, and may backfire. The U.S. Administration has shown that its first priority is keeping Ebola out, with helping end the outbreak in the DRC a secondary concern. That's meant travel restrictions broader than anything we've imposed before — covering travelers from across the region, and reportedly some green card holders and permanent residents as well.

For example, just these past two days, news broke that high-risk American travelers will be subject to a mandatory quarantine in Kenya before they are allowed to return. If an American is infected, the U.S. government plans to send them to a hospital it is standing up from scratch in Kenya. (Currently, Americans who were in the area are allowed to return but are diverted to three airports—Houston, Atlanta, and DC—for further screening.) Past administrations have used travel notices and stepped-up screening; this goes much further.

At first blush, these strict precautions may sound prudent. But this approach could backfire in three ways:

1. Restrictions this blunt give people every reason to hide where they’ve been and whom they’ve been near — making the people we most need to find harder to track, not easier.

2. They also breed a false sense that this is someone else’s problem. But diseases are humbling. They find the small cracks in even the most impenetrable-seeming defenses.

3. Lives lost. There is no treatment for this Ebola strain, which means survival depends heavily on the quality of the health system. We have that system in the States, but we are choosing not to use it for infected Americans.

This is unbelievable and infuriating. (See a deeper dive from me here.)

The only real way to lower the risk to Americans — and everyone else — is to end the outbreak in the DRC and across the region.

What this means for you: If you have travel plans to this region, it’s time to cancel them. This is a high-risk situation in Central Africa, and CDC released a Level 4 Travel Advisory. There is also great uncertainty if and when the Administration will let you back in.

To the general public in the U.S., your risk remains very, very low right now.

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U.S. disease “weather report”

Ticks: past peak season?

Good news, especially for people in the Northeast and Midwest: tick numbers continue to decline. Though we are at the peak of the season, this unusually early year is trending favorably.

Source: CDC; Annotated by Hannah at Your Local Epidemiologist.

Heat-related illnesses in the North

Heat risk is certainly not blanketing the entire country yet, but this week it will be moderate in the Midwest and the Southeast.

Source: CDC; Annotated by Hannah at Your Local Epidemiologist.

What this means for you: Be sure to check the CDC HeatRisk tool. A red day isn’t the best day for that soccer game for a kid with asthma, and a stretch of orange days is a great time to check on your elderly neighbor.

Common colds surging

As far as respiratory viruses go, the only thing really going around right now is the common cold. It is higher this year than last year, but should peak very soon before returning this fall.

Source: CDC; Annotated by Hannah at Your Local Epidemiologist

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Spotlight: Chemical plants

Over the weekend, YLE California covered the serious situation that unfolded around a chemical plant in Orange County, California. Thankfully, the worst-case scenario (a chemical explosion) was mitigated, but only through luck. The health implications in a densely populated area could have been catastrophic.

As the situation was winding down, another chemical explosion struck Washington State. This one was fatal. Health officials say the risk to surrounding residents from chemicals in the air and ground remains low, though the community deserves far greater clarity.

Clean air and clean water consistently rank as Americans’ top public health concerns — yet when chemical disasters strike, communities are too often met with reassurances rather than transparency and accountability. Residents near the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio train derailment, for example, are still waiting to understand the long-term impact on their health, with few clear answers.

What this means for you: Many are wondering if facilities processing potentially dangerous materials are in their neighborhoods. This interactive map allows you to enter your ZIP code and see all facilities monitored by the EPA, including any violations.

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Good news

• Ebola vaccines and treatment for the Bundibugyo species are in development. Two vaccine platforms are being explored, at least one of which may be deployable in as little as 2 months. One vaccine is being developed by Oxford, and the other uses the same biotechnology as the FDA-approved Zaire species of Ebola. (It may provide cross-protection, but it’s unclear at this point.) On the treatment side, two promising monoclonal antibody cocktails are likely to be deployed, though doses are limited and logistical hurdles remain significant challenges. Anni over at The Biotech Tea had a great explainer about the Ebola vaccine gap, if you want to read more.

• Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) has been officially renamed polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), following more than a decade of debate and input from roughly 22,000 clinicians, researchers, and patients worldwide. This is good because the old name was medically misleading, leading to patients without visible cysts being dismissed or overlooked entirely. The WHO estimates that 70% of people with the condition remain undiagnosed. A more accurate name should improve recognition, reduce stigma, and ultimately help the millions of people living with this condition get diagnosed and treated sooner.

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Public health situations are everywhere right now. Staying healthy takes public health professionals and systems working tirelessly behind the scenes and each of us showing up for our neighbors and communities.

Love, YLE

Big thanks to Ed Nirenberg for staying on top of the Ebola vaccines, Hannah Totte for all the figures, Dr. Craig Spencer for the Ebola insight, and Dr. Matt Willis for covering the chemical situation in CA.

Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) comprises a team of experts, ranging from physicians to immunologists to epidemiologists to nutritionists, working together with one goal: to “Translate” ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions.

A Long COVID Shocker

The Boston Globe is behind a paywall, but I can see that their headline says "One in Six Americans who had COVID-19 developed Long COVID".  That's really shocking.

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Long COVID may affect 18 million Americans, doubling surveillance estimates
By Mass General Brigham via Medical Xpress 5-27-26
Edited by Stephanie Baum, reviewed by Andrew Zinin 

"The true toll of long COVID may be double that of current estimates and hidden from current surveillance systems that rely on capturing diagnostic codes, according to new research led by Mass General Brigham. Investigators have used a novel AI algorithm to comb through medical records of nearly 460,000 patients with COVID-19 across 58 U.S. hospitals, finding that approximately one in six (roughly 16%) developed long COVID.

"These rates, which translate to more than 18 million Americans, are twofold higher than current estimates and reflect the growing cumulative burden of chronic conditions following COVID-19 infection. Results are published in JAMA Network Open.

"Over 10 million people with long COVID would go entirely undetected by the diagnostic code that health systems and policymakers rely on to track the disease burden," said study corresponding author Hossein Estiri, Ph.D., a faculty member in the Mass General Brigham Department of Medicine. "The figures we uncovered are almost certainly an undercount."

"Current diagnostic coding, including the ICD code U09.9 designated for post-COVID conditions, captures fewer than 7% of patients with long COVID.

"Mass General Brigham researchers deployed a novel "precision-phenotyping" algorithm they designed specifically to identify long COVID in longitudinal electronic health records by analyzing temporal sequences of clinical events from hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 patients. The algorithm was previously validated to identify cases of long COVID as a diagnosis of exclusion, which identifies conditions that appeared after COVID-19 infection and cannot be explained by preexisting conditions already in a patient's medical history.

"Researchers analyzed electronic health records from 457,950 patients who had previously tested positive for COVID-19 across four U.S. regions: New England, Southeast Texas, Southern California and Western Pennsylvania. They identified long COVID in 16.3% of patients overall, with rates ranging from 13.6% to 22.7% across regions. Across the full study cohort, 14.5% of COVID-19 patients (66,587 individuals) developed chronic conditions requiring sustained clinical care. The study also uncovered regional variations of long COVID clinical manifestations, such as dramatically different rates of prediabetes—an emerging sequelae of long COVID—across various parts of the U.S.

"Contrary to the assumption that long COVID is a legacy of early waves of the pandemic, the researchers also found that cumulative prevalence continued to increase across all regions studied. This indicates the virus continues to act as a catalyst for new, long-term chronic health conditions impacting different systems in the body. Statistical modeling showed significant quarterly increases in New England, Southern California and Western Pennsylvania, with trends pointing to continued growth over the next decade if current patterns persist.

"This work demonstrates how longitudinal clinical data in a health system can be structured and analyzed to support more consistent identification of complex post-viral conditions," said Shawn Murphy, MD, Ph.D., study co-author and Chief Research Information Officer for University of Washington. "There is significant potential for clinical AI when it is designed for public health and integrated across real-world care settings."

