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Ebola Forecast: Scientists Release Updated Projections and Tracking Maps
An anonymous reader writes Scientists of the Northeastern University, in collaboration with European scientists, developed a modeling approach aimed at assessing the progression of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and its international spread under the assumption that the outbreak continues to evolve at the current pace. They also considered the impact of travel restrictions, and concluded that such restrictions may delay by only a few weeks the risk that the outbreak extends to new countries. Instead, travel bans could hamper the delivery of medical supplies and the deployment of specialized personnel to manage the epidemic. In the group's page, there's also an updated assessment of the probability of Ebola virus disease case importation in countries across the world, which was also invoked during the Congressional Ebola debate. The group also released a map with real-time tracking of conversations about Ebola on Twitter. Policy makers and first responders are the main target audience of the tool, which is able to show a series of potential warnings and events (mostly unconfirmed) related to Ebola spreading and case importation.
Scientists, as has been readily confirmed by all news outlets, arent a part of this discussion. Here are the latest forecasts from the newsdroids you trust(c) most:
November: cold front of phobia and ostracization provided through state quarantines and youtube videos of isolated ebola victims. Viewers should expect to vote based entirely on ebola, and ensure they include ebola in casual conversations at least 4 times per day. At no point should viewers stop consuming the product, or attempt to calmly rationalize this situation. Purchase precisely what television doctors prescribe, and adhere to name brands only.
December:Ebola will be entirely forgotten, do not include ebola in any conversations. Focus on black friday, cyber monday, spendy saturday, and subprime mortgage sunday. Holiday spirit, Bing Crosby, and santa trackers will be hauled out of cold storage and our graphics department will ensure concerns of this "disease" are re-applied solely to african and east asian nations far out of the grasp of American geographic knowledge. Drive directly into inexorably sprawling suburban traffic to your largest supermall or box store and purchase nose hair trimmers, cologne, candy, and oil drum sized tins of popped corn. Assume/insist ebola has been cured.
January sneak peek: after guzzling champagne and shitting your weight in cakes and pies, prepare for the next Avengers film, government shutdown, internet advocacy trend, exercise resolution, civil unrest, and iProduct. and hey, thanks for another great programming year!
Good people go to bed earlier.
Travel restrictions are epidemiology 101, but politics gets in the way...
I see the media panicking. I don't see the American public panicking.
If anything there is concern that the government is not taking proper choices do to politics (such as restricting / checking people who travel to ebola and requiring that doctors spend 21 days (or so) at home or in a nice isolation ward at the hospital with TV and all the take out menus they want.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
You are aware that experts at both the CDC and the World Health Organization are saying that is likely to make the outbreak worse, and they both recommend against travel restrictions?
So here we have every top medical organization, vs one random slashdot poster. Hmm. Dunning-Kruger much?
The only way to reduce your own risk of being contaminated is to stay isolated.
Slashdot readers live in the basement and never go outside.
If ebola goes on a rampage world-wide, the only survivors will be people who stayed in isolation.
The future belongs to the nerds.
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First off Ebola is a tragedy and is worthy of all efforts at control and eradication, not because I may someday be at risk, but because real people are dying. However.... The posting links to an "updated assessment" which you can view. Looking there, one is led to believe that on Oct 24, the number of Ebola cases are 30,000 worldwide. But if you look really closely, this is just a projection based on data accumulated 30 days ago. Is this the most current data we can view on which to base our assessment? Look now at the bottom of the page and you will see updated assessments including one for Oct 29 (yesterday). Look for the WHO situation reports further down. Currently the stats are: approx 13,000 confirmed or suspected cases total approx 6,000 cases confirmed. approx 5,000 deaths approx 1,000 total cases of live people testing positive for infection And the big news..... Cases in the past 21 days approx 1,500 vs. 30,000 My question is why are we trying to inject this fear into our people? Why the over inflated assessment for the purpose of publication? Is the author guided by an alternative motive, or are they just too lazy to look? Again.. Ebola is a huge concern and a tragedy to humankind. We need to do everything we can to fight this outbreak. But we should be given accurate information not scare tactics.
If our President initially came out, armed with scientific facts and results of studies like this one as the rationale for not imposing a travel ban, it would have gone over much better with the American people.
Instead, we've witnessed nothing but a "FUD campaign" - with a strong sense that nobody in charge really knows what the h*ll they're doing with this stuff. First, the hospital in Texas got blamed for screwing up and not following procedures. Then it was revealed they never received any official procedure in the first place for dealing with ebola.
