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CDC: Ebola Cases Could Reach 1.4 Million In 4 Months
mdsolar sends this report from the NY Times:
Yet another set of ominous projections about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa was released Tuesday, in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that gave worst- and best-case estimates for Liberia and Sierra Leone based on computer modeling. In the worst-case scenario, Liberia and Sierra Leone could have 21,000 cases of Ebola by Sept. 30 and 1.4 million cases by Jan. 20 if the disease keeps spreading without effective methods to contain it. These figures take into account the fact that many cases go undetected, and estimate that there are actually 2.5 times as many as reported. ... In the best-case model — which assumes that the dead are buried safely and that 70 percent of patients are treated in settings that reduce the risk of transmission — the epidemic in both countries would be 'almost ended' by Jan. 20, the report said.
White people do nothing except help spread the disease by sending in soldiers and doctors to get sick then sending them to other places to infect people. Not that the west will care, after all, it's just Africa, right?
Some Hollywood-style end of world scenario right here.
I told you so ...just doesn't seem like enough.
There are only 4M inhabitants in Liberia, so 1.5M means half of them dead. There will be "unusual effects" of such a situation, namely that everybody will run for their life to get out of the country (and into the neighbor countries). I'd be interested if this is included in the simulation.
In the worst-case scenario, Liberia and Sierra Leone could have 21,000 cases of Ebola by Sept. 30 and 1.4 million cases by Jan. 20
ok, so considering that Sep 30 is one week away, I think it's unlikely that the disease will spread four-fold in that tiem.
Because that just means the virus has a longer horizon to hop somewhere else.. like Mumbai.
My understanding is that Ebola is rather difficult to transmit (direct contact with infected tissue), if that is true why is it spreading so well in the effected areas? Having so many infected is not a good thing, it increases the chances that the disease could mutate into something that is more transmissible in humans.
"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Considering there was the recent killings of doctors who were trying to educate the unwashed masses on how to prevent or mitigate the spread of Ebola, along with the other attacks and general mistrust of health workers, letting the disease spread might not be a bad option.
Those who don't want to listen to experts die off, those who are too panicked to touch the dead bodies live, and things work themselves out.
Cruel? Maybe. But when you're already putting your life on the line trying to help people and those people attack and kill you, sometimes you have to make the tough decision to let nature take its course.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
1.2 million? I call BS. When things start to look really bad people will voluntarily stay at home, dramatically reducing transmission. And this is before we consider government action. This already happened during the swine flu scare in Mexico where everyone stayed home for a week and then on top of that the government ordered restaurants, schools and other businesses closed.
From my experience, CDC estimates should be taken with a grain of salt, as they often seem dubious at best.
Then again, I suppose that should apply to any estimate, especially when the estimator is using ceteris paribus in order to reach a certain conclusion...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Assuming that the dead are buried safely just isn't going to happen. When you have that many people dying, nobody's going to be in a rush to join them by burying them. "Let someone else do it." And eventually, there just won't be enough people to bury all the dead even if they were willing. They'd be spending way too much time meeting their own basic survival needs in countries that are falling apart.
Nobody's going to be running to the local clinic for examination when they know that they can't even be fed there if it's confirmed they have the disease - and that's already happening.
The patient escaped from Monrovia's Elwa hospital, which last month was so crowded with cases of the deadly disease that it had to turn people away.
One woman at the scene said: "The patients are hungry, they are starving. No food, no water.
More and more, it appears the "best-case" scenario is that the disease burns itself out while being contained to only a few countries. And please keep in mind, even the UN agrees that we're going to see more of this once more diseases gain antibiotic resistance.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
At lot of the mistrust of outside people in those regions is very, very well deserved. Even when it's their own "government".
And your sentiment isn't really a new idea it's pretty much how the world has treated most of Africa for a really long time, the same Africa most of the world has exploited for long periods at one time or another.
The death toll of the disease is 80% of all persons infected.
While the disease increases exponentially, the ratio of infected / dead is around 55% currently. But that still means that 80% will be dead three weeks later.
Source: http://healthmap.org/site/dise...
From The Onion, America's Finest News Source:
http://www.theonion.com/articl...
I've been reading that a vaccination has been trialled...Any word on its effectiveness? Perhaps this will help?
I just read the Excel model that you can download as part of the article:
- It uses the parameters of previous Ebola outbreaks as a base.
