For the purposes of this list, “crisis” shall refer to negative circumstances that could alter a nation’s economy. Most of the time, such a description would be fit by large-scale disasters like wars, epidemics, and famine. Sometimes, however, portents of doom might barely seem newsworthy.

Seemingly innocuous things like a low birth rate, a shortage of vultures, or just having too many cattle around are, for some countries, more dire than they appear. While the following situations seem unspectacular, they could lead to worse disasters.

10 South Korea’s Birth Crisis

South Korea’s birth crisis is so bad that the government is paying couples to have children. The nation’s fertility rate hit a record low in 2018. At the current rate, the population is expected to grow in the negative in just ten years. This means there will be more deaths than births. If the trend is allowed to continue, it is estimated that there will be nobody left in the country by 2750.

In just 13 years, the South Korean government has spent over $121 billion to encourage parents to have more children. These days, most parents are eligible to receive up to $270 a month from the government.

Starting in late 2019, parents with children below the age of eight will be allowed to work one hour less per day. The government is also building more kindergartens and day cares. Fathers will also given be a paid paternity leave of ten days—seven days more than the currently approved three days.^[1]

9 India’s Stray Cow Crisis

The Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is currently experiencing a severe stray cow crisis. Cows are not eaten in India because they are considered sacred creatures. Some people do eat cows, but the state government and cow protection groups have been clamping down on them.

This has left farmers with fewer incentives to keep male calves and cows that no longer produce milk. Most farmers abandon these unproductive cattle on the streets because having them around costs money. In 2012, there were 1,009,436 stray cattle in the state of Uttar Pradesh. This year’s Live Stock Census is expected to show a much higher number.

The stray cattle have become a nuisance because they raid farmlands and eat crops. Some cows end up in cow shelters, which have quickly become overcrowded and underfunded. These days, farmers and community members lock the stray cattle in government buildings like schools and hospitals.^[2]

8 Venezuela’s Passport Crisis

Venezuela has been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the past few years. The oil-rich Latin American nation has suffered serious hyperinflation that has almost brought its economy to a standstill. And with two people claiming to be president, its many problems won’t be ending anytime soon.

Over 2.3 million people have fled Venezuela for neighboring Latin American nations since 2014. However, many more are still stuck because they do not have passports. The passport crisis is so bad that fellow Latin American nations are allowing Venezuelans in with expired passports. But Venezuelans without passports remain stuck in the nation.

Getting a passport or any government-issued document was an uphill task before the crisis. Now it’s worse. Workers at the passport office are known to deliberately delay passports unless passport-seekers pay bribes of $1,000 to $5,000. Today’s passport-seekers don’t have that kind of money. And the government itself isn’t too keen on allowing its citizens to leave.^[3]

7 Venezuela’s Health Care Crisis

Venezuela is also experiencing a severe health care crisis. At least 22,000 doctors have fled the country since the crisis began, causing a nationwide shortage of doctors. Several hospitals have either closed or operate irregularly. Those that remain open do not have enough supplies.

These days, patients are required to bring their own drugs, syringes, gloves, and even soap. This has seen Venezuelan hospitals go from places where people are cured to places where they get killed. It is normal for patients to contract deadly diseases while admitted for other ailments.

This is worsened by a shortage of drugs, which, coupled with severely malnourished patients, is the perfect recipe for disaster. Hospitals have also seen an increase in burn victims. Most are toddlers who got burned when they strayed into wood fires and kerosene lamps that have taken the place of heaters and light bulbs.^[4]

6 China’s Food Crisis

China has been experiencing a food crisis for a few years now, and the trade war with the US made it worse. Last year, the Chinese government introduced several tariffs to much-needed food imports like soybeans, sorghum, and corn in response to Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods.

Interestingly, the Chinese government-owned Sinograin, which keeps a stockpile of grain for the government, had to pay the tariffs. President Xi Jinping later toured areas of Northeast China, where most of China’s farms are based, and said that China should become more self-sufficient in food production.

Food production has always been a problem for China. China’s arable farmland amounts to less than a tenth of the world’s farmland, even though it has one fifth of the world’s population. On top of that, lots of its farmland is either occupied by industries or contaminated with heavy metals released by those industries.^[5]

The food crisis began decades ago, when an improved standard of living caused Chinese citizens to shift from carbohydrate- to protein-rich diets, and there isn’t enough farmland to grow vegetables and rear livestock. For now, China has been able to manage by importing food and leasing or buying farmland in Africa, Australia, and the Americas.

However, the trade war with the US has shown that importation could be unreliable. Besides, most countries harboring Chinese farms are expecting a population boom in a few decades and will be needing the farmland to feed their own citizens.

5 The US Recyclable Plastic Crisis

Bad news for environmental activists: the US government cannot recycle most of its recyclable plastics. A few years ago, a huge chunk of recyclable items used in the US ended up in China. This changed in January 2018, when China banned recyclable plastics from the US.

The US turned to Canada, Turkey, Malaysia, and Thailand to recycle its plastics. In the first half of 2017, the US exported 4,000 tons of recyclable plastics to Thailand. Within six months of China’s ban, the US had exported 91,505 tons of plastic to Thailand. That’s a 1,985-percent increase.

But these countries do not want US plastics. Malaysia introduced a tax and limited the types of plastics that are acceptable. Thailand has promised to ban US plastics within two years. In response, several US states have either abandoned recycling some types of plastics or dumped recycling altogether.^[6]

4 China’s Birth Crisis

A few decades ago, China introduced a one-child policy to control its booming population. The policy was strictly enforced, with the government even conducting forced abortions and sterilization on people who flouted the policy.

In 2015, the government replaced the one-child policy with the two-child policy when it realized that the nation was experiencing a decline in population growth, just like South Korea. But it seems like most Chinese couples prefer having just one child or none at all.

The Chinese government wants parents to have more than one kid so badly that it is encouraging couples to have more children “for the country.” A government-run newspaper also informed couples that, “Having children is a family matter but also a national matter.”

The government is considering paying couples to have a second child. It is also considering tax breaks or even dumping its two-child policy to allow couples have as many children as they want.^[7]

3 India’s Vulture Crisis

India had lots of vultures in the past. Its vulture population was so high that nobody bothered to count, though an estimate put it at 40 million in the early 1990s. This changed between 1992 and 2007, during which the vulture population fell by 97 to 99.9 percent. India has only around 20,000 vultures today.

Interestingly, nobody noticed the decline in vulture population until researchers and villagers suddenly noticed that they were not seeing enough vultures. Some villagers even thought the US had stolen their vultures.

Remember we mentioned that Indians generally don’t eat cattle? This is where the vultures come in. Indian farmers fed their dead cattle to vultures. Unfortunately, diclofenac, a popular painkiller used for cattle, is lethal to vultures. It causes renal failure and death in vultures that eat the carcasses of dead cattle.

Now, there aren’t enough vultures to eat the carcasses, leaving lots of dead and decomposing cattle scattered across India. This has left the country on the brink of a disease epidemic. Rats and dogs have replaced the vultures, but they are not as effective. Besides, dogs could pass bacteria in the carcasses to humans.

