‪#‎Ebolaconspiracy 2

This post was elicited by one of my earlier posts on the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa. One commentator brushed the earlier exposition off as shallow thinking thus I have decided to succinctly present the facts as they are.
FACTS
The Ebola Virus Disease (or EVD), as the name suggests, is caused by a virus - Fact!
No virus known to man has a cure, not even the virus that causes the common cold – Fact!
Preventive inoculation against viruses currently consist of Vaccines, antigenic substances usually prepared from an innocuous form of the disease agent (or a synthetic substitute) as killed or weakened bacteria or viruses, to stimulate antibody production and provide immunity against the virus – Fact!
Multinational vaccine companies (not Governments!), historically have conducted much of the innovation, research, and development in the field of vaccine production, an expensive and relatively time consuming process. - Fact!
There are two broad types of vaccine costs: manufacturing costs; and research and development costs. Often, the focus is on the cost of production, with an assumption that the cost of the vaccine should be close to the cost of production. However, this ignores the research and development costs. – Fact!
This is where governments come in for research costs are often subsidized by governments and other organizations who stand to benefit from the development of the vaccine. This is done through subsidies, rebates, and tax exemptions. – Fact!
The Ebola virus, since its discovery in 1976, had prior to now never had an outbreak in Nigeria. There are several pandemics that breakout across the globe / Africa and if they are not indigenous to a particular country it would be extremely cost prohibitive to invest in a vaccine for all of them. – Fact!
To give you an idea of the cost, the global vaccine market is expected to increase by more than 100%, from US$24 Billion in 2009 to US$56 Billion in 2016 (Nigeria's entire annual budget is US$27.6 Billion / N4.69 Trillion). – Fact!
Also vaccine manufacturing has significant economies of scale, meaning that producing a bigger volume reduces the price per dose. For example, even if a manufacturing plant is producing at only 20% of its capacity, it still has to pay the operating costs of the plant and those costs are divided over fewer doses, therefore driving up the cost per dose. This is without building in the research and development cost. – Fact!
The implication of this is that research for an Ebola virus would have found it extremely difficult to attract the requisite investment. Since its emergence in 1976, there have been 2,586 cases of Ebola virus disease in humans and 1,717 deaths. While that's a fatality rate of 66.4 per cent, or roughly two out of every three patients, influenza kills approximately 500,000 people every year. In 38 years, Ebola has killed fewer than 2,000 people. The flu? Nineteen million. In contrast over one million people die from malaria each year, with an estimated 300-600 million people suffering from malaria each year. In better perspective, Boko Haram are said to have killed 13,000 people since 2009, barely 5 years ago. – Fact!
The cost of developing a vaccine for the Ebola Virus, prior to this current outbreak, was a terrible investment case (unless as an extremely effective Biological Weapon of Mass Destruction or a vaccine to counter one), unless it became a global or regional crisis, which it since has, in this case an African crisis with the potential to ravage the entire West Africa, home to 350 million people, plus a resurgence in the DRC Congo, Uganda and Sudan with a combined population of approximately 150 million (500 million people in all). – Fact!
Ka Chineke Mezie Okwu!





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