These outbreaks happened in remote and sparsely populated regions. In contrast, the outbreak in Monrovia has hit slum like neighborhoods. This is a completely different base.
- The Excel model uses a "flat" model of population that doesn't take into account geographical distribution.
Infectiousness in slums will be a lot higher than in previous outbreaks because of the density of population.
- The model talks about keeping 70% of the infected population at home or in hospitals in order to reduce the infection rate. This way, the epidemic will slowly decrease.
However, there is widespread fear of hospitalization and the mortality rate of Ebola (80%) basically means that people will distrust any doctors, hospital etc. So I can't see how this should happen.
- In the history of Ebola there was no outbreak of this size.
In the past there were plenty (relatively) of workers per case. But now patients will outnumber the helpers.
Summary: I can't see why the exponential development could be slowed down as indicated in the model...
Well I wouldn't trust anyone either that I knew visited various places when I know that one of those places might have made the messenger a vehicle for the infection. Infact, if no one in Africa had a car or the villagers hadn't travelled, this thing wouldn't have spread fast enough to make a note.
If they want to educate the unwashed masses, air drop some leaflets or device that starts to playback a prerecorded message when picked up ... (apparently giving out radios is a bad idea based on some story I read about radios being used for propaganda purposes)
it's the only way to be sure...
Is that the recommendations from the WHO to restart flights from the affected countries is retarded.
Nigeria got infected in the first place because someone skipped the country and then infected 21 other people and 7 of them died. The fact that they basically stopped flights to Nigeria after that fucking PROVES we need to continue to blockade flights.
Hell, someone else bailed to Switzerland a few days ago and they now have a possible case in Lausanne.
Keep the flights banned.
Ebola is young in humans. There is no immunity to it like we have some immunity to Flu and various other diseases.
It being young is scary in other ways.
Before now, the virus had about 500 hosts in which to evolve a more spreadable version, and did not.
Even if it mutates to a version that 'only' kills 10% of the population, the truly scary thing is not global Ebola.
In western countries, Ebola in its current form would be a few cases per 'patient zero' coming from outside.
The scary thing is if it evolves, and becomes arielly transmissable.
That way lie hundreds of millions of deaths.
The New York Times Opines:
Seastead this.
It feels like the international medical community (or really governments) are not stepping up with timely health care and precautions.
How long until it's here?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
And before someone points it out, yes, I'm aware the mortality rate from Ebola isn't comparable to the flu, but the overblown hype about it stands.
Based on my computer model (Plague Inc), htfu and figure it out before it gets worse.
Remember, you guys should have a vaccine "By November"?
Oh wait right that was a bunch of Obama bullshit lies because Ebola has a 50% mortality rate and we never figured it out and evidently in the almost decade since the last outbreak, the CDC was more worried about coming up with Zombie scenarios.
According to the article "How Nigeria has succeeded in containing Ebola", there's hope that Ebola can be contained. The article tells how leaders including Babatunde Fashola, governor of Lagos state, have put procedures in place to stop the spread of Ebola. Nigeria is a large, populous country. But it has had only 21 cases of Ebola, and nine deaths.
And this is in a country with lots of internal problems. I really hope Boko Haram doesn't mess up their efforts.
bring on the zombie-inducing vaccines and "vaccine causes zombism" smear campaigns.
Call me an ugly, brutal beast but in my humble opinion the poverty and brutal behavior that we have seen in Africa is related to poverty which is caused by too large a population for the natural resources to support. It may well be that if 905 of the population of Africa dies of Ebola that Africa will have a much brighter future. There are island nations like Haiti that are also tragic due to too large a population. The effect is that we have millions of people trying to survive on a hand full of beans. Education and investment will not change the number of people nor will it change the size of the hand full of beans. Poverty and over population are married and can not be separated.
If we started air-dropping Ebola victims over Chinese cities.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
It should be recognized that these "home-centered funerary practices" include members of the family washing the corpse, then intentionally drinking from the water used to wash the corpse as part of the rite. Of an ebola victim.
It's mind-boggling, and they in many cases are not in a mindset (due to lack of education, literacy, conspiracy culture and previous government actions) to listen to best practices, like not drinking the washing water used on an ebola victim to the point that there's a non-zero chance the messenger will be hacked to death.
It's a total horror show convergence of ignorance and past sins from a myriad sources (colonialism, catholicism warning condoms will give you AIDs in order to discourage their use, etc) but before the darwinism jokes start: these people aren't really that generically different from your average slashdotter, they just happened to be born in a fucked up region of the world.