"The researchers note that their findings do not include undocumented infections, which have become the majority since widespread testing ended, and exclude patients without longitudinal medical records. These limitations suggest the overall disease toll of long COVID may be even higher.

"These patients are not absent from clinical care; they are absent from the diagnostic code that would identify them as long COVID patients," said lead study author Jiazi Tian, MSc, a data scientist in the Clinical Augmented Intelligence Group at Mass General Brigham. "The cardiologist seeing new dysautonomia, the endocrinologist seeing new metabolic disease, the neurologist seeing unexplained cognitive complaints—some of these presentations are long COVID arriving without the label that would connect them to a COVID-19 infection."

"This study demonstrates how hospitals can leverage AI to help fill surveillance gaps that public health agencies are no longer tracking. What excites me most is what can come next with this new surveillance data," said Estiri. "Once we can distinguish different clinical and organ-specific manifestations of long COVID, we gain the ability to launch new trials and test targeted treatments for the right patients."

Virus Conspiracy Theories In The USA

I can't believe how Americans can still be this ignorant.

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Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks prompt raft of conspiracy theories in divided US; Ever-growing influence of social media and AI means such ideas spreading at faster rates than before, experts say

Written by Edward Helmore at UK Guardian, Mon 25 May 2026 08.00 EDT

Hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks carry with them familiar attendants in the US: extreme conspiracy theories about a planned pandemic, or “plandemic”, designed to upend midterm elections or push new vaccines or any one of a myriad of wild ideas.

Ebola, which the World Health Organization warned on Friday is spreading rapidly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, poses a “very high” risk at the national level. In the upside-down world of conspiracy theories it could be a bioweapon, a financial plot, or a scheme to extract national resources.

The hantavirus outbreak, which began on a cruise ship in the South Atlantic, killing three passengers and causing at least 11 to test positive, carries its own set of baggage in the form of conspiracy theories: passengers were crisis actors, or it was caused by Covid vaccines and Bill Gates, or perhaps it was an Israeli false flag operation and can be cured by the antiviral horse de-wormer ivermectin.

This is not new, though undoubtedly the ever-growing influence of social media and now AI slop, means that such ideas spread further and faster than ever before.

“This is very normal, and we should not be shocked that people are conspiracy theorizing,” said Dr Joseph Uscinski, an associate professor of political science at the University of Miami and author of a new book on the consequences of the Black Death that killed more than one third of Europeans in the 14th century.

“If people are paying attention to something, so are people who are conspiracy-minded, and they are going to interpret disease through that lens,” he adds. “Of course, there is going to be a conspiracy behind it and they’re going to blame people they already dislike.”

Uscinski points out that theories around the hantavirus and Ebola are not much different from during Covid, Aids or other virus outbreaks. During the previous Ebola outbreak in 2014, online posts – some picked up by Infowars’ Alex Jones – held that Ebola victims were returning as zombies. But that was during the fourth season of The Walking Dead.

“Whatever the disease, people are going to say there’s a conspiracy behind it, or that it’s not real and the vaccine is scam. It’s the same stuff done over and over,” Uscinski adds.

Currently, such theories are especially strong on the right in the US.

On Jones’s network, one host, Harrison Smith, proposed: “If I was the bad guy, you know what I would do? I’d really release the hantavirus. I would really have an actually super deadly virus spreading from person to person, and then I would release a real vaccine.”

WHO’s chief scientist, Sylvie Briand, said on Friday that obeldesivir, an experimental Covid antiviral treatment developed by Gilead, could be used among Ebola contacts to prevent them ⁠from ​developing the disease.

The rightwing site Gateway Pundit, which included a “Contagion Emergency Kit”, suggested that hantavirus was “another plandemic” and a “transparent effort to terrorize Americans and swing the midterms against President Trump”.