There's conflicting information about how contagious the ebola virus is ... with claims that you can't get it without direct contact with the infected person's bodily fluids, but medical workers wearing hazmat suits while going near the people. (If people are supposed to believe their chances of getting the virus while on an airplane with an infected person are "pretty unlikely" -- then how is it we have concerns about hospital workers catching it, even after wearing protective suits and everything else? I don't think people are convinced you can have this BOTH ways at the same time.)
And sure ... people also recall the H1N1 "swine flu" situation and how that panned out in reality.
IMO, the travel ban would just be good common sense to impose -- while setting up some exceptions for medical staff legitimately traveling to/from the high risk areas for the purpose of aid. I *love* how the government makes it out to be an "all or nothing" proposition -- where we simply can't impose the ban without risking inability to provide medical assistance over there. Seriously?! You can't come up with scenarios allowing SELECTIVE travel for appropriate people and some extra steps they're required to go through upon re-entering the US?
Really? An "ebola forecast?" That's the degree of paranoia you've allowed the cable news outlets to work you up into?
Give me a fucking break. First of all, unless you're currently sitting next to somebody with an active infection or you've just cut yourself dissecting an infected animal, the chances of ebola spreading through North America are virtually zero. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be precautions taken, of course...in fact those precautions are exactly why you _don't_ need to be worried, because they've proven quite effective. These same media outlets seem to liken a number of the African countries affected to being about as clean as a prison toilet...yeah, that's not biased at all. Like Newsweek printing a cover with a chimpanzee on the front talking about how ebola could make its way from Africa to the continental U.S. via "infected bushmeat." Seriously, that's something that an American news outlet actually printed. They're basically _telling_ you that your best chances of catching the thing would be subsisting on a diet of infected monkeys and you're _still_ fucking terrified. They did the same thing with SARS, they did the same thing with H1N1, they're doing the same thing with ebola...yet all three of them haven't killed as many people as the common flu does, every single year.
People need to stop being afraid of their own shadows just because CNN and the government tell you to. I can sympathize, these people have been using your fear against you for decades. Communists, terrorists, "weapons of mass destruction" (incidentally, the US is sitting atop the largest pile of WMD's on the face of the earth, which they could willingly irradiate until the end of time if they actually pushed the button). The boogeyman of the day is ebola. They want you to be afraid because people who are afraid are easier to control, they're prone to making irrational decisions based on their gut feelings rather than, you know, actually thinking about it.
You want something to be worked up over, worry about heart disease...it's becoming so prevalent that odds are it's what _will_ kill you long before ebola ever does. We don't need an "ebola czar," we don't need an "ebola forecast." What we do need is for people to use their fucking heads for five seconds because if they did, they'd realize that there's a better chance of being struck by lightning than a plague of ebola decimating the entirely of North America. Stop playing into the hands of the media outlets. I gurantee you that if you stop "tuning in" so to speak, the ebola "issue" will disappear from the headlines so fast that you'd think it was a distant relative of Vanilla Ice. They don't give a fuck about ebola, or you for that matter, they give a fuck about the advertising space they're probably selling hand over fist these days.
She is not "supposed to be quarantined" according to anyone except some idiot politicians trying to score political points and capitalize on fear. She has tested negative multiple times, has no symptoms, and the CDC has cleared her to go home. New Jersey governor said Monday that the CDC cleared nurse Kaci Hickox to go home during 21-day quarantine after she tested negative for Ebola
It's just idiot politicians who have to be seen to be "doing something", regardless of whether that thing makes any sense.
Also CDC says returning Ebola medical workers should not be quarantined.
I was under the impression that travel bans would just impact ordinary civilian and commercial craft, not military air vehicles or airplanes which are designated specifically for transporting medical supplies to an area where they are so vitally needed. So why would such travel restrictions still cause delays in treating the outbreak, exactly?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
'A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals and you know that.'
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So your point is that these people don't follow your advices (even if you are the top expert in epidemiology) and this as lead to a disastrous situation in the US
You mean the same experts who gave the OK for Amber Vinson to fly knowing she was exposed and had a fever?
How many people have been infected by contact with Amber Vinson?
Or the doctor who returned from Guinea who admitted he wasn't feeling good but decided to ride the subway multiple times, go bowling and eat out?