India has banned diclofenac and introduced breeding programs to repopulate the wild with vultures. However, it will take time before it gets the intended results. The government could also suffer a setback because some cattle owners still use diclofenac illegally.^[8]

2 South Korea’s Suicide Crisis

South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. 13,500 South Koreans committed suicide in 2015. That’s an average of 37 in a day. Most who choose to end their own lives are senior citizens, who often live in poverty and do not want to become a burden to their living relatives. Many aged South Koreans are so poor that they depend on free meals to survive.

In response to high suicide rates, the government has criminalized suicide pacts—agreements between two or more people who promise to engage in joint suicide.^[9] In 2011, the government also reduced suicide rates by 15 percent when it banned paraquat, a pesticide often used to commit suicide.

1 Germany’s Renewable Energy Crisis

Germany is the model nation for renewable energy. On one Sunday in 2017, it generated so much power from its renewable sources that the government paid users to use the excess power. This is referred to as “negative prices” and has also happened in Belgium, Britain, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

In such instances, the government pays citizens and factories to switch on equipment and machines they are not using. Imagine the US government paying you to switch on your washing machine for no reason. To be clear, the government does not give consumers money. Rather, the energy companies subtract it from their electricity bills.

Negative prices happen because green energy is unpredictable and uncontrollable. Coal and nuclear plant output can be increased or decreased to meet demands. Solar panels and wind turbines cannot. They generate electricity depending on the weather conditions.

Green energy companies keep themselves abreast of the weather with forecasts. But for anybody who has ended up in the rain when the weatherman said it would be sunny, we know weather forecasts are not always reliable.

The attempt to shift to green energy has created a crisis Germans call “energy poverty.” Energy poverty happens when people find it difficult to pay for electricity, or they spend so much on electricity that they do not have enough money to survive. This happens because Germans pay an average annual tax of $171 and high electricity prices to keep the green energy companies in business.

Besides plunging many into energy poverty, the unreliable green energy is counterproductive for Germany. While the government pays citizens to waste excess electricity, it always leaves it coal and nuclear plants working in case the green sources do not produce enough electricity. This has increased Germany’s carbon emissions and even caused the government to build more coal plants.^[10]

Panic over Ebola has reached absurd heights, with people paying far more attention to worst-case scenarios than to likely outcomes. However, mainstream media alarmism looks almost reasonable next to some of the more absurd conspiracy theories currently circulating about the disease.

10America Manufactured Ebola

Delaware State University professor Cyril Broderick published a letter in Liberia’s Daily Observer in September accusing the US government of manufacturing the Ebola virus. Broderick alleges that Ebola is a genetically modified organism that America weaponized and tested in Africa under the guise of distributing vaccines. He further names Canada, the UK, and France as being in cahoots with America, with the WHO and the UN somehow involved as well.

For sources, Broderick primarily quotes Leonard Horowitz, an opponent of vaccination who thinks American scientists also invented AIDS. Broderick further quotes some speculative conspiracy theorist article and the book The Hot Zone—a legitimate work of nonfiction that does not actually support his claims.

Delaware State did not fire or discipline Broderick for his wild, reckless claims. The University instead said that the professor has the right to say whatever he wants in his free time. But they made sure to clarify that they do not endorse his letter, and he has no expertise in the subject.

9The Ebola Virus Doesn’t Exist

A former nurse caused a violent uprising at a Sierra Leone hospital when a crowd heard her say that the Ebola virus doesn’t exist at all. The outbreak, she claimed, is really just an excuse for doctors to perform cannibalistic rituals at the hospital.

It didn’t take much to convince the crowd. Many in Sierra Leone and surrounding countries naturally distrust hospitals. Most patients and their families choose traditional healers over foreign doctors and nurses. One woman infected with Ebola was removed from a treatment center by her family and taken to a traditional healer. A search for the woman paid off, but on her way to the nearest hospital, she died in the ambulance.

Toward the end of July, the violence escalated as more people started believing the conspiracy. People threated to burn down clinics and treatment centers and remove the Ebola patients by force. At that point, Sierra Leone had the highest number of Ebola patients, and police officers had to stand guard at the main hospital in Kenema. They hurled tear gas into the crowd and accidentally shot a nine-year-old boy.

This incident also led health organization Samaritan’s Purse to stop their outreach to patients in the area. Their health workers had been attacked by community members after they tried to collect a patient.

8Saltwater Cures Ebola

False claims of cures have been making the rounds in parts of Nigeria. One of these cures is drinking saltwater—which, far from curing any disease, can dehydrate drinkers to the point of death. At least four people died of drinking saltwater in an attempt to protect themselves from Ebola. These people had been healthy and lived hundreds of miles from the nearest outbreak.

The World Health Organization issued a statement to warn people against treatments not given by doctors or nurses. They especially warn against believing anything about remedies that are posted on social media platforms. Patients should instead turn to health centers and doctors.

However, again, many in the affected region heartily distrust doctors and dismiss anything they say as lies. One man even told the Wall Street Journal that since he had never seen anyone die before his eyes of the disease, it must be only a rumor.

7God’s Wrath

In July, more than 100 Christian leaders met in Liberia’s capital of Monrovia to discuss how to respond to the Ebola threat. After a day’s discussion, the group unanimously declared that God was angry with Liberia and had sent Ebola as a plague to punish its people.

He was punishing them for corruption—for homosexuality, among other things. And the absolute best way for the country to respond would be three days of fasting and prayer. The government should join in the observation, said the group, shutting down for the period.

A Liberian Muslim cleric, Salafia Mosque chief imam Sheikh Salah Sheriff, echoed the sentiments. He blamed the outbreak on such sins as homosexuality, fornication, adultery, armed robbery, general wickedness, and disrespect of the authorities—all grave affronts to Allah. Asked, he conceded that followers should follow medical advice to avoid exposure, but to really defeat Ebola, Liberians had to “begin to fear God rather than the virus.”

6Witchcraft

One other rumor infecting parts of West Africa is that Ebola comes from witchcraft. The consequence of this is that people consider Ebola as a total and supernatural death sentence—even though treatment can help stop the spread and sometimes even save sufferers.

For example, when Doctors Without Borders took two sick sisters to an eastern Guinea hospital in July, both totally lost hope. Neither tried to fight the disease. They just lay still and waited for death. But Rose, the 12-year-old daughter of one of the sisters, apparently did not believe in witchcraft. She assured her mother and aunt that all three of them could survive, staying cheerful and ensuring that they all followed the doctors’ instructions. They all did recover, which makes them more fortunate than most.

The other consequence of irrational fear of Ebola is that sufferers become needlessly ostracized. Patients at the hospital, especially children, should ideally receive regular visits from their family. But family members are so scared of the disease that they often refuse to come in, despite doctors’ requests.

At the same time, the persistent belief in witchcraft is putting a serious dent in efforts to stop Ebola in its tracks. Some refuse to get medical help because they believe witches and sorcerers are cursing people and causing them to die. They simply refuse to believe that a virus is to blame for the deaths of patients.

