The Ebola Virus Outbreak

Scenario
An attack of Ebola Virus as a terrorist after an attack.
The Ebola virus can spread through the air if someone coughs or sneezes and their phlegm or liquid comes in contact with someone’s eyes, inside of their mouth, nose or some broken skin on the body like a cut or scrape (WHO, 2014). As a terrorist, the best way to get many people infected would be in a hospital setting or a place where people will sweat a lot and breathe more heavily like inside a gym. This would allow the contamination to be more effective. By sending someone to a gym and coughing around people working out, they would be more likely to contract the virus.
Sweat is also another way to transmit the pathogen, along with semen, vomit, and urine (WHO, 2014). In terms of who would be affected, if the clear choice is a gym, the expected targets are adults working out. To monitor if they are infected, simple checking of the news would highlight if the infection attempts worked. Any one person with Ebola will reach the news and would be easy to spot due to the rarity of the disease and the ongoing fear of its potential spread. If one infected person is sent into a gym to infect others, the overall expectation is that at least 2-3 people become infected. Then those people will spread it to their loves ones through copulation, shared spaces, and so forth.
Success would be based on how many cases of Ebola emerge. If there are a resounding high number like 15 that would be considered a job well done. Because of the nature of the infection and the often close quarters of most people that live in cities and so forth, it would be fairly easy to cause an Ebola epidemic (CDC, 2019). To avoid detection would be easy. As long as one has one infected person, infecting others, and then that person is treated to avoid death, the infections can continue unencumbered.
In terms of Ebola virus disease (EVD) is caused by the Ebola virus, a filovirus family member, occurring in both primates and humans. The first cases of EVD emerged in 1976 in South Sudan and Democratic Republic of the Congo (Public Health England, 2016). While outbreaks or cases have not been recorded between 1979 to 1994, recent years have brought light to major outbreaks. For example, from March 2014 to June 2016, the biggest outbreak of EVD was recorded affecting mainly Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. Although there are six species of the virus, only 4 can cause illness in humans.
These are:
1. Zaïre ebolavirus (EBOV)
2. Sudan ebolavirus (SUDV)
3. Tai Forest (TAFV) (formerly known as Ebola Ivory Coast)
4. Bundibugyo ebolavirus (BDBV) (Public Health England, 2016).
Investigation of the disease could lead to the discovery of the source of the infection. That is why if the plan was to infect people at a gym, it must be one with limited camera equipment that will allow the person infected (terrorist), to avoid being spotted. The person would have to sneak into the gym to avoid being identified, and proceed to infect various innocent people. Because sweat and saliva can lead to transmission of the virus, leaving sweat and saliva on exercise machines may lead to a more effective rate of transmission. Another person can check to see if additional people become sick by seeing which hospitals the infected may go to as treatment involves maintaining vitals since there is no cure or antiviral drug available for EVD (CDC, 2019).
References
CDC. (2019, March 27). Treatment. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/treatment/index.html
Public Health England. (2016, August 19). Ebola: overview, history, origins and transmission. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ebola-origins-reservoirs-transmission-and-guidelines/ebola-overview-history-origins-and-transmission
WHO. (2014, October 6). What we know about transmission of the Ebola virus among humans. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/06-october-2014/en/