Sierra Leone has just completed a three day lockdown of the entire country over the weekend in an attempt to slow down the spread of Ebola. No one except authorized personnel were allowed out on the street during this time.

Teams of healthcare workers and volunteers attempted to visit every household, to educate them about the disease, look for more people with Ebola or for bodies that need proper burial, and to pass out some basic hygiene supplies. The government claims that 80% of households were contacted.

Not sure if we'll ever really know if the lockdown had any real effect on the spread but we may know in the coming weeks. I can't imagine the entire US experiencing something similar, although I could imagine a lockdown happening at the local level here if people or politicians ever became scared enough to demand such drastic measures.

Anyway, a real life example of another reason to be able to survive for at least 72 hours without any outside help. The government did give the people advanced warning of the lockdown, like warning the public about a hurricane coming. However, markets there are already very low on supplies due to the disruption already caused by the disease. And people are very poor and prices are very high for what is still available, so this lockdown was very difficult to comply with for many people.

In other news, US military personnel have started arriving in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. Liberia is the country most in need of help dealing with the outbreak. Some infectious disease experts say the outbreak is basically out of control within Liberia so this military effort may mostly be seen as damage control rather than an effective effort to actually halt the epidemic there. Ebola outbreaks tend to subside on their own, and not because of human intervention, unfortunately.

Supposedly the US military personnel there right now will not have any direct patient contact, but once you're in the hot zone, it's pretty hard to be confident that you won't have any second-hand exposure to the disease if you're there to train local healthcare workers. We'll see how the people back home react if service members start contracting the disease.