5Doctors Are Purposely Infecting People With Ebola

In some villages, people don’t just think that doctors are useless in fighting the disease. They think that the doctors are actively spreading it, so they avoid or even fight doctors who try to help. This irrational fear may stem from incidents where patients went to the hospital for separate medical issues only to be infected by deadly diseases while there.

In extreme cases, villagers have threatened to kill any medical doctor or assistant who comes to treat patients. In the village of Kolo Bengou, Guinea, townsfolk blocked roads with logs to prevent Doctors Without Borders from entering. As a result, the disease spread further.

The persistent rumors that witch doctors can cure the sick also contributes to a lack of faith in real doctors, hampering effective treatment.

4It Started With An Evil Snake

One story tells of a woman with a bag at the border of Guinea and Sierra Leone. Someone opened the bag and saw a snake inside it, and as soon as they looked at it, the woman died. The person who’d opened the bag died next, and the snake slithered off in the nearest bush. And that was how Ebola entered Sierra Leone.

This odd tale is actually consistent with one part of the true story of Ebola. This outbreak is theorized to have started in Guinea before coming to Sierra Leone.

Those who believe in the Ebola snake say that those who show symptoms don’t have a disease at all. They’ve been cursed.

3Ebola Is Spread By White Demon Worshipers

The above image appeared on a Nigerian website in September. Along with it came a story that seems to combine the worst aspects of several dangerous Ebola rumors.

That anime-style nurse holding the skull is named “Ebola-Chan,” said the site. Cults in Europe and America worship her as a goddess. They perform blood sacrifices at altars to Ebola-Chan and eat the hearts of victims, and in return for their patronage, the goddess spreads Ebola throughout Africa. In league with the cult are doctors who manually infect victims with Ebola while pretending to treat it.

The posting did not come from a concerned Nigerian, despite what it claimed. It was from a user of the image board 4Chan, where Ebola-Chan is a meme. When a 4Chan user sees Ebola-Chan, they’re supposed to say “thank you, Ebola-Chan” and joke about the extermination of all Africans.

It’s uncertain if anyone in Nigeria was taken in by the website, but nearly all Internet hoaxes manage to fool someone.

2An Ebola Bomb

Dr. Peter Walsh, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, claims that terrorists could build bombs containing a powdered form of the Ebola virus. Such a bomb could kill huge numbers of people in a major British city, Walsh told a UK tabloid. This threat may seem particularly serious in the UK because there is otherwise little reason to expect that the disease will enter the country.

In reality, while bioterrorism is always a possibility, it’s unclear why any terrorist would choose to weaponize Ebola of all diseases. Unlike many diseases, Ebola is neither airborne nor waterborne. It is far less contagious than most other viruses.

1The Ebola Crisis Will Launch The New World Order

Perhaps the strangest conspiracy theory of them all claims that the New World Order elite created the Ebola virus as a means of depopulating the Earth. The number of people who must die to reach a “manageable population” is a staggering five billion.

According to this insane conspiracy, the New World Order elite have three primary ways of ensuring depopulation. These include famine from unsustainable development, war from artificial conflict, and manufactured diseases. The cure for the diseases will only be held by the elite.

The elite created the Ebola epidemic to depopulate Africa, with the rest of the world their next target. The news that Ebola has reached the US and killed a patient in Dallas only fueled the fire around this theory.

Estelle lives in Gauteng, South Africa. She usually loves conspiracies, but these ones are far too crazy.

Have you heard? The apocalypse is here. Across the US, Europe, and the UK, stories are emerging about a virus that’s the older, meaner brother of the Black Death and the Spanish flu. Ebola will kill you in the most horrific way imaginable and it’s about to go supernova on humanity.

Or is it? Turns out the Ebola threat to the West has been overstated to a ridiculous degree. It has been dangerous and destructive on the African continent, but it isn’t the worldwide Armageddon the media is making it sound like.

10It’s Almost Impossible To Catch

When Spanish flu hit in 1918, it infected over one-third of the world’s population. Thanks to a scarily efficient transmission rate, the virus swept through the human race like the infection in a zombie movie. Right now, the question on everyone’s lips is: Could Ebola do the same?

The answer: No. Not a chance.

Unlike Spanish flu, Ebola is very hard to catch. To contract the virus, fluids from an infected patient have to enter your body via a cut or one of your orifices. If you wanted to, you could literally douse your hands in infected blood and—provided you didn’t have a cut and you washed properly afterward—still not get Ebola.

But what about the common fluids, the sort we share on a daily basis like saliva and sweat? According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the live virus has never been isolated from sweat. As for saliva, it only becomes contaminated in the most severe stages of the disease, meaning you’d have to be French-kissing a terminally ill patient to stand a chance of catching it from saliva. Nor can bloodsucking insects like mosquitoes carry the virus from one human to another.

In fact, Ebola is so hard to catch that you could sit on a plane next to an infected person for an entire flight and still not contract the virus. When an infected man projectile-vomited in an airliner full of passengers in July, not a single other person became sick.

9The Transmission Rate Is Laughably Low

When studying an infectious disease, doctors consider a factor called the basic reproductive number (“R₀“). In its simplest terms, R₀ tells us how many other people an infected person will spread the virus to. HIV has a value of 4, which means that one HIV-positive person could be expected to infect four other people in a totally susceptible population. A super-virus like measles has a value of 18, making it stunningly contagious. Ebola on the other hand has a maximum value of 1.5 or 2. That means that even if we take no precautions at all to isolate or treat an infected person, that person shouldn’t infect more than two people.

Now, mathematically, even such a comparatively low rate can lead to widespread infection if left unchecked. But in the Western world, Ebola’s actual R₀ is less than its maximum one. Since the virus spreads via fluids, it does best in cultures with poor medical care and where burial rituals involve coming into very close contact with the body. In countries with decent medical infrastructure, it finds its work cut out for it. The only prerequisite to stopping its spread is isolation; you could stop Ebola entirely with nothing more hi-tech than a door.

By doing nothing more than following procedures that have been standard for decades for dealing with infectious illnesses, the US is all but guaranteed to beat Ebola.

8It Won’t Become Airborne

Of all fears surrounding Ebola, the most terrifying is that it might become airborne. Scientists may assure us that it won’t happen, but we know that viruses mutate. Surely, an airborne Ebola is at least a possibility, right?

Well, yes, in the same way that it’s technically possible for Carrot Top to become the 45th president. While Ebola theoretically could evolve to take to the air, it would have to go against everything we know about virus transmission to do so. According to the WHO, there is literally no evidence that in any way documents airborne Ebola (not even the 1989 Ebola mutation discovered in Reston, Virginia). No virus in history has changed its method of transmission so drastically. Even super-fast mutating viruses like HIV and flu have never switched delivery method, and Ebola is like a sleeping sloth compared to those two.

And what about the possibility of Ebola being spread by coughs and sneezes, flu-style? Again, it’s extremely unlikely. As Scientific American pointed out, Ebola doesn’t replicate in sufficiently large quantities in the lungs and throat to make infection via sneeze a possibility. The virus also doesn’t give its victims cold-like symptoms. Finally, respiratory pathogens spread across the entire world in weeks or even days. If Ebola had made the jump to respiratory pathogen by now, we’d already know.

