Bush Meats Involvement with the Ebola Outbreak
My topic starts out with the recent outbreak of Ebola in Western Africa, which involves the spread of this disease from Guinea to Sierra Leone to Liberia. The spread of this virus disease can be shown as a set of countries with Ebola, which starts out with Guinea and then it keeps on increasing with size by adding more and more countries (Sierra Leone and Liberia).
To give a little background on bush meat, this meat is just the meat of animals like monkeys and fruit-bats. The consumption of bush meat is thought of by scientists to be a cause of this Ebola outbreak. Many people of this area don’t believe that the bush meat is the cause of this outbreak causing many to put themselves in danger by eating the meat.
This topic relates to the our concept of networks on how the two networks of bush meat animals for food and Ebola infected animals intersect. If an edge from a node in each network is established than many more edges might be established. More edges mean that these animals have infected the food supply of these individuals, which would then pass this virus onto the people who eat this meat. The connection of these networks might not have that much significance if it wasn’t for the people of those countries. The people of Western Africa know the facts that eating this meat has great risks but they just think of this as just a rumor.
Another way that this topic relates to our Networks class is how this topic relates to our idea of payoff. The bush meat eating people have a couple of situations and payoffs they can have. One can be to eat the bush meat and never get Ebola, eat the bush meat and get Ebola, and to never eat the bush meat have a lower chance of contracting Ebola. Most of the people eat the bush meat so most of them are only concerned with the first two situations. The worst payoff of this situation is an early death. The worst payoff of not eating the bush meat is a very high percentage of not having an early death. With these payoffs and with what we’ve learned in class, we would say that the bush meat eaters should stop eating bush meat.
Article: http://www.bellanaija.com/2014/09/02/watch-the-vice-documentary-on-bush-meat-and-the-ebola-outbreak-in-liberia-fg-in-nigeria-bans-bushmeat-imports/
Monkey Meat and the Ebola Outbreak in Liberia