WI/PC : Ebola circa 1880

The "germ theory" began to develop in the mid-1800s and was relatively well accepted by the end of the century, modern bacteriology started in the 1880s. Having said that while bacteria and parasites (think malaria) were being classified, viruses, like ebola, were a totally unknown quantity. Also things like barrier gloves etc were not used/available at the time, so dealing with the dead and the sick would be a huge cause of spread. Hoever, given the nature of transportation and the knowledge of quarantine, I doubt ebola would spread widely although local outbreaks would be pretty bad.
 

Lusitania

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There were many local plagues that might of devastated a local tribe or even village. The lack of means of communication and relative limited contact with outside world would limit or even prevent the knowledge of the plague reaching outside world. If it it did it would be classified as plague nothing more. You need modern technology and communication plus modern medicine to identify and amplify the epidemic to mass audience.

Even stuff that happen in the middle of 20th century in Africa hardly made news. Point the first cares of aids were in Western Africa guinea, Portuguese Guinea in mid 1960s. But due to war and lack of interest it was not picked up and only when a different strain of AIDS reached Europe and America did it become “important”.
 
Ebola burn itself out very quickly, meaning it kills people before it can effectively infect others. What was learned in the most recent outbreaks is that one of the primary methods of infection is actually funerary rights that involve a lot of exposure to the infected's body and fluids. In the 1880's lower populations mean it's much harder for this specific disease to spread beyond a single area and slower travel times mean that Ebola symptoms will generally start showing before an infected person can get too far.

It's a terrible disease but in 1880 well understood quarantine methods, destruction of infected materials, and limiting contact with bodies should be sufficient to protect against large scale epidemics. The colonial powers have a loooong history of dealing with quarantining plagues so while the disease is physically horrifying it's not actually as dangerous as smallpox or yellow fever.

Plus in 1890 half of everybody in sub-Saharan Africa is about to drop dead from Rinderpest and starvation so Ebola probably won't even make the news.
 
No, I don't believe Ebola evolved recently. Neither did AIDS. A 15-year old rich kid died in St. Louis in the mid-sixties. His infections did not respond to the best medicine of the day, which his family could afford. They froze some tissue samples and when analyzed in the eighties, AIDS was confirmed. It's just that the practices of the day limited the spread of the disease (less gay sex, fewer shared needles).
 
...I thought that the first human outbreak was in South Sudan in 1976.

I put it in the 1880s to coincide with the Mahdist State taking over the area, but what would happen if the outbreaks started earlier, before the massive deaths?
 
...I thought that the first human outbreak was in South Sudan in 1976.

I put it in the 1880s to coincide with the Mahdist State taking over the area, but what would happen if the outbreaks started earlier, before the massive deaths?
First RECORDED outbreak.
It's surely been killing isolated villages since humans turned to carnivory.
 
First RECORDED outbreak.
It's surely been killing isolated villages since humans turned to carnivory.

That is certainly possible, especially as technology to reach the outside world only reached the jungles of Central Africa recently. It is quite possible that for quite sometime throughout much of tropical African an Ebola outbreak could have devastated a village and no one knew about it because of their remoteness. Anyone that tried to leave would have died before they could reach help. The problem is at a certain point munity starts to happen so in order for Ebola to keep killing at the rates to does it needs to be fairly recent evolution.
 
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