7If It Does Mutate, It’ll Probably Become Milder

Although it seems counterintuitive, most viruses actually want you alive. The world’s most successful viruses aren’t those that kill you stone dead in 12 hours, but those like HSV-1. HSV-1 lingers dormant in your system, allowing it to infect up to 90 percent of the American over-60 population.

Compared to a Darwinian superbug like that, Ebola is laughably pathetic. It kills its hosts so fast that it barely has time to spread itself. The idea of it becoming more dangerous as time moves on flies in the face of everything we know about natural selection.

A far more likely outcome in the event of a successful mutation is the virus becoming milder. For Ebola, this would be an evolutionary win as it could then spread to more people. For us, it would mean the virus becoming significantly less deadly to encourage this spreading. Rather than being a harbinger of airborne destruction, an Ebola mutation would likely save lives.

6There’s No Infectious Incubation Period

One of the scariest things about viruses is their incubation period—the time between when you contract the bug and when symptoms appear. During this time, illnesses like the flu can still be infectious, so you can spread the virus without even knowing you have it. Luckily, this isn’t the case with Ebola.

According to the WHO, Ebola patients can’t spread the disease until they start showing symptoms. Even if you shared a needle and a cup of vomit with your best friend the day before they came down with Ebola, you still won’t get infected. This is incredibly useful in combatting the disease. Since most people tend to notice when a friend is suffering Ebola, we can usually trace all the movements of an infectious subject and quarantine everyone with whom they came into contact.

As an additional bonus, the virus also stops being infectious the moment symptoms clear up, so the chances of catching it from a survivor are effectively zero.

5The Number Of Cases So Far Is Tiny

Remember swine flu? In 2009, we were convinced that a flu outbreak was going to annihilate all life on Earth. We barely noticed as it first spread across the globe, yet the virus still managed to infect over 60 million people in the US alone. If the States could shrug off nearly one-fifth of its population coming down with the last media panic, how many people must Ebola have already infected to cause such a storm this time?

Try around 8,000 worldwide. While that’s clearly 8,000 too many and horrible for all concerned, it does show how phenomenally slow and limited Ebola’s spread is. Only a single infection has been reported in each of Spain and Senegal, with no deaths. Even in the States, where Ebola has already claimed a life, the total number of infected people (at time of writing) stands at three.

For comparison, on average, the bubonic plague infects seven Americans annually. Yet, as of 2014, we’re still to experience a repeat of the Black Death pandemic that devastated Europe.

4We’ve Survived It Before

In 2008, Michelle Barnes stepped off a plane from Uganda, unaware that she had a passenger with her. Hiding in her body was the deadly Marburg virus, a close cousin of Ebola with a near-identical mortality rate and symptoms. Over the next few days, the symptoms began to emerge, during which time Barnes came into contact with around 260 people in her Colorado town. Of all those exposed to a symptomatic Barnes, care to guess how many came down with Marburg?

None. Barnes survived and did not infect a single other person. In fact, she wasn’t even aware that she had the virus until several months after her ordeal.

In the Netherlands, another woman who had been to the same part of Uganda as Barnes also came down with Marburg. Once again, no one else became infected, despite authorities identifying 64 people thought to be at high risk.

These weren’t just flukes. In literally every single case of Marburg reported in the West, the death and infection toll has been tiny. During the 1975 Johannesburg outbreak, only three people were infected, with one death. Even the infamous 1967 Frankfurt and Belgrade scares saw a mere 31 people infected and seven killed. This happened at a time when our knowledge of the virus was almost non-existent and medical procedures less stringent, and it still killed fewer people than asthma typically kills in a single day.

3Our Infrastructure Is Excellent

Aside from being at the center of an Ebola outbreak, what do Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia have in common? Answer: Their medical infrastructure is shamefully bad. Across all three countries, healthcare is little more than a particularly grim joke. Patients are often placed two or three to a bed. Water and electricity can be scarce. Health precautions are not observed, and patients are left untreated if they can’t afford the necessary drugs. In Liberia, many hospitals are effectively devoid of protective equipment and staff. In such conditions, it’s no wonder that Ebola spreads.

Contrast this with healthcare in the West, and things couldn’t be more different. Germany, for example, has seven entire hospitals specifically equipped for fighting Ebola. The UK’s healthcare system is so good that the government thinks the total number of cases could never reach double digits. In the US, the CDC has many measures in place to stop Ebola spreading. Combine this with well-funded, high-quality hospitals across the board, and the idea of Ebola devastating our cities begins to seem no more than a fantasy.

2We May Already Have A Vaccine

In 2005, virologist Heinz Feldmann created a vaccine that stops the spread of Ebola in macaques before or even after infection. Since no one at the time was interested in funding an Ebola vaccine, the work didn’t progress to human trials. However, in 2009, it was used on a German worker who accidentally pricked herself with an Ebola-infected needle. While it’s not clear that she’d ever contracted the disease at all, the vaccine certainly didn’t do any harm and possibly saved her life.

This isn’t the only Ebola treatment held up at trial stage. According to professor of tropical medicine Jeremy Farrar, there are several potential candidates in the works, all of which could provide some level of protection against the virus. By normal standards, they’re still far from being ready for consumers. But if the choice ever lies between taking this medicine and a strong likelihood of death—as it does for Ebola sufferers currently in West Africa—many say that these experimental treatments are promising enough to open them to the public.

1The Threat Is Just Media Panic

By now, you’re probably wondering why we’re hearing so much about a virus that will almost certainly burn itself out with only limited fatalities. Why are newspapers publishing stories that suggest all health and medical professionals are intentionally lying to us and the world as we know it is about to end? There are a few reasons, and one is very simple: Audiences eat it up.

Look back at almost any pandemic story of the last decade, and it’s pretty clear that the media focuses almost exclusively on the negatives. During the SARS epidemic, the Daily Mail ran the headline “SARS more serious than AIDS,” predicting over a billion cases. There hasn’t been a single case reported globally since 2004. When swine flu blew up, multiple papers claimed that it could kill 120 million people. In the UK, the effect of the panic was worse than the flu itself. By summer 2009, only 30 people had died, but the media-induced panic had nearly crashed the nation’s health services.

People simply don’t want to be reassured. If we’d called this article “10 Reasons Ebola Will Destroy America (And It’s All Obama’s Fault),” we’d be pulling in enough traffic right now to pay off all our mortgages. Same deal with news sites: They can’t let the other guy get all the Ebola clicks, so they churn out bigger, louder, and scarier articles to pull everyone in.

After all, if they keep on scaremongering, they may be right sometime. A disease may devastate the whole Earth at some point in the future. But this Ebola epidemic won’t. And the sooner the world’s editors and reporters realize that and just settle down, the better.

Estimates suggest that up to a billion animals perished. The human lives lost are steadily climbing to 30. Millions of hectares. Countless homes. All consumed by one of the worst disasters in living memory.

It’s difficult to believe that anything great emerged from the horrifying Australian 2019-2020 fire season. But with the last decade marred by moral failure, global conflict, and petty division, the things pulled from the fire showed that humanity can still respond with great compassion and heroism.

