Ebola "Turning Point" and Perspective
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Last Week the Huffington Post reported Ebola.com Sells For More Than $200,000 -- Including 19,000 Shares Of Cannabis Sativa Stock.
Two Las Vegas entrepreneurs attempting to sell the rights to Ebola.com succeeded in selling to the highest bidder -- literally.Add it up and they received $214,091. That's quite a profit, but the sellers made even more on LasVegasRealEstate.com and PayDayLoans.Com.
Chris Hood and Jon Schultz paid $13,500 for the rights to Ebola.com back in 2008 and have just sold it to a company called Weed Growth Fund.
The terms of sale call for Hood and Schultz to get $50,000 in cash and 19,192 shares of Cannabis Sativa, Inc., a company run by former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson that hopes to market legal cannabis products throughout the world.
The stock is currently trading under the CBDS ticker symbol at $8.55 share, which means the value of the shares sold to Hood and Schultz is $164,091.
There is certainly a lot of attention on the disease. But what are the real risks?
The following chart of number of ebola cases and the country of origin from The Guardian will add a much needed perspective.
Ebola Cases
Turning Point
Admittedly the disease is very scary. About 70% of the people who contract the disease die from it. But according to Dr Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome Trust and as reported by The Guardian in Ebola ‘May Have Reached Turning Point’
The Ebola epidemic in west Africa may have reached a turning point, according to the director of the Wellcome Trust, which is funding an unprecedented series of fast-tracked trials of vaccines and drugs against the disease.Balanced Risk Assessment
Writing in the Guardian, Dr Jeremy Farrar says that although there are several bleak months ahead, “it is finally becoming possible to see some light. In the past 10 days, the international community has belatedly begun to take the actions necessary to start turning Ebola’s tide.
“The progress made is preliminary and uncertain; even if ultimately successful it will not reduce mortality or stop transmission for some time. We are not close to seeing the beginning of the end of the epidemic but [several] developments offer hope that we may have reached the end of the beginning.”
Farrar’s comments come as the World Health Organisation confirmed that the number of Ebola cases in Liberia has started to decline, with fewer burials and some empty hospital beds. But the WHO warned against any assumption that the outbreak there was ending.
“I’m terrified that the information will be misinterpreted,” said Dr Bruce Aylward, assistant director-general in charge of the Ebola operational response. “This is like saying your pet tiger is under control. This is a very, very dangerous disease. Any transmission change could result in many, many more deaths.”
“The danger is that instead of a trend that takes us down to zero, we end up with an oscillating pattern,” he said. Getting to zero will involve grindingly hard work, identifying every Ebola case and tracing all the contacts. Without that effort, Ebola will remain at a lower but still dangerous level.
Dr Jeremy Farrar does a good job of expressing cautious optimism, yet mentioning the risks without the customary fearmongering and hype we have seen in other articles.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