Mikki Willis, who made the film Plandemic, about the conspiracy theory that the Covid pandemic was planned, said that “they are … gonna try this again” with hantavirus. According to Media Matters, a website which monitors the right wing in the US, numerous podcasters and social media figures have linked the twin viral outbreaks as a way of potentially disrupting the coming US midterm elections.

But claims that conspiracy theories are always rightwing are not entirely accurate. “When people conspiracy theorize they are almost always accusing a center of power, whether that’s pharmaceutical companies or the government,” Uscinski says.

Anti-fluoridation, a movement that opposes the addition of fluoride to public water supplies, exists in Portland, Oregon, and it does in Florida, but for different reasons: one group mainly thinks it’s a capitalist corporate plot; the other is anti-communist.

Same with vapor-trail conspiracies that started during the anti-Vietnam war protests. The Make America healthy again movement has also blended its political coloring from left and right.

“They can be political but not necessarily partisan – but they are always held by people who don’t trust the establishment,” Uscinski says. “Wherever you find conspiracy-minded people you’ll find conspiracies. The defining characteristic is not if they’re left or right, but that they’re raging conspiracy theorists.”

But, ironically for anti-government conspiracists, it is attacks on state power that are actually harming the response to the viruses.

US engagement in curbing the current Ebola outbreak is hampered by massive cuts to global public health efforts, including the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and research cuts at US health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last week, US secretary of state Marco Rubio and WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus clashed on US international engagement after Rubio said the agency was a “little late” in identifying the Ebola outbreak in DRC.

Thomas Asbridge, a Middle Ages historian and author of The Black Death, argues that the response to hantavirus, Ebola, Covid and the 14th century plague share common characteristics.

Asbridge points out the Black Death came during financial and climate crises – the collapse of the Florentine gold-backed economy and the onset of the Little Ice Age.

“That is a quite similar context to what we have been experiencing in the early part of the 21st century,” he says, pointing to the economic financial crisis of 2008 and human contact with animals carrying zoonotic pathogens that jump across species.

So too does confusion over precisely how to respond – something not helped by hostility to the government or confusion over officials’ sometimes mixed messaging. In response to identification of the Andes strain of hantavirus onboard MV Hondius, officials initially offered contradictory information about whether it was spread by rodent dropping or could by close human-to-human contact. During Covid, people were first advised to wash food, and there were questions over whether it was airborne, the distance it could travel and how long you could be in a space with someone.

And amid the natural confusion of dealing with a virus, conspiracy theorists only add to the problem – which remains a very real one.

“We might be much slower to accept and respond appropriately to what’s required,” Asbridge says. “We’re absolutely right to be alarmed and cautious about Ebola and hantavirus. Hopefully we will be lucky this century.”

On The Destruction of Beautiful Statues and Monuments

I was so glad to see this column, because I thought I had been one of the only people who were outraged by the deliberate destruction of these monuments and their beautiful artwork after the George Floyd riots, and the outpouring of political correctness that followed.  I always loved the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue, Richmond;  as well as the Monument of Reconciliation at Arlington, and I could never understand what vandalizing and destroying them could possibly accomplish other than giving in to completely uncivilized behavior. 

(Speaking of the Robert E. Lee statue, I remember reading that Washington & Lee University even tried to cancel a grave marker -- for Lee's famous horse, Traveller!)

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A Memorial to the Erased Statues and Monuments. 

A compilation of all the statues and monuments that communist red guards destroyed or removed during the woke revolution

Yuri Bezmenov, May 24, 2026

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Mao’s Red Guards destroyed countless cultural artifacts. They were indoctrinated to annihilate anything that represented the “Four Olds”: Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits. Museums and private homes were ransacked. Streets were renamed and agitprop honoring Mao’s Little Red Book replaced art. Millions of “class traitors” lost their lives and livelihoods in public humiliation struggle sessions.

Nothing was too sacred for the Red Guards. They desecrated religious symbols and the dead. The corpse of the 76th-generation Duke Yansheng was dug up and hung naked from a tree. They dragged the remains of a Ming Dynasty Emperor and Empress outside their tomb, where they were posthumously denounced and immolated. Countless other treasures were burned like cheap firewood.