See Also: 10 Terrifying Tales From The World’s Most Apocalyptic Fires

10 A Dachshund Survived The NSW Fires

Wilbur was unaware of the fame gathering around him. While news channels flashed his photo and appealed to the public to be on the lookout for him, the dog was trying to survive in the wild. The odds were against him. Wilbur was a small dachshund lost in the lethal fires of New South Wales.

It’s unclear when he became separated from his owner but he was found early in December. Firefighters battling the blaze near Termeil noticed a small creature wandering alone between the flames. They rescued the dog and kept him overnight with their team. Thankfully, Wilbur’s owner quickly responded when the firefighters made it known that they had found a sausage dog.

The traumatized dachshund was delighted to see his owner. For the man, called Paul, the moment was bitter-sweet. He was still looking for his other dog and asked the firefighters to keep an eye out for a beagle called Olly. Incredibly, just a few hours later, Olly was also found. Both dogs were unhurt and happy to be back with their owner.

9 Versace Drops The Use Of Kangaroo Leather

Two years ago, Versace announced that real fur was meh. The Italian fashion house guaranteed that none of their accessories or clothes would ever again contain the pelt pulled off an animal. However, they continued to use real leather. Moreover, kangaroo leather.

The kangaroo is viewed by many as the symbol of Australia and the number of wild animals being culled every year for leather doesn’t sit well with animal activists. Campaign groups have been asking fashion houses for a long time to boycott kangaroo products and finally, in 2020, Versace agreed.

The decision to remove kangaroo leather from its designs weren’t directly caused by the Australian fires. The pressure from activists had been ongoing for a while and Versace already withdrew any related products from its 2019 collection. However, the announcement was made this year and was seen as a welcome gesture at a time when the future of kangaroos is grappling with an unprecedented threat.

8 Six Koalas Saved By Firefighters

The koala is one of Australia’s icons. The 2019-2020 fire season didn’t help their fight against extinction. The numbers are heartbreaking. Tens of thousands of koalas have been burned alive. Hundreds were euthanazed and hundreds more are fighting for their lives in clinics. Stories abound of civilians and firefighters plucking the scorched koalas from trees, homes and off the roads.

One story concerned firefighters who came across a group of koalas at Cudlee Creek. They were fighting fires that would ultimately destroy over 100 buildings and homes and kill one man. During the dramatic hours that followed, the koalas were collected and taken to safety. Many praised the firefighters for their humanity. Battling the fast-moving fire meant that they were pressed for each second but the firefighters decided to stop and help the defenseless marsupials.

A photo of the koalas has since gone viral. The image shows the creatures, relatively unharmed, huddling together in a hallway. One even hugged the wall like a favorite eucalyptus tree. Koalas are cursed with cute looks in the sense that their portly bodies cannot escape a quick blaze. If it weren’t for these firefighters, and Koala Rescue taking them in, they would’ve joined the disaster’s terrible statistics.

7An Unknown Fish Trap

In 2019, UNESCO declared an aquaculture system in Australia as a World Heritage Site. The Gunditjmara people used the structure to harvest eels 6,600 years ago. Just to put that into perspective—the site is older than the Egyptian pyramids. The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape is located in south-west Victoria and includes an intricate system of stone-lined pools, channels, and homes.

The fires arrived a few days before Christmas. A lightning strike boosted the flames and despite a gigantic firefighting effort, the blaze dragged across 7000 hectares (17,297 acres) of land. Including the brand-new UNESCO ruins.

Traditional owners of the site weren’t too concerned that the fire would damage the ruins directly. The stones were almost heat-resistant. The real danger came from falling trees. Some grew inside the aquaculture buildings. If the fire toppled any, chances were that the structure could be weakened by roots being unearthed or smashed by a toppling trunk. When the blaze passed, a group visited to see if any trees had crashed onto the structure. Luckily, none did. Even more surprisingly, the blaze had cleared vegetation to reveal an unknown section of the trapping complex.

Located near Lake Condah, the section was a smaller system with a channel running 25 meters (27 yards) along the ground. Until the fire, this part of the traps went undetected despite sitting 20 meters (22 yards) from a track leading to the main site. In this case, at least, something valuable wasn’t destroyed by the blaze but instead emerged more complete than it was before.

6Millions Were Raised

As the world watched Australia burn, those with deep purses weren’t idle. Celeste Barber is an Australian comedian whose fundraiser attracted huge donations and pledges from celebrities. All told, the sum totaled A$22 million. Stars like Pink, Kylie Minogue, and Nicole Kidman were among those who joined the call to support Barber’s Facebook fundraiser. Incredibly, the eye-watering amount took less than 48 hours to accumulate.

Perhaps more noteworthy are the people without personal fortunes who found creative ways to support Australia. One was a woman named Kaylen Ward. The 20-year-old sex worker took to Instagram and promised a personal nude photograph to anyone who donated $10 or more to her designated fire relief charities. Four days later, she raised $700,000. None of the money reached her. Ward insisted that her admirers must pay the charities directly and send her the receipt to get their nude pictures. For her efforts she earned the name “The Naked Philanthropist” and Instagram deleted her account.

5 The Koala Dogs

Narcotics dogs. Sure. Bomb-sniffing canines, okay. But koala dogs? As weird as it sounds, they do exist. When a handler barks, “Koala, find!” the four-footed detectives jump into action and start searching for fur and droppings. Their job is to keep track of the eucalyptus-munchers during good times and bad.

These are undoubtedly bad times and the dogs track under dangerous circumstances. Nearly all of them wear mittens to protect their paws from burns and sharp debris. Thus far, they’ve saved dozens of koalas. Two of the highly-trained canines are Taylor and Bear. Taylor is a four-year-old with eight koalas under her belt and Bear has such a prolific streak that Tom Hanks quipped he was going to make a movie about him.

Every koala saved is a treasure, but there simply aren’t enough dogs to help the thousands of marsupials that are still in trouble. Despite this, these service canines diligently perform their duties against an insurmountable tragedy, using their noses to find the bodies, the injured and the hiding koalas their handlers might miss.

4 Sheepdog Snoots 220 Sheep To Safety

Stephen Hill gave no thought of enjoying New Year’s Eve. That night he was facing a terrible loss. The fires were closing in on the small town of Corryong, in Victoria. He looked around his cousin’s farm where he worked and realized the sheep were in danger. Worse, it was a dark night, the flock was being difficult and he needed help.

He turned to Patsy. He found the shepherd mix on the property and loaded her on a four-wheeler before setting off to the field where the sheep were in trouble. Despite the heat, bleating and fire-related smells the dog never faltered. She followed Hill’s commands and herded the frightened animals to a safe barn. It wasn’t an easy task, not with a large number of sheep involved nor the proximity of the massive blaze. Indeed, the flames claimed six sheep. But in the end, Patsy nudged more than 220 animals to safety.

Hill gave the dog sole credit for the flock’s survival, an act that meant the world to him. He’s one of the countless people still badly affected by the genocidal losses suffered among domestic and wild animals alike.