If we started air-dropping Ebola victims over Chinese cities.
Air dropping seems a pretty ineffective way of spreading Ebola seeing as it's not airborne. No one in their right mind is going to start buggeringising around with a corpse that appears from nowhere. They'll call the authorities and let them deal with it. So worst case scenario is you have a few infected med techs who handled the corpse improperly and will be quarantined immediately after tests are run on the corpse.
Secondly, as soon as the first blood test comes back on the first corpse, Chinese authorities will notify people, they've got almost complete control of all media and communications, getting the message out not to touch any strange corpses that fall from the sky will be easy for them.
Beyond this, you need to keep the virus alive long enough to fly it to the destination and drop it, this means the aircrew loading the corpses are going to be most at risk and most likely to be infected (and take it home to their families if they aren't quarantined after the flight). Ebola doesn't die with the victim, but it does die, the virus is not self perpetuating without a living host.
Given that Ebola is blood borne, not air, food or water borne it makes a pretty crappy biological weapon. You'd do more damage dropping the common cold in.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
How is the impending Ebola pandemic my fault, you ask? Because I have the worst luck in the whole world.
For some reason, every industry I work in suffers some sort of bizarre, unprecedented calamity. It's not something I cause directly; it just seems to happen.
My previous job involved working for the government. What could be more stable and secure than a government job? So my bad luck had to manifest and come up with something called "sequestration", never before seen in the history of the U.S. government, and boom, I was out on my ass.
Now I work in aerospace. The world is more connected than ever before, air travel is more affordable than ever before, so what could possibly go wrong? How about a global pandemic that eventually causes air travel to get shut down as a precautionary measure? It'll happen. And it'll be my rotten luck that causes it.
Back in 2000, I was working in the defense field, in a research-and-development position. The world wasn't becoming safer any time soon, so it seemed like I had a stable career. Then 9/11 happened, and military spending shifted away from R&D, and into the actual bombs, bullets, and other materiel of fighting a live war. I'm out of a job again.
I could go on, but this sort of thing has been happening to me for years.
Maybe I should go work for al-Qaeda. They won't survive a year with my bad luck bringing them down.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
I know they want more help, but do they? If the locals resist 'western medicine', then its real easy that the spread will continue regardless of the number of resources we supply (resources will be squandered, the spread continue). I understand that people are dying, I understand that some people want help, but help should be provided to those that want it. Western medicine doesn't deal well with warlords, local politics, and differing opinions from witch doctors. And the real bitch is that with science, its still there even if you stop believing in it. Local warlords might have their own ideas about burials, or what a clean clinic really is. They might want to give the witch doctor a chance. They don't want to hurt anyones feelings. And sure, the locals turn on the doctors for bringing this. And its all wasted effort. I hate it, but this will have to travel beyond local customs, warlord politics and witch doctors before its eradicated. Its no different here: they tell parents to get the kids inoculated against disease, and idiots like Jenny McCarthy tells everyone that vaccines cause Autism. And then diseases relegated to the 3rd world suddenly show up again in the 1st world. And every parent who's child dies should sue the hell out of Jenny McCarthy (at least have her charged with practising medicine without a license). The short answer though is that this outbreak will get worse, and no amount of outside aid will help it until the locals start doing more themselves.
It is said that the bodies of the ebola victims are filled with ebola virus, and the bodies were buried. Isn't this akin to merely "hide" the problem, and not eliminate it?
By burying the dead bodies which are filled with the ebola virus, they are allowing the virus to flow out of the decaying bodies which were buried in the burial grounds and thus contaminate the underground waters
As there aren't a lot of tap water infrastructure available in that part of the world, many people still rely on water they obtain from rivers and from wells - and when the virus contaminate the underground water more people are going to be infected with that virus
Why can't they burn the dead bodies instead?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
At least tap water --- if properly supplied --- has gone through the chlorination process
And according to WHO, chlorination kills the ebola virus
But in Africa, and in many other third world countries, especially the rural area,they take the water from the well and streams, and use it
Of course many of them do boil water before they drink it. But my point being, the water that they take from the streams / well might have been contaminated by the ebola virus, and that might become a vector for spreading the disease
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Give Ebola-chan a kisu~
Virologist training CDC clinicians heading to west africa:
OK, Obama says we're going to get these people into Liberia and do this. And where do you get the 500 people a week? How do you go to a country that is so limited in its resources and its infrastructure and say that you want to set up an isolation center in some remote corner that needs it, but, OK, it's 15 hours by bad road and there's no materials. And oh, by the way, there's no electricity and no running water and stuff.