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For Memorial Day, I have compiled a list of all the statues and monuments destroyed or removed during the American Woke Cultural Revolution. Trump was mocked for saying that after the Confederates, they’d come for the founding fathers. Once again, he was proven right. The destruction of cultural heritage is a brutal shiv of demoralization and subversion. I have provided details on who ordered the removals and where the statues were relocated to.

Please add anything I missed in the comments. If we don’t remember, then the memory hole will be normalized and everything that millions fought and died for will be forgotten. Orwell tried to warn us.

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Monument of Reconciliation - Arlington National Cemetery

Removed under orders from the Biden regime’s Congressional Naming Commission. Relocated to New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley. What was a regime trying to tell us when they tore down a monument towards reconciliation?

One hero tried to stop it:

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Thomas Jefferson - City Hall, NYC

Removed by unanimous vote of NYC’s Public Design Commission, which was appointed by NYC City Council. Relocated to the New York Historical Society.

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Theodore Roosevelt - Museum of Natural History, NYC

Removed by unanimous vote of the NYCPublic Design Commission following vandalism during George Floyd Riots. Theodore Roosevelt IV and Mayor Bill de Blasio supported the decision. Relocated to the Theodore Roosevelt Museum in Medora, North Dakota.

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Emancipation Memorial featuring Abraham Lincoln - Boston, Maskachussetts

Removed by unanimous vote from the Boston Art Commission.
Currently placed in storage. Future plans for the monument have not been determined, but the city announced it hopes the work will be better moved to a "publicly accessible location where its history and context can be better explained.” New works will be installed at the former location featuring “a series of virtual panel discussions and short-term art installations examining and reimagining our cultural symbols, public art, and histories.”

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William Penn Statue at Welcome Park - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Removed by National Park Service under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. The park is on the site of Penn’s original home in Philadelphia. It will be "rehabilitated" to include an "expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia.” NPS claims that at some later date, which is not currently funded, there will be a new exhibit that mentions Penn and his work founding what became the state named for him.

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Kit Carson - Denver, Colorado

During Summer 2020, Denver Parks and Recreation removed the statue “proactively” for safety and as a precautionary measure to keep it from being torn down similar to a Columbus statue. Relocation unknown.

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Christopher Columbus - Sacramento, California and Boston, Massachussetts

California’s state legislature voted to remove a statue of Columbus and Queen Isabella from the Capitol Rotunda. It was there since 1883. Boston criminals vandalized and beheaded Columbus.

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Robert E. Lee Statue - Charlottesville, Virginia

Removed by Charlottesville City Council vote. Sparked major protest that left three dead along with the “both sides” hoax that was the centerpiece of to Biden’s campaign. Melted down in a humiliation ceremony.

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Benjamin Carson High School of Science and Medicine

Removed by unanimous vote by the Detroit School Board. Living black men are receiving the same treatment as dead white men for wrongthink. Carson is an inspiration to all children. He went from poverty to Yale, medical school, and Johns Hopkins, performing first known separation of conjoined twins joined at the back of the head. The Democrats who destroyed Detroit justified removing his name from the school because it was “synonymous with having Trump’s name on our school in blackface”.

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Minnesota State Flag

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Utah State Flag

During the 2023 General Session, Utah legislators narrowly passed Senate Bill 31 (SB31)—changing the Utah State Flag. They did not allow Utah citizens to vote. Volunteers have filed an official statewide initiative to put this state flag issue to a vote on the Nov. 2024 ballot in the general election. The goal: Vote to restore the Utah state flag as the one state flag (repealing SB31, including the new flag). In order to get this on the ballot, they need to gather at least 134,298 signatures from registered Utah voters.

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How many more artifacts will the left destroy if they ever take power again? Ugliness will continue until we invest in beauty. Save our children and grandchildren from slop.