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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.
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.
"Please send aid money to Africa where Africans (not foreigners) can deal with it themselves."
Hell no.
You want our help/money? We control how it gets spent.
You want control? Earn the money yourself.
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.
Many of these places have everyone bathing and drinking from the same water supply, and there are cultural practices like touching the dead before burial. Additionally there is a lack of trust in western medical practices.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
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.
Send in Brad Pitt!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Please write to your governments and have these sorts of people punished. Please send aid money to Africa where Africans (not foreigners) can deal with it themselves.
Wait, are you a Prince? Do you need my help to reclaim your inheritance?
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:
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Your concern for micromanagement by your own country's unelected bureaucrats is more important to you than the lives of literally millions of people.
I don't care how justified you think you are, but right now you're getting up there with "voting national socialist in 1935" levels of awful.
Nah, he's merely pointing out that Africans who "know how African diseases work" is obviously not working, and that throwing money at a solution that doesn't work will not turn it into one that does.
It's not even really about infrastructure, just basic sanitation.
If you have the resources to wash your hands - which much of Africa does not - then you'll probably be able to contain an Ebola outbreak without much trouble.
=Smidge=
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...
Instead of quarantines, we need to treat it at a regular hospital and treat the people with respect.
There's a great idea, let's put a highly infectious virus with a 50% kill rate into a hospital and not quarantine those known to be infected.
That's simply insane.
Yes, the whole situation on the ground is fucked up, but not recognizing that the ONLY way to contain Ebola is by quarantine is going to make things worse not better.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Your concern for micromanagement by your own country's unelected bureaucrats is more important to you than the lives of literally millions of people.
Sierra Leone, Liberia, and some other West African countries have not proved to be reliable to apply aid money where it's intended.
There are, indeed, African countries to be trusted, even in West Africa, but last time I checked Ebola had not spread to Cape Verde.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
Your assumption that the unelected bureaucrats in an African kleptocracy are more responsive to the needs of millions of people (who aren't related to them) is...amusing.
And I don't care how justified you think you are....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Yeah, the CDC says it's possible, and I trust their judgement more than my own.
But, in spite of that, I have a question: How can something with a 90% fatality rate really become endemic? It'd imply a near complete depopulation of the affected areas.
Epidemic makes sense. People hide out, move around, spread the disease, huge, rapid expansion into new populations occurs. I don't know how they'd model a endemic ebola.
Because it doesn't just kill you in a day. It takes a while. Symptoms don't appear from 2-21 days; once the symptoms appear you're contagious. Granted that's a wide margin of error.
In the meantime, you have people that try to "get away" because they either don't realize they're already infected or are simply in denial. Said person just has to cross a certain threshold and now it's in a whole other region. You can get pretty far in 21 days, and depending on our knowledge of the area and motivation, it's "possible" to get somewhere else. After all, you might have weeks until you start to show.
That's not counting the doctors / nurses / guards / etc. that can accidentally get exposed and unknowingly pass it on.
What "regular hospital"? Part of the problem is that there is NO infrastructure. Zmap is, unfortunately, hit or miss. Even despite the partial success of Zmap there isn't enough production of it since it was experimental at the beginning & even if there were enough and the distribution was there the patients would still have to rely on western doctors to get treatment.
It's not even resources, so much, as custom.
Western societies generally don't touch the dead, unless required to do so.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Touching the dead can give you Ebola? That seems like an extremely easy to transmit disease. I'm surprised a worldwide Ebola apocalypse hasn't occurred already.
Touching people who died from Ebola can give you Ebola, yes. It's an infectious disease that spreads via bodily fluids and causes bleeding. Since someone who died from it probably bled quite a lot, that means they're essentially covered in infected and infectious blood.
Additionally there is a lack of trust in western medical practices.
That's not the only problem.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Why is this comment above me rated "Insightful"? It's the most egregiously hateful thing I have read in months. The U.S. has a cure and you wouldn't share that with the folks that need it unless there was profit involved? What kind of monster are you and those that voted you up?
Your concern for micromanagement by your own country's unelected bureaucrats is more important to you than the lives of literally millions of people.
Sierra Leone, Liberia, and some other West African countries have not proved to be reliable to apply aid money where it's intended.
There are, indeed, African countries to be trusted, even in West Africa, but last time I checked Ebola had not spread to Cape Verde.
Oh, as opposed to the Iraqi and Afghan ass clowns that were given billions and get military and economic aid from the U.S., still!?!?! Maybe if there were terrorists in these African nations they'd get some aid, is that what you're going for, or is it even more racist than that?
There's a great idea, let's put a highly infectious virus with a 50% kill rate into a hospital and not quarantine those known to be infected.
And note that even in the US, about 75,000 people a year die from infections they acquire in hospitals, and that's just pneumonia, C. difficile, MRSA, and other things much less scary that Ebola, which you can get from touching something with just a few virus particles in it. I think the people who are claiming Ebola is only a problem in Africa due to ignorance and substandard medical care are fooling themselves: if it gets to the U.S., the hospitals here are unlikely to perform up to the standards required.
Plus, every new infection means more chances for Ebola to mutate, possibly into an airborne form.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Plus, even Ebola survivors can spread the disease: I've read that the semen of Ebola survivors can transmit Ebola for months after their clinical recovery. And what about symptomatic carriers? AFAIK there have been none reported, but what if there's even one "Typhoid Mary" of Ebola?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I think there's some disturbing parallels to the zombie/ebola outbreak scenario.
The movie "Contagion", while kind of lame, sort of came close to delivering it. 28 Days Later wasn't bad, either, but a little too zombie-like to be "realistic."
It's not hard to imagine a real pandemic where there's a disease with a very high mortality rate, a long incubation period before debilitating symptoms occur but a very short period before obvious but benign symptoms occur that make the infected easy to identify.
I could see a situation like that being a lot like a zombie outbreak -- the infected know they are infected and likely to die but have several weeks without symptoms that make them unable to cause havoc. At some point those infected would probably start to react/strike back at the uninfected as the uninfected pulled back and stopped wanting to have anything to do with them.
Trolling or not, it's true that the death of the majority of the population of every nation on earth would go a long way towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The deaths brought about by the resulting general collapse of civil government and trade throughout the world, as Western Europe experienced for eight centuries after 476, would go even further.
The most horrifying part is that the first industrial revolution that made the present state of high civilization possible has at present consumed virtually all of the easily accessible deposits of base materials - fuel and mineral deposits - that enabled it. Meaning that if industrial society falls, it may take a very, very long time to restart. That's assuming it can even be restarted when there's no coal, oil or metals left that can be mined without 21st-century drilling rigs and tunnel borers.
Considering that Africa accounts for about 7.7%* of the total world's energy consumption then no, even if all of Africa died it would not reverse climate change. It would not even stop it. It would not even slow it that much.
Source: World Energy Consumption
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Rampant corruption and poverty is only part of the problem.
Botswana is widely considered the least corrupt country in Africa, and the most prosperous sub-Saharan country.
But they have been completely unable to control the AIDS epidemic, with up to a quarter of the country infected.
Botswana has gone from having one of the highest sub-Saharan life expectancies to one of the lowest.
Unhealthy habits can be very hard to change, even in a relatively prosperous and well-governed country.
Given the sad history of AIDS in Africa, it is hard to be optimistic about ebola control.
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 !