It doesn't just happen because you make an announcement. It takes just an incredible effort to set all this stuff up, and it takes time. (...)
I haven't given up hope, but there's no doubt that it's an uphill battle.
(...)
One of the things that really drives me is this idea of the experimental therapies and vaccines. (...) So I feel like one thing that definitely has to happen for the future is that we have to come out of this [outbreak] with some tools.
http://kunr.org/post/dr-daniel-bausch-knows-ebola-virus-all-too-well
I hear CDC instead Africa.
I don't care about CDC news, I want to hear the Africans, because *they* deal with the virus, *they* get infected.
And guess what, I'm sure they actually do something about it.
This is the worse case scenario.
Simple as that.
Is not just the risk of someone unintentionally bringing it here (which almost happened in Minnesota with Patrick Stewart) but he died when he was switching planes. His symptoms developed on the plane! The factors that no one wants to recognize or talk about
1. CDC MYTH It wont be a problem here because we have much better sanitation.
Really? have you been to a sporting event lately, a concert venue, a Wal Mart, or any other public bathroom? Their is ALWAYS URINE all over the place if not poop sitting in the toilet unflushed or poop or urine on the seats. If someone infected with Ebola urinated on the floor and you come in contact with it by walking through it you get EBOLA. It can last several days out of the body especially in liquidsit can be preserved indefinitely through sublimation. At an outdoor concert venue I went to a few months ago their was at least 1/8" of piss across the entire bathroom floor of the bathroom building that everyone was walking in and it was draining out through a drain in the floor connected to a grey water waste system (meaning this ended up in a ditch someplace no the treatment plant).
"A drop of blood can remain contagious outside the body. And virus particles can survive for days or weeks, depending on the environment. Ultraviolet light, heat and exposure to oxygen gradually deactivate the virus, while cooler temperatures and humidity help keep it active"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/09/12/346114454/how-do-you-catch-ebola-by-air-sweat-or-water
"Ebola’s sucker punch is its speed of replication. At the time of death, a patient can have 1 billion copies of the virus in one cubic centimeter of blood."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/know-enemy/
also how many times have you seen someone use the bathroom and not wash their hands, further their hands are soiled when they touch the handles of the door of the stall, the levers to flush, and the sink to wash in (if they was their hands) if they don't they contaminate the door handle on the way out (so much for your clean hands if you washed them).
2. Public sewer system cannot filter out the contagion. All hospitals except for CDC specialize centers lack specialized toilets to handle the waste. Also is anyone going to tell public works employees if a sewer main clogs or blows that it may contain Ebola? and what about the sludge tanks at the water treatment plant?
3. Public hospitals are NOT screening for EBOLA because they are believing what CDC said initially that it wont hit here. Many people have been hit with the D68 respiratory virus and we are just a few weeks away from Flu Season and the holiday shopping season. Those symptoms present the same as Ebola. And because this country is too politically correct and afraid of offending someone I am sure most hospitals and staff aren't going to ask a person of African descent if they have travelled to Africa lately out of fear of offending them.
4. They have not discussed the possibility of Ebola spreading through RATS, (imagine broken sewer lines and rats becoming exposed in NYC) although it does spread through bats and chimpanzees, they have also seen dogs able to carry it but little information if they an infect anyone. Considering it is spread through bodily fluids I would assume a dog infected licking you would spread it.
5. Public hospitals are overloaded just with the flu virus, in my local hospitals you could wait 3 - 6 hours in the waiting room until you are seen. It was a scary sight last time I was there, people wearing masks coughing and sweating (not separated from everyone else) people with puke buckets, and a public restroom in the waiting area where people went to puke.
6. Most pubic hospitals do not have a quarantine area, they may have rooms that are isolation rooms, but those rooms lack a private bathroom, and you also have to wheel the person through the common hall to get to the room, their is no separate entrances for people with highly contagious diseases. Meanwhile any coughing they
http://xkcd.com/605/
Simplistic extrapolation will provide you with a simplistic answer.
Send the Ebola victims to Iraq or Syria to wipe out ISIS/ISIL!