The Ebola virus will likely go down in history as one of the greatest scourges of the 20 tens.

The epidemic that ravaged West Africa between 2013 and 2016 was the worst incidents of an Ebola pandemic in history so far.

But the danger of Ebola is both not over in the world and also a little overhyped.

The virus that causes the disease was only discovered in 1976 during two simultaneous outbreaks in what is now south Sudan and what was then Zaire.

It's believed that fruit bats are the primary carrier of the disease in nature, and it was through direct contact with them that the disease first spread to humans.

Once infected, signs and symptoms will usually begin within a few days.

That can seem like the symptoms of malaria.

Ah, high fever, sore throat and headaches, usually followed by vomiting, diarrhea and a rash.

In many cases, but not all internal and external bleeding then occurs within 5 to 7 days of the symptoms.

First appearing, blood begins to pour out of every opening in the body, which may lead to coughing or vomiting Blood internal bleeding can cause reddish purple spots to appear on the skin while bleeding into the whites of the eyes may also occur.

This causes you to suffer from severe dehydration.

Oxygen lost two important organs, since you don't have enough blood to carry it and severely low blood pressure.

Depending on the strain, 25% to 90% of people infected with the Ebola virus will die within 6 to 16 days, with an average of around 50% meaning that most likely if you get infected.

Your odds air like flipping a coin to see whether you live or die.

While all of that sounds absolutely horrific, and it is the reason why Ebola isn't quite white, apocalyptic end of the world scale bad, like a lot of the media suggested back in 2014 is because Ebola just isn't really very good at spreading between people.

The only proven ways to become infected are by being in direct physical contact with an already infected person or animals, body fluids like blood, sweat or saliva, or by being in contact with an object that has recently had infected fluids, touching it like needles, close or door knobs.

There are also two other ways of an unknown likelihood that Ebola can spread.

Since the virus can remain inside of a man's semen over a year after recovery, it could be spread sexually, and the virus has also been observed to be able to spread through the air between pigs and people, although it has never been observed to spread through the air from person to person.

So as long as you're not touching an infected person or animals body fluids, you're most likely going to be fine.

The most common places that Ebola spreads between people is inside of families, hospitals or at funerals morning.

The infected dead.

The Ebola virus was first detected in sub Saharan Africa in 1976 and Africa remains by far the continent that is the most severely affected by it.

Outbreaks across the region took place sporadically in the decades since, but the epidemic in West Africa between 2013 and 2016 was the worst beginning in Guinea.

The epidemic rapidly spread to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, with minor outbreaks in a few other countries as of May 2016, the World Health Organization reported a total of 28,616 people were infected in the pandemic, with 11,310 fatalities were roughly 40% for the 17,000 or so survivors of the disease.

Though the suffering has never ended, post Ebola syndrome is often severe enough to require serious medical attention, like muscle pain and hearing or vision problems.

And the suffering for the countries affected in general is certainly far from being over as well.

The economies of almost every country in West Africa took a hit because of a decrease in trade, border closures, flight cancelations and a huge drop in both foreign investment and tourism.

One of the most significant indicators of this is by looking at the GDP growth rate of Liberia from 2005 up until the pandemic began, which saw high double digit growth for several years and then a sudden drop to 0.7% in 2014, no growth in 2015 and negative growth in 2016.

It's been widely speculated that the economic consequences for the region will claim Mawr lives than the actual disease itself cost.

And while the W H O declared an end to the emergency in 2016, the second worst outbreak of Ebola in history is still ongoing and largely unheard of in the Far eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Life here was already harsh.

Before Ebola, the area has been subject to an ongoing military conflict known as the Kiva conflict, with over 70 different armed groups.

Actively operating attacks on civilians have been common.

There are thousands of refugees and over a million uprooted people, since the area is so nearby to both Uganda and Rwanda.

It means that cross border travel for trade is also common and now than an Ebola outbreak has started here.

Just a few months ago, it could create the perfect storm for a potential disaster.

I traveled to nearby Rwanda last month to get a glimpse of this situation in a glimpse of possible solutions.

So far, 319 people have been confirmed to have come down with Ebola in the area, which includes 49 healthcare workers.

The biggest problems with containing the outbreak here is the active and ongoing military conflict, because health care workers going in to help essentially have to risk their lives twice.

The W H O recommends that they have armed guards to protect against the conflict, and then they risk contracting Ebola itself when helping innocents people.

Understandably, this has caused a shortage of health care workers in a country in a region that already had a low supply of them to begin with.

While I was in nearby Rwanda, I spoke with a company called Zip Line that is pioneering the use of drones to deliver crucial medical supplies.

While Ebola hasn't crossed over yet from the DRC into Rwanda, ziplines rapid services could help to halt the diseases advance if it ever happens.

The drones, The Zip line flies currently on Lee Flyover Rwanda and currently on Lee, deliver blood to people that need it.

And like I mentioned previously in this video, most of the people who die from Ebola die because of low blood pressure or fluid loss.

Since most infected people who die die within 6 to 16 days of their first symptoms, a matter of days could make the difference between life and death, and the geography of the area doesn't help its mountainous hilly and the roads are mostly dirt to say nothing of the conflict destroying certain parts of the roads in the DRC.

Transporting critical in time sensitive supplies is hard by ground but relatively easy by air.

Ziplines drones can carry blood to infected patients upto 80 kilometers away in under an hour from their base inside of Rwanda, and they're working on carrying vaccines to one of the most exciting developments in the fight against Ebola has been the RV SV's Ebola vaccine, which is still in the experimental phase and has not been fully approved.

But it appears to be at least somewhat effective.

It's already been used on the ground in the DRC, and over 300,000 emergency doses have been created in a stockpile just in case against more out of hand.

Zip Line is going to begin using their drones to deliver vaccines like this to hospitals and clinics in February.

But it's ultimately the health care workers on the ground that will be administering these vax scenes and performing blood transfusions.

The drones in the air could support their efforts logistically and hopefully save more lives in the process.

If you like to learn more about how Ebola specifically targets your body cells, what your body and cells actually do or are, or any number of other scientific or mathematical principles.

The best way to learn and understand is by applying them yourself.

And that's exactly what brilliant dot org's allows you to dio.

If watching my weekly videos isn't enough for you, and you want to learn something new every day, Brilliant offers daily problems now that provide a quick view into math, logic, science, engineering or computer science.

You can learn to track time like the ancients did.

Learn how to use a solar sail to travel in space without any fuel or loads of other things.

Each problem provides you with the context and the framework that you need to tackle it so that you can learn the concepts by applying them.

And if you like the problem, there is more like it in the quiz on the left, so you can explore the concept and even greater detail.

And if you ever get confused and need more guidance, you can join in on the community discussion.

Each thought provoking challenge will lead you from curiosity to mastery one day at a time.

So if you're curious about learning mawr and you want to support real life, Laura, at the same time go over to brilliant dot org's slash real life floor and sign up for free.

And then the 1st 200 people that use the link in the description will get 20% off of their annual subscription to view all of the daily problems that air in the archive.

And if you want to check out Maura about Rwanda, Zip Line and the amazing work that they're doing, go and check out my friends, Wendover Productions and Riel Engineering, who each made their own videos about the subject as well.

And as always, thank you for watching.