3 Request For Shelters Triggered A Global Response

The inferno left hundreds of animals orphaned or without a home. A large portion of the destitute babies are marsupials that need warmth and a mother’s pouch to survive. This season’s tide of orphans sparked one of the disaster’s most unusual and cozy rescue efforts.

Animal Rescue Craft Guild is based in Australia. Long before the fires came, the organization whipped up shelters, including nests and slings, for young wildlife. The babies would then snuggle in their new homes made from knitted, crocheted and cloth items. When the crisis hit, the animals came pouring into shelters and the Guild appealed to their Facebook members to help sew and knit the items. The response was overwhelming.

From all over the world, thousands of knitters and crafters united. They made koala mittens for burned paws, kangaroo pouches for joeys, blankets for animals to sleep on and interestingly, something called bat wraps. These are exactly what they sound like. You take a baby bat and you wrap the kid up nice and comfy. Possums, sugar gliders and wombats also received their crafted goodies.

2The Government Airdropped Food For Wallabies

The Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby is an endangered species in New South Wales, one of the worst-hit areas. The fires connected with their vulnerability like a baseball bat. The blaze undoubtedly killed many and left the survivors in a barren landscape without food. Large-scale starvation set in. Before the fire season, the animals had also been struggling against Australia’s ongoing drought.

The government of NSW decided to help. Operation Rock Wallaby collected tons of vegetables, mostly carrots, and nutritious sweet potatoes. The planes first took off early in January and dropped the food over a dozen wallaby colonies. The project will continue until the marsupials can support themselves with renewed natural food resources and water.

The image of one of the wallabies was shared with the public, showing both the devastation and the success of the aid program. Like many others, the creature leaped at the chance to gorge on the veggies and this particular one was photographed enjoying a carrot.

1 A Secret Mission

When a park ranger found a tree in 1994, it sent shock waves through the botanical world. The Wollemi Pine existed before many dinosaurs and was thought to be extinct. Before the Jurassic wonder’s rediscovery, the tree was known only from 200-million-year-old fossils. The pine found in 1994 was not alone. A grove of the rare, so-called “Dinosaur Trees” stood nearby.

The grove is located in a gorge in the Blue Mountains. But the precise spot remains a closely guarded secret. Visitors and poachers would exterminate the living fossils. Botanical gardens around the world propagate the species but the Australian batch, numbering less than 200, is the last wild Wollemi Pines in the world.

When the blaze came, the prehistoric treasure was directly in its path. While keeping the location’s hidden status in mind, conservationists organized a secret mission to save the trees. Despite the drama of extinction edging closer to the grove and that the mission itself was unprecedented in the history of environmental protection, the rescuers kept everything low key. Publicity could’ve led unwanted guests straight to the grove.

Air tankers circled the pines and drew a ring of fire retardant around them. Specialist firefighters were airlifted to the gorge. Once on the ground, they rigged an irrigation system to keep the trees moist. But at one point, the team had to retreat. The fire had arrived. After a few days filled with thick smoke, everyone waited for the haze to clear to see if their plan had worked.

Incredibly, the pines were safe. A little charred, but relatively unscathed. The mission had been a phenomenal success.

In 2016, the opioid crisis took the lives of 59,000 Americans. Estimates suggest there are 2.6 million prescription opioid addicts in the US—and nearly double that number of heroin users. To date, 77 million Americans have fallen victim to the crisis in some way.

The medical and pharmaceutical industries are at the heart of the problem, along with an influx of cheap heroin from Mexico and US-controlled Afghanistan, dealer access to synthetic super-opioids like fentanyl, and fatal despair in many parts of the country. Here are ten facts about the United States’ opioid crisis.

10 Making A Killing

In May 2007, the makers of prescription opioid OxyContin pleaded guilty to misleading doctors, patients, and regulators about the risks of the drug. Purdue Pharma agreed to pay over $600 million for intentionally masking the drug’s risk for addiction and abuse. The payoff resolved both civil and criminal charges against the pharmaceutical giant.^[1]

Launched in 1996, OxyContin received the most aggressive marketing campaign of any narcotic painkiller. Within a few years, sales increased to $1 billion annually. The key to OxyContin’s “safe” use was its time-release mechanism. However, users quickly discovered that crushing the tablets would result in a high as powerful as heroin. Internal documents revealed that Purdue Pharma was aware of the resistance OxyContin would face. The company specifically promoted the drug for prescription by general practitioners, who often have limited experience with pain management and detecting abuse in patients. Sales officials distributed fraudulent charts to doctors regarding OxyContin’s risk potential.

9 The Afghan Connection

Prior to the US/NATO-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, there were 189,000 heroin users in the United States. By 2016, the number had skyrocketed to 4.5 million. Between 2000 and 2001, the Taliban, working with the UN, banned opium production. Months before the invasion, they’d successfully reduced cultivation from 82,000 to 7,600 hectares. By 2016, the production area had increased to 224,000 hectares. This exponential expansion occurred at the same time the US led a taxpayer-funded $8.5 billion eradication program of Afghanistan’s opium poppies.^[2]

In the 1960s and 1970s, the CIA collaborated with opium producers in the Golden Triangle in exchange for help combating Communism. In the 1980s, they imported Nicaraguan cocaine for sale in Los Angeles to fund contras. Currently, the US occupation of Afghanistan is in its 16th year, making it the longest conflict in our nation’s history—providing ample opportunity and incentive to dip into the lucrative opium trade.

8 Overdose Antidote

Naloxone is a lifesaver. This opioid antagonist can instantly reverse an overdose by binding to our brains’ opioid receptors. Naloxone isn’t new; generic versions have been available for years. Today, six companies manufacture naloxone. Five produce it in intravenous forms, while one produces a nasal spray called Narcan. Because Narcan can be easily administered, it is rapidly becoming the most popular form of naloxone with police and medical professionals.

The reaction of local law enforcement and first responders to opioid antidotes is mixed. The sheriff of Ohio’s Clermont County believes it is a “call of duty” to have deputies carry the lifesaving nasal spray. However, a mere 80 kilometers (50 mi) away in Butler County, law enforcement will have nothing to do with the overdose antidote. Butler County’s sheriff doesn’t want to put his officers at risk performing a task better-suited for medical professionals. Many claim naloxone “enables” users.^[3]

7 Kratom

In October 2016, federal regulators reversed a decision to ban a plant that might be able to alleviate the opioid crisis. Two months prior, the DEA categorized the Southeast Asian kratom plant as a Schedule I substance, alongside LSD and heroin. The DEA claims kratom has been responsible for the deaths of 15 individuals between 2014 and 2016. However, 14 of those 15 had other drugs in their system.^[4]

Typically consumed in a tea, kratom contains mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine—chemicals that activate our brains’ opioid receptors. At low doses, kratom provides a gentle stimulation. However, at higher doses, it produces a sedative effect and numbs pain. Kratom may be a less addictive alternative to opioids. When consumed, the plant causes users to experience opioid-like effects without the potentially fatal respiratory depression associated with heroin. Thailand (Siam at the time) banned kratom in 1943 because it threatened to decrease tax revenue from opium sales.

