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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.
"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.
They're assuming cases are underreported by a factor of 2.5.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
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
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.
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?
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...
Well then, I guess the decision to be uneducated and ignorant will serve them well when their carcasses are being zipped up in a double-lined black bag and tossed into a common grave.
Yes, many, many injustices have been perpetrated against the African continent and its peoples, but when your people are dying and people are coming in, risking their own lives to try and help you, and your response is to attack and kill them, trying to use the injustices of the past to justify the mass deaths of the present won't win you any friends, will it?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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"
Probably. Funerary practices in that part of the world are very home-centered, generally administered by the grieving family. That's a major current transmission route, and its emotional and traditional base gives it resistance to quarantine pressures. No one is just going to pile corpses outside waiting for the body cart, if they've spent weeks locked away caring for their dying loved one.
Dealing with the dead is a big part of epidemic management, and "doing it right" (to minimize infectiousness) is expensive, as well as insensitive to the survivors. So yeah, the dead will continue to infect the living, until it burns itself out, or until someone imposes draconian responses.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Here are some better interactive versions of the Wikipedia charts:
Ebola Outbreak Tracker
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
That's right up there with the "climate scientists made up global warming to get funding" morons.
weinersmith