How many people have been infected by contact with this doctor?
Do you mean the person who doesn't have any symptoms and has tested negative to ebola at least once? That person?
That doesn't mean anything. You can test negative, and be asymptomatic, for a long time while still carrying the disease.
The position of actual scientists that oppose quarantines doesn't rely on whether somebody tested negative for ebola. It's based on whether somebody who is infected is likely to infect others when they become contagious.
Are you suggesting that people should be quarantined regardless of the science?
If you don't understand the science, why do you expect those you disagree with to understand it?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
The science, so far, suggests that people aren't shedding virus (infective) until they start developing symptoms. Or is there other research stating that people are infective while asymptomatic? The science of the situation changes as the researchers are getting a better understanding of this particular infection. It's an exciting time (so long as you're not infected, of course).
As an aside, why is science in quotes? Are we supposed to exchange that word for mysticism?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Even if the nurse has Ebola, until she starts showing symptoms she won't pose any risk of infecting anyone else.
Even the people infected with Ebola in the US have so far only passed on the infection to people caring for them in later stages of the disease (when even more virus is shed). The one nurse who rode on an airplane while allegedly running a fever (I've heard conflicting reports) infected a grand total of 0 people.
So why should someone who is showing no symptoms and thus has a 0 risk of transmitting Ebola right now be forced into a 21 day quarantine?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Why is it that people in africa cannot follow science or these top expert's advice? Why is it that all 3 people mentioned above bt the GP have demonstrated that they cannot follow the science? Why is it that with everyone being an expert and the science already settled, is the outbreak still happening and people who know better are getting infected?
Here is the problem which is the same problem that happens in engineering, software development, sports, and quit a bit of other things in life as we know it. What works on paper, what works in theory, does not always work in practice. There are a number of reasons for this, a lot of them may not even be in your control. We just had a rocket explode on launch and i'm certain that everyone involved thought they did everything correctly, everything was right- until it was obvious it wasn't.
Almost- if not every state that requires a drivers license also requires the use of a seat belt for at least the driver when operating a car. Cars are completely safe and damage is rare when the rules are followed yet people mess it up all the time.
The experts can say anything they want. The mortality rate with Ebola is sky high compare to getting cancer and dieing from smoking yet we banchildren from doing it and restrict where people can smoke. Doing the bare minimum with Ebola is not rational considering the risks results in death more often than not. Statistically, you are less likely to die from a gunshot if a gun is shot around you than you are if you get Ebola. Quarentine is akin to wearing seatbelts, to laws against discharging firearms in certain areas, to smoking in certain areas, to wearing helmets while operating motorcycles.
I don't get it. Why does a travel restrictions have to be an all-or-nothing proposition?
It's real bloody simple. Let medical staff, military, and those working directly to address the Ebola epidemic travel. Those that wish to travel for leisure or other business related reason, banned from doing so. Exceptions are if you wish to return home to Africa to be with your family, but knowing full well you can't leave until after the epidemic subsides.
Anything wrong with the proposed solution above?
Life is not for the lazy.
So require anyone returning from Ebola afflicted countries or caring for Ebola infected patients to report their temperature two times a day (which they do anyway) for a 21 day period. Any temperature above normal levels will result in a 5 day quarantine until it can be determined whether they have Ebola (in which case, they go into quarantined treatment) or whether they have something else (in which case, they are still monitored until the 21 days are up).
If you are worried about the nurse transmitting Ebola to random people she meets on the street, look at the Thomas Duncan case. He went into the ER feeling sick (which we now know was due to Ebola), was sent home, interacted with friends and family, went back to the hospital, and interacted with many doctors and nurses. The total number of Ebola transmissions in this case? Two nurses who took care of him during the times when he was VERY infectious and a minor breach in protocol could mean infection.
One of those nurses, in turn, flew on a plane and engaged in some other "normal life" activities before showing symptoms. Total number of people she infected with Ebola? Zero.
We shouldn't be worried that this nurse will go to the supermarket and infect random people with Ebola. Especially not if she's not showing any symptoms. The politicians want you to panic so they can take some measures (regardless of whether those measures actually help), say they "did something" and "took action", and gather more votes for the next election campaign.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
You do realise that the major part of the international effort has been civilian organisations like MSF? How do you think MSF get staff, supplies and equipment into and out of the affected zone? On regular scheduled airlines of course, they don't have their own fleet of planes.
Watch this Heartland Institute video