6 Hidden Victims

Children are the hidden victims of the US opioid crisis. Abandoned by addicts, orphaned by overdoses, or forcibly removed by protective services, tens of thousands of children have been ripped from their families. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 92,000 children entered the foster system in 2016 as a result of the opioid crisis. This is the most in more than 30 years. The last time the US saw a tidal wave of lost children was the crack epidemic of the 1980s. This time, opioids are the culprit.^[5]

Georgia, Indiana, and West Virginia had the biggest increases of drug-related foster placements in 2016. Vanderburgh County, Indiana, with a population of 179,000, had more children of drug users enter the system than Los Angeles, Miami, or Seattle. Babies born addicted to heroin are also increasingly common. With high-pitched shrieks, insomnia, and tremors, neonatal abstinence syndrome leads to agonizing withdrawal pains.

5 Trump’s Tough Talk

In October 2017, President Trump declared the opioid crisis a “public health emergency.” However, without room in the budget to combat the national scourge, his administration has forced state and local authorities to pick up the slack. Despite campaign promises, the first year of the Trump presidency ended with little more than tough talk.^[6]

On top of that, the GOP tax bill could mean savage cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs which provide the very funding local governments need to combat the crisis. “Mentioning a few helpful items [ . . . ] is not a plan for tackling a public health emergency,” notes Brandeis University’s opioid policy expert Andrew Kolodny. “We need a plan with details, we need an appropriation request in the billions to build a treatment system.”

4 Fentanyl

In October, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 50 percent of opioid overdose deaths in 2016 were linked with fentanyl. A synthetic opioid that can only be legally administered by a doctor, fentanyl and its analogues killed at least 20,000 people in 2016. 50 times stronger than heroin, fentanyl has become the opioid of choice in many parts of the US—like New England. According to the DEA, much of the fentanyl that hits New England streets is manufactured in Mexico using Chinese precursors.^[7]Cartels exploited New England’s long history of abusing prescription painkillers. Initially, they introduced “garbage heroin” at 18 percent purity. However, starting in 2015, they began marketing a product known as “China White”—supposedly of higher potency and purity. In reality, it was the same heroin spiked with fentanyl. Some street-level dealers might not even be aware that their product is cut with fentanyl. Ignorance and potency increases the probability of overdose.

3 Heavy Cost

The White House Council of Economic Advisors calculated the true cost of the US opioid epidemic in 2015 at $504 billion. Six times higher than had been estimated, the figure was 2.8 percent of the country’s GDP that year. It represents money spent on health care and criminal justice as well as lost productivity. The epidemic is growing worse. Over the past ten years, overdose deaths have doubled. However, underreporting of prescription drug deaths in the past may have factored into the rapid increase.^[8]

The National Institutes of Health currently spends $116 million a year on research to combat opioid addiction. The NIH’s Dr. Francis Collins has suggested that research funding would have to increase to four or five times to keep up with the accelerating pace of the crisis. The NIH’s goals are to develop pharmaceutical treatments for addicts, antidotes strong enough to combat fentanyl, and nonaddictive opioid alternatives for pain medication.

2 A Deeper Problem

The US opioid crisis may be a symptom of a deeper problem. A recent study found that in some rural California counties, the premature death rate of white people between ages 25 and 35 has recently more than doubled. Funded by the California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities, the study noted that opioid overdoses were only responsible for 33 percent the skyrocketing numbers. Alcoholism-related illnesses and suicide were also significant factors.

The spike in self-inflicted death leads many to suspect rural white Californians may be “dying of despair.” As the economy shifts from manufacturing toward information services, this population feels disenfranchised, turning toward chemicals and suicide. Approaching the fall of communism, Russia experienced a similar spike in death rate. This malignant malaise has been encroaching on America’s rural communities for decades. Some speculate that the shift toward a global economy, paired with a lack of social support, is generating fatal despair.^[9]

1 Anti-Opioid Vaccine

In response to the opioid crisis, some researchers are experimenting with vaccines. The goal: to block the drugs’ euphoria while alleviating the withdrawal symptoms. An inoculation would generate antibodies that specifically target opioid molecules. After receiving the vaccine, a user would find that the drug would be bound with antibodies before it could reach the brain.

However, every opioid vaccine effort since the 1970s has failed. Past results were unable to generate enough antibodies to provide effective opioid protection in humans. But people aren’t giving up hope. A team at the Scripps Research Institute announced that it had developed a vaccine that can counteract the effect of heroin on rhesus monkeys. The US Army has been tinkering with an opioid vaccine paired with an HIV vaccine. Vaccines specifically targeting withdrawal symptoms are showing promise. One such drug, lofexidine, has already been approved in the UK and is currently under FDA review in the US.^[10]

A leading authority on occult music, Geordie McElroy hunts incantations and spell songs for the Smithsonian and private collectors. Dubbed the “Indiana Jones of ethnomusicology” by TimeOutLa, he is also front man of Blackwater Jukebox.

Around 12 million people in the US use vaping pens or e-cigarettes. The device turns liquid, often flavored or containing nicotine, into a vapor to inhale. In 2019, an outbreak of deadly lung disease was connected to the smoking alternative. In all the states, except for Alaska, over 2,000 people became seriously ill and nearly 40 died. The condition causes terrifying damage but despite their best attempts, health agencies are struggling to solve its triggers and sudden appearance.

SEE ALSO: 10 Facts That Everyone Gets Wrong About Vaping

7The First Patient

Looking back, the earliest cases occurred sometime in April. However, it was not until June 11 when doctors first became aware that they were dealing with an unknown condition. On that day, a teenager was admitted to the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. He experienced breathing difficulties, ran a fever and had lost a lot of weight.

The staff initially thought he had picked up a lung infection. It was easy to imagine how the teenager, who was an active BMX biker, inhaled the wrong kind of dirt outdoors that ended up irritating his airways. If anything, there was a slight chance that it was a rare kind of pneumonia. The tests did not support the hunch. Several scans later and a turn in the surgery room proved that his lungs were not infected with anything. Instead, the signs suggested that the boy had inhaled a substance so noxious that it physically harmed him.

Within a month, three other teenagers arrived at the same hospital with the biker’s symptoms, including coughing, fatigue, shortness of breath, diarrhea, and vomiting. Just like the first patient, their airways were raw and bleeding. Doctors did not like the mysterious lung disease, especially when three of the four patients landed in ICU.

Looking for a connection between the boys, the doctors found that they had nothing in common. The background search eventually did deliver a single factor – they all vaped. This was strange in itself. People have been vaping for years. If the trendy form of smoking was the culprit, why was it suddenly making smokers sick? There was no answer. All the doctors could say for certain was that the condition, preliminarily named EVALI, was a deadly, non-infectious outbreak. Also, more dishearteningly, that nothing like this has ever been seen before.^[1]

6 Lungs Like Gas Attack Victims

The Mayo Clinic stumbled upon a disturbing fact. Like many other medical institutions, their experts are desperately hunting for the cause of the vaping illness. During one study, the first of its kind, their team examined the lung biopsies from 17 patients, several of whom had already died.

They fully expected to find injuries caused by vaping liquids, perhaps in the form of damaging fatty deposits within the lungs. Instead, they found a hair-raising and familiar sight. The lungs showed acute chemical burns and scarring. They could just as well have been looking at the victims of a gas attack. There was well and truly a strong resemblance between the lungs of vaping patients and the case histories of individuals who had been exposed to toxic chemical agents.

Although the Mayo experts could not narrow down the cause, they found convincing traces that something about vaping was incredibly toxic. The most plausible dangers included contaminants, an unknown but lethal byproduct, or the vaping liquid itself. Taking into consideration the large number of people who vape, the team released their findings and called the situation a “public health crisis.”^[2]

5 The Marijuana Link

When the world faces a dodgy health danger, the leading investigative organization is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Several months after the initial outbreak, the first whispers blaming marijuana started. Not the actual plant or dried leaves, but the vaping products containing THC. The latter is the psychoactive component in weed that causes a high.

In recent years, THC public image cleaned up a little and even found a niche in the health sector. But the whispers were not spawned by paranoia or people opposed to marijuana’s growing influence. They were made from scientific observations. For instance, 12 of the 17 people whose biopsies were analyzed by the Mayo Clinic had a history of vaping cannabis oil or marijuana.

When the CDC rooted through the available information and interviewed patients, the picture turned even greener. Around 85 percent of people admitted to vaping THC-containing cartridges. A few honest souls even confessed to buying their stash on the black market. This was significant, in a way. THC vaping products originating from this illegal corner had already come under the spotlight for possible health risks. Finally, most of the patients whose deaths were linked to vaping had also enjoyed vaping THC.

Although weed seems to be holding the smoking gun, there is no direct evidence that THC is behind the lung disease. In other words, researchers cannot find the steps of the process that links the moment when somebody vapes cannabis oil to the point that they get sick.^[3]

Related: Top 10 Scary Facts And Stories About Marijuana

4 A Dangerous Additive

Sometime after the cannabis link showed up, the CDC realized something profound. There was a big chance that THC had nothing to do with the outbreak. Instead, the danger could come from something that THC was mixed with – vitamin E acetate. This goop is sometimes added to vaping liquid as a cartridge-filler and THC-thinner.

The keen observer might recognize the chemical as an additive to skincare products and antioxidant in perfume. Vitamin E oil is also sold as a supplement. While it is true that the acetate is harmless when smoothed into wrinkles or swallowed as a capsule, inhaling the sticky stuff is not a good idea. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when several authorities like the CDC and FDA (Food and Drug Administration) examined patients’ lungs and vaping products, they found vitamin E acetate in nearly all of them. Most of this freaky oil showed up in the THC samples and black market vapers.

Having something with the consistency of honey cling to an e-cigarette’s insides is fine. Finding the same thick goo inside a person was, frankly, disturbing. But it seemed hopeful too. The researchers found that acetate in the lungs was capable of producing the respiratory symptoms of EVALI.

Identifying the toxin was a great breakthrough. So was the near-perfect fit with the symptoms. However, it was more like a step in the right direction than a cure. The discovery failed to answer the big questions. If vitamin E oil is causing this, nobody knows how the substance triggers the disease nor why there was no sign of the problem until April 2019.^[4]

3 The Elusive Factor X

Stopping the outbreak is not as simple as removing vitamin E oil from vaping products. Health authorities have admitted that the illness could be caused by a multitude of factors instead of one. Not even the heating process of vaping devices has been ruled out. For example, while looking for clues, a Pennsylvania study found that harmless oils like vegetable glycerin and propylene glycol could turn toxic when vaped. Unfortunately, both are commonly used base oils in vaping cartridges.

The scary truth about vaping is that the industry is stuck in its Wild West phase. Largely unregulated, there are hundreds of chemicals inside these products and many might play a role in the disease. Effectively, the number of unidentified ingredients makes it almost impossible to declare which vaping products are safe and separate from those that are potentially harmful.

Online videos make the situation worse. Increasingly, people are posting do-it-yourself tutorials on how to add stuff to vapers. This includes substances the devices were never designed to heat and turn into vapor. The trend is an unnecessary burden for investigators. Almost daily, it adds more substances to their full plate to be researched. The FDA is already analyzing over 900 products and devices, while systematically working their way through the black market supply chain.

Besides the unknown additives and irresponsible videos, another problem is missing case histories. Right now, one of the most important ways to understand the disease is to compile a list of what every patient smoked and for how long they used each substance. However, the ones that died and who were perhaps the most telling cases, cannot share their habits.

2 Britain’s First Death

Professor Stanton Glantz is the director of the Centre for Tobacco Research Control & Education. Based in San Francisco, he is against smoking-related dangers to the public. Indeed, Glantz once played a pivotal role in the release of 90 million pages of secret documents from the tobacco industry.

His view on vaping is that Britain is mad. Not the population, but Public Health England who believes that the illness is an American phenomenon. PHE claims that nothing similar can happen in Britain because the government banned the use of vitamin E acetate. While true, Glantz pointed out that the chemical had never been confirmed as the culprit. Even the CDC and FDA knows that some people became sick without smoking cannabis oils and even after using devices with very little vitamin E oil. Something bigger is going on.

The PHE seems determined to ignore the elephant in the room. There are now cases that span many countries. In fact, Britain’s own cases happened before the American outbreak. A year ago, Birmingham doctors described a young woman with classic symptoms. Unaware of the 2019 crisis that loomed not too far in the future, the physicians already suspected her vaping habit because it was the only source that matched the fatty lipids found in her lungs.

Worse, the earliest death linked to vaping comes from Britain – an astonishing nine years before the US crisis. PHE continues to encourage the public to use e-cigarettes to quit smoking – and that’s exactly what Terry Miller (57) did in 2010 before vaping oil clogged his lungs. His mortuary report was not a glowing review for vaping, stating, “It was thought that he may have developed lipoid pneumonia from the inhalation of oil-blended concentrated nicotine from the device.”^[5]

1 The International Backlash

Following the deaths in the US, several countries cooled towards e-cigarettes. Singapore and India banned the devices. Japan allowed vaping but not e-liquids with nicotine. China stated that it wanted to severely supervise the practice in the future. Should the Chinese government slam the door on e-cigarettes, it would be a blow to the industry. A third of the world’s smokers are Chinese.

The fact that India banned everything – the production, trading, selling and storing – of vaping products already killed a massive market of 1.3 billion potential consumers. Despite the fact that vaping is touted as a good way to quit smoking, India is having none of it. Like many US states and critics, the country stated that the flavored liquids are instead encouraging more children to start smoking.

India is so serious about enforcing the law that anyone who breaks it could spend a year behind bars. This includes advertising or daring to hand somebody a vaper. The global retreat from vaping is bad news for certain tobacco companies that poured billions into the technology to compensate for falling cigarette sales. On an interesting note, vaping fans have accused India of placing the ban to protect its own interests and not the public’s health. After all, the country is one of the world’s largest producers of tobacco. Should vaping outperform the traditional cigarette, thousands of jobs and an epic source of profit would be